Warlord wrote:

tell you the truth its hard to believe that apple II clone or whatever was damaged like that during shipping. Expansion cards don't get unscrewed and come out on their own and fly around inside of a case. It must of been like that and then whoever sold it shipped it like that because they were dumb.

the expansion cards in that particular style machine aren't screwed in, there are no brackets on them, all the connectors go out via cables, it was packaged in a big box with just one piece of styrofoam holding it in position on top and a few loose pieces around, so yes it could easily rattle around inside the box and I'm 100% sure the damage was from shipping, probably the package was dropped, and there not being any soft padding below, it just smashed the bottom in and probably rattled all the cards loose.

I gave the seller some tips to do better packaging in the future, i.e. stuff the inside as well and wrap the whole thing up so loose parts can't hit against each other increasing the damage, and they apologized, I don't see the point in making a big fuzz about it considering the price I paid... I hope I'll get around to fix it up again some time.

Merovign wrote:

You may have a somewhat historical system there! If you had plenty of times you could skim through the old Creative Computing mags on archive.org - they had a lot of ads for Apple II clones in the early 80s, and a column dedicated to them for a while IIRC.

It could also be a homebrew or one of the non-US clones... I would love to have access to some of the output of some of the domestic industries of places like Brazil and France that tried hard to have their own large domestic industries in the 1980s (actually a lot of countries did, I learned some about Norway's last year).

it looks kinda home-brewish, but seeing is this is a purpose made case with the same port locations as an apple II from the looks of it it just looks like a job from a small firm probably, since I bought it from germany and the floppy controller seems to be from germany too it was probably some small company buying the parts and putting those clones together there.
this machine seems to be from before my time ^^ according to the datecodes.

I got a Commodore 64 today with a dsik drive, casette drive, joystick, BASIC expansion card, all manuals (in german 😢 ) about 20 floppies in a holder and a ghostbuster casette. After getting it I see the power brick has no connector, but I got a Didaktik power supply in the loot too and the connector is exactly matching so will put it on the C64 brick. Will find a pinout on net later... Also I dont know how to set it up on my TV... RF cable is enough? I have a LED TV. I have never had something this old, IDK how to use it, nothing, i am too young generation for this type of PC... 🙁 First I will open it to check capacitors, clean it a bit, repair the power supply and try to get it work, photos later, now I am at work. Also got an Abit NF7 board with CPU. The guy who gave these to me has an F1 Sim compact, but left it home accidentally. After testing the things we will discuss about the price 😀

Got a second Tyan S1571 motherboard with a Pentium MMX 200, that had an open multiplier. So i took that CPU and made it to run at 75x3.5=266MHz. (Y)
Before that, i had MMX 200, that didn't support 3.5 multiplier.

Now i have one Tyan S1571 with 200MHz MMX cpu in excess... (I got my cpu what i was after) Need to find a good new owner for it. It's quite an interesting board. (i.e. 6x72pin + 2xSDRAM slots for ram)

+ with it i got 3 completely broken slot 1 motherboards for donor pieces...

Bought a Compaq Armada M700 that needs to be inspected before I plug it in and remove the Li-Ion battery in case something happens.

GigAHerZ wrote:

Got a second Tyan S1571 motherboard with a Pentium MMX 200, that had an open multiplier. So i took that CPU and made it to run a […]
Show full quote

Got a second Tyan S1571 motherboard with a Pentium MMX 200, that had an open multiplier. So i took that CPU and made it to run at 75x3.5=266MHz. (Y)
Before that, i had MMX 200, that didn't support 3.5 multiplier.

Now i have one Tyan S1571 with 200MHz MMX cpu in excess... (I got my cpu what i was after) Need to find a good new owner for it. It's quite an interesting board. (i.e. 6x72pin + 2xSDRAM slots for ram)

+ with it i got 3 completely broken slot 1 motherboards for donor pieces...

Dabbling with two Tyan S2882(-D) boards here atm. Planning on condensing a lot of work into one machine. Planning on running either 2x Opteron 248 single cores or 2x Opteron 285 dual cores. The non-D model of the board maxes out at 16GB, whereas the D-revision takes up to 32GB DDR1 EEC REG. This is borderline modern guilt, though, so I think I already overstayed my welcome here 😜

Ebay purchase for $120 shipped.. Some 200MHz MMX system. But the rear I/O interests me so I risked it. Seller photos, no internal pix.

Hopefully I'm correct here, but I don't know of any other sound cards that use that rear I/O layout... Can anyone confirm my suspicions?

but what you suspect?

