TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-15, 10:35:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 09:58:

DOS will be fine, but I'd sure like to have a 4 MB VLB model - that's on my list of "still not quite rich / bonkers enough to bu […]
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HanSolo wrote on 2022-03-15, 00:22:

Finally I got the last piece of hardware that I was looking for. (I mean hardware I am planning to use and not just stuff into boxes and call it a collection 😀) A VLB graphics card for a future 486/66 build. It has only 1 MB but back in the days that was quite common and for DOS I don't see a demand for more.
Of course there are some more items that I'd like to have but those I will probably never get because I'm not willing to spend a fortune on old hardware.
SpeaVegaPlus.jpg

DOS will be fine, but I'd sure like to have a 4 MB VLB model - that's on my list of "still not quite rich / bonkers enough to buy".
2 MB models abound, but the high end 4 MB cards have been hunted to extinction, years ago - to be stuffed in a box and called a collection.
(How pretentious. Things I hunt down are stuffed in a box and called part of "the heap".)

Spea was rather proficient in Germany in VLB and PCI times. They acquired Video Seven in 1993 and sold high end CRTs under that name.
The German Wikipedia has a list of their cards with the chips used in them.

Heap huh .. II liike the sound of that ...tell me . .what's living at the bottom of that heap ?

Think that would be a rusty industrial half-box with a socket 7 mobo that I once litterally picked up from the side of the road somewhere. Think it was a part of a discarded arcade machine or maby old atm.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-03-13, 19:36:

Prolly best thing to happen to the GA-7VAX, Gigabyte never got their VIA socket A boards up to the standards of everyone else, i.e. 100% stable at stock and free of constant niggles. If you wanna get tinfoil hatted about it you'd figure they were taking backhanders from intel to screw them up on purpose, but I'm sure there's a simple explanation where they just kept paying the same engineers to make the same mistakes across multiple chipset generations.

Dunno, I had rather good performance from the other working 7VAX I have. A bit too barren for my taste (it's pretty basic - RTL8100C LAN, DualBIOS, and just the bare stuff to get you running.) but otherwise ran 2000 Server SP4 rather nice.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:20:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-15, 10:35:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 09:58:

DOS will be fine, but I'd sure like to have a 4 MB VLB model - that's on my list of "still not quite rich / bonkers enough to bu […]
Show full quote

DOS will be fine, but I'd sure like to have a 4 MB VLB model - that's on my list of "still not quite rich / bonkers enough to buy".
2 MB models abound, but the high end 4 MB cards have been hunted to extinction, years ago - to be stuffed in a box and called a collection.
(How pretentious. Things I hunt down are stuffed in a box and called part of "the heap".)

Spea was rather proficient in Germany in VLB and PCI times. They acquired Video Seven in 1993 and sold high end CRTs under that name.
The German Wikipedia has a list of their cards with the chips used in them.

Heap huh .. II liike the sound of that ...tell me . .what's living at the bottom of that heap ?

Think that would be a rusty industrial half-box with a socket 7 mobo that I once litterally picked up from the side of the road somewhere. Think it was a part of a discarded arcade machine or maby old atm.

Hmm I see, are you sure its still just a rusty old box ? I mean it has all that other hardware on top of it to eat.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:35:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:20:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-15, 10:35:

Heap huh .. II liike the sound of that ...tell me . .what's living at the bottom of that heap ?

Think that would be a rusty industrial half-box with a socket 7 mobo that I once litterally picked up from the side of the road somewhere. Think it was a part of a discarded arcade machine or maby old atm.

Hmm I see, are you sure its still just a rusty old box ? I mean it has all that other hardware on top of it to eat.

OK, you called my bluff.
I don't get your folk lore or pop culture reference.
It happens to the best of us. 😀

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:38:

OK, you called my bluff. I don't get your folk lore or pop culture reference. It happens to the best of us. :) […]
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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:35:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:20:

Think that would be a rusty industrial half-box with a socket 7 mobo that I once litterally picked up from the side of the road somewhere. Think it was a part of a discarded arcade machine or maby old atm.

Hmm I see, are you sure its still just a rusty old box ? I mean it has all that other hardware on top of it to eat.

OK, you called my bluff.
I don't get your folk lore or pop culture reference.
It happens to the best of us. 😀

It an Aussie thing mate, we are a strange bunch down this way comes from living upside down and fighting off Drop Bears.

That said . .we do have an awful lot of Germans that live in my state so perhaps its a little German humour . .oh wait, PUNCH LINE FIRST .. then the joke.

Just kidding, the last German festival I went to here was before the uhh virus lockdowns and it was a blast, all the food and beer you could eat and drink, I honestly cannot wait for them to start holding them again.

debs3759 wrote on 2022-03-14, 02:19:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-03-14, 01:13:

Yeah, I may have mentioned Powerline/Homeplug 1.0 vs 1.0 Turbo, any experience mixing? having some before. […]
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HanJammer wrote on 2022-03-14, 00:15:

Powerline adapters are nothing unusual. Pretty popular solution.

