Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-02-03, 05:50:

Just nabbed this. Never seen one of these before, and I can't find any pictures of the card or the box online anywhere other tha […]
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Just nabbed this. Never seen one of these before, and I can't find any pictures of the card or the box online anywhere other than an old amazon.ca listing. Going by the pictures and feature set, I'm thinking it's a MediaVision Thunderboard variant. The real struggle will be to not open it play with it. I'm not one to keep sealed boxes around but this seems pretty rare.

ibm_opt1.jpg
ibm_opt2.jpg

The only other mention of an IBM Easy Options sound card I've seen is a post here relating to a 16-bit card that someone found.

It is on TH99 though!
https://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/i/I-L/51749.htm

By the way... who got the sealed Windows Sound System from 1992? I was tempted but it was a bit pricey... even this one I got was not cheap. I need to block ebay on my computer for a while... 🤣

Nice score, I also have a sealed one so kind of hoping you’d peek inside yours! 😉 also, pictured below is an unboxed variant of this board but there isn’t any sign as to what that one actually is (no FCC ID or manufacturer).

Interesting that the bundled software with the IBM seems to be pretty close to that which came with the actual MV Thunderboard (Lemmings, Nova 9).

On the topic of Thunderboard “clones”, it does seem that the Protac card is deemed a clone because of the Thunder chip and OPL2, but the feature set is different so it’s possibly more a clone of the AC525, albeit 16-bit. But yeah, definitely no MIDI on the OG Thunderboard!

My last post about retro hardware pickups was... long time ago (it was somewhere in the end of june 2020). And i was doing monthly reports, so this one will be... slightly different. Let's go. 😁

Motherboards:

ASUS CUBX-E

Interesting and somewhat rare S370 mobo. Probably because it's 440BX and built-in UDMA 100 controller.

ASUS SP98AGP-X

Hooo boy, now this is a rare retrohardware. There is some SS7 ATX powerhouses around (like ASUS P5A-B or Gigabyte GA-5AX), they have great performance, they have well-known chipsets, and... they're really expensive (like 3dfx Voodoo cards). This one is not that fascinating performance-wise, but... It's ATX, and it's rare. 😁

Intel TC430HX

Another one S7 ATX mobo. There's also built-in Yamaha sound chip.

Dataexpert EXP8449

White ISA-slots... Beautiful.

FIC VA-503+

With a whopping 1mb of L2 cache.

Tyan Titan Turbo AT-2 S1571

Very interesting motherboard (i mean, 6 SIMM slots in 430TX mobo? Okay, i guess...)
I know that Tyan is a very specific brand that making mobos mostly for workstations and stuff like that.

Videocards:

nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 PCI

It's common knowledge that TNT2 M64 is a thing that can be found everywhere and it's very cheap. But - this works if you talking about AGP version.
PCI version is much more harder to find. And PCI version is definitely not that cheap.

Matrox G450 PCI

Pretty much the same case like with TNT2 M64.

ATi Rage Pro Turbo AGP (ATi All-In-Wonder Pro)

nVidia Riva 128ZX

I hope someday i'll find ASUS version... 😁

And last, but not least, sound:

Trident 4DWave-DX

Woah, sound chip made by Trident? Wait a minute... Okay, i knew about Trident soundcards, so it's not a big surprise for me.
And i also heard that it's not that bad soundchip. Definitely gonna test it (hell, maybe i'll compare it to powerhouses like Vortex 2 or Audigy).

dionb wrote on 2021-02-03, 18:43:

Got hold of a card near the top of my 'must find'-list: 16123768354990.jpg […]
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Got hold of a card near the top of my 'must find'-list:
16123768354990.jpg

Terratec EWS64XL - with a 16MB SIMM

Friend of mine bought one in ~2000. He was intending to use it under Win2k for music production for his black metal group (er, except you weren't allowed to call it black metal despite sounding just like...), but due to driver hell it never delivered on the promise. I now bought this from someone who had gotten it to work for him, he recorded a lot of dark mediaeval-sounding folk stuff with it and used the MIDI synth for backing.

Due to absolutely no musical talent my ambitions are more limited: load that 8MB Hoontech sound bank and enjoy some DOS games 😀

Oh, and the little chips are 512kb SRAM chips to upgrade some boards to 1MB L2

Very cool!

Benetton93 wrote on 2021-02-04, 10:16:

My last post about retro hardware pickups was... long time ago (it was jsomewhere in the end of june 2020). And i was doing moth […]
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My last post about retro hardware pickups was... long time ago (it was jsomewhere in the end of june 2020). And i was doing mothly reports, so this one will be... slighly different. Let's go. 😁

Motherboards:

ASUS CUBX-E

Interesting and somewhat rare S370 mobo. Probably because it's 440BX and built-in UDMA 100 controller.

