devius wrote on 2020-06-14, 21:14:

HanJammer wrote on 2020-06-14, 18:46:

Result of yesterday's meeting with a friend from the other side of the country...

Holy balls!

BTW, I'm extremely confused by the memory card in the ASUS Cache386/33 with memory card set. Why is the bracket on the wrong side of the card?

It's on the other side of the card to prevent you from plugging it into an AT bus.
The bracket still belongs to the other side (of the picture) where the brackets of ISA cards will go (... and the DIN port is).

I bought a MSI 6368 with a 1.3 GHz Tualatin celeron.
Feature 1 ISA slot but sadly no AGP.

Swiego wrote on 2020-06-14, 16:01:

Well I got these! I’ve always wanted a working Bernoulli drive. This was actually a set of finds and purchases over a few month […]
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Well I got these! I’ve always wanted a working Bernoulli drive. This was actually a set of finds and purchases over a few months (drives, SCSI cables, disks and the Adaptec vs Iomega controller topic) that eventually led me to where I am. Both drives work with 150MB disks which is great. I have some 230MB disks but cannot get the higher capacity drive to read or format them. Not sure if the drive is the issue (it’s shown signs of flakiness with the 150MB disks) or the disks are bad. This has been quite an adventure to setup, with all sorts of special drivers and utilities, and I’m still on the lookout for a way to clean the heads.

223F4BC9-8AD1-43FE-9F7F-60DB53207E63.jpeg

A0B41F2E-FA41-4D5A-A658-5DAFC3202334.jpeg

Now that things are working I’m gonna lay everything on the carpet and see what happens.

Nice! I am rather surpised I never read about these drives here. I own an external box of two 20 MB drives since beginning of the 1990s with around 30 disks. I connected them again about 2 years ago. They were still working (under Windows 7..!), but many read errors on the disks. I made many photos and planned to post them someday...

I sold my GA-586HX mainboards with CPUs and RAM a couple of years ago … and I still regret it.

So, what do you do if you’ve got the feeling TV program is bad, nothing new or interesting left on the streaming services? … yes, go shopping on the internet.

To fill the painful gap between my DX4-100 and the PIII-650 I purchased an ASUS XP55T2P4 Rev.3.x w. 256kb cache onboard (will check the caps), an ASUS CM1 Rev.3.0 256kb COAST module, an Intel Pentium 233 MMX and a quartet of EDO RAM (128MB in total). I’ll post some pictures once the stuff from Poland, England and Germany arrives.

Powerleap PL-IP3/T sloket arrived today. Came with a 1400 Tuleron.

Bancho wrote on 2020-06-15, 09:58:

Powerleap PL-IP3/T sloket arrived today. Came with a 1400 Tuleron. […]
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Powerleap PL-IP3/T sloket arrived today. Came with a 1400 Tuleron.

Excellent combination if you ask me 😀

wiretap wrote on 2020-06-14, 19:57:

Just purchased this for $50 on eBay, a (2004?) Falcon Northwest Fragbox Pro. (No GPU/HDD, but seller says it boots to BIOS) I plan on putting my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra in it, so it will be like OEM specifications.

What AGP mobo fits in a case that small??

kolderman wrote on 2020-06-15, 11:18:

wiretap wrote on 2020-06-14, 19:57:

Just purchased this for $50 on eBay, a (2004?) Falcon Northwest Fragbox Pro. (No GPU/HDD, but seller says it boots to BIOS) I plan on putting my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra in it, so it will be like OEM specifications.

What AGP mobo fits in a case that small??

For example a 886LCD-M/mITX mainboard although this isn't the mainboard of the Frag Box...

kolderman wrote on 2020-06-15, 11:18:

wiretap wrote on 2020-06-14, 19:57:

Just purchased this for $50 on eBay, a (2004?) Falcon Northwest Fragbox Pro. (No GPU/HDD, but seller says it boots to BIOS) I plan on putting my GeForce FX 5950 Ultra in it, so it will be like OEM specifications.

What AGP mobo fits in a case that small??

Any Shuttle form factor motherboard.

I was after the DMX Xfire 1024 only (best damn PCI sound card IMO) but I didn't mind getting the other two for a buck apiece..

The CT4810 will go into my GX110 as a part of its restoration to a default config. The CMI card is for just checking out how it sounds, and how well its DOS compatibility works.

Bought this VLB caching IDE controller, going to get it in about 3 days. Here's the seller's photo:

I've been able to identify it as a Hornet Technology VL-200 thanks to this 14-year old post on a German message board. Here's a full photo:

Now, this looks like a bit of a different version — it has an Appian IDE chip (mine has what looks like Adaptec AIC-25VL01Q.

In the original post they say this controller had a "fake" CPU under a square white sticker and the Appian chip is a common VLB IDE solution that doesn't use caching. They also quote an article from C't magazine 3'94 that tested this controller and found no performance improvement. They went as long as to say that this was a "warmplate" for memory sticks.

On the other hand, they mention that this controller was actually more expensive than cached IDE controllers from Tekram and Promise. So I'm guessing maybe the performance issue was an oversight rather than PC Chips "fake cache" situation. Besides, I see that someone must have deliberately upgraded the RAM (two sets of different sticks), so it must have done something.

While I'm waiting for the controller I wanted to ask if anyone has a manual or drivers for this card. Or maybe someone knows the original website URL for Hornet Technology? Right now Hornet seems to be a Grindr-like app, so it's pretty hard to google for any info.

Diamond Stealth Trio32 & Trio64. Nothing special, just wanted to get those while still cheap...

Is there a noticeable performance difference between Trio32 and Trio64 in DOS? I always wondered..

even the "cheap" diamond cards are just pretty :3

No. There is no difference in DOS.

In fact there is even only a little difference in Windows unless you use very high resolution/colour depth/refresh rates for which neither Trio64 nor 32 is practical due to slow RAMDAC.

Found this AT psu I got long time ago and never looked into it, in really great condition and different from most psu of that period (I think it was of the 1991) it seems much better built. It has an unknown brand on it but the PCB says MPS-04230MI and there're Nippon Chem-Com, JP, Jamicom capacitors brand, total 200W and seems almost never used.
Opinions?

Paging @gdjacobs

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-15, 16:18:

Paging @gdjacobs

I'll ask him for opinions, anyway I don't know if all these AT psu are still safe to use.. some days ago ones I have powered a different one of a cheap no-brand suddendly got broken in the worst way with the usual scary effects as soon as switched the power button.

Also I opened an old Astec 145W and while it's a well known brand I'd say it had a cheaper layout than this. But also much more used than this.

386SX wrote on 2020-06-15, 16:33:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-15, 16:18:

Paging @gdjacobs

I'll ask him for opinions, anyway I don't know if all these AT psu are still safe to use.. some days ago ones I have powered a different one of a cheap no-brand suddendly got broken in the worst way with the usual scary effects as soon as switched the power button.

Also I opened an old Astec 145W and while it's a well known brand I'd say it had a cheaper layout than this. But also much more used than this.

I would never trust an AT PSU personally. Recap it if you want, but honestly assuming it's not a case that needs one of those weird nonstandard PSU positions or anything proprietary, I'd rather just grab a At-ATX adapter and go from there.

Quieter, cleaner power output, Less likely to blow up if it's unhappy. Good stuff!

imi wrote on 2020-06-15, 14:01:

even the "cheap" diamond cards are just pretty :3

Diamond cards are always pretty. Something about that simple green PCB and colored bios stickers. Shame that anything with "Diamond" on it seems to cost a fortune sometimes!

Also I add the Astec 145W for comparison (that dark thing on the capacitors glue is dust not an hole 😁)