that is a really nice 386 ^^

I got these two chunky beasts.

both of them work, the CF-28 has a french keyboard unfortunately, that needs to go ^^
I love how modular the toughbooks are, so changing the keyboard is going to be easy I guess, also parts seem to be compatible across multiple models.
if I change it to a black keyboard it would be all black, which seems to be uncommon for a CF-28 ^^

the CF-25 was advertised as MKIII - 166Mhz by the seller but unfortunately turned out to be only a MKII - 150Mhz... that means no yamaha sound, no socketed processor and no MMX 🙁 it also came with a leaking NiMH battery instead of the newer Li-Ion ones that I took out just in time luckily. It is also missing the drive cover which wasn't visible on the sellers pictures either.

but the CF-28 is working perfectly and is in pretty decent condition, for a toughbook anyways as those usually get a good amount of abuse, even the battery still seems to hold a charge 😀 edit: I take that back, the battery just went from 90% to 8%... oh well still got like 10 minutes out of it ^^
probably going to use this one for testing purposes.

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

Oo, nice 386!

I'd love to see what all hardware it has installed - Is that VGA Card full length? Must be something interesting if so. I'm gonna call it now: DTC 5000 series hard disk controller!

and some boring stuff

HP Scanjet interface card

generic I/O card

scsi card

special 32bit ram card

and the Everex ram card I have another thread about
Everex Ram 8000 AT configuration help

pinkdonut666 wrote:

bonus points if you can identify the sound card ;) […]
Show full quote

bonus points if you can identify the sound card 😉

Covox Sound Master II - https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/ … nd-devices.html

pinkdonut666 wrote:

Orchid Prodesigner IIS

Prodesigner II.
Prodesigner IIS is shorter, and comes with socketed RAMDAC.

See this post - Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Though that card is also marked just "Prodesigner II", somewhat confusing...

Grzyb wrote:

pinkdonut666 wrote:

bonus points if you can identify the sound card ;) […]
Show full quote

bonus points if you can identify the sound card 😉

Covox Sound Master II - https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/ … nd-devices.html

Huh. Never knew that Covox made internal sound cards for IBM PCs and compatibles back then. I wonder if the MIDI was UART or Intelligent?

There's no CPU on the card so definitely not intelligent.

Grzyb wrote:

pinkdonut666 wrote:

bonus points if you can identify the sound card ;) […]
Show full quote

bonus points if you can identify the sound card 😉

Covox Sound Master II - https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/ … nd-devices.html

I have one boxed, let me know if you need the disk images. I think I put them online before but can't remember.

https://imgur.com/a/w3hKR

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

sf78 wrote:

I actually skipped this, but I was tempted as these old Dell's don't show up that often. It was 1€ and had (I presume) an SB 128 in it.

Are these actually uncommon? I see these all the time, it's really a race between these old Dell Dimensions / Optiplexes, the Pentium 4 Dell Dimension / Optiplexes, and Compaq Deskpro machines.

Dell wasn't really a thing here at that time. Most late 90's early 00's corporate PC's were Compaq/HP/IBM. I think it wasn't until P4 that Dell started to gain some ground.

edit: Okay, what the hell now?!

I should just start buying all this useless junk and sell it back to you guys across the pond!

interesting...

https://denver.craigslist.org/zip/d/morrison- … 6997036365.html

almost makes it worth the 45 minute drive for me. (one way)

Daniël Oosterhuis wrote:

But, I suppose I have an excuse to check out SID replacements like the SwinSIDs and ARMSIDs now.

The ARMSID rocks, highly recommended. A bit different but not much - kinda like listening to a nice AudioDrive vs the original SB Pro.