At least a very odd sound card. Never saw one with the joystick port in the middle.

respect2759 wrote:

I got a Commodore 64 today with a dsik drive, casette drive, joystick, BASIC expansion card, all manuals (in german 😢 ) about 20 floppies in a holder and a ghostbuster casette. After getting it I see the power brick has no connector, but I got a Didaktik power supply in the loot too and the connector is exactly matching so will put it on the C64 brick. Will find a pinout on net later... Also I dont know how to set it up on my TV... RF cable is enough? I have a LED TV. I have never had something this old, IDK how to use it, nothing, i am too young generation for this type of PC... 🙁 First I will open it to check capacitors, clean it a bit, repair the power supply and try to get it work, photos later, now I am at work. Also got an Abit NF7 board with CPU. The guy who gave these to me has an F1 Sim compact, but left it home accidentally. After testing the things we will discuss about the price 😀

The C64 displays its RF output on channel 36 of your tv. Your tv needs an analog tuner or else you need a RF converter box. The modern alternative is to connect it to a tv or monitor with a composite video cable. You can (for example) buy one at retrogamingcables.co.uk.

retropol wrote:

but what you suspect?

Gravis Ultrasound? Unless there is another sound card with the same layout I'm unaware of.

wiretap wrote:

Gravis Ultrasound? Unless there is another sound card with the same layout I'm unaware of.

Very likely. This is mine for reference. If true, a good find 😀

My Gravis Ultrasound and 16 bit daughter board

pan069 wrote:

wiretap wrote:

Gravis Ultrasound? Unless there is another sound card with the same layout I'm unaware of.

Very likely. This is mine for reference. If true, a good find 😀

My Gravis Ultrasound and 16 bit daughter board

Nice. 😎

respect2759 wrote:

I got a Commodore 64 today with a dsik drive, casette drive, joystick, BASIC expansion card, all manuals (in german 😢 ) about 20 floppies in a holder and a ghostbuster casette. After getting it I see the power brick has no connector, but I got a Didaktik power supply in the loot too and the connector is exactly matching so will put it on the C64 brick. Will find a pinout on net later... Also I dont know how to set it up on my TV... RF cable is enough? I have a LED TV. I have never had something this old, IDK how to use it, nothing, i am too young generation for this type of PC... 🙁 First I will open it to check capacitors, clean it a bit, repair the power supply and try to get it work, photos later, now I am at work. Also got an Abit NF7 board with CPU. The guy who gave these to me has an F1 Sim compact, but left it home accidentally. After testing the things we will discuss about the price 😀

Take care with those original C64 power bricks, they can die and take the PC with them.

wiretap wrote:

retropol wrote:

but what you suspect?

Gravis Ultrasound? Unless there is another sound card with the same layout I'm unaware of.

They exist. I remember once being rather disappointed that a case I opened contained some OPTi 924-based card and not the GUS I'd been hoping for...

Edit:
Got myself a unicorn too, better still, for a good price and from exactly the same seller I got the last one from: a second SGI Multilink. Which I need as my other one is dying (possibly dud caps, but not sure) and I have two SGI 1600SW monitors anyway. I'd hoped to run the system connected to them with video cards with native 1600SW/OpenLDI support, but I wanted to run a modern OS on them and turns out that they not only lack recent Windows drivers, but are unusable in Linux too as the 2D acceleration architecture their driver uses has been deprecated. So I desperately need another Multilink. Just as I reached that depressing conclusion, the same bloke I bought the last one from found another in his attic and posted it online. I should have it Thursday 😀

Got me two more AWE64 Value cards. I can't resist picking these up when I find them for cheap ($5ish), they do nearly everything I need in DX4 through Pentium II systems.

appiah4 wrote:

Got me two more AWE64 Value cards. I can't resist picking these up when I find them for cheap ($5ish), they do nearly everything I need in DX4 through Pentium II systems.

*COUGH* AWE64 Legacy *COUGH*

luckybob wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Got me two more AWE64 Value cards. I can't resist picking these up when I find them for cheap ($5ish), they do nearly everything I need in DX4 through Pentium II systems.

*COUGH* AWE64 Legacy *COUGH*

I'm already there but I don't want one of those cards for various reasons (price, not really seeing the extra benefit, I don't like destroying old hardware to build new etc.) I wish them luck though. Also, I don't think they are asking for Value cards to be sent to them anyway?

oh no, now I have to sort through all of these 🤣

Gravis Grip Multiport including 4 gamepads
a bunch of Saitek pads, Logitech Wingman, several other multi-adapters and pads

2x Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro, 1x Sidewinder Joystick
Gravis and several others...

not pictured: I also got a CH Flightstick pro for €1,50 + shipping

...does anyone want to come over and play some games? 😁

imi wrote:

oh no, now I have to sort through all of these :lol: […]
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oh no, now I have to sort through all of these 🤣

Gravis Grip Multiport including 4 gamepads
a bunch of Saitek pads, Logitech Wingman, several other multi-adapters and pads

2x Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro, 1x Sidewinder Joystick
Gravis and several others...

not pictured: I also got a CH Flightstick pro for €1,50 + shipping

...does anyone want to come over and play some games? 😁

I see some interesting stuff there. The Grip setup is really cool & that Interact N64 controller looks a hell of a lot more comfortable than a real N64 pad. Nice score!

