bjwil1991 wrote:

Original Xbox bundle for $10 revision 1.6b (manufactured 11/2004) […]
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Original Xbox bundle for $10 revision 1.6b (manufactured 11/2004)

I think I want one -- but I need a good comprehensive list of either "Games exclusive to XBOX" as I own a PS2 and Gamecube for that generation already.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Original Xbox bundle for $10 revision 1.6b (manufactured 11/2004) […]
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Original Xbox bundle for $10 revision 1.6b (manufactured 11/2004)

Those models luckily don’t have leaking clock capacitors, but they also aren’t the best for modding. That said, you can still soft mod.

infiniteclouds wrote:

bjwil1991 wrote:

Original Xbox bundle for $10 revision 1.6b (manufactured 11/2004) […]
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Original Xbox bundle for $10 revision 1.6b (manufactured 11/2004)

I think I want one -- but I need a good comprehensive list of either "Games exclusive to XBOX" as I own a PS2 and Gamecube for that generation already.

There are many lists out there, and as a general rule of thumb, it has the best version of multi platform games. Certain games, like GTA San Andreas and the SSX games, are still better on PS2 for specific reasons, though.

Going to do a softmod on it, but I'll be cleaning it out, lubricate the fan, and put new thermal compound on the heatsinks. I'll also read the EEPROM chip for the password, make a CD, copy the exploits on there, and go from there. Xbox LAN party?

bjwil1991 wrote:

Going to do a softmod on it, but I'll be cleaning it out, lubricate the fan, and put new thermal compound on the heatsinks. I'll also read the EEPROM chip for the password, make a CD, copy the exploits on there, and go from there. Xbox LAN party?

You don’t necessarily need to read the EEPROM if you can wire up a USB to Xbox cable, and can find a usb stick that’s small enough to actually work.

The latest Rocky5 softmod installer lets you null the EEPROM (set it to all zeroes), so in case the original HDD dies it's easy enough to build a new one. It's a one-minute process and you can do it straight from the menu without messing around with the hardware at all. Still not as nice as flashing the TSOP (which lets you disable the HDD lock entirely), but the best you can do on a 1.6.

I also got a 1.6 recently (side of the road find 😜 ) that I've been messing around with. I already had a 1.4 that I modded a few years ago, but the tools have improved and made a ton of functionality easier, so I've been using this one as sort of a test bed to mess around with. Definitely go with Rocky5 as it's the most full-featured and up to date softmod available.

Tons of good homebrew on these! Naturally I've also got Quake 1 & 2, Doom, Heretic, Descent, Freefall 3050AD, etc. installed. 😉

Got a brand new unicomp ultra classic!

And some sweet sd to ide brackets from a fellow vogon'er!

xjas wrote:

The latest Rocky5 softmod installer lets you null the EEPROM (set it to all zeroes), so in case the original HDD dies it's easy […]
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The latest Rocky5 softmod installer lets you null the EEPROM (set it to all zeroes), so in case the original HDD dies it's easy enough to build a new one. It's a one-minute process and you can do it straight from the menu without messing around with the hardware at all. Still not as nice as flashing the TSOP (which lets you disable the HDD lock entirely), but the best you can do on a 1.6.

I also got a 1.6 recently (side of the road find 😜 ) that I've been messing around with. I already had a 1.4 that I modded a few years ago, but the tools have improved and made a ton of functionality easier, so I've been using this one as sort of a test bed to mess around with. Definitely go with Rocky5 as it's the most full-featured and up to date softmod available.

