Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-01-11, 05:17:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-11, 01:47:

Those 478 boards with ISA are indeed worth a lot and are very hard to come by. Nice find!

I must be living right, I just tested the second 478 board, and it also POSTed with no issue.

Great find and great price ! Was it on Craigslist ? Hard to find anything good a few states above you anywhere local now a days....

Craigslist has no deals anymore. Ebay prices but no shipping. Use to be awesome.

luckybob wrote on 2021-01-09, 21:32:

Honestly, as fucked up as that card is, even a box would not have helped. That was deliberately destroyed by the mail system.

It probably got stuck in a machine or between two heavy parcels. Not intentional.

Bottom line: Don't ship hard, squarish, fragile items in a simple envelope.

ODwilly wrote on 2021-01-10, 01:18:

wiretap wrote on 2021-01-09, 19:32:

My PCIe PhysX card for my 8800GTX SLI rig came today. I didn't expect to get the boomerang edition. Sellers really need to under […]
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My PCIe PhysX card for my 8800GTX SLI rig came today. I didn't expect to get the boomerang edition. Sellers really need to understand they can't just stuff things like this in a 5x8" bubble mailer..

Plug it into a sacrificial motherboard and see if it works!

I've seen worse bent motherboards work once screwed down to the standoffs but an expansion card that bent would be a true miracle if it worked..

pete8475 wrote on 2021-01-10, 06:08:

I sold computers for over 15 years (owner/operator of a retail store, sold new computers and repaired old computers) , all kinds […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-09, 04:57:

This made me curious, as I have an overclocked Abit NF7-S 2.0 system that has been used, in some capacity, almost constantly since I built it 2003. I just ran memtest on it for the first time since I last tweaked it about 8 years ago. It ran for 50 minutes, long enough to do a full pass, plus some. No errors detected. I don't do anything super critical on it, so I didn't feel like running it for a 24 hour test, but I've never had stability problems with it.

I sold computers for over 15 years (owner/operator of a retail store, sold new computers and repaired old computers) , all kinds of junk will pass memtest for an hour. I used to think a single full pass of memtest86 was sufficient and then I started getting people calling me saying their new Athlon XP/nforce 2 computers were bluescreening. Ultimately I threw out at least 90% of the nforce 2 MSI and Asus boards I sold, I took almost all of them back from clients (only exceptions were people I could not reach) and replaced them with VIA boards. I took a bath on that trash!

When those boards started causing clients problems I came to the conclusion they sucked when every single one couldn't pass memtest (or the microsoft memory diagnostic program in extended mode) over a mere weekend, I'd start running memtest at 5pm friday and come in Monday morning and they would always have errors. This was with every damn kind of ram I could order from distributors! Kingston, Crucial, Corsair, OCZ (fuck them for other reasons), etc.

Maybe Abit somehow made their boards better, none of my suppliers carried their boards when I was in business so I never got to be hands on with an abit nforce 2 board.

Oh also I always found the nforce 2 boards I had access to were more stable (but still eventually failed memtest every damn time) with 1 stick of memory in that third slot that was spaced away from the 2 meant for dual channel.

This was my experience in the AthlonXP era as well. My KT333/400/600 systems were all rock solid but almost all nForce2 systems I had or built had RAM issues of some kind or another. TwinMOS memory usually made the systems work, somewhat stable, but if you actually memtested them they would fail. They just didn't fail often enough for real users to notice most of the time, but nForce2 was a SHIT chipset.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-01-11, 11:15:

ODwilly wrote on 2021-01-10, 01:18:

wiretap wrote on 2021-01-09, 19:32:

My PCIe PhysX card for my 8800GTX SLI rig came today. I didn't expect to get the boomerang edition. Sellers really need to under […]
Show full quote

My PCIe PhysX card for my 8800GTX SLI rig came today. I didn't expect to get the boomerang edition. Sellers really need to understand they can't just stuff things like this in a 5x8" bubble mailer..

Plug it into a sacrificial motherboard and see if it works!

I've seen worse bent motherboards work once screwed down to the standoffs but an expansion card that bent would be a true miracle if it worked..

The PCB is physically cracked with traces broke and BGA solder joints broken. It would not work if plugged in. I just got a refund last night, and I'll add the card to my scrap bin for parts. There are a lot of good components on it since the card was supposedly brand new per the ebay seller.