Love that board - interesting that Asus chose to increase, not decrease number of ISA slots over the non-E. A nice trend-breaker making it more useful to us retro-freaks 😀

ASUS SP98AGP-X https://i.imgur.com/r8Oxlq3m.jpg Hooo boy, now this is a rare retrohardware. There is some SS7 ATX powerhouses ar […]
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ASUS SP98AGP-X

Hooo boy, now this is a rare retrohardware. There is some SS7 ATX powerhouses around (like ASUS P5A-B or Gigabyte GA-5AX), they have great performance, they have well-known chipsets, and... they're really expensive (like 3dfx Voodoo cards). This one is not that fascinating performance-wise, but... It's ATX, and it's rare. 😁

Oh yes, SiS 5591. The chipset that didn't quite manage 100MHz, so released as supporting 95MHz FSB. Not exactly SiS' greatest hour, but a nice rarity nonetheless, particularly on such a high-quality board (usually you just see this on PC-Chips crapfests)

And last, but not least, sound: […]
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And last, but not least, sound:

Trident 4DWave-DX

Woah, sound chip made by Trident? Wait a minute... Okay, i knew about Trident soundcards, so it's not a big surprise for me.
And i also heard that it's not that bad soundchip. Definitely gonna test it (hell, maybe i'll compare it to powerhouses like Vortex 2 or Audigy).

Nice one. Prepare to be positively surprised, at least when compared to Vortex 1. It's basically a high-end implementation of SiS/ALi's integrated codecs, with Q3D and A3D 1 support.

I now have three gamepads and a joystick. I need to get a USB to gameport adapter though now so I can use this on a modern machine, and my retro laptops (assuming these USB gameport adapters work in Windows 98).

Just got my first external MIDI device: a Roland SC-155. It's a less common version of the original SC-55, with a bunch of sliders for easy volume/panning adjustments.

Currently having a blast testing all of my favorite games with this! As expected, Doom and Duke3D sound epic, and early '90s Sierra adventure games like Gabriel Knight and King's Quest VI are absolutely spectacular! Comparing the SC-155 to soundfonts, I'm starting to notice small, subtle differences. Instruments seem to blend together more naturally on the real thing, and some tracks seem to use a different sounding drum set. Fun stuff all around!

dionb wrote on 2021-02-04, 12:02:

Oh yes, SiS 5591. The chipset that didn't quite manage 100MHz, so released as supporting 95MHz FSB. Not exactly SiS' greatest hour, but a nice rarity nonetheless, particularly on such a high-quality board (usually you just see this on PC-Chips crapfests)

Not many well-known brands used this chipset. After 20 minutes of googling all i could find were couple of motherboards:
ASUS SP98AGP-X
ECS Elitegroup P5SD-B (AT)
ECS Elitegroup P5SD-AS (built-in SiS 6326 video, no AGP, ATX)
Gigabyte GA-586SG (AT)

Yeah... quite a few. Still, this make me to do even more research about this strange chipset. I'll play it safe though and i'll leave P200MMX (i did some SPEEDSYS tests with that processor just for fun):


Or i'll replace with AMD K6-2/333 and perform some tests on more modern Win9x programs.

PS: It always amazed me how PC Cheaps (heh) were hiding real names of the chipsets with "cool" monickers, like "TX-Pro II" or "HX-Pro", stuff like that.

Benetton93 wrote on 2021-02-04, 12:46:

[...] […]
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[...]

Not many well-known brands used this chipset. After 20 minutes of googling all i could find were couple of motherboards:
ASUS SP98AGP-X
ECS Elitegroup P5SD-B (AT)
ECS Elitegroup P5SD-AS (built-in SiS 6326 video, no AGP, ATX)
Gigabyte GA-586SG (AT)

Those two ECS boards are identical to the PC Chips ones (this was after ECS/PC Chips merger).

Yeah... quite a few. Still, this make me to do even more research about this strange chipset. I'll play it safe though and i'll […]
Show full quote

Yeah... quite a few. Still, this make me to do even more research about this strange chipset. I'll play it safe though and i'll leave P200MMX (i did some SPEEDSYS tests with that processor just for fun):


Or i'll replace with AMD K6-2/333 and perform some tests on more modern Win9x programs.

PS: It always amazed me how PC Cheaps (heh) were hiding real names of the chipsets with "cool" monickers, like "TX-Pro II" or "HX-Pro", stuff like that.

There were specific K6-2 releases for this chipset. The K6-2 380 (4x95MHz) and 475 (5x 95MHz) were specifically released for these boards. Of course they're technically identical to the 400/500MHz variants.

Today I finally found a cheap MS IntelliMouse (non-Explorer variant) in seemingly good condition and immediately snagged it.

