PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2020-01-05, 03:01:

Seems Harris / Leitch used this particular board in quite a few different pieces of kit - a pic from a current listing

NX4100-VTS.jpg

Thanks, I'm kinda new to this class of board and have been reading up on the different mounting & case options you mention.

Wow really nice ! Do you have any specs on it ?

i was at a local e-waste when this was dropped off so i had to buy it...
ibm model f at keyboard...

it's in excellent condition. both flip out feet are still intact along with the rubber feet on the bottom plate.

i hurry home, plug it into a 486, power it up, the three led's on the keyboard flash and then
🤣

oh well, i'll pop it open sometime this week and see what's up. hope it's nothing major

Horun wrote on 2020-01-05, 03:56:

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2020-01-05, 03:01:

Seems Harris / Leitch used this particular board in quite a few different pieces of kit - a pic from a current listing

NX4100-VTS.jpg

Thanks, I'm kinda new to this class of board and have been reading up on the different mounting & case options you mention.

Wow really nice ! Do you have any specs on it ?

There's a Wayback spec link and flyer for the board here Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

@FluffyBunnyFeet

The ibm model F is designed for XT class machines only. It won't work in anything but, without a converter.

FluffyBunnyFeet wrote on 2020-01-05, 04:39:

i was at a local e-waste when this was dropped off so i had to buy it... ibm model f at keyboard... [...] i hurry home, plug it […]
Show full quote

i was at a local e-waste when this was dropped off so i had to buy it...
ibm model f at keyboard...
[...]
i hurry home, plug it into a 486, power it up, the three led's on the keyboard flash and then
[...]

oh well, i'll pop it open sometime this week and see what's up. hope it's nothing major

XT- and AT-type keyboards used different signalling and aren't compatible. Your 486 is expecting an AT keyboard & can't use this one natively. There's a good chance it works fine, you just need an older PC to use it on.

IIRC you can get a signal converter if you want to use this on a machine that takes AT-keyboards.

EDIT: THIS WAS WRONG. See Dionb's correction below. It is an AT-signalling keyboard after all. Didn't realize IBM made AT keyboards with this layout.

wirerogue wrote on 2020-01-04, 03:06:

nos inwin a500 case. a nice start to my next build.

inwin.a500.case.iso.jpg

You lucky bastard 😁 Best case ever.

Just won a lot of ISA cards (>30) for almost exactly 1€/card. I don't care for most of the cards, but there are two very interesting sound cards included. 😀 Also a couple of 3Com ethernet cards, which are always good to have.

More when the lot arrives.

Had some time today to go to the local flea market and I got these:

A Matrox G400 32Gb AGP card

An Eicon Diva PRO 2.0 ISA ISDN modem. I bought this because I thought it is some kind of LAN card... Probably I'll keep it just for the collection...

An Ensoniq Soundscape Opus ISA sound card

A Creative Sound Blaster 16 Value CT2770

And also this socket 7 motherboard

It's a Sowah SR M504 C board. Basically it's a noname board, couldn't find any relevant info on it, only a 2 page pdf with the jumper settings and CPU support. It should be enough to test it... The board it's not in a very good shape, but for what I paid for it, It's ok. Supports CPU's up to 200 MHz, including dual voltage CPU's...
Also grabbed two socket A/462 CPU's, one Athlon XP-M 2800+ and one Sempron 2300+.
All these stuff for about 10 euro/11 USD! It's nothing spectacular, but for that kind of money it's a nice haul. I love these sunday flea markets...

Received an IBM Thinkpad 560E from the friendly local mail carrier over the weekend...

The 560E is a very decent DOS/Win95 machine - Trident TGUI9682 GPU, Pentium 166MMX, 80MB RAM ceiling, ESS1688 audio, and with a throw-weight of around 4 lbs...not too shabby. This would have been the Carbon X1 of its day (1997) - it's light, well appointed and with decent specs. It's also quite good for gaming. The machine seemed to have visited the Thousand Islands region of New York/Ontario as it had a service sticker from Badhead.com, which is a tech shop located in Gananoque (a 20 minute drive from Kingston, Ontario and 30 minutes from Watertown, NY)

It's a curious specimen - the top case is missing (probably lost or broken), which gave this machine an Ono-Sendai Cyberdeck feel to it - Just have to hunt down some old Japanese Corporate/OpenBSD/Defcon stickers to give it that old hacker machine look. I actually prefer this look for now as the HDD is normally a royal pain to get to (it's supposed to fit on the lower left corner of the machine and under the top case/bezel). This is not the plan for very long, though. The 560s have a reputation for solder joint cracks on the inverter board thanks to chassis flex, and without the top case, this chassis flex will eventually kill the machine.