I haven't had these huge problems you are speaking about with nforce based systems.

I had an nforce 2 system for my Athlon XP 2000 system, then a nforce 3 system for my Athlon 64-3000 system. Didn't really have any problems.

But that said, I like the VIA based systems more these days, better Win98/DOS compatibility and a little less weirdness.

Just for funsies ... I pulled out an nforce 2 board, (ASUS A7N8X-X) put 3 gig of DDR ram on it, and am currently running memtest86 on it ... will leave it for several hours and report back.

2 passes of memtest86 (using 200mhz ram, 3 cas, 3 double sided dimms (6 banks), to put as much stress on the memory system as possible), no errors

Recieved the Amiga internal RGBtoHDMI Version2 adaptor today, installed it straight away in my Rev 8a.1 machine (Plus-Spec modded) and did two youtube videoes about it.

Horun wrote on 2021-01-11, 05:35:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-01-11, 05:17:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-11, 01:47:

Those 478 boards with ISA are indeed worth a lot and are very hard to come by. Nice find!

I must be living right, I just tested the second 478 board, and it also POSTed with no issue.

Great find and great price ! Was it on Craigslist ? Hard to find anything good a few states above you anywhere local now a days....

Yeah, Craigslist. The ad was for four computer cases, $15.00 each. Being a 3 hour round trip from where I am, it had to be on a weekend. By the time I was able to meet him, he was down to a pair of cases, but he said he had pulled the motherboards from the other two cases, and would give me them and the spare video cards if I bought the remaining pair. From the look of the cases in the photo I was thinking there might be something like P3 hardware inside - I was a little disappointed that wasn't the case, but it turned out okay.

Had a very nice find recently.

This Powertech WDC card seems like a very nice example of a WD90C33 VLB. Should be one of the fastest out there. I hope to do some comparison testing some day.

This Real3D SFA-136-A is apparently extremely rare, even in comparison to the Starfighter PCI (I also have one of those but several caps corroded traces on it so it is nonfunctional). I can't find anything about these online other than a picture on yjfy's website which seems to be based in China (and is down right now?). Does anyone know what this card was used for? I'm inclined to think it was used for simulators or arcade machines, as there is no indicator that these were ever sold at retail. I'll be testing it here shortly, but I'm not expecting it to work with just any drivers.

EDIT: Well, I threw it in my 440BX test machine and it worked immediately. Here is what the video BIOS shows at startup:

Windows 98SE detected it as an "Intel i740 Win9x PV4.0 with Video Capture". Strangely, dxdiag detects 71.5MB of video memory... maybe this is related to some AGP trickery or just a glitch. It seems to work fine in 3D accelerated games of the time. It also added a "Gfx829, WDM Video Capture for Intel740" device under Multimedia in device manager.

I believe these were from built in drivers in 98SE, but I'm not 100% sure as I was using an installation that had other i740 installed previously.

Anyway, I'm happy that it works, but also very curious as to what exactly it is or what it was used for, if anyone can find any information anywhere.

I was looking for a Yamaha sound card and luckily found 2 at a great price tag.

Audician 32 - LWHA151A00
ATC-6631 (don't know the brand but it was manufactured here in Brazil)

Pretty happy with both, too bad that my Windows 98 installation got corrupted and I'm without floppy disks to boot a new installation (waiting for Gotek drive, which will arrive soon).

Now time to start my MT32-PI project.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-11, 18:42:

This Real3D SFA-136-A is apparently extremely rare, even in comparison to the Starfighter PCI (I also have one of those but several caps corroded traces on it so it is nonfunctional). I can't find anything about these online other than a picture on yjfy's website which seems to be based in China (and is down right now?). Does anyone know what this card was used for? I'm inclined to think it was used for simulators or arcade machines, as there is no indicator that these were ever sold at retail. I'll be testing it here shortly, but I'm not expecting it to work with just any drivers.

The card itself is rare, but other than that I think it's just a regular AGP card using Intel's i740, similar to the Diamond Stealth II G460. It was definitely sold at retail, the most notable example being the Alienware Area 51 from 1998, where it was accompanied by two Diamond Voodoo 2 cards in SLI configuration. The performance of the i740 was lackluster however, so one could say the the Starfighter never "took off".

