RandomStranger wrote on 2021-01-30, 21:19:

I'd be more hyped about the AGP card. It looks like a Matrox G400 which is not particularly extraordinary, but always nice to me […]
Show full quote

PC@LIVE wrote on 2021-01-30, 20:21:

Ordered today this batch of various cards, Video TV Audio LAN, one ISA SB, one Hauppauge Win-TV ...
The PCI-E video card should be interesting, it's an ASUS C40HREV 1.03, I think it's a 256MB GF maybe but I don't know what version.
As soon as they arrive I will start testing them, I hope they all work.

I'd be more hyped about the AGP card. It looks like a Matrox G400 which is not particularly extraordinary, but always nice to mess around with something that isn't and nvidia or ATI card.
The PCI-E is looks identical to this 8500GT, so it's probably either that or an 8600.
The rest, 2 Ensoniq AudioPCI/SB 128PCI, an SB! Live (SB0060 maybe?), a Vibra16 CT4170. Some networking cards however always nice to have.

Yes it's a Matrox G400 with 16MB of RAM, the exact model is Matrox G4 + M4A_16DG 16Mb 4X AGP VGA.
Regarding the PCI-E I saw that it could be an ASUS of a PC-HP, and as you suggested it should be an 8500GT or
8600GT with 512MB of DDR2 RAM. The sound cards are these: ISA SB CT4170, PCI two SB CT4810s and one SB CT4760.
PCI Network Cards, IBM 10/100, Realtek RTL8139c, Compaq PCI 10/100, 3Com 3C905-TX-M.
The PCI video card is a S3 Trio64V2 / DX I think with 2MB of RAM.

gex85 wrote on 2021-01-31, 09:17:

imi wrote on 2021-01-30, 21:23:

and speaking of little things... I always wanted to have one of these... for more than 20 years now
and even got it in the box with all accessories :3
Sony Vaio PCG-N505X, floppy for scale

Nice, I got one of those myself, it's a great little machine. Mine has only a Celeron in it, and the Keyboard has been partially ruined by the previous owner who "disassembled" it by basically ripping it off and then glued it back in place... *facepalm*
Apart from that, it is in good shape and has all the accessories, too. But the keyboard is a flimsy piece of junk, even if the guy hadn't destroyed it, it's just not good to type on at all.

yep, only a celeron (333) and the keyboard is pretty yellowed unfortunately, but it was a reasonable price and I have a box to put on a shelf ^^

sound is yamaha iirc yes, but graphics is a crappy neomagic just like my PCG-X9, but eh these are more for "I always wanted this machine back in the day" than actual use ^^

Skanque wrote on 2021-01-31, 13:59:

New arrivals

those are some nice boxes :3

imi wrote on 2021-02-01, 10:21:

sound is yamaha iirc yes, but graphics is a crappy neomagic just like my PCG-X9, but eh these are more for "I always wanted this machine back in the day" than actual use ^^

Yeah, you don't buy these for the raw power... but the Yamaha chip does sound really good with a decent pair of headphones.

Today's purchase: My first GOTEK floppy emulator. I never really wanted to have one of these in my retro machines because I prefer authentic looks over convenience and don't use floppy disks all that much once a system is set up and ready to go. But now I got one for the workbench because fiddling around with actual floppy disks during setup or for BIOS flashing is such a hassle. I think I'll primarily use it during setup of new or reconfigured machines and then replace it with an actual floppy drive once the build is finished (because then I usually have simpler methods to transfer files, most notably via LAN).
So I guess I'll now have to take a look at the FlashFloppy firmware and the various hardware mods out there, they seem to make this thing even more convenient to use.

SteveC wrote on 2021-01-23, 22:37:

Just bought a pair of Toshiba Portege laptops to make a 2 player Win98 gaming setup 😀 Both working just need hard drives according to the seller, easily sorted. Don't think £34 delivered for the pair was too bad.

So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying though as you can't boot off USB and I don't have the dock to get the RJ45 port for ethernet and I don't have the custom connector floppy drive so I can't boot off floppy! Have to prepare a drive in another PC and move it over, taking the laptop to pieces in the process.

