VOGONS


Bought these (retro) hardware today

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Reply 24340 of 52340, by The Serpent Rider

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I got setup from McGyver

*synthesizer music from 80s* "Push it to the limit!"

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 24341 of 52340, by luckybob

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The Serpent Rider wrote:

I got setup from McGyver

*synthesizer music from 80s* "Push it to the limit!"

all I can hear in my head is this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTidn2dBYbY

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 24342 of 52340, by arncht

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the not too popular atx version of the asus tx97, the tx97-x

combined with p233, 64m sd, asus riva128 - maybe the best "all in one" (speed + compatibilty) machine for 90s dos games.
actually with gus.

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My little retro computer world
Overdoze of the demoscene

Reply 24343 of 52340, by kixs

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appiah4 wrote:
The Serpent Rider wrote:

It sure does, but I have no DIP20 256Kx4 60nx chips to do that

Might not be so good anyway due to missing "cache" sockets.

Yeah I also noticed no onboard cache or sockets on the card, but beggars can't be choosers.. Besides, no idea how much of an impact they have.. And the CL cards have no cache either, I think?

What cache are you talking about? 😕

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 24344 of 52340, by appiah4

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kixs wrote:

What cache are you talking about? 😕

Aren't U7 and U18 supposed to be used for cache chips for BANK0 and BANK1 on the DSP6430 card? They are unpopulated and have no sockets installed. Or maybe I'm an idiot and they are just for parity?

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 24346 of 52340, by gdjacobs

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arncht wrote:
the not too popular atx version of the asus tx97, the tx97-x […]
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the not too popular atx version of the asus tx97, the tx97-x

combined with p233, 64m sd, asus riva128 - maybe the best "all in one" (speed + compatibilty) machine for 90s dos games.
actually with gus.

20180716_222208.jpg

mkovb.jpg

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 24347 of 52340, by NamelessPlayer

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I actually bought these back on Saturday, but got sidetracked with some other stuff since then...
retrocomputing_haul_7-14-2018.jpg

-GeForce 7800 GS AGP (thinking of Mac-flashing this one once I've got a big enough ROM to solder on and benching it in my main MDD G4, as it's the correct GPU/BIOS revision for that)
-Diamond Monster 3D Voodoo1 4 MB (the most compatible with early 3dfx titles, as I understand)
-S3 ViRGE/GX (one of the most compatible cards on that DOS test suite, from what I can tell, and thus an ideal mate for the Voodoo1)
-Matrox Millennium and Millenium II (less compatible than the ViRGE/GX, apparently, but Matrox's 2D quality is legendary)
-Philips Rhythmic Edge PSC703 (thrown in as a freebie, never heard of it, thought it warranted a bit of investigation)

Not pictured: an HP Pavilion 7935 that is, for some reason, missing its AGP slot (not soldered). I suppose I could try to find a donor slot to solder in myself, but it's still a hassle considering it was the sort of system I was hoping to cram one of my Voodoo5 5500s into. Still worth it just for the fact that it's loaded with a pair of 512 MB SDRAM DIMMs, though; that density isn't particularly common.

Also not pictured and not related to this forum: a first-gen Surface Pro 128 GB with Touch Cover and charger, but no pen (which is no problem because I've already got compatible Wacom pens on hand). I wasn't expecting him to have this, but for $100, how could I not?

Reply 24348 of 52340, by arncht

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I heard about the compaq gx - very good out of the box vesa, but it is not general at the s3 bioses - i always try them. The riva128 not just faster, it is also more compatible (more vesa modes), with univbe the most stupidiest vesa modes.

My little retro computer world
Overdoze of the demoscene

Reply 24349 of 52340, by canthearu

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arncht wrote:

the not too popular atx version of the asus tx97, the tx97-x

combined with p233, 64m sd, asus riva128 - maybe the best "all in one" (speed + compatibilty) machine for 90s dos games.
actually with gus.

The intel TX chipset is pretty solid, apart from lack of AGP slot and only 64meg cachable memory issue.