Yeah, I may have mentioned Powerline/Homeplug 1.0 vs 1.0 Turbo, any experience mixing? having some before.

I think I just like X10, '80s smart home tech, Radio Shack Plug'n'power etceteraaaa.... all sorts of strange crap.

Hmmm so I can maybe plug x10 controller to RS232 over ethernet, plugged into a homeplug/powerline adapter and have the other end plugged in to a PC somewhere else. Which miiiight be useful if the x10 controller doesn't communicate well from a far flung branch circuit, so I could stick it in the nearest socket to the breaker panel or something so it gets best reach.

I'd be surprised (nay, shocked!) if it can communicate between different properties. That would be a major security risk (and I imagine the signal would degrade over great distances). Would be fun to hack into a neighbour's internet connection through one though. Easier than hacking a wireless connection (although I do know someone who got free access to wifi for a few years, when a local network security engineer forgot to secure his own home connection. Fair game, I say, in the circumstances)

I wouldn't. 99% of those units are sold unsecured by default, even though the standard supports 128b encryption. Linking up with neighbouring homes on the same power phase is so common, ISP's have it explicitly indicated in their call scripts.

Aside from security, the typical symptoms are:
- multiple DHCP servers in same network and IP conflicts, particularly on the gateway (192.168.1.1 is pretty common 😉 )
- bad performance (if your device goes online via the neighbours)
- inability to access IP-restricted content (typically a provider's own video service)
- inability to communicate with other devices that should be on same network.
The list goes on and on...

Worst case I know of was a solar panel installer who installed solar on all the houses in a street. He used unsecured PLC adapters to connect the inverter/controller to internet in every one of the houses. They basically all connected with each other and the fun started. I believe one of our local field technicans tracked down the installer and gave him a (PLC) networking 101 😮

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:46:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:38:

OK, you called my bluff. I don't get your folk lore or pop culture reference. It happens to the best of us. :) […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:35:

Hmm I see, are you sure its still just a rusty old box ? I mean it has all that other hardware on top of it to eat.

OK, you called my bluff.
I don't get your folk lore or pop culture reference.
It happens to the best of us. 😀

It an Aussie thing mate, we are a strange bunch down this way comes from living upside down and fighting off Drop Bears.

OK, I looked up 'drop bear'. You live, you learn. Around Berlin, there be wolves 😜

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-15, 11:46:

That said . .we do have an awful lot of Germans that live in my state so perhaps its a little German humour

Same problem here, but it keeps getting better!
Australian Germans have humour? Must be the sunshine.

Wasn't Phil's computer lab Phil from Germany? Maybe I'm mixing that one up. Certainly a good import then.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 09:58:

HanSolo wrote on 2022-03-15, 00:22:

Finally I got the last piece of hardware that I was looking for. (I mean hardware I am planning to use and not just stuff into boxes and call it a collection 😀) A VLB graphics card for a future 486/66 build. It has only 1 MB but back in the days that was quite common and for DOS I don't see a demand for more.
Of course there are some more items that I'd like to have but those I will probably never get because I'm not willing to spend a fortune on old hardware.
SpeaVegaPlus.jpg

DOS will be fine, but I'd sure like to have a 4 MB VLB model - that's on my list of "still not quite rich / bonkers enough to buy".
2 MB models abound, but the high end 4 MB cards have been hunted to extinction, years ago - to be stuffed in a box and called a collection.

I wanted a 2 MB card and had several on my watch list. But they all were too expensive for my taste. This 1 MB model nobody seemed to want and when the seller reduced the price to 15 Euro I reconsidered if the additional memory is really worth spending more. The higher resolutions with more colors would only be used under Windows and I'm not planning to use Windows on a 486.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 12:33:

Wasn't Phil's computer lab Phil from Germany? Maybe I'm mixing that one up. Certainly a good import then.

He's from Austria as far as I know. Just like Peter from CPU Galaxy

HanSolo wrote on 2022-03-15, 12:46:

I wanted a 2 MB card and had several on my watch list. But they all were too expensive for my taste. This 1 MB model nobody seemed to want and when the seller reduced the price to 15 Euro I reconsidered if the additional memory is really worth spending more. The higher resolutions with more colors would only be used under Windows and I'm not planning to use Windows on a 486.

Quick dive into my E-mail, appears I bought a Diamond Speedstar Pro and an unknown Miro for around 40 Euro, two years ago.
Since I'm still thinking in 2012 prices today, that must have felt like a borderline ok deal to me.

