Picked up a very cheap boxed Boss DR-330 "Dr.Synth" midi module with manual today. Battery had started to leak but I removed it and there is no damage. Unit works great

I've finally added an Atari ST to my collection. Never owned one back in the day, I've only ever used emulation briefly.

Ordered this a couple of days ago and received today -

It's a 520 STE with 4MB RAM upgrade and a 4160 STE badge added. Think I'll keep the 4160 badge 🤣.

I took a gamble buying this from eBay. There was absolutely no information in the auction listing - literally nothing, the photos were blurry too. But it's turned up and aside from needing a cleaning (particularly the keyboard as you can see in the photo) it is otherwise in fully working condition, floppy drive & all.

Happily it also has a switchable TOS mod, with a switch on the side of the case to switch between TOS 1.62 & TOS 2.06.

Going to remove the floppy drive and add a Gotek for now. Probably will get an UltraSatan for it next month.

PTherapist wrote on 2021-02-17, 12:49:

I've finally added an Atari ST to my collection. Never owned one back in the day, I've only ever used emulation briefly. […]
Show full quote

I've finally added an Atari ST to my collection. Never owned one back in the day, I've only ever used emulation briefly.

Ordered this a couple of days ago and received today -

It's a 520 STE with 4MB RAM upgrade and a 4160 STE badge added. Think I'll keep the 4160 badge 🤣.

I took a gamble buying this from eBay. There was absolutely no information in the auction listing - literally nothing, the photos were blurry too. But it's turned up and aside from needing a cleaning (particularly the keyboard as you can see in the photo) it is otherwise in fully working condition, floppy drive & all.

Happily it also has a switchable TOS mod, with a switch on the side of the case to switch between TOS 1.62 & TOS 2.06.

Going to remove the floppy drive and add a Gotek for now. Probably will get an UltraSatan for it next month.

Neat!!! And congrats

As soon as I saw the title of the offert "9800 pro" I bought it without even looking if it works. $ 13 (includes shipment). Good purchase or bad? It is 128MB only (and palit, heh) but copper cooler looks pretty nice. Seller`s picture

dulu wrote on 2021-02-17, 20:16:

As soon as I saw the title of the offert "9800 pro" I bought it without even looking if it works. $ 13 (includes shipment). Good purchase or bad? It is 128MB only (and palit, heh) but copper cooler looks pretty nice. Seller`s picture

Good if it works, bad if it doesn't and can't be fixed. I consider it worth the risk though 😀

Card is described as working, it is a retailer and I am entitled to a free return (I don't think it will be needed 😁)

dulu wrote on 2021-02-17, 20:16:

As soon as I saw the title of the offert "9800 pro" I bought it without even looking if it works. $ 13 (includes shipment). Good purchase or bad? It is 128MB only (and palit, heh) but copper cooler looks pretty nice. Seller`s picture

That doesn't look like a 9800 Pro to me, but I did find some pictures online of similar Palit cards being sold as 9800 Pros. We just had a post recently about these non-standard 9800 models. I'm not sure exactly what you've got there, but it isn't a 9800 Pro the way ATi designed them. The through-hole caps and the rectangular memory chips (and the layout) give it away.

It may perform as a 9800 Pro, or it may have reduced performance... it's hard to say. Either way, it was cheap, so congrats! 😁

Today I went to a thrift store on a whim, and I would like to think I cam out on top. I got a pair of working AppleDesign Powered Speakers and a SB16.

The latter will probably end up being used at some point, but the former will see some use relatively soon.

BetaC wrote on 2021-02-17, 23:47:

Today I went to a thrift store on a whim, and I would like to think I cam out on top. I got a pair of working AppleDesign Powered Speakers

A great score - are they decent quality? The bigger AppleDesign speakers are good bits of kit, quite loud and fit the bill when used on any Mac or PC of the era.

Byrd wrote on 2021-02-18, 02:02:

BetaC wrote on 2021-02-17, 23:47:

Today I went to a thrift store on a whim, and I would like to think I cam out on top. I got a pair of working AppleDesign Powered Speakers

A great score - are they decent quality? The bigger AppleDesign speakers are good bits of kit, quite loud and fit the bill when used on any Mac or PC of the era.

