H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-03-06, 06:36:

bestemor wrote on 2025-03-05, 22:46:

Now, I had a great plan of not buying any more 'retro' hardware, as in several decades old I mean. (as opposed to the retro stu […]
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Now, I had a great plan of not buying any more 'retro' hardware, as in several decades old I mean.
(as opposed to the retro stuff from just 10 years or so)

But, saw this Turtle Beach Montego II sound card with an AU8830A2 chip, unassumingly hiding in a dark corner of the internet.
And figured; whatever, ok, fine... I can 'rescue' that one at least.

But, it also came with a bunch of other stuff, so not sure if that was such a good idea after all.
I am now stuck with this lot (still in transit):

- Montego II sound card
- Gainward GeForce4 Ti 4800 128mb
- Asus P4T socket 423 mobo
- 8x 128mb RAMBUS
- 4 sticks of CRIMM dummies/continuation RAM
- Pentium4 CPU 1.5ghz (s423/installed)
- Pentium4 CPU 1.9ghz (s423)
- Pentium4 CPU unknown (s423/covered in paste)
- and most likely also a random old PSU, but WITH an AUX connector
(still no idea if it is really needed though)

Motherboard/RAM and graphics card is working fine, judging by the desktop screenshots from the seller.
Funnily enough, I have no idea yet if the sound card actually works though. 😆

No idea what to really do with that s423-board etc, some quick research tells me I can use all that RAM to make a fine space heater apparantly!
But never ever owned one of these quirky boards before, skipped straight to socket 478 from slot1, so that makes for a new 'experience' I guess. 🤔

Oh well, wasted a good 20 euros on this random pileup, not sure if I will regret it - we'll see when it all arrives I suppose.

Sellers picture:

The attachment TurtleBeachSoundcard.jpg is no longer available

20€? I'd pay that for the P4T/RDRAM combo any day. That's a real bargain!

Well, truth be told, there was actually another 5 euro in shipping cost on top, hence ca 25 euro total.
So, perhaps not quite the bargain after all... 😝

Another gem I got myself back - Dell Optiplex GX1, the 450MHz P3 variant.

Anyone know how much worth is the ATI GPU inside it? As in, can a Voodoo 2 save its butt?

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-06, 18:24:

Another gem I got myself back - Dell Optiplex GX1, the 450MHz P3 variant.

Anyone know how much worth is the ATI GPU inside it? As in, can a Voodoo 2 save its butt?

A TI-84 calculator bit banging an external frame buffer attached to an E-ink display has a good chance of outperforming the 4MB Rage Pro.
If you happen to have that Voodoo2 on hand, it would make a fine addition to that lovely beige Optiplex.

I always recommend the Rage XL for decent 3D acceleration. Lots of these floating around for cheap.

Yeah, I have a XL. Issue is... I'm pretty limited in PCI expansions (2 slots for each type IIRC) and that onboard 3com LAN is nearly the bane of my existence, unless someone knows how to make it download without feeling as if I was using a 56k modem 🤣

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2025-03-07, 03:29:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-06, 18:24:

Another gem I got myself back - Dell Optiplex GX1, the 450MHz P3 variant.

Anyone know how much worth is the ATI GPU inside it? As in, can a Voodoo 2 save its butt?

A TI-84 calculator bit banging an external frame buffer attached to an E-ink display has a good chance of outperforming the 4MB Rage Pro.
If you happen to have that Voodoo2 on hand, it would make a fine addition to that lovely beige Optiplex.

I have an overclocked TI-89, that would really run in circles around it? 🤣

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-06, 18:24:

Another gem I got myself back - Dell Optiplex GX1, the 450MHz P3 variant.

Anyone know how much worth is the ATI GPU inside it? As in, can a Voodoo 2 save its butt?

I have the 500MHz variant. It sucks that there is no way to completely switch off the on-board ATI GPU. There is neither a jumper nor a BIOS setting for that. It will automatically switch off if it detects an installed VGA card, but it won't do that when I install a monochrome Hercules Graphics Card (clone) in it. The card will then only work in "secondary monitor" mode, with only one of the two memory pages. That results in many games not working.