But for retro DOS purposes, those are not large limitations. You get Ultra-DMA 33 and a good chance of getting a BIOS that accepts large hard drives so you are not stuck using awful period correct hard drives. For me, a few hours with a quantum fireball hard drive whine was enough to cure me of that nostalgic desire.

You also get SD-RAM support, which means you can get RAM cheaply in comparison to EDO RAM.

Reply 24350 of 52340, by dionb

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canthearu wrote:
arncht wrote:

the not too popular atx version of the asus tx97, the tx97-x

combined with p233, 64m sd, asus riva128 - maybe the best "all in one" (speed + compatibilty) machine for 90s dos games.
actually with gus.

The intel TX chipset is pretty solid, apart from lack of AGP slot and only 64meg cachable memory issue.

The lack of AGP isn't such an issue if you want to stay period-correct with the rest of the platform - the first generation of AGP cards only offered marginal performance improvements versus their PCI counterparts, particularly so if you stayed with a (relatively slow) Intel CPU.

The way to beat the cachable limit is of course a K6-2+ or K6-3(+), with its own cache and tagRAM - but if you want to go down that road you're better off with an SS7 board (i.e. 100MHz FSB and AGP).

But for retro DOS purposes, those are not large limitations. You get Ultra-DMA 33 and a good chance of getting a BIOS that accepts large hard drives so you are not stuck using awful period correct hard drives. For me, a few hours with a quantum fireball hard drive whine was enough to cure me of that nostalgic desire.

At least the Fireballs tended to have decent-ish performance, unlike say contemporary Maxtors, which are almost as noisy. But if you're giving up on this particular aspect of period-correctness anyway, a CF card is a very interesting option as completely quiet - and better capable of actually utilizing the UDMA33, at least for reads.

You also get SD-RAM support, which means you can get RAM cheaply in comparison to EDO RAM.

Depend a bit on where you are and what's available, but generally true.

A little undocumented titbit about the i430TX regarding RAM: according to Intel spec it can handle max 64Mb chip density, so the biggest DIMM officially supported is 16x 8Mx8 = 128MB, with max total RAM 256MB. However, it turns out that the TX memory controller shares the same basic design with the i440EX (with same advertised memory limits)... and the i440ZX. So it will actually accept 128Mb chips, so max 256MB (but only if double-sided, so with 16 16Mx8 chips) per DIMM and 512MB in total.

That said, unless you're going for complete overkill and have a CPU with its own L2 cache, these amounts of RAM are completely silly for a TX system. Best performance with a 'normal' CPU will be had with a single 64MB PC100 DIMM.

Reply 24351 of 52340, by canthearu

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dionb wrote:

The lack of AGP isn't such an issue if you want to stay period-correct with the rest of the platform - the first generation of AGP cards only offered marginal performance improvements versus their PCI counterparts, particularly so if you stayed with a (relatively slow) Intel CPU.

The way to beat the cachable limit is of course a K6-2+ or K6-3(+), with its own cache and tagRAM - but if you want to go down that road you're better off with an SS7 board (i.e. 100MHz FSB and AGP).

As I said, not a large problem for DOS retro, and probably not much of a problem at all, even in windows. With PCI only, you still have plenty of options like installing a voodoo 2, or even a voodoo 3 PCI (but that starts getting very expensive)

But yep, if you are interested in going much faster than 200mhz on a socket 7 sort of platform, then you should move up to a SS7 with a K6, or a slot 1 pentium II.

At least the Fireballs tended to have decent-ish performance, unlike say contemporary Maxtors, which are almost as noisy. But if you're giving up on this particular aspect of period-correctness anyway, a CF card is a very interesting option as completely quiet - and better capable of actually utilizing the UDMA33, at least for reads.

I have about a dozen 250gb IDE WD drives I got for $1 each. They are cheap, quiet and reliable drives. While it is interesting to fire up the old drives once in a while (I even have an old working 20meg MFM drive), I quickly tire of the bearing whine that many of the drives in the 1gb to 20gb range end up suffering. Sadly, this Fireball drive probably came out of the factory whining like this, it only has a few thousand hours on it.