Tons of good homebrew on these! Naturally I've also got Quake 1 & 2, Doom, Heretic, Descent, Freefall 3050AD, etc. installed. 😉

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Soft modded my first Original Xbox a while back using Rocky5's softmod tool and I'm going to softmod this one, however, I need to replace 5 Nichicon 3300uF 6.3V radial caps by the PSU header and CPU as they are swollen with new Rubycon caps. The rest of the caps are good, so that's a bonus and the HDD is a Western Digital 8GB. Mine had a Seagate 10GB that blew smoke when I attempted to power it on with my computer's 520W PSU 9 years ago, but was replaced with an 80GB HDD and soft modded a while ago, then cloned to a 480GB SSD. Will upgrade the HDD to a bigger one as well after the softmod so I can install games and do some Xbox LAN parties or something, like gaming online with it (I heard that someone reversed engineered the Xbox Live for the OG Xboxes and made Halo 2 come back online as well.

cyclone3d wrote:

General_Snuss wrote:

retropol wrote:

tell me what was the price for this SC?

I paid €70,-, which is a bargain if you ask me.

That is a smokin' hot price for that.

That's what I paid for mine last year as well. There's a guy from the Netherlands who is often selling these as cheap.

after not finding a soundcanvas forever, I found a white SC-55ST yesterday for 45€ + shipping tho 😒... the seller had three and they all were pretty much gone immediately, so who else got one? 😁

derSammler wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

General_Snuss wrote:

<snip>
I paid €70,-, which is a bargain if you ask me.

That is a smokin' hot price for that.

That's what I paid for mine last year as well. There's a guy from the Netherlands who is often selling these as cheap.

Where is he selling?

imi wrote:

after not finding a soundcanvas forever, I found a white SC-55ST yesterday for 45€ + shipping tho 😒... the seller had three and they all were pretty much gone immediately, so who else got one? 😁

Nice, I saw those, they were gone before I spotted them though - that's a seller in the UK right? I bought an SC-7 from him 😁

Thermalwrong wrote:

Nice, I saw those, they were gone before I spotted them though - that's a seller in the UK right? I bought an SC-7 from him 😁

yep, that one, the SC-7 were gone pretty fast as well, I almost added one of those too, but I didn't really see the point in addition to the SC-55ST ^^... for now.

Hi! I'm very new to this forum and to retrocomputing as well, hopefully it's OK to post short questions in this topic? I picked up an Am386-DX40 computer today, brought it home from my mom's workplace. It was my first ever computer. My parents couldn't afford to buy a PC in the 90s, but for some time mom was working at home and we've had this beautiful system she brought with her, and, of course, I got into DOS and Windows 3.11 gaming.

The PC is missing some parts, and there's a very suspicious empty slot on the mobo. Thing is, I can't see any markings to find out what motherboard this is. Any ideas? I'd like to find a manual, or at least some info on the mobo. Also, I can't find out the capacity of the RAM modules as googling the chip markings yields no hits. Does anyone have any ideas or comments about this hardware?
https://imgur.com/a/ocziYvi

imi wrote:

after not finding a soundcanvas forever, I found a white SC-55ST yesterday for 45€ + shipping tho 😒... the seller had three and they all were pretty much gone immediately, so who else got one? 😁

Seeing the ebay pictures, that unit is really done. For that price, I could have sold you an SC-155 in better condition.

VioletGiraffe wrote:

Hi! I'm very new to this forum and to retrocomputing as well, hopefully it's OK to post short questions in this topic? I picked up an Am386-DX40 computer today, brought it home from my mom's workplace. It was my first ever computer. My parents couldn't afford to buy a PC in the 90s, but for some time mom was working at home and we've had this beautiful system she brought with her, and, of course, I got into DOS and Windows 3.11 gaming.

The PC is missing some parts, and there's a very suspicious empty slot on the mobo. Thing is, I can't see any markings to find out what motherboard this is. Any ideas? I'd like to find a manual, or at least some info on the mobo. Also, I can't find out the capacity of the RAM modules as googling the chip markings yields no hits. Does anyone have any ideas or comments about this hardware?
https://imgur.com/a/ocziYvi

The empty socket is for 387 co-processor. Not necessary, but optional.
For ram... Well, in the end, i have just tried out and then added sticker about the size on it. For me it has been quicker than to go through chips datasets and count together, what's the size...