Yes, I know, it's silly to use Hercules monochrome graphics on such a machine, but it's kind of cool to see MS Flight Simulator and FastDoom work with a monochrome monitor on faster systems. 😁

I keep a V2 12MB for mine and recently ordered a PCI V3 as well. Tryna' squeezing every bit possible out of it - even a 650MHz Coppermine if it's possible.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-03-07, 08:26:

Standard Def Steve wrote on 2025-03-07, 03:29:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-06, 18:24:

Another gem I got myself back - Dell Optiplex GX1, the 450MHz P3 variant.

Anyone know how much worth is the ATI GPU inside it? As in, can a Voodoo 2 save its butt?

A TI-84 calculator bit banging an external frame buffer attached to an E-ink display has a good chance of outperforming the 4MB Rage Pro.
If you happen to have that Voodoo2 on hand, it would make a fine addition to that lovely beige Optiplex.

I have an overclocked TI-89, that would really run in circles around it? 🤣

Careful now, you could make a grown Savage4 user cry with that thing!

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%).
Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's.

Diamond speedstar pro VLB.
Intel CPU, see pic. 66MHz 486 ES? Engineering sample?
Asus VX97 motherboard (Socket7 / i430VX)
DTK GMB-486SG/ PKM-0038S E2-A - a little bit of battery leak but not too bad. (Socket3 VLB, sis) with AMD Am5x86-P75
Octek Rhino 6 (socket 7/ i430FX)
Two Soyo SY-5VA (socket 7 / i430VX)
Unidentified 386-board with leaky varta. Chips 82C301 chipset and a 386 DX-25

oh2ftu wrote on 2025-03-07, 18:23:

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%).
Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's.

Intel CPU, see pic. 66MHz 486 ES? Engineering sample?

It's not generally possible to tell exactly what it is from the codes on the bottom.
The "ES" on the bottom doesn't mean it's an engineering sample. A huge number of Intel CPUs from that era had that marking, and they are not ES chips. I don't think anyone in the collector/enthusiast scene knows what it means, possibly some kind of batch code.

Probably a precursor to S codes.

ES 446
SL2YP

myne wrote on 2025-03-08, 02:15:

Probably a precursor to S codes.

ES 446
SL2YP

No, the S-Spec came long before the 486. Even some 808x and 80186 have them.

oh2ftu wrote on 2025-03-07, 18:23:

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%). Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's. […]
Show full quote

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%).
Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's.

Diamond speedstar pro VLB.
Intel CPU, see pic. 66MHz 486 ES? Engineering sample?
Asus VX97 motherboard (Socket7 / i430VX)
DTK GMB-486SG/ PKM-0038S E2-A - a little bit of battery leak but not too bad. (Socket3 VLB, sis) with AMD Am5x86-P75
Octek Rhino 6 (socket 7/ i430FX)
Two Soyo SY-5VA (socket 7 / i430VX)
Unidentified 386-board with leaky varta. Chips 82C301 chipset and a 386 DX-25

The 386 Chips board is really beautiful, I like how the traces are laid out. It's a very tidy layout.

Does anyone know what the long slot on the bottom is? There's an 8-bit slot and a few 16-bit ISA slots, but what's the slot on the bottom?

Cosmic wrote on 2025-03-08, 06:48:

oh2ftu wrote on 2025-03-07, 18:23:

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%). Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's. […]
Show full quote

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%).
Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's.

Diamond speedstar pro VLB.
Intel CPU, see pic. 66MHz 486 ES? Engineering sample?
Asus VX97 motherboard (Socket7 / i430VX)
DTK GMB-486SG/ PKM-0038S E2-A - a little bit of battery leak but not too bad. (Socket3 VLB, sis) with AMD Am5x86-P75
Octek Rhino 6 (socket 7/ i430FX)
Two Soyo SY-5VA (socket 7 / i430VX)
Unidentified 386-board with leaky varta. Chips 82C301 chipset and a 386 DX-25

The 386 Chips board is really beautiful, I like how the traces are laid out. It's a very tidy layout.

Does anyone know what the long slot on the bottom is? There's an 8-bit slot and a few 16-bit ISA slots, but what's the slot on the bottom?

Those types of slots were normally for RAM expansion though it is weird to see it on a board that has SIMM slots already.