If I was completely throwing period correctness away, I'd probably get a few more IDE to SATA converters and just use a SATA SSD. They are more suited to the heavy read/write workloads that windows would throw at a drive, and I feel more comfortable having a good controller manage the NAND then the more basic ones on a CF card.

Depend a bit on where you are and what's available, but generally true.

A little undocumented titbit about the i430TX regarding RAM: according to Intel spec it can handle max 64Mb chip density, so the biggest DIMM officially supported is 16x 8Mx8 = 128MB, with max total RAM 256MB. However, it turns out that the TX memory controller shares the same basic design with the i440EX (with same advertised memory limits)... and the i440ZX. So it will actually accept 128Mb chips, so max 256MB (but only if double-sided, so with 16 16Mx8 chips) per DIMM and 512MB in total.

That said, unless you're going for complete overkill and have a CPU with its own L2 cache, these amounts of RAM are completely silly for a TX system. Best performance with a 'normal' CPU will be had with a single 64MB PC100 DIMM.

Hah, that is pretty cool. It is a pity that Intel had to cut the chipset off at the knee's a bit with the 64meg cachable memory restriction, but gotta have that market segmentation in place. Like the deliberate crippling of the original celerons, Intel only produced a decent celeron because they were forced kicking and screaming by AMD and their better products.

Reply 24353 of 52340, by arncht

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dionb wrote:
The lack of AGP isn't such an issue if you want to stay period-correct with the rest of the platform - the first generation of A […]
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canthearu wrote:
arncht wrote:

the not too popular atx version of the asus tx97, the tx97-x

combined with p233, 64m sd, asus riva128 - maybe the best "all in one" (speed + compatibilty) machine for 90s dos games.
actually with gus.

The intel TX chipset is pretty solid, apart from lack of AGP slot and only 64meg cachable memory issue.

The lack of AGP isn't such an issue if you want to stay period-correct with the rest of the platform - the first generation of AGP cards only offered marginal performance improvements versus their PCI counterparts, particularly so if you stayed with a (relatively slow) Intel CPU.

The way to beat the cachable limit is of course a K6-2+ or K6-3(+), with its own cache and tagRAM - but if you want to go down that road you're better off with an SS7 board (i.e. 100MHz FSB and AGP).

But for retro DOS purposes, those are not large limitations. You get Ultra-DMA 33 and a good chance of getting a BIOS that accepts large hard drives so you are not stuck using awful period correct hard drives. For me, a few hours with a quantum fireball hard drive whine was enough to cure me of that nostalgic desire.

At least the Fireballs tended to have decent-ish performance, unlike say contemporary Maxtors, which are almost as noisy. But if you're giving up on this particular aspect of period-correctness anyway, a CF card is a very interesting option as completely quiet - and better capable of actually utilizing the UDMA33, at least for reads.

You also get SD-RAM support, which means you can get RAM cheaply in comparison to EDO RAM.

Depend a bit on where you are and what's available, but generally true.

A little undocumented titbit about the i430TX regarding RAM: according to Intel spec it can handle max 64Mb chip density, so the biggest DIMM officially supported is 16x 8Mx8 = 128MB, with max total RAM 256MB. However, it turns out that the TX memory controller shares the same basic design with the i440EX (with same advertised memory limits)... and the i440ZX. So it will actually accept 128Mb chips, so max 256MB (but only if double-sided, so with 16 16Mx8 chips) per DIMM and 512MB in total.

That said, unless you're going for complete overkill and have a CPU with its own L2 cache, these amounts of RAM are completely silly for a TX system. Best performance with a 'normal' CPU will be had with a single 64MB PC100 DIMM.

64m is also overkill for this age - 32m was more typical in 97 and early 98.
the first fireball was the fastest drive in 95, the st is also one of the fastest from 97 (do not mix with tm, bigfoot). when i build a new config, i always want an authentic rig, i wont use sdcard - every age has the right sound 😀
it is like a steam engine without noise - they are dirty and noisy.