First thing you want to do is to remove that barrel battery and replace it coin cell or other modern solution!

Bought an ESS ES1869F sound card for my upcoming SuperSocket7 build.

Also bought a 32GB IDE SSD and a 40-pin to 44-pin IDE adaptor.

VioletGiraffe wrote:

Hi! I'm very new to this forum and to retrocomputing as well, hopefully it's OK to post short questions in this topic? I picked up an Am386-DX40 computer today, brought it home from my mom's workplace. It was my first ever computer. My parents couldn't afford to buy a PC in the 90s, but for some time mom was working at home and we've had this beautiful system she brought with her, and, of course, I got into DOS and Windows 3.11 gaming.

The PC is missing some parts, and there's a very suspicious empty slot on the mobo. Thing is, I can't see any markings to find out what motherboard this is. Any ideas? I'd like to find a manual, or at least some info on the mobo. Also, I can't find out the capacity of the RAM modules as googling the chip markings yields no hits. Does anyone have any ideas or comments about this hardware?
https://imgur.com/a/ocziYvi

It’s a fairly typical late 386 board with an integrated AMD 386DX40 CPU. The empty square slot is for an FPU, but there isn’t a lot of software that would benefit from that on a 386.

386 boards don’t have a lot of documentation online, so at best you can find jumper settings. However, boards like this don’t have many settings (since you can’t change the CPU), so you don’t really need that. Also most jumpers should be described on the board itself. Look for silkscreened text.

GigAHerZ wrote:

The empty socket is for 387 co-processor. Not necessary, but optional.
For ram... Well, in the end, i have just tried out and then added sticker about the size on it. For me it has been quicker than to go through chips datasets and count together, what's the size...

First thing you want to do is to remove that barrel battery and replace it coin cell or other modern solution!

Thanks! Yep, that battery irks me, it's a miracle it hasn't leaked yet. Reading 1.6 volts across the leads, it's in best case seriously discharged,but likely just dead. Not sure yet what I'm going to replace it with as it's a Ni-Cd rechargeable and a somewhat inconvenient voltage to replace with something other than a similar Ni-Cd or Ni-MH. Maybe a small Li-Po.
Odd, I've searched for 80387 to see how it looks and pretty much all the pictures paint a chip with leads around its perimiter, not with an array of legs under the belly.
Did games of the era use floating-point math? I guess 3D ones could have. Would installing a 387 let me run something that a bare 386DX-40 can't?

jheronimus wrote:

It’s a fairly typical late 386 board with an integrated AMD 386DX40 CPU. The empty square slot is for an FPU, but there isn’t a lot of software that would benefit from that on a 386.
386 boards don’t have a lot of documentation online, so at best you can find jumper settings. However, boards like this don’t have many settings (since you can’t change the CPU), so you don’t really need that. Also most jumpers should be described on the board itself. Look for silkscreened text.

Fair enough, makes sense, thanks. So far I've only noticed the table for setting CPU frequency with jumpers, but I don't think the board has too many jumpers either. I vaguely recall reading something about having to configure IRQs with jumpers so I wanted to have the manual for that case, but I don't know if this hurdle applies to this particular mobo.

VioletGiraffe wrote:

Did games of the era use floating-point math? I guess 3D ones could have. Would installing a 387 let me run something that a bare 386DX-40 can't?

No. First games to require an FPU came up in the Pentium era. Quake 1 was probably the first not to run without an FPU.

SimCity is said to use the FPU if present, but does not require it. There also was Falcon 3.0 which offered a more realistic flight model if an FPU is present. But that's it really for pre-Pentium games.

derSammler wrote:

Seeing the ebay pictures, that unit is really done. For that price, I could have sold you an SC-155 in better condition.

hmm? I don't really see anything wrong with it apart from some yellowing, which is normal I guess if it was exposed to the sun.