Unfortunately, in keeping with the current "post-modern sleeze" appeal of the machine, the entire thing smells like nicotine, much like my T21 (which took a keyboard swap and an aggressive wipe-down to eradicate). Fortunately the 560s are easy to strip down...

Well, I put it back together but for some reason the HDD is not detected. Then I realized what happened....the HDD cable (some piece of crap conductive flex cable) snapped - the inability to read the drive was reported as an issue on the original evilbay listing, but the diagnostics say that everything else is working normally. The original HDD is not quite healthy (it read data for up to 5 seconds then it'll lock up), but no one sane wants to deal with a 22 year old HDD. Oh well, the "plan B" parts machine I ordered is arriving within 2 weeks. In the meantime, setting up a 2GB MicroSD card and an SD-to-IDE adapter with a Windows 98SE install and getting it ready for use later.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-01-06, 05:30:

gave this machine an Ono-Sendai Cyberdeck feel to it

Yes! Great. Thanks for that Gibsonian reference, I deeply appreciated it. 😀

I was originally bidding on a Dragon 32 computer on eBay, but that went stupidly high so I didn't win. On a complete whim I decided to change tact (and money) and bagged one of these instead (random stock image from Google) -

Should arrive here later this week. My first retro purchase of the year.

Also ordered a "Just NANO SD" SD card reader/DivMMC device for my ZX Spectrum +2A. Long past overdue ordering one of these, I've been having to rely on loading .wav files through the cassette deck up until now. Having all the games on an SD card with instant loading will be a vast improvement!

PTherapist wrote on 2020-01-06, 11:17:

I was originally bidding on a Dragon 32 computer on eBay, but that went stupidly high so I didn't win. On a complete whim I dec […]
Show full quote

I was originally bidding on a Dragon 32 computer on eBay, but that went stupidly high so I didn't win. On a complete whim I decided to change tact (and money) and bagged one of these instead (random stock image from Google) -

Should arrive here later this week. My first retro purchase of the year.

Also ordered a "Just NANO SD" SD card reader/DivMMC device for my ZX Spectrum +2A. Long past overdue ordering one of these, I've been having to rely on loading .wav files through the cassette deck up until now. Having all the games on an SD card with instant loading will be a vast improvement!

Nice, the second home computer we had back in the 80's after the Vic-20, good little machine is the electron! I have a BBC Model B here with a MMC, it sure does make life easier! Hope you enjoy your new machine 😀

BSA Starfire wrote on 2020-01-06, 12:13:

Nice, the second home computer we had back in the 80's after the Vic-20, good little machine is the electron! I have a BBC Model B here with a MMC, it sure does make life easier! Hope you enjoy your new machine 😀

I'll probably get one of those SD Card interfaces for the Electron later this year, they definitely do make life easier. Until then I'll get by with loading tape images through the cassette port.

luckybob wrote on 2020-01-05, 04:43:

@FluffyBunnyFeet

The ibm model F is designed for XT class machines only. It won't work in anything but, without a converter.

xjas wrote on 2020-01-05, 04:45:

[...]

XT- and AT-type keyboards used different signalling and aren't compatible. Your 486 is expecting an AT keyboard & can't use this one natively. There's a good chance it works fine, you just need an older PC to use it on.

IIRC you can get a signal converter if you want to use this on a machine that takes AT-keyboards.

Er, that's an IBM Model F 'AT'. The "AT" part sort of indicates AT spec, indeed this was the first AT keyboard. The fact it has indicator LEDs is another give-away: the PC/XT keyboard used a unidirectional protocol and didn't support indicator LEDs. This one does so is clearly an AT part using the AT protocol. Whatever else is wrong with it, it's not being an XT device.

See: https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Model_F#IBM_ … ter_AT_keyboard

When browsing eBay Classifieds the other day, an ad with a lot of mainboards and expansion cards raised my interest. In the original photos, the cards were piled so that most of them weren't fully visible, but there was one on top of the pile that couldn't be overlooked.
When I asked for more photos, I was pleased to find that there was acutally one more rare card in the lot.

