Wow that's quite the steal on that ps2

Purchased a Hercules 3d prophet 4500 for 50 dollars back in March. Because of Covid 19's effect on shipping I didn't get it until now. I know that the Kyro2 is not a speed demon, but I'm looking forward to putting this through its paces regardless!!

I just got a Hercules Dynamite 128 with an ET6000. Going to do some test runs against various S3 and Matrox cards...

Just acquired a Roland MT-32 module with its power supply, nothing else.

So, let's see, I need:

-that ISA card from Belgium (PC Midi card) made by 2 members here
-a M-M midi cable
-anything else?

So stoked that both my 486 and this thing were waiting for me, both short driving distance to me!

CMB75 wrote on 2020-06-23, 17:38:

I just got a Hercules Dynamite 128 with an ET6000. Going to do some test runs against various S3 and Matrox cards...

That's very nice card (although kind sad they didn't soldered additional MDRAM chips or at least the sockets for upgrade chips). Definitely more interesting thand those 'generic' Viewtop ET6000s. Although performance wise I don't think that there is anything faster than ARK1000 based cards when it comes to 2D only PCI cards (ie. Hercules Stingray Pro)...

Mu0n wrote on 2020-06-23, 18:06:

Just acquired a Roland MT-32 module with its power supply, nothing else. […]
Show full quote

Just acquired a Roland MT-32 module with its power supply, nothing else.

So, let's see, I need:

-that ISA card from Belgium (PC Midi card) made by 2 members here
-a M-M midi cable
-anything else?

So stoked that both my 486 and this thing were waiting for me, both short driving distance to me!

Just MPU-401 compatible midi interface card (intelligent mode card) and midi cable or you can alternatively run SoftMPU with some generic gameport<->midi cable.

Mu0n wrote on 2020-06-23, 18:06:

Just acquired a Roland MT-32 module with its power supply, nothing else. […]
Show full quote

Just acquired a Roland MT-32 module with its power supply, nothing else.

So, let's see, I need:

-that ISA card from Belgium (PC Midi card) made by 2 members here
-a M-M midi cable
-anything else?

So stoked that both my 486 and this thing were waiting for me, both short driving distance to me!

If you will use it with a 486 then you can just use SoftMPU with any sound card that has a bug-free MPU-401. If you don't have a gameport-midi cable, you can use Serdaco's DB-15 adapter to connect with midi-midi cables.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-23, 12:56:

Wow that's quite the steal on that ps2

Yup.
Pretty cheap for a Ps2. 😀

Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 Pro S3 Virge/DX 4MB

Could someone please help me identify these ISA cards? Never seen anything like them. Came from a future 486 project:

Probably some kind of telecommunication cards. Concord-Eracom also made hardware cryptographic modules for financial institutions (banks).
Pretty much useless for hobby use, but interesting stuff anyway. Sometimes you can find like 486 or Pentium CPUs on such cards.
Would be easier to tell if you could split the long ISA cards.

Anyway, such cards always remind me how immensly flexible x86 architecture was and is and it's uses extends far behind home/office or even server room use.

Something that people with those silly old Amigas or Macs will never understand :]

HanJammer wrote on 2020-06-24, 00:23:

Probably some kind of telecommunication cards. Concord-Eracom also made hardware cryptographic modules for financial institution […]
Show full quote

Probably some kind of telecommunication cards. Concord-Eracom also made hardware cryptographic modules for financial institutions (banks).
Pretty much useless for hobby use, but interesting stuff anyway. Sometimes you can find like 486 or Pentium CPUs on such cards.
Would be easier to tell if you could split the long ISA cards.

Anyway, such cards always remind me how immensly flexible x86 architecture was and is and it's uses extends far behind home/office or even server room use.

Something that people with those silly old Amigas or Macs will never understand :]

Great information, thanks. A real shame they wouldn't have any hobbyist use - seeing that "Zilog" logo really got me excited. And yes, isn't it amazing how flexible and extensible such architecture must be. Minituarization and planned obselecence is taking away all the pleasure of discovering these delightful treasures.

Guess I'll hold onto them for a museum piece, then.