Nice little laptops though - should make nice Windows 98 machines to play with - 2 player over irDA haha. PII 300Mhz with 128Mb might struggle under XP, and 2000 might be a bit restrictive on gaming.

edit - just working on the second laptop and the hard drive is fine, just partitioned (into win98 and win2k labelled partitions), wiped and looks like someone forgot to make a partition active or put boot files on it. I bet they didn't any method of installing Windows either so gave up!

Picked this up last week

Claimed to be a Goldfinger Device, and allegedly used with a 1000mhz Slot A back in the day

Cannot find any info online of any Goldfingers that look like this one though, and appears to have a chip missing.

Its either the rarest mofo Goldfinger there is, and that’s why I can’t find anything on it, or it’s not a Goldfinger

Only one way to find out, but in the meantime anyone have any ideas to temper my curiosity?

AMD goldfinger look so simple and are becoming so hard to find these days that I think we should retro-engineer them and make a open schematic.
I have no goldfinger myself but I'd love to make my own ^^

SteveC wrote on 2021-02-01, 18:18:

So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying though as you can't boot off USB and I don't hav […]
Show full quote

SteveC wrote on 2021-01-23, 22:37:

Just bought a pair of Toshiba Portege laptops to make a 2 player Win98 gaming setup 😀 Both working just need hard drives according to the seller, easily sorted. Don't think £34 delivered for the pair was too bad.

So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying though as you can't boot off USB and I don't have the dock to get the RJ45 port for ethernet and I don't have the custom connector floppy drive so I can't boot off floppy! Have to prepare a drive in another PC and move it over, taking the laptop to pieces in the process.

Nice little laptops though - should make nice Windows 98 machines to play with - 2 player over irDA haha. PII 300Mhz with 128Mb might struggle under XP, and 2000 might be a bit restrictive on gaming.

edit - just working on the second laptop and the hard drive is fine, just partitioned (into win98 and win2k labelled partitions), wiped and looks like someone forgot to make a partition active or put boot files on it. I bet they didn't any method of installing Windows either so gave up!

🙁 Installed all drivers etc and Win98 unofficial SP3 on both, left them running for a while, came back to them and one was locked up making a strange noise from the speaker. Powered it off and on and it won't turn back on - power LED comes on, HDD spins up but it never boots and the screen doesn't come on at all, not even backlight or boot logo. The other still works though!

As of today I am finally dipping my toes in to the 68k family.

I also managed to snag an Apple Extended Keyboard II (with white ALPS switches) for a grand total of $60. I currently don't have a way to get video out from the mac, and which isn't too much of a problem since it seems to, somewhere, be unable to power on. I can get a quick click from the floppy drive, and the LEDs on the keyboard light up once, but that's it. It also seems to be, of all things, missing the SCSI HDD power cable. Still, it gives me a project to work on for a while, and a far better keyboard for my G3.

It even came with some manuals.

BetaC wrote on 2021-02-02, 01:10:

As of today I am finally dipping my toes in to the 68k family. image0.jpg I also managed to snag an Apple Extended Keyboard II […]
Show full quote

As of today I am finally dipping my toes in to the 68k family.
image0.jpg
I also managed to snag an Apple Extended Keyboard II (with white ALPS switches) for a grand total of $60. I currently don't have a way to get video out from the mac, and which isn't too much of a problem since it seems to, somewhere, be unable to power on. I can get a quick click from the floppy drive, and the LEDs on the keyboard light up once, but that's it. It also seems to be, of all things, missing the SCSI HDD power cable. Still, it gives me a project to work on for a while, and a far better keyboard for my G3.
image1.jpg
It even came with some manuals.

LC475?

SteveC wrote on 2021-02-01, 18:18:

So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying though as you can't boot off USB and I don't hav […]
Show full quote

SteveC wrote on 2021-01-23, 22:37:

Just bought a pair of Toshiba Portege laptops to make a 2 player Win98 gaming setup 😀 Both working just need hard drives according to the seller, easily sorted. Don't think £34 delivered for the pair was too bad.