So, 15 for any working VLB VGA is probably just fine.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 13:01:

Quick dive into my E-mail, appears I bought a Diamond Speedstar Pro and an unknown Miro for around 40 Euro, two years ago. Since […]
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HanSolo wrote on 2022-03-15, 12:46:

I wanted a 2 MB card and had several on my watch list. But they all were too expensive for my taste. This 1 MB model nobody seemed to want and when the seller reduced the price to 15 Euro I reconsidered if the additional memory is really worth spending more. The higher resolutions with more colors would only be used under Windows and I'm not planning to use Windows on a 486.

Quick dive into my E-mail, appears I bought a Diamond Speedstar Pro and an unknown Miro for around 40 Euro, two years ago.
Since I'm still thinking in 2012 prices today, that must have felt like a borderline ok deal to me.

So, 15 for any working VLB VGA is probably just fine.

About 2 years ago I found an ad for a VLB card for 9 Euro from a seller in my area. The ad itself was already pretty old so it seems very few people were interested in that stuff then. Unfortunately the ad was so old that he couldn't find the card anymore 🙁

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-13, 13:11:

Known working compatible coast modules may as well not exist here in Australia, so I snagged this as soon as I saw it, I can always sell any parts I dont need.
Have tried a couple of times to get a module, one never worked the other is with the postal gods when it went missing on its way from Germany.

Is this an original Asus module?
A year ago I found an Asus CM1 Rev.3.0 (latest) on Ebay for just 2€ and 1€ shipping. Works fine on my P55T2P4. That was really a lucky catch.

If you need more COAST modules, have a look at RAM lots on Ebay and other sites. Often people who have COAST modules have no idea what it is and think it's a RAM stick. I've seen a few lots that contained a COAST module.
That's how I got my 2nd module. The RAM sticks in that lot were pretty worthless, but there were also 2 CPUs on the picture, which weren't mentioned in the title/description. Pentium MMX 233MHz and AMD 486 DX4-120. Got the whole lot for just 20 bucks, hehe.

Anyone know a good translation of the German fisherman's term "Beifang", please let me know.

Anyway, that's how I pulled this crab on board. It's VGA alright!

Any good?

I guess the English is "bycatch" which is used in the technical discussion of offshore trawling and other types of commercial fishing, but might not be well known outside that. The meaning being fish or sea critters that are caught unintentionally along with the intended target species.

Looks like you caught yourself a "real" XT VGA card rather than one of those that work but look ugly overhanging the slot.

Edit: yay, does "everything" I think... http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/video … nfiguration.txt

Also, the word bycatch if you use it, English English speakers should be able to parse the meaning by separating it to by and catch, because there's several by-xxxx words in common usage, like byway, byword etc, whereas in North American English the less educated might only know bypass, and not recognise that it's a composite.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-03-15, 15:13:

I guess the English is "bycatch" which is used in the technical discussion of offshore trawling and other types of commercial fi […]
Show full quote

I guess the English is "bycatch" which is used in the technical discussion of offshore trawling and other types of commercial fishing, but might not be well known outside that. The meaning being fish or sea critters that are caught unintentionally along with the intended target species.

Looks like you caught yourself a "real" XT VGA card rather than one of those that work but look ugly overhanging the slot.

Edit: yay, does "everything" I think... http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/video … nfiguration.txt

Also, the word bycatch if you use it, English English speakers should be able to parse the meaning by separating it to by and catch, because there's several by-xxxx words in common usage, like byway, byword etc, whereas in North American English the less educated might only know bypass, and not recognise that it's a composite.

Thanks for the language update and that link!

I shall now find my oldest motherboard, break off all the 16 bit slots and test that thing 😜

If you don't want it I have a 8086 PC currently with "one of those that work but look ugly overhanging the slot" that would benefit immensely by not having a card looking ugly overhanging the slot 😆

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 14:40:

Anyone know a good translation of the German fisherman's term "Beifang", please let me know.

Anyway, that's how I pulled this crab on board. It's VGA alright!

Any good?

Nice catch

Search for "Cirrus Logic Eagle II" on Vogons - your card seems to have some similarities to it. It would be nice to test some notable "CGA only" games on it (e.g. "Digger") to see how the card handle those.

I had a Voodoo 5500 a few years ago and sold it for more than double what I paid a year afterward. The card ran fine, but it was loud, beat-up looking, and I understand why Artex decided to part with it.

Now this one (which I just picked up and paid about 1/3 more than the one I sold) ... this one is practically brand-spanking new. It has the new "card" smell, not a speck of dust, glossy, no fingerprints, no discoloration or sticker yellowing/wear, and is quiet as can be in operation (fully tested and works great). The box has edge-wear, but it has hardly ever been opened. You know the feeling of a new box versus one that has been opened 1000 times, crushed, warped, and/or the outside feels paper thin. Not this one; still sturdy after all of these years - and the clamshell is like new, even. No yellowing and no cracks!

No mousepad?

Unknown_K wrote on 2022-03-15, 22:11:

No mousepad?

That would cost extra. I have to draw the line somewhere!