Salient wrote on 2020-11-01, 15:17:

Seems like I'm on a roll.... Just scored this nice Roland PMA-5 for 60 euros!
Even came with the original receipt from 1997. 😀

Neat! I had one of these for a bit, and like many things, I wish I'd kept it. Good fun.

Pair of 120gb HDDs. Not IDE but still cool in black.

The good stuff somehow seems to come along in waves... after not finding anything interesting for several weeks, I have made quite a few good purchases in the past few days.

This Medion-branded PC is, objectively speaking, nothing special at all. Pentium II 400 MHz, Intel SR440BX board, onboard TNT graphics and some crappy sound chip, 64 MB RAM, 13 GB Western Digital HDD.

But this was the first PC that my brother and I got brand new in 1999. Back then the Medion PCs, sold by German food discount chain ALDI (usually with two promotional campaigns and updated models per year), provided a great bang for the buck and were extremely popular with German PC buyers. People waited in line for hours in the morning for the shops to open and get their hands on one of these computers that were usually sold out within just a few hours.
This particular model was sold in March 1999 in a bundle with a 17 inch CRT, Logitech mouse and keyboard for 1,999.00 DM, which is roughly 750 EUR / 870 USD 1,380 EUR / 1,600 USD in today's money.

I have been looking for this machine for about 3 years now and it is the first time that I came across one that is completely in its original state, just like it was sold in 1999. Not a single component was removed or added, even the bag with the silica gel is still taped to the bottom inside the case. It is certainly not in perfect condition on the outside, but I hope that I can restore it. Back in the day, we upgraded it with a 10 MBit Ethernet card, another 128 MB of RAM and a Ricoh MP 7080A CD writer, so I am planning to do the exact same upgrades again, not a single thing more.

On a different note, I managed to pick up a Miro HISCORE 3D (3Dfx Voodoo 1 with 6MB), unfortunately without the loop cable, but for really cheap.
And I found another one of those quite rare Pentium II 450 MHz CPUs.

^ Can report that when ALDI came to Australia, they brought the Medions with them 😁

Same in America my parents bought me a Medion branded 25 inch TV and we had a Medion branded computer as well.

gex85 wrote on 2020-11-02, 09:28:

This particular model was sold in March 1999 in a bundle with a 17 inch CRT, Logitech mouse and keyboard for 1,999.00 DM, which is roughly 750 EUR / 870 USD in today's money

That's without accounting for inflation.

If you do that, 1999 DM was roughly 1000 EUR in '99 which would be worth about 1435 EUR in 2020.

This Tandon TM 7003 286 machine. This thing weights a ton. 5160 is portable compared to this Tandon. I havn't checked it inside yet or tried to power it on... I have a matching Tandon keyboard for it too (I had it for quite some time now). From what I've seen in the auction pics it has IBM MDA inside and MFM controller with full height HDD.

This weekends thrift - A S370 i815 motherboard loaded with bloated caps, a Slot1 440LX AT motherboard with 1 missing ram slot tag, and a 3DFX Velocity 100, all for 10Euro.

This slot 1 is a ECS : http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/2143

Munx wrote on 2020-11-02, 16:44:

This weekends thrift - A S370 i815 motherboard loaded with bloated caps, a Slot1 440LX AT motherboard with 1 missing ram slot tag, and a 3DFX Velocity 100, all for 10Euro.P_20201102_174952.jpg

Nice. Does the 815 board have a PC-PCI / SB-Link header?

gex85 wrote on 2020-11-02, 09:28:

The good stuff somehow seems to come along in waves... after not finding anything interesting for several weeks, I have made qui […]
Show full quote

The good stuff somehow seems to come along in waves... after not finding anything interesting for several weeks, I have made quite a few good purchases in the past few days.

Medion.jpg
This Medion-branded PC is, objectively speaking, nothing special at all. Pentium II 400 MHz, Intel SR440BX board, onboard TNT graphics and some crappy sound chip, 64 MB RAM, 13 GB Western Digital HDD.

But this was the first PC that my brother and I got brand new in 1999. Back then the Medion PCs, sold by German food discount chain ALDI (usually with two promotional campaigns and updated models per year), provided a great bang for the buck and were extremely popular with German PC buyers. People waited in line for hours in the morning for the shops to open and get their hands on one of these computers that were usually sold out within just a few hours.
This particular model was sold in March 1999 in a bundle with a 17 inch CRT, Logitech mouse and keyboard for 1,999.00 DM, which is roughly 750 EUR / 870 USD in today's money.

I have been looking for this machine for about 3 years now and it is the first time that I came across one that is completely in its original state, just like it was sold in 1999. Not a single component was removed or added, even the bag with the silica gel is still taped to the bottom inside the case. It is certainly not in perfect condition on the outside, but I hope that I can restore it. Back in the day, we upgraded it with a 10 MBit Ethernet card, another 128 MB of RAM and a Ricoh MP 7080A CD writer, so I am planning to do the exact same upgrades again, not a single thing more.

On a different note, I managed to pick up a Miro HISCORE 3D (3Dfx Voodoo 1 with 6MB), unfortunately without the loop cable, but for really cheap.
And I found another one of those quite rare Pentium II 450 MHz CPUs.