The bigger ones apparently sound better, but they sound good for 1993/1994 speakers in my opinion. They don't compare well to the Apple Pro Speakers that I recently got, and the logitech speakers that I have lying about definitely sound better, but they're also not as old as I am.

Found a couple of monitors locally, which is pretty rare. The 17" HP is better than anything I have :

Does it work?

Yes!

Put it into production then :

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-02-14, 03:39:

I doubt these were user-modified overclocking cards... many many Geforce 2 MX cards were produced and sold without heatsinks. They could function fine this way and I have had at least a couple dozen like this in the last few years. For what it's worth, I have never come across an MX with an aftermarket heatsink.

Well, read this then 😀 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=aut … po-pretaktovani
I would not run it without heatsink, after overclocking.
Personaly, didnt see GF2 MX without heatsink from decent company. Maybe some noname? Don't know.

Bought a Compaq Portable for an alright price, but could've been lower.

This one has a HardCard installed along with a NIC that has BNC and AUI-15 ports, and a RAM + RTC card.

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-02-18, 04:34:

Found a couple of monitors locally, which is pretty rare. The 17" HP is better than anything I have : […]
Show full quote

Found a couple of monitors locally, which is pretty rare. The 17" HP is better than anything I have :

DSC_0001.JPG

Does it work?

DSC_0002.JPG

Yes!

Put it into production then :

DSC_0003.JPG

Nice find on that HP monitor. We had one back in the day and it had a beautiful picture to it. I still wish we didn't sell it.

3Com 3C509B-TP ISA network card to hold an XTIDE ROM and give my 386 networking capability at the same time.

Already have a 3C509B-Combo, doing the same for my 286.

W.x. wrote on 2021-02-18, 04:41:

Well, read this then :) https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=aut … po-pretaktovani I would not run it without heatsink, af […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-02-14, 03:39:

I doubt these were user-modified overclocking cards... many many Geforce 2 MX cards were produced and sold without heatsinks. They could function fine this way and I have had at least a couple dozen like this in the last few years. For what it's worth, I have never come across an MX with an aftermarket heatsink.

Well, read this then 😀 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=aut … po-pretaktovani
I would not run it without heatsink, after overclocking.
Personaly, didnt see GF2 MX without heatsink from decent company. Maybe some noname? Don't know.

Maybe I'm missing something. I just searched that entire article for "heatsink" and only managed to find references to adding a fan to an existing heatsink and RAM-heatsinks for overclocking.

I would never dispute that more cooling is needed for overclocking of almost any chip.

However, to say that all GF2 MX cards came with heatsinks unless they were modified, is just not true. Not all MX cards were intended for overclocking. They were incredibly common in prebuilt systems, and the OEM cards used often had no heatsinks. I wouldn't expect big overclocks from these... core or memory. But I was never even talking about that, so... 😮

I just checked my "Big Box O' MX cards" and found these. Keep in mind, I don't have MX200 cards in this box... these are all Geforce 2MX (vanilla).

We have here two low profile nvidia-branded P180-0039 cards (labeled for Dell and IBM... they're identical to the one from the Dell I was posting about!), one MSI MS-8835 (built for Dell) and one Creative card (built for Compaq). All the most common names in the OEM add-in-card business from the time. No heatsinks at all. Also notice how the PCBs aren't discolored from heat. The cards work 100% fine without heatsinks and get nowhere near as hot as something like a Voodoo 3 (which burns and discolors the PCB over time, even with a heatsink... and yet some of THOSE were sold without them).

Anyway, my only reason for posting this is to clarify that the card in the Dell system posted earlier was not modified, and that those cards are extremely common, and are perfectly good cards as-is.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-02-18, 15:50:

Maybe I'm missing something. I just searched that entire article for "heatsink" and only managed to find references to adding a […]
Show full quote

Maybe I'm missing something. I just searched that entire article for "heatsink" and only managed to find references to adding a fan to an existing heatsink and RAM-heatsinks for overclocking.