So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying though as you can't boot off USB and I don't have the dock to get the RJ45 port for ethernet and I don't have the custom connector floppy drive so I can't boot off floppy! Have to prepare a drive in another PC and move it over, taking the laptop to pieces in the process.

Nice little laptops though - should make nice Windows 98 machines to play with - 2 player over irDA haha. PII 300Mhz with 128Mb might struggle under XP, and 2000 might be a bit restrictive on gaming.

edit - just working on the second laptop and the hard drive is fine, just partitioned (into win98 and win2k labelled partitions), wiped and looks like someone forgot to make a partition active or put boot files on it. I bet they didn't any method of installing Windows either so gave up!

Yeah, that's a common affliction of old subnotebooks - they generally do not boot off USB1.1 - not that USB1 is great for booting ISOs anyways. If you got a Toshiba external drive + cable, it might use the TEAC FFC26 interface. If it does, you can mod yourself a nice little mini-Gotek for those machines.

If you are lucky you got a pair of Portege 7010CT - the Neomagic 256AV is an okay 2D-only chip (although gona.mactar.hu and its DOS compatibility table will disagree). The real winner here is the legit OPL3-SA3 audio (YMF725 if I remember correctly). If I am gunning for a PII class subnotebook the 7010CT and the ThinkPad 240(ESFM Solo-1) will be my choices.

If you are not so lucky? You might end up with a pair of Portege 3110CTs. You'll want to look up how to configure the ESS Maestro 2 (ES1978) for DOS if you plan to use it there...it's not that straightforward. The Maestro 2 is a decent Windows AC97 chip but not well regarded in DOS. Keep expectations low for the Trident Cyber9525 video chip onboard - use it as a 2D card (it'll do fine and compatibility should be good) and ignore whatever Direct3D hardware acceleration it claims to have. It's based on the Trident 3DImage family, essentially a 3DImage 975 but with less VRAM - let's just say that there are generally more respect for the S3 Virge MX than this one - if it's not slow in Direct3D then it's glitchy as hell -> https://vintage3d.org/trident.php

Yeah, I know. Why can't Toshiba make a small machine with the Trident Cyber9525 and the YMF725F on the SAME CHASSIS? It would at least be a decent little laptop for late DOS/Early Windows...

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-02-02, 01:54:

BetaC wrote on 2021-02-02, 01:10:

As of today I am finally dipping my toes in to the 68k family. image0.jpg I also managed to snag an Apple Extended Keyboard II […]
Show full quote

As of today I am finally dipping my toes in to the 68k family.
image0.jpg
I also managed to snag an Apple Extended Keyboard II (with white ALPS switches) for a grand total of $60. I currently don't have a way to get video out from the mac, and which isn't too much of a problem since it seems to, somewhere, be unable to power on. I can get a quick click from the floppy drive, and the LEDs on the keyboard light up once, but that's it. It also seems to be, of all things, missing the SCSI HDD power cable. Still, it gives me a project to work on for a while, and a far better keyboard for my G3.
image1.jpg
It even came with some manuals.

LC475?

No, just a regular LC II. I am aware of it being crippled by the 16 bit bus, so I know I won't be getting something surprisingly powerful. I'm just Happy to finally have a 68k mac.

My X850PRO PCIe arrived today ad now all the pieces are in place for the EXTREMELY OVERKILL LGA775 Windows 98SE/WindowsXP dual boot setup.

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-02-02, 02:21:

Yeah, that's a common affliction of old subnotebooks - they generally do not boot off USB1.1 - not that USB1 is great for bootin […]
Show full quote

SteveC wrote on 2021-02-01, 18:18:

So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying though as you can't boot off USB and I don't hav […]
Show full quote

SteveC wrote on 2021-01-23, 22:37:

Just bought a pair of Toshiba Portege laptops to make a 2 player Win98 gaming setup 😀 Both working just need hard drives according to the seller, easily sorted. Don't think £34 delivered for the pair was too bad.

So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying though as you can't boot off USB and I don't have the dock to get the RJ45 port for ethernet and I don't have the custom connector floppy drive so I can't boot off floppy! Have to prepare a drive in another PC and move it over, taking the laptop to pieces in the process.