My little retro computer world
Overdoze of the demoscene

Reply 24354 of 52340, by canthearu

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arncht wrote:

64m is also overkill for this age - 32m was more typical in 97 and early 98.
the first fireball was the fastest drive in 95, the st is also one of the fastest from 97 (do not mix with tm, bigfoot). when i build a new config, i always want an authentic rig, i wont use sdcard - every age has the right sound 😀
it is like a steam engine without noise - they are dirty and noisy.

32 or 64 meg is kinda splitting hairs I reckon. For me, getting a single 64meg stick of SDRAM for my TX based system was just a lot easier than finding a 32meg stick.

I had both an original 540meg Fireball - It was an amazing drive for the time. It was balls to the wall fast for it's time. I was using it mostly on a 386/486 with DOS. Because I was poor and the fireball was a gift 😀

I also had a 3.2gig Fireball ST. Also a very fast drive, but I wasn't so lucky with this one. First one had a head crash so I eventually returned it under warranty. Later on, I plugged the molex connector upside down on the replacement and it went up in actual flames like it's namesake.

In a sense I do agree with you about the noise thing, and my NEC V30 (HP Vectra CS) system just wouldn't be an old XT class machine without that seagate ST-225 buzzing away under it's hood. It kind of fires and rattles into life rather than just turning on, and that is awesome. But the noise the old fireballs make, along with the sound a lot of old worn fans is just too much for me and I can't spend a long time with them running. It was a noise I disliked back then too with an almost equally fiery passion back then as I do now.

I should document what I needed to do to get that old Vectra CS running.

Reply 24355 of 52340, by blurks

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ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution

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Reply 24356 of 52340, by appiah4

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Finally! Bought my first Sound Canvas!

Roland_Sound_Canvas_SD-35.jpg

A Roland SD-35; functionally identical to an SC-50 (SC-55 equivalent GM and GS) and can play MIDI files directly from floppies. I'm considering ordering a black GOTEK, flashing it with FlashFloppy firmware and modding the thing. Stop button is gone, the dip switch needs to be replaced, and the adapter is damaged and will be replaced with a good 9V 1A 3rd party unit, but otherwise it works great! So happy about this purchase! It cost me less than 20 bucks shipped.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 24357 of 52340, by DaveJustDave

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very nice! is this EGA? i've never seen one of these before

blurks wrote:

ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution

I have no clue what I'm doing! If you want to watch me fumble through all my retro projects, you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrDavejustdave

Reply 24359 of 52340, by dionb

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blurks wrote:

No, this is a CGA/MDA (Hercules) video adapter with a whopping 64 KB of RAM.

More details on ATI's early lineup here -> https://sites.google.com/site/atiwonderseriesdatabase/

The "Small Wonder" bit is the fact that it provides all the capability of a contemporary full-length card in a short card that will also fit into the 'short' slot of an XT that few other 1980s cards would fit into, freeing up another long one for use by something bigger.

Today received a big box of formerly unspecified "video cards, sound cards and Ethernet cards":

full.png

First impression is slightly disappointing. Three of the "Ethernet" cards are in fact Token Ring, the two ISA NICs are Networth things I already had and had not been able to get to work properly. The sound cards include two bog-standard Soundblaster Live/Audigy cards and... an MWave. The only use I can think of for the latter is for an entirely correct OS/2 Warp build - if I'm feeling masochistic enough.

As for VGA, there are some nice-looking cards in there, a Medion Radeon 9800XXL and an XFX HD4650 AGP - but both look like someone's been mucking around with the heatsinks, bits are wobbly and the 9800XXL either had some sloppy soldering done or otherwise gratuitous scratching near some caps. Will test, but not exactly optimistic. Then there's a Radeon 9600Pro that looks sort of hopeful and a TNT2 Ultra with solid build quality but even more solidly stuck fan. Let's hope it didn't suffer a thermal death... The rest is mainly low-end GeForces and ancient Rage Pros. Dumping quite a few of this lot straight into the "sell or give away as 'untested scrap' box", but enough hopefully not too frustrating testing ahead.

Oh yes, an in the top right corner the parts ordered from Unicomp. Brand new, but being fitted to a 1992 keyboard, so retro enough 😉