I would never dispute that more cooling is needed for overclocking of almost any chip.

However, to say that all GF2 MX cards came with heatsinks unless they were modified, is just not true. Not all MX cards were intended for overclocking. They were incredibly common in prebuilt systems, and the OEM cards used often had no heatsinks. I wouldn't expect big overclocks from these... core or memory. But I was never even talking about that, so... 😮

I just checked my "Big Box O' MX cards" and found these. Keep in mind, I don't have MX200 cards in this box... these are all Geforce 2MX (vanilla).
20210218_105441.jpg

We have here two low profile nvidia-branded P180-0039 cards (labeled for Dell and IBM... they're identical to the one from the Dell I was posting about!), one MSI MS-8835 (built for Dell) and one Creative card (built for Compaq). All the most common names in the OEM add-in-card business from the time. No heatsinks at all. Also notice how the PCBs aren't discolored from heat. The cards work 100% fine without heatsinks and get nowhere near as hot as something like a Voodoo 3 (which burns and discolors the PCB over time, even with a heatsink... and yet some of THOSE were sold without them).

Anyway, my only reason for posting this is to clarify that the card in the Dell system posted earlier was not modified, and that those cards are extremely common, and are perfectly good cards as-is.

Yep, never saw such before, probably because Im still searching for GF2MX vanilla more than half year, noone has answered on my want ad. I alraedy have MX200 and 400 versions, but searching for vanilla too. So, you are tempting me with that screenshot of vanilla MX's . 😀

Would not probably had OEM version of this card before. All big companies, names, and I saw like at least hundreds of MX, MX200, MX400, all had heatsink on them. But it's true, none of them was OEM.

Thank you, for showing me non-heatsink versions. As far as i know, common cards sold in Box for customers as GF2 MX alone, always had heatsink. I saw so many pictures, of all various MX, from Asus to no-name, and all had heatsinks. Good to know, some OEM didnt have. Would probably sold worse, when would be sold in box this way. Because graphic card with heatsink looked more "cool" (not temperature-wise), and from Geforce2, in 2000 and 2001, everyone expected good results, so thats why probably they always included heatsink in boxed version. Anyway, it's 4W card, true, it can work probably without heatsink. But to be honest, as customer, I would for sure WANT to have heatsink on it, if you ask me. I would probably put heatsink, If I've got in some box this kind of GF2MX, I would really thought previous user took it away, cause I saw this kind of behavior lots of time, selling cards without heatsinks, although originaly they were put on.

To be less offtopic, I've just got these, it's my first 486 board, finally after half year, I've manage to get decent deal for 36$. It's asus pvi-486sp3 rev1.21 and AM5x86-x5-133adw https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/am5x86/amd-x5-133adw

Today, I've tested it, and it seems ok. Booted into BIOS.

The PVI is a good board. Note that you can upgrade the cache to 512KB if you plan to fit a decent amount of RAM. I see it has 4x 512kbit chips fitted, you can remove those and fit 4x 1024kbit chips instead if you want to max it out.

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-02-18, 16:50:

The PVI is a good board. Note that you can upgrade the cache to 512KB if you plan to fit a decent amount of RAM. I see it has 4x 512kbit chips fitted, you can remove those and fit 4x 1024kbit chips instead if you want to max it out.

Well, thank you for advice. Would not know it. I had just opposite question for myself, if it can be "downgraded" to 128 Kb, to simulate more of 486 I once had in 1996.
I found in manual jumpers for setting the Cache. When I set it to 128 kB (4 chips), while I have 256, will it work as 128?

W.x. wrote on 2021-02-18, 16:36:

Yep, never saw such before, probably because Im still searching for GF2MX vanilla more than half year, noone has answered on my […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-02-18, 15:50:

Maybe I'm missing something. I just searched that entire article for "heatsink" and only managed to find references to adding a […]
Show full quote

Maybe I'm missing something. I just searched that entire article for "heatsink" and only managed to find references to adding a fan to an existing heatsink and RAM-heatsinks for overclocking.

I would never dispute that more cooling is needed for overclocking of almost any chip.