I am in fact trying to re-create that Area 51 setup for one of my builds, but I had to go with the Diamond variant of the i740 due to the Starfighter AGP being much more difficult to find.

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-01-11, 19:58:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-11, 18:42:

This Real3D SFA-136-A is apparently extremely rare, even in comparison to the Starfighter PCI (I also have one of those but several caps corroded traces on it so it is nonfunctional). I can't find anything about these online other than a picture on yjfy's website which seems to be based in China (and is down right now?). Does anyone know what this card was used for? I'm inclined to think it was used for simulators or arcade machines, as there is no indicator that these were ever sold at retail. I'll be testing it here shortly, but I'm not expecting it to work with just any drivers.

The card itself is rare, but other than that I think it's just a regular AGP card using Intel's i740

Yes, it's just a retail i740. http://www.plasma-online.de/index.html?conten … rds/real3d.html

I only have NVivia and ATI/AMD cards in gpuzoo.com so far, but eventually will have more info for cards like this. Still working on adding older NVidia and ATI cards first (the database has over 10K cards listed at the moment)

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-01-11, 19:58:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-11, 18:42:

This Real3D SFA-136-A is apparently extremely rare, even in comparison to the Starfighter PCI (I also have one of those but several caps corroded traces on it so it is nonfunctional). I can't find anything about these online other than a picture on yjfy's website which seems to be based in China (and is down right now?). Does anyone know what this card was used for? I'm inclined to think it was used for simulators or arcade machines, as there is no indicator that these were ever sold at retail. I'll be testing it here shortly, but I'm not expecting it to work with just any drivers.

The card itself is rare, but other than that I think it's just a regular AGP card using Intel's i740, similar to the Diamond Stealth II G460. It was definitely sold at retail, the most notable example being the Alienware Area 51 from 1998, where it was accompanied by two Diamond Voodoo 2 cards in SLI configuration. The performance of the i740 was lackluster however, so one could say the the Starfighter never "took off".

I am in fact trying to re-create that Area 51 setup for one of my builds, but I had to go with the Diamond variant of the i740 due to the Starfighter AGP being much more difficult to find.

I have another Starfighter AGP card, as mentioned here (middle right side in pic). Those aren't super common, but aren't that rare.

I was more curious about this particular variant with all of the video in\out functionality. Also, when I say retail, I mean sold in a box as a video card at retail, like this one: https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/greet … -17-2017.28934/

Those cards aren't advertised as having any VIVO functionality.

canthearu wrote on 2021-01-11, 12:34:

I haven't had these huge problems you are speaking about with nforce based systems. […]
Show full quote

I haven't had these huge problems you are speaking about with nforce based systems.

I had an nforce 2 system for my Athlon XP 2000 system, then a nforce 3 system for my Athlon 64-3000 system. Didn't really have any problems.

But that said, I like the VIA based systems more these days, better Win98/DOS compatibility and a little less weirdness.

Just for funsies ... I pulled out an nforce 2 board, (ASUS A7N8X-X) put 3 gig of DDR ram on it, and am currently running memtest86 on it ... will leave it for several hours and report back.

2 passes of memtest86 (using 200mhz ram, 3 cas, 3 double sided dimms (6 banks), to put as much stress on the memory system as possible), no errors

The couple of hours of testing simply isn't enough, those boards like to fuck up after they've been on for a while. Leave it for a couple of DAYS and see what happens. I'd be very surprised if you don't have errors then.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-01-11, 11:17:

This was my experience in the AthlonXP era as well. My KT333/400/600 systems were all rock solid but almost all nForce2 systems I had or built had RAM issues of some kind or another. TwinMOS memory usually made the systems work, somewhat stable, but if you actually memtested them they would fail. They just didn't fail often enough for real users to notice most of the time, but nForce2 was a SHIT chipset.

Glad to hear I wasn't the only one running into this.

I 100% agree that chipset was and still is SHIT.

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-11, 20:11:

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-01-11, 19:58:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-11, 18:42:

This Real3D SFA-136-A is apparently extremely rare, even in comparison to the Starfighter PCI (I also have one of those but several caps corroded traces on it so it is nonfunctional). I can't find anything about these online other than a picture on yjfy's website which seems to be based in China (and is down right now?). Does anyone know what this card was used for? I'm inclined to think it was used for simulators or arcade machines, as there is no indicator that these were ever sold at retail. I'll be testing it here shortly, but I'm not expecting it to work with just any drivers.