I wanted one of those for quite some time because I like the combination of the classic Microsoft shape with the optical sensor.
Here's a review from back in the day: http://www.dansdata.com/ieye.htm

darry wrote on 2021-02-03, 20:34:

I have a Yamaha AW4416 24-bit multi-track recorder (I seem to be addicted to those, LOL) on the way, which would be a great thin […]
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I have a Yamaha AW4416 24-bit multi-track recorder (I seem to be addicted to those, 🤣) on the way, which would be a great thing except... http://www.home-machine-shop.com/AW4416_RTC_R … tc_ds12887.html

Yes, I have managed to find and order something other than a PC motherboard that uses a Dallas DS12887 RTC/battery combo and, as a bonus, it is often soldered rather than socketed, or so I hear .

We'll see if I get lucky (socketed) or if I will need to have a socket soldered in (I am just not confident enough yet to try my hand at soldering on something so expensive, but I have a great place a 20 minute walk from where I live that would probably make short work of it ). Alternatively, I could try to mod the DS12887, but even that seems a bit risky to do without desoldering it first .

Oh well, live (spend) and learn .

EDIT : Why ? because I feel too lazy to do precise level matching that my current 16-bit VS-880EX requires, so a 24-bit unit seemed like a good idea (note to self : never go Ebay shopping while drunk)

EDIT2: I wonder if adding an 8 channel MY8-AE AES EBU I/O board and some S/PDIF to AES EBU converter would allow multiple S/PDIF inputs easily, or whether I would still need to find a way sync the clocks of the S/PDIF sources to the AW4416's internal clock . Even if it worked, it would not be an inexpensive solution .

I now have a GW-12887-1 (DS12887 replacement with CR2032 battery holder) and some sockets on the way too .

More info here : https://www.tindie.com/products/glitchwrks/gw … acement-module/

Few weeks back I bought a brand new sealed 14” CRT monitor from someone. I took a long shot and asked if he had any old computer parts, so he said he’d look. He sold me all this for $150.

And the rest 😂...

Holy crap you got all that for 150 bucks! That's a seriously great deal and everything is packaged and labeled nicely as well

looks like you hit the jackpot ^^ nice

Yeah, he had old computer parts. Now you do - lots 😜

Wow, nice lot! I have learned that it definitely pays to ask. I just say "If you have any old computer stuff around, let me know" when talking to people about anything computer related and I've found some cool stuff that way. It's amazing the stuff that people just have laying around for 15-30 years, with no thought as to what they should do with it.

Of course, for every nice lot there's a bunch of "Yeah! I've still got every printer and flat bed scanner I've ever owned in the garage! You want'em???", so you have to be prepared for that too. Only printer I've ever willingly taken and kept was a Xerox Diablo 620 daisy wheel printer from 1982 with the original box, accessories, font wheels in decorative cases from a person who was a salesperson for Xerox back then. Neat setup, and I eventually got it working on my 5150, but... It's so ridiculously huge and bulky and I have no practical use for it.

Unless it's from the 80s, all printers go to Goodwill.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-02-05, 02:13:

Of course, for every nice lot there's a bunch of "Yeah! I've still got every printer and flat bed scanner I've ever owned in the garage! You want'em???", so you have to be prepared for that too.

heh, I had something like that once on the local classifieds, person was selling a few boxes of old hardware and I asked for some of the stuff, and they were like "nah you need to take it all" x3 one of the boxes was full of old routers and other useless stuff but eh it was a good deal and they even brought it to my door x3

gex85 wrote on 2021-02-04, 19:46:

Today I finally found a cheap MS IntelliMouse (non-Explorer variant) in seemingly good condition and immediately snagged it. s-l […]
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Today I finally found a cheap MS IntelliMouse (non-Explorer variant) in seemingly good condition and immediately snagged it.
s-l1600.jpg
I wanted one of those for quite some time because I like the combination of the classic Microsoft shape with the optical sensor.
Here's a review from back in the day: http://www.dansdata.com/ieye.htm

🤣, this was one of the first things I ordered back in 2005 when signing up on ebay.... Heck, I even think it was the SOLE reason for my signing up back then - bidding $100 to make sure I got it, for the same reasons you had.
(ended up as only $6 though, so....)

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-02-05, 01:49:

Holy crap you got all that for 150 bucks! That's a seriously great deal and everything is packaged and labeled nicely as well

Yeah, he also tested everything for me even though I told him it wasn't necessary so that was cool of him. He literally emailed me an excel sheet with all the stuff he had, and asked what I wanted. I picked out the parts I most wanted because I wasn't sure how much he wanted for it. In the end, I offered him $150, and he just gave me everything.Scoket 7, 462, 478, 775 boards, and multiple of each. Over 15 Slot1 CPU's I have no idea what I'll do with them. There was so much stuff I had to take it all straight to my storage locker because I don't have room (Actually let me rephrase that... the wife would shoot me if I brought it all home 🤣).

He tossed in a couple more CRT monitors, as well all those computer systems you see. One is a Dell Celeron 600, there's a gorgeous IBM Aptiva 1.1GHz Celeron, and the In-Win A500 case that has a Asus P2B board and P3 500 installed.

I hope you do want that gorgeous In-Win A500 though :p