HanJammer wrote on 2020-06-23, 20:23:

That's very nice card (although kind sad they didn't soldered additional MDRAM chips or at least the sockets for upgrade chips). Definitely more interesting thand those 'generic' Viewtop ET6000s. Although performance wise I don't think that there is anything faster than ARK1000 based cards when it comes to 2D only PCI cards (ie. Hercules Stingray Pro)...

Yes, it is kind of sad, but for sure I’ll solder in the additional RAM if I can source the upgrade chips. As for the ARK1000, also true in most cases, but there’s always a faster solution. What I want to experiment with are the differences in regards to the technology used and exploit unique features (almost as much fun as playing games).

HanJammer wrote on 2020-06-24, 00:23:

Concord-Eracom also made hardware cryptographic modules for financial institutions (banks).

The first card with the obscured module on the left and the component "do not head above 212F during assembly" actually seems to be a cryptographic module. The key is kept inside that opaque module in static RAM (and the whole encryption/decryption process also happens in that module). The temperature sensitive component is a (most likely lithium) battery used to back-up the key RAM when the computer is turned off.

There will be some kind of tamper detection inside the opaque box, so it clears the key if you attempt to open it. Probably, the key is already long gone because the battery is most likely flat. The idea of boards like this is very similar to current "hardware wallets" for crypto-currency that also try to make sure that everything involving the key happens in a controlled, tamper-resistant environment.

HanJammer wrote on 2020-06-24, 00:23:

Something that people with those silly old Amigas or Macs will never understand :]

Yes, because they never needed these accessories for these tasks. 😉

The Turtle Beach Montego II card that I ordered a few days ago has arrived!

I installed the drivers and applications from the official CD and did some minor testing. First, the A3D demos that come with the drivers blew me away. The things the Aureal devs managed to accomplish with just 2 speakers (or headphones) are nothing short of amazing. Also, DOS compatibility seems good, and the wavetable on the card sounds pretty nice as well. Next up, I plan on testing some A3D 2.0 games, starting with Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force.

P.S.

My nephew recently got hyped because the PlayStation 5 will have positional 3D audio and when I told him that we had that on PC back in 1998 he just looked at me all confused. Can't wait to show him some A3D games next time the family comes over for a visit.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-06-24, 10:31:

The Turtle Beach Montego II card that I ordered a few days ago has arrived!

Very nice card and kind of rare (most I see are from Diamond), Turtle Beach was high-end.

CMB75 wrote on 2020-06-24, 03:48:

Yes, it is kind of sad, but for sure I’ll solder in the additional RAM if I can source the upgrade chips. As for the ARK1000, also true in most cases, but there’s always a faster solution. What I want to experiment with are the differences in regards to the technology used and exploit unique features (almost as much fun as playing games).

Is the upgrade chip perhaps something like item number '274047495303' ?

bestemor wrote on 2020-06-24, 10:52:

CMB75 wrote on 2020-06-24, 03:48:

Yes, it is kind of sad, but for sure I’ll solder in the additional RAM if I can source the upgrade chips. As for the ARK1000, also true in most cases, but there’s always a faster solution. What I want to experiment with are the differences in regards to the technology used and exploit unique features (almost as much fun as playing games).

Is the upgrade chip perhaps something like item number '274047495303' ?

Could you elaborate on this, please. Up until now I searched for the terms MoSys, MDRAM, MD908 and SJ-5-100. Where is that item number from?

Got a Promise SATA300 TX2Plus for one of my Slot 1 based machines today for a measly € 6, shipping included. While it technically worked just fine with IDE I wanted the comfort of being able to use SATA drives.
So far it is working great.

listing/item number on our favourite 'you-know-where' site... 🙂

Granted, this is the 909 version (but only difference is the slightly larger MB size), and there are conflicting stories about whether these can be mixed with 908's, but better than nothing perhaps ?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp. … deo/NXeKSCcY5rw
https://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/tseng12.html

PS: and here's a card that uses only MD909's:
http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/vlask/tseng/et6000f.jpg

Aaand... finally, an example card that mixes BOTH types/memory sizes !
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common … e/ec/ET6100.JPG
Sure, this is the ET6100 card, but looks promising though....