Nice little laptops though - should make nice Windows 98 machines to play with - 2 player over irDA haha. PII 300Mhz with 128Mb might struggle under XP, and 2000 might be a bit restrictive on gaming.

edit - just working on the second laptop and the hard drive is fine, just partitioned (into win98 and win2k labelled partitions), wiped and looks like someone forgot to make a partition active or put boot files on it. I bet they didn't any method of installing Windows either so gave up!

Yeah, that's a common affliction of old subnotebooks - they generally do not boot off USB1.1 - not that USB1 is great for booting ISOs anyways. If you got a Toshiba external drive + cable, it might use the TEAC FFC26 interface. If it does, you can mod yourself a nice little mini-Gotek for those machines.

If you are lucky you got a pair of Portege 7010CT - the Neomagic 256AV is an okay 2D-only chip (although gona.mactar.hu and its DOS compatibility table will disagree). The real winner here is the legit OPL3-SA3 audio (YMF725 if I remember correctly). If I am gunning for a PII class subnotebook the 7010CT and the ThinkPad 240(ESFM Solo-1) will be my choices.

If you are not so lucky? You might end up with a pair of Portege 3110CTs. You'll want to look up how to configure the ESS Maestro 2 (ES1978) for DOS if you plan to use it there...it's not that straightforward. The Maestro 2 is a decent Windows AC97 chip but not well regarded in DOS. Keep expectations low for the Trident Cyber9525 video chip onboard - use it as a 2D card (it'll do fine and compatibility should be good) and ignore whatever Direct3D hardware acceleration it claims to have. It's based on the Trident 3DImage family, essentially a 3DImage 975 but with less VRAM - let's just say that there are generally more respect for the S3 Virge MX than this one - if it's not slow in Direct3D then it's glitchy as hell -> https://vintage3d.org/trident.php

Yeah, I know. Why can't Toshiba make a small machine with the Trident Cyber9525 and the YMF725F on the SAME CHASSIS? It would at least be a decent little laptop for late DOS/Early Windows...

I wasn't so lucky and got 3110CTs but I still think it's a nice little machine. I do need to research the audio in DOS though. Shame one laptop has died, but at least I have some spares for the other one!

Deksor wrote on 2021-02-01, 20:24:

AMD goldfinger look so simple and are becoming so hard to find these days that I think we should retro-engineer them and make a open schematic.
I have no goldfinger myself but I'd love to make my own ^^

There are several schematics out there for them. I was going to start a PCB design for one a while back, but the thread on here pretty much died and there seemed to be no interest. Maybe I'll pick up the project soon.

wiretap wrote on 2021-02-02, 12:16:

Deksor wrote on 2021-02-01, 20:24:

AMD goldfinger look so simple and are becoming so hard to find these days that I think we should retro-engineer them and make a open schematic.
I have no goldfinger myself but I'd love to make my own ^^

There are several schematics out there for them. I was going to start a PCB design for one a while back, but the thread on here pretty much died and there seemed to be no interest. Maybe I'll pick up the project soon.

Someone was supposed to be making some over on CPU-World (https://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28887) but we heard nothing for a long time, so I assume it is abandoned. There are quite a few people who want one, including me.

I won an auction and got this little ASUS CUPLE VM 1.03 for about $ 10 incl ship.
My plans for this motherboard are to put it into case and pair it with 3dfx Voodoo2. I think it would be a nice pair, because last time when I tried it with Pentium 3 500 it was a bit too slow. This time I plan to pair it with Pentium 3 1000 MHz (133 FSB) and 512 MB of 133 SDRAM.
It will fit perfectly also because the motherboard doesn't have AGP slot, instead a more "exotic" Trident Blade 3D IGP.
Anyway, sounds like a good plan and lot of fun 😁

winuser_pl wrote on 2021-02-02, 14:24:

I won an auction and got this little ASUS CUPLE VM 1.03 for about $ 10 incl ship. My plans for this motherboard are to put it in […]
Show full quote