The card itself is rare, but other than that I think it's just a regular AGP card using Intel's i740

Yes, it's just a retail i740. http://www.plasma-online.de/index.html?conten … rds/real3d.html

I only have NVivia and ATI/AMD cards in gpuzoo.com so far, but eventually will have more info for cards like this. Still working on adding older NVidia and ATI cards first (the database has over 10K cards listed at the moment)

There is no picture of this card on that page. Unless I'm missing something.

ixbit covered the Starfighter and there is one model that is similar, but it requires an addon board for the VIVO functionality and a separate memory card to get 8MB.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en& … =search&pto=aue

Maybe this is just a later version of that?

Also found this:
https://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/v/P-R/55396.htm

I just found it odd that there isn't another picture of one of these on the internet anywhere.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-11, 20:22:

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-11, 20:11:

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-01-11, 19:58:

The card itself is rare, but other than that I think it's just a regular AGP card using Intel's i740

Yes, it's just a retail i740. http://www.plasma-online.de/index.html?conten … rds/real3d.html

I only have NVivia and ATI/AMD cards in gpuzoo.com so far, but eventually will have more info for cards like this. Still working on adding older NVidia and ATI cards first (the database has over 10K cards listed at the moment)

There is no picture of this card on that page. Unless I'm missing something.

No, that site doesn't have images, but it is among the most complete sites for listing old cards. I'll be cross referencing cards from plasma-online with info from reviews and other collection sites when I add legacy cards to my site (which is waiting for the webmaster to add the last few thousand cards in my database)

I've been waiting since Friday to post this to make sure it got shipped and trackable first. I bought a 2nd NEC Versa M/75 for two reasons - 1. since this one is as/is and untested, If it does not work I can copy the guts from the other one into this one, and 2.) If this one does work, I can do the acrylic/alumilite one with the other motherboard. This one looks to be in much nicer shape than the AAC one, I don't see any cracks in the photos, and all of the access doors are in tact, meaning I can now mold replacements for the P/75 now. It was not the best price, but it was worth it for the things I'm planning, including a history video. I'm planning to get all five - all that's left aver this is the Ultralite Versa (the early one without the trackball) and the Versa V (the model with the non-removable screen).

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-11, 20:27:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-01-11, 20:22:

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-11, 20:11:

Yes, it's just a retail i740. http://www.plasma-online.de/index.html?conten … rds/real3d.html

I only have NVivia and ATI/AMD cards in gpuzoo.com so far, but eventually will have more info for cards like this. Still working on adding older NVidia and ATI cards first (the database has over 10K cards listed at the moment)

There is no picture of this card on that page. Unless I'm missing something.

No, that site doesn't have images, but it is among the most complete sites for listing old cards. I'll be cross referencing cards from plasma-online with info from reviews and other collection sites when I add legacy cards to my site (which is waiting for the webmaster to add the last few thousand cards in my database)

The fact that the Starfighter uses an i740 is fairly common knowledge in the retro 3d accelerator world. The i740 exists because of Real3D.

The Real3D Starfighter PCI is often depicted as an ultra rare collector's item, and yet there are pictures of it all over the internet. It doesn't really do anything special, so it isn't more useful than any other... it's just an oddity. On the other hand, this particular variant of the Real3D Starfighter AGP I found is only pictured on one other website, and that site contains ultra rare oddities like engineering samples and development boards from Real3D and Intel. I know this particular card isn't anything like those, but saying its the same as any Starfighter AGP card, for which there are a hundred of pictures online, just seems odd. It clearly isn't the same card.

I'm not looking for an award, I was simply stating that it seems to be rare. Kind of the point of posting things in this thread... we find them interesting or unusual. If someone can find pictures of these sitting in scrap lots, installed in computers and being pulled out of retail boxes, then please shoot down my dreams of owning "The rarest of all the Starfighters", but I don't see the point in peeing in my cheerios with no pictures or information to add to the conversation.

It's like going to a CPU collector's forum and telling people "That's just Cyrix 5x86." when they say they're happy to have found a 5x86 150. 😀

(I know it's not like that, I'm being facetious)