Medion made the Disney computer.
It was a funky computer with a Celeron CPU and FIC motherboard with ATI video.
Infineon memory ( german ).
Strange case and power supply.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-11-02, 16:57:

Munx wrote on 2020-11-02, 16:44:

This weekends thrift - A S370 i815 motherboard loaded with bloated caps, a Slot1 440LX AT motherboard with 1 missing ram slot tag, and a 3DFX Velocity 100, all for 10Euro.P_20201102_174952.jpg

Nice. Does the 815 board have a PC-PCI / SB-Link header?

Sadly No. Plenty of audio and other connectors, but no sblink. Not even a spot to solder one in.

Brutek wrote on 2020-10-31, 10:50:

Hello Guys,

today i`ve got these nice ATI 9500 64MB
It is fortunately possible to unlock the Card to 9700 with a Biosmod.

If the card is the one in the picture, you won't be able to unlock it because half the memory module pads are unpopulated.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-11-02, 14:13:

gex85 wrote on 2020-11-02, 09:28:

This particular model was sold in March 1999 in a bundle with a 17 inch CRT, Logitech mouse and keyboard for 1,999.00 DM, which is roughly 750 EUR / 870 USD in today's money

That's without accounting for inflation.

If you do that, 1999 DM was roughly 1000 EUR in '99 which would be worth about 1435 EUR in 2020.

Oh shoot, you are of course correct. Don't know how I could miss that, I was in a bit of a hurry and somehow screwed up the calculation. Thanks for pointing it out.

However, I have just won the eBay auction for the Ricoh CD writer as well (1€ + shipping), so I have all the parts on the way now 😄

My IBM ThinkPad A22p has arrived. That was quick - four days from the Netherlands to Germany. 🥰

It's not perfect, but I'm happy I got one at all after many years.
Problems:
- screen has a few little spots, but not too noticeable
- flap for the PCMCIA slot is missing
- basecover has cracked because of stiff hinges ( a typical problem)

The hinges can be fixed by sanding them down and greasing them a bit, which I will do in the next days.
Broken parts are easily transferred from my A22m.

Most importantly - it completely works! The Rage 128 is handling Half-Life like a piece of cake and the UXGA resolution still is a dream in 2020. This was "Retina" before Apple called it like that.

I had one of these many years ago and I'm happy I've got one again.

Remembered something unusual I had acquired as a curiosity some time ago: a Trio3D/2X. Why should anyone care about these cards? Well, this one is a little unusual.

Hint: these are typically only found as AGP.

darry wrote on 2020-11-01, 03:32:

I found a reasonably priced sealed OEM Aureal SQ2500 in the town where I live . I hope the seller will let me pick it up in person . I still have a PCI slot or two left in my retro machine, so why not .

Is 5 sound cards in the same PC too many, 🤣 ?

EDIT : I am nowhere close to beating Multi-Soundcard Industrial Computer Project

The card works fine with 2048 drivers, including S/PDIF out, except for 3 things :

a) the driver complains about the card being on a secondary PCI bus and several devices (including legacy stuff which I don't care about) won't work (I can't put it in another slot because of space and thermal constraints)
b) There is no option to choose a MDI out connected to the waveblaster header
c) Even the slot where I installed it isn't ideal from a thermal point of view
d) Though the card installed and worked without issue, Windows 98 SE refuses to boot after that, so not ideal. 😉

Considering points a, b and c , I was not willing to fight it on point d and just removed the card . I may revisit the idea with a PCI riser connected to the otherwise unusable PCI slot that shares a backplate slot with an ISA on my board . On another note, AU8830 wavetable sounds better than I remembered .

EDIT : Tried with a PCI riser in the shared slot, but still got the complaint about the card being on a secondary PCI bus . Still no option choose the external/waveblaster MIDI port . As an additional "bonus", having the SQ2500 in that PCI slot sliently (no device manager errors) breaks my onboard NIC (probably an undetected IRQ conflict) .

EDIT: Apparently, there are drives without the "Your Vortex adapter is not plugged into the primary PCI bus" error , but I this point I don't feel like fighting with it . Especially considering that, even if external MIDI somehow works with those drivers , using a riser is much more impractical than I thought, so not really worth the effort for me .

Bought one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-XTIDE-XT-IDE-OPT … 6e765%7Ciid%3A1 because I did the crime of updating my bios to try and get my dx4 100 working in my vectra ve 4/66 and it broke my cf card adapter functionality and on top of that it didn't fix my issue with the cpu. I just wanted to play dn3d 🙁

SaxxonPike wrote on 2020-11-02, 22:01:

Remembered something unusual I had acquired as a curiosity some time ago: a Trio3D/2X. Why should anyone care about these cards? Well, this one is a little unusual.PXL_20201102_215533447.jpg
Hint: these are typically only found as AGP.

Those came after the Virges, didn't they?

jm8881 wrote on 2020-11-03, 00:56:

Bought one of these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-XTIDE-XT-IDE-OPT … 6e765%7Ciid%3A1 because I did the crime of updating my bios to try and get my dx4 100 working in my vectra ve 4/66 and it broke my cf card adapter functionality and on top of that it didn't fix my issue with the cpu. I just wanted to play dn3d 🙁

Does that motherboard actually support 3 volt operation? Bare DX4's don't work at 5 volts.

Does that motherboard actually support 3 volt operation? Bare DX4's don't work at 5 volts.

The dx2 66 it came with is 3v.

edit:
holy crap, I can't find anything that says the ve 4/66 came with an amd processor. Only an i486DX2-66 which is 5 volt.

edit 2:
actually i just found this: https://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/80486/AMD-A804 … X4-100SV8B.html which says the ve 4/100 came with a 3v amd