I won an auction and got this little ASUS CUPLE VM 1.03 for about $ 10 incl ship.
My plans for this motherboard are to put it into case and pair it with 3dfx Voodoo2. I think it would be a nice pair, because last time when I tried it with Pentium 3 500 it was a bit too slow. This time I plan to pair it with Pentium 3 1000 MHz (133 FSB) and 512 MB of 133 SDRAM.
It will fit perfectly also because the motherboard doesn't have AGP slot, instead a more "exotic" Trident Blade 3D IGP.
Anyway, sounds like a good plan and lot of fun 😁

That would be a nice platform for a VooDoo 2 glide system. You can use the on board video for your 2d and save a pci slot for a network card and a better sound card and have a great gaming experience.

Yes, that's my plan, although I don't have any special sound card yet, I'll use the chip AC97' onboard audio.

It's a solid plan. Using the onboard audio is a good starting point and you can look for a good creative Live! Or Audigy card for EAX or even a Vortex 2 based card as well.

SteveC wrote on 2021-02-02, 11:46:

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-02-02, 02:21:

Yeah, that's a common affliction of old subnotebooks - they generally do not boot off USB1.1 - not that USB1 is great for bootin […]
Show full quote

SteveC wrote on 2021-02-01, 18:18:

So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying though as you can't boot off USB and I don't have the dock to get the RJ45 port for ethernet and I don't have the custom connector floppy drive so I can't boot off floppy! Have to prepare a drive in another PC and move it over, taking the laptop to pieces in the process.

Nice little laptops though - should make nice Windows 98 machines to play with - 2 player over irDA haha. PII 300Mhz with 128Mb might struggle under XP, and 2000 might be a bit restrictive on gaming.

edit - just working on the second laptop and the hard drive is fine, just partitioned (into win98 and win2k labelled partitions), wiped and looks like someone forgot to make a partition active or put boot files on it. I bet they didn't any method of installing Windows either so gave up!

Yeah, that's a common affliction of old subnotebooks - they generally do not boot off USB1.1 - not that USB1 is great for booting ISOs anyways. If you got a Toshiba external drive + cable, it might use the TEAC FFC26 interface. If it does, you can mod yourself a nice little mini-Gotek for those machines.

If you are lucky you got a pair of Portege 7010CT - the Neomagic 256AV is an okay 2D-only chip (although gona.mactar.hu and its DOS compatibility table will disagree). The real winner here is the legit OPL3-SA3 audio (YMF725 if I remember correctly). If I am gunning for a PII class subnotebook the 7010CT and the ThinkPad 240(ESFM Solo-1) will be my choices.

If you are not so lucky? You might end up with a pair of Portege 3110CTs. You'll want to look up how to configure the ESS Maestro 2 (ES1978) for DOS if you plan to use it there...it's not that straightforward. The Maestro 2 is a decent Windows AC97 chip but not well regarded in DOS. Keep expectations low for the Trident Cyber9525 video chip onboard - use it as a 2D card (it'll do fine and compatibility should be good) and ignore whatever Direct3D hardware acceleration it claims to have. It's based on the Trident 3DImage family, essentially a 3DImage 975 but with less VRAM - let's just say that there are generally more respect for the S3 Virge MX than this one - if it's not slow in Direct3D then it's glitchy as hell -> https://vintage3d.org/trident.php

Yeah, I know. Why can't Toshiba make a small machine with the Trident Cyber9525 and the YMF725F on the SAME CHASSIS? It would at least be a decent little laptop for late DOS/Early Windows...

I wasn't so lucky and got 3110CTs but I still think it's a nice little machine. I do need to research the audio in DOS though. Shame one laptop has died, but at least I have some spares for the other one!

Heh. Well, that gives you the opportunity to buy a 7200CT/CTe. Same audio chip as the 3110CT, Cyberblade e4 graphics (some light Direct3D gaming is possible) and a Coppermine Pentium III. It’s actually a pretty decent alternative to the Sony Vaio PCG-SRxx machines (those have YMF754 but TERRIBLE keyboards).

As for the ESS Maestro drivers, I swear that one day I’ll have some bandwidth and bundle up the working DOS config off my Dell C600.