I stumbled on this "word processor" for a few bucks today. I say "word processor" but it's clearly a little PC of some kind, booting a bespoke software suite from ROM. Normally I wouldn't bother with something like this, but it was cheap, in exceptionally nice shape, works perfectly, and I just like the way it looks. Great keyboard too.

The floppy drive seems to need a belt but it's otherwise fully intact. I would love to find some hidden way to get it to boot from floppy, but I don't see anything obvious. Panasonic even called it a "lap top", although they didn't quite commit to it.

There was some nastiness in the battery compartment, because of course there was, but fortunately it cleaned up OK and doesn't seem to have damaged the plastic. Apparently nicad batteries "leak" into a weird fibrous solid. Now I'm wondering if it has a separate barrel battery on the motherboard I need to worry about. It doesn't seem to have one (there's no clock & no battery-backed RAM saves as far as I can tell) but who knows.

After confirming it runs without a battery pack, I put the old one in my recycle pile. Yick.

It has a (probably serial) data port on the side & a parallel port for standard printers. There's an option in the menu for connecting it to a "compatible Panasonic typewriter" - apparently you can slave an electronic typewriter to it instead of a printer? Somebody thought that was a great idea.

The model is KX-WL50. There's very little info about this online. I have no idea what's inside, but I'd bet anything it's an 8088 or Z80 and some fairly off-the-shelf parts. I can't even figure out how to open it; there's no visible screws on the outside, but there are some suspicious screwdriver marks in places where plastic clips are likely to be.

If anyone can find a disassembly manual or even a specs sheet for this thing online, hit me up! Maybe I'm just failing at searching again but I'd love to have some more info on it.

Edit: jesus christ, 1500 pages of pickups. What a lot of obsolete crap. 10/10, keep it up you all. 😉

xjas wrote:

I stumbled on this "word processor" for a few bucks today. I say "word processor" but it's clearly a little PC of some kind, boo […]
Show full quote

I stumbled on this "word processor" for a few bucks today. I say "word processor" but it's clearly a little PC of some kind, booting a bespoke software suite from ROM. Normally I wouldn't bother with something like this, but it was cheap, in exceptionally nice shape, works perfectly, and I just like the way it looks. Great keyboard too.

CameraZOOM-20190826171419852.jpg

CameraZOOM-20190826171600913.jpg

The floppy drive seems to need a belt but it's otherwise fully intact. I would love to find some hidden way to get it to boot from floppy, but I don't see anything obvious. Panasonic even called it a "lap top", although they didn't quite commit to it.

CameraZOOM-20190826171641732.jpg

There was some nastiness in the battery compartment, because of course there was, but fortunately it cleaned up OK and doesn't seem to have damaged the plastic. Apparently nicad batteries "leak" into a weird fibrous solid. Now I'm wondering if it has a separate barrel battery on the motherboard I need to worry about. It doesn't seem to have one (there's no clock & no battery-backed RAM saves as far as I can tell) but who knows.

CameraZOOM-20190826164235952.jpg

After confirming it runs without a battery pack, I put the old one in my recycle pile. Yick.

It has a (probably serial) data port on the side & a parallel port for standard printers. There's an option in the menu for connecting it to a "compatible Panasonic typewriter" - apparently you can slave an electronic typewriter to it instead of a printer? Somebody thought that was a great idea.

CameraZOOM-20190826171813754.jpg

The model is KX-WL50. There's very little info about this online. I have no idea what's inside, but I'd bet anything it's an 8088 or Z80 and some fairly off-the-shelf parts. I can't even figure out how to open it; there's no visible screws on the outside, but there are some suspicious screwdriver marks in places where plastic clips are likely to be.

If anyone can find a disassembly manual or even a specs sheet for this thing online, hit me up! Maybe I'm just failing at searching again but I'd love to have some more info on it.

Found the user manual for the KX-WL55:
https://manualmachine.com/panasonic/kx-wl55/1 … 40-user-manual/

And the printer that goes along with it:
https://manualmachine.com/panasonic/kx-wd55/1 … 50-user-manual/

And a blog post about the same:
http://aboredprogrammer.com/panasonic-wl55-kx-wl55/

KX-WL50 specifications:
http://salestores.com/panasonickxw.html#.XWSRvOhKiUk