However, to say that all GF2 MX cards came with heatsinks unless they were modified, is just not true. Not all MX cards were intended for overclocking. They were incredibly common in prebuilt systems, and the OEM cards used often had no heatsinks. I wouldn't expect big overclocks from these... core or memory. But I was never even talking about that, so... 😮

I just checked my "Big Box O' MX cards" and found these. Keep in mind, I don't have MX200 cards in this box... these are all Geforce 2MX (vanilla).
20210218_105441.jpg

We have here two low profile nvidia-branded P180-0039 cards (labeled for Dell and IBM... they're identical to the one from the Dell I was posting about!), one MSI MS-8835 (built for Dell) and one Creative card (built for Compaq). All the most common names in the OEM add-in-card business from the time. No heatsinks at all. Also notice how the PCBs aren't discolored from heat. The cards work 100% fine without heatsinks and get nowhere near as hot as something like a Voodoo 3 (which burns and discolors the PCB over time, even with a heatsink... and yet some of THOSE were sold without them).

Anyway, my only reason for posting this is to clarify that the card in the Dell system posted earlier was not modified, and that those cards are extremely common, and are perfectly good cards as-is.

Yep, never saw such before, probably because Im still searching for GF2MX vanilla more than half year, noone has answered on my want ad. I alraedy have MX200 and 400 versions, but searching for vanilla too. So, you are tempting me with that screenshot of vanilla MX's . 😀

Would not probably had OEM version of this card before. All big companies, names, and I saw like at least hundreds of MX, MX200, MX400, all had heatsink on them. But it's true, none of them was OEM.

Thank you, for showing me non-heatsink versions. As far as i know, common cards sold in Box for customers as GF2 MX alone, always had heatsink. I saw so many pictures, of all various MX, from Asus to no-name, and all had heatsinks. Good to know, some OEM didnt have. Would probably sold worse, when would be sold in box this way. Because graphic card with heatsink looked more "cool" (not temperature-wise), and from Geforce2, in 2000 and 2001, everyone expected good results, so thats why probably they always included heatsink in boxed version. Anyway, it's 4W card, true, it can work probably without heatsink. But to be honest, as customer, I would for sure WANT to have heatsink on it, if you ask me. I would probably put heatsink, If I've got in some box this kind of GF2MX, I would really thought previous user took it away, cause I saw this kind of behavior lots of time, selling cards without heatsinks, although originaly they were put on.

To be less offtopic, I've just got these, it's my first 486 board, finally after half year, I've manage to get decent deal for 36$. It's asus pvi-486sp3 rev1.21 and AM5x86-x5-133adw https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/amd/am5x86/amd-x5-133adw

Today, I've tested it, and it seems ok. Booted into BIOS.

You're correct that boxed cards were probably always equipped with heatsinks. They had to actually compete on some level with each other, so having less effective cooling would have certainly made one card less desirable. Also, we have to remember that the original 2MX (vanilla) was a mid range card, not an entry level card (TNT2 M64 was probably still the most common entry level card until the MX200 came out). The premium price of buying a decently capable gaming card was likely worth the few cents it cost to have it equipped with a heatsink. For OEM cards, it didn't matter, because the customer couldn't even know what the card looked like until they owned the system... and few people bought Dell or Compaq systems off the shelf if they were intending to overclock.

Also, very nice board+CPU you found there! And a nice price! 😁

Today I got my Salient AT3000 in the mail! It came shipped in a re-used box that says "CalComp - A Lockheed Company" on it... which is pretty nifty, if totally unrelated to this card. I'm happy to report that it does function. I threw it in a 440BX system and it booted right up. The BIOS display shows that it is a 1MB card (the Falcon64 portion anyway). In Windows 98SE it was detected as a non-PNP ET4000, which I found kind of hilarious. The drivers are installed but I get the message that the display driver isn't installed properly, and I can't set anything above 640x480x4. It also detects an unknown device... presumably the TIGA chip or the mysterious Xylinx FPGA chips. Next I will see if installing a generic Daytona64 driver will work.

Would love to find a proper Salient driver set for this thing!