Who can spot the cards that caught my attention? (One is very easy, the other one not too difficult either) 😄

According to the seller, most of the stuff should work (and there was quite a bit more in the lot that isn't in this picture) so I decided to get it for 55€ shipped.

gex85 wrote on 2020-01-06, 13:42:

[...]

Who can spot the cards that caught my attention? (One is very easy, the other one not too difficult either) 😄

According to the seller, most of the stuff should work (and there was quite a bit more in the lot that isn't in this picture) so I decided to get it for 55€ shipped.

I suppose the V5-5500 and SB 1.5 are the two you're referring to. If either of them works, you've more than got your EUR 55 covered 😉

The AMD K5 and the ALi-based 486 PCI board aren't bad either.

Edit: what looks like a CT2910 SB16 is also nice.

dionb wrote on 2020-01-06, 14:11:

I suppose the V5-5500 and SB 1.5 are the two you're referring to. If either of them works, you've more than got your EUR 55 covered 😉

The AMD K5 and the ALi-based 486 PCI board aren't bad either.

Edit: what looks like a CT2910 SB16 is also nice.

Exactly 😄
I had previously identified the Sound Blaster as CT1350B (which would make it a SB 2.0).
The CT2910 is a nice addition, but nothing too special IMO.

The 486 board was actually one more reason to get this lot. I still need a decent board to go with the AT desktop case that I recently stumbled across, and this would probably fit the bill. A matching CPU should also be in the lot, as well as controller cards, VGA cards etc., so it will probably accumulate to a nearly complete 486 system. Would only need a proper hard disk (or go the Compact Flash route).

As I previously wrote, I got in contact with a very nice seller who had dozens of expansion cards for sales on eBay Classifieds, for 1€ each (and he was serious about that). I initially contacted him for an Aureal Vortex AU8820, but by the time I wrote him the card was already sold to someone else. After having exchanged a few very nice messages with him, he told me that he had plenty more stuff that he wanted to sell. I asked him if he would mind sending me photos before putting everything up on eBay... so he did send photos of more cards that he wanted to sell!
Here's a photo of what I finally got:

Yeah, that's right, a Diamond Voodoo 2 12MB, complete with loop cable and an S3 Virge PCI.
And a Creative Voodoo Banshee PCI.
And an ELSA TNT2 M64.
And an ATi Rage 128 with TV-Out.
And various 3com network cards.
And a 2-port Compaq and a 4-port D-Link card.
And another Adaptec AVA-2904.
At 1€ each.

Since there has been a bit of discussion lately whether or not prices should be posted: I think that it is important to show that you can find good stuff for cheap if you are patient, lucky and friendly. You don't (always) have to shell out insane amounts of money to get your hands on nice pieces of retro hardware. However, I don't mean to start this discussion all over again, but wanted to make clear why I usually post prices, especially if I got something for cheap.

Coming up next: Lifetime supply of Pentium III Tualatin CPUs (from the same seller). 😄

gex85 wrote on 2020-01-06, 15:58:

I think that it is important to show that you can find good stuff for cheap if you are patient, lucky and friendly.

So you already tested all cards and they all work? Because that's often the problem. People sell you crap even for high amounts of money. When buying whatever cards for 1€ each, I would expect that half of them are dead from the outset. If not, you're lucky, but never expect too much.

derSammler wrote on 2020-01-06, 16:16:

gex85 wrote on 2020-01-06, 15:58:

I think that it is important to show that you can find good stuff for cheap if you are patient, lucky and friendly.

So you already tested all cards and they all work? Because that's often the problem. People sell you crap even for high amounts of money. When buying whatever cards for 1€ each, I would expect that half of them are dead from the outset. If not, you're lucky, but never expect too much.

I only had a machine with Win XP installed at hand, so I used it to test all cards but the Voodoo 2. They all do seem to work perfectly fine. Will pull out a Win 9x machine asap to test the Voodoo (which is obviously the most interesting card in the lot). But in this case I am confident, everything was very well packaged and upon visual inspection there was no apparent damage to the card.
The other big lot with the V5 will be much more interesting, it's really a gamble...

Edit: I had forgotten about the FastVoodoo2 WinXP drivers... so I used these to test the Voodoo 2, seems everything is working fine. At least the card is recognized, drivers install without issues and the good old Donut demo runs perfectly fine. 😄