Got myself some 'new' stuff for the first time in a while:

Anticlockwise from top:

- Thermaltake SuperOrb - box a bit battered, but cooler itself looks new, no dust and a pristine contact surface.
- Generic Ricoh-based PCI PC-card adapter. Advertised as PCMCIA, but I believe it's a Cardbus controller. Will use to hot-swap CF cards on P3 system 😉
- SMC 9232 (?) EISA 10/100MbE card
- UMC TK 85C418GVIO 4J D08 VLB Multi I/O *and* VGA combo board. The UMC UM85C418F VGA chip surprised me recently performing almost as good as an ARK1000VL. I already had a board with UM85C418F and IDE, but that still needed separate I/O and floppy. Now I have a truly all-in-one solution 😜
- Cornerstone ImageAccel PC164i. Hi-res Windows 2D accelerator. More of a curiosity than anything else.
- Aztech Sound Galaxy BX II 8b ISA very short Soundblaster 2.0 clone.
- EVGA N7600A-PB. Unfortunately dead, but possibly fixable. All the fake solid-state caps (really just electrolytic ones made to look like solid state 🙁 ) are gone, but in that state it still booted. Then the previous owner somehow managed to insert the Molex power connector the wrong way round. It sparked, some magic smoke came out and it did not POST anymore. I can't see visible damage, but I'm assuming consequences may be limited to the VRM area, which could be fixed.

Vynix wrote:

That doesn't surprise me at all, knowing Commodore's history of cutting corners on everything that they could on home computers 😦 I wonder what kind of other unneeded cost-saving measure they took

While one could easily think that, it was certainly no cost-saving measure. Because then, early boards would have had more socketed chips than later ones, but there's absolutely no correlation between the age of a C64 (or rather its mainboard) and the number of socketed chips.

For me, the only explanation that makes sense is that they used sockets whenever a chip was out of stock, so they could continue producing boards and just add the chips later once they were available.

Got my case for the dual-Xeon build I'm planning. NOS and with all the goodies. 😀 Nice thing is that it has front USB ports hidden under a lid, so it could be used for a pre-USB build as well and would still look authentic.

This Voodoo 1... unfortunatelly seller didn't informed about the major problem on the backside of the PCB so I will try to get a refund 😒//

HanJammer wrote:

This Voodoo 1... unfortunatelly seller didn't informed about the major problem on the backside of the PCB so I will try to get a refund 😒//

Gutted 🙁
It makes me angry that sellers dont identify these things before posting them.

I guess it is not impossible for someone with a steady hand to repair but its not good.

LewisRaz wrote:

Gutted :( It makes me angry that sellers dont identify these things before posting them. […]
Show full quote

HanJammer wrote:

This Voodoo 1... unfortunatelly seller didn't informed about the major problem on the backside of the PCB so I will try to get a refund 😒//

Gutted 🙁
It makes me angry that sellers dont identify these things before posting them.

I guess it is not impossible for someone with a steady hand to repair but its not good.

Bodge repair would do the job, it's not the first time I would do this, unfortunatelly it doesn't look to me that this damage occured because of something sharp - it's black-ish/metal-ish in colour which leads to a conclusion the traces are burned. These traces lead from TMU to RAM chips so It's safe to assume that electronic parts are most likely dead as well, and I don't have time for extensive diagnose and so on...

Seller agreed to refund it once I send it back.

Traces don't burn in such a small spot. These are certainly impact spots. Not sure what the silver color there is, however. Either remains of the metal part that caused the damage, or it's the inner ground layer. In the latter case, you can pretty much forget repairing it.

sf78 wrote:

Dell wasn't really a thing here at that time. Most late 90's early 00's corporate PC's were Compaq/HP/IBM. I think it wasn't until P4 that Dell started to gain some ground.

Yeah, Dell actually pulled out of the consumer market once or twice because they weren't doing so well. Couldn't compete with Packard Bell or Compaq on price point.

They soared selling to businesses, however, selling customized machines in large amounts to schools and offices. That's where most of these machines come from, I'm sure.

derSammler wrote:

Traces don't burn in such a small spot. These are certainly impact spots. Not sure what the silver color there is, however. Either remains of the metal part that caused the damage, or it's the inner ground layer. In the latter case, you can pretty much forget repairing it.

Yes, that maybe true as well - even V1 had multi-layer PCBs as far as I remember...

it looks like a layer underneath the top traces to me, groundplane maybe?
would make a repair quite hard 😒 ...poor voodoo