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-03-08, 07:37:

Cosmic wrote on 2025-03-08, 06:48:

oh2ftu wrote on 2025-03-07, 18:23:

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%). Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's. […]
Show full quote

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%).
Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's.

Diamond speedstar pro VLB.
Intel CPU, see pic. 66MHz 486 ES? Engineering sample?
Asus VX97 motherboard (Socket7 / i430VX)
DTK GMB-486SG/ PKM-0038S E2-A - a little bit of battery leak but not too bad. (Socket3 VLB, sis) with AMD Am5x86-P75
Octek Rhino 6 (socket 7/ i430FX)
Two Soyo SY-5VA (socket 7 / i430VX)
Unidentified 386-board with leaky varta. Chips 82C301 chipset and a 386 DX-25

The 386 Chips board is really beautiful, I like how the traces are laid out. It's a very tidy layout.

Does anyone know what the long slot on the bottom is? There's an 8-bit slot and a few 16-bit ISA slots, but what's the slot on the bottom?

Those types of slots were normally for RAM expansion though it is weird to see it on a board that has SIMM slots already.

I've been unable to identify the board. Looked at retroweb and used google reverse image search.
No suitable strings on the motherboard. Etched on the bottom MST-1267-B.
The battery ate away a few square-cm of copper-plane. Luckity no traces were lost.

Asus VX97 seems dead. Reflash bios, nada. Voltages are there. Didn't bother to check the osc. I'll give it away 😀
Also, the Soyo's are missing bios-chips so I'll give them away too.

Cosmic wrote on 2025-03-08, 06:48:

oh2ftu wrote on 2025-03-07, 18:23:

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%). Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's. […]
Show full quote

I was offered these for free. But I gave them a bottle of finnish 013 (38%).
Motherboards, one VGA-card and three CPU's.

Diamond speedstar pro VLB.
Intel CPU, see pic. 66MHz 486 ES? Engineering sample?
Asus VX97 motherboard (Socket7 / i430VX)
DTK GMB-486SG/ PKM-0038S E2-A - a little bit of battery leak but not too bad. (Socket3 VLB, sis) with AMD Am5x86-P75
Octek Rhino 6 (socket 7/ i430FX)
Two Soyo SY-5VA (socket 7 / i430VX)
Unidentified 386-board with leaky varta. Chips 82C301 chipset and a 386 DX-25

The 386 Chips board is really beautiful, I like how the traces are laid out. It's a very tidy layout.

Does anyone know what the long slot on the bottom is? There's an 8-bit slot and a few 16-bit ISA slots, but what's the slot on the bottom?

It has some similarities to this board:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/soyo-15m0

Obviously a different model, but it does have the extra long slots (which TRW says are for memory expansion, as cyclone3D mentioned) along with SIMM slots on a slightly different CHIPS chipset.

There's also Armas MST-1267-A.
Seems like an entry needs to be made 😀

I stopped by a few thrift stores with my friends today and was able to score some retro items!

Most interesting was this COAST module! Hope I can test it/it works. I'm sure I'll go down a rabbit hole looking for an answer later, but does anyone have an idea if this will work in my TE430VX? I've heard there are a few different pin-outs, so it has me a bit worried about testing it immediately.

I also found some shorty single-ended floppy and ATA133 cables, very nice! This'll take the slop out of my single-floppy systems.

Somewhat unrelated, but we went to look at art at an open studio and I saw these "towers"

I inspected them closely and damn, there was some GOOD hardware ruined for this piece (They were all bent over rebar). There were shit parts, of course, but there were a few boards that looked awesome. The socket8 one, and a P3B-F, and a few SS7 boards (one with a MMX still in it) and a few 386/486 boards with fully populated sockets. One of these would be a great source of parts. I would've loved to have all the DIP memory from some of those boards.

Optiplex came in yesterday. Managed to get it up to speed with an origina Aureal Vortex taking over the sound portion (yeah, Crystal sound chip ain't really that bright.) and a Gainward Voodoo 2 12MB for the 3D portion.

Now, to figure a way of mounting the fan to blow in the middle of the CPU rather than the sideways mounting Dell chose for it.