What retro things have you done today?

cee-S-dee said:
Hahaha i have that auction in my watch list. The awe32 is nice albeit one of the cut down models but still a nice card. The VLb controller looks interesting although in pretty bad shape. I'm on the look out for a standard VLB I/O controller at the moment.
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Ive bid higher than I should have on it but others may be willing to gamble more.
The VLB IO card looks in pretty bad shape and for some reason appears to have the connector cut off for the serial port. As long as there is no trace damage tho it could be alright. I think soldering on new headers is within my skills.

For a dos PC is there really any benefit to VLB controllers instead of ISA? Most games and files are so small I cant see any speed increase being noticed in the real world?

I was planning on using this for my 486 video project:

Its the only IO card in my collection
 
LewisRaz said:
Ive bid higher than I should have on it but others may be willing to gamble more.
The VLB IO card looks in pretty bad shape and for some reason appears to have the connector cut off for the serial port. As long as there is no trace damage tho it could be alright. I think soldering on new headers is within my skills.

For a dos PC is there really any benefit to VLB controllers instead of ISA? Most games and files are so small I cant see any speed increase being noticed in the real world?

I was planning on using this for my 486 video project:

Its the only IO card in my collection
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I think for Transfer rates VLB can make out that period HD speed. VLB is directly connected to the CPU bus (and why using 50mhz fsb cpus can cause issues sometimes). Is it noticable... probably not, but it's VLB man.. gotta have a VLB VGA card and I/O Controller hahahaha!

That card looks nice. Keep hold of that!

If you win that auction that Awe32 will be a nice card. Its is one with genuine OPL3 and not CQM which is a massive plus. I need to re-install Win 95 on the PC i assembled off that case i had off you.
 
almoststew1990 said:
I've got a 3910 and whilst it only had 512k of internal memory or has a real opl3 chip so it is a great "all rounder" with my SB Live as my General Midi card.
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Yeah i think most of the awe32 are decent cards. I have the CT-3980 which is a "full fat" Awe32 which has the sim slots and Wavetable Header. If i'm honest i've not played with the memory banks and you can't use many in Dos. I only have 2mb on mine as large 30 pin simms are expensive. The Wavetable header is handy though as i have a HOMAC on that.

If i'm going to mess with soundbanks i'll use the Awe64 Gold with RAM.

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I'm going through my sound cards at the moment and think i'm going to move some on which are similar to other cards or don't have some sort of Synth chip on board.
 
I already have 3 cards with real opl3 :D

And my Yamaha one has general midi/opl4 chip YMF704C-S...
But ISA soundcards are fun! It wasnt until starting to lurk on vogons that I realised how different they all sound.

the Vibra16 you traded with me is the card going into the dx4, should I not win the awe32 (or if I do win and its broken). That card actually is actually nice compared to the yamaha because it has far less noise.
 
LewisRaz said:
I already have 3 cards with real opl3 :D

And my Yamaha one has general midi/opl4 chip YMF704C-S...
But ISA soundcards are fun! It wasnt until starting to lurk on vogons that I realised how different they all sound.

the Vibra16 you traded with me is the card going into the dx4, should I not win the awe32 (or if I do win and its broken). That card actually is actually nice compared to the yamaha because it has far less noise.
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I don't even know how many i have with real opl3 - 10+ easy!

The vibra is actually a really nice card. It has very low noise. the CT-3600 which based on the the vibra is like a very cut down awe64, has a mod where you can add a genuine opl3 chip for basically an awe64 with OPL3!

This is my favorite card for DOS though (Top card) Terratec ews64s. This card can load sound fonts in dos. There is one which can replicate a Roland SC-55 very closely. And that bottom card is that same as the card as you have with the 704. Keep that card, its kinda rare. I sold mine for £70.


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I have never ever heard of that! Really enjoying learning about all these sound cards. They have such a dedicated following too.

It is amazing how much the rarer ones go for
 
Sound cards in the Dos Period is crazy mate! The only card i am missing which i really want is a Gravis. There was a really rare boxed Gravis that was up for £1000 and sold! It had a best offer on it but i can imagine it went for mega money as it had the ess chip on it. Still not got hold of one that is in my price range (-£100)

This is probably my most rare/expensive card - Sound Blaster Pro ( Dual OPL2) - Along With the adlib

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I don't really have a collection of soundcards anymore, I sold on the ones I didn't use like a 3600 and Vibra thing. That leaves me with my SB2.0, 3910AWE32, SBL and a C Media 8370 ( or whatever the ubiquitous one is). I do have an ESS 1869F on the way though...

These days I seem to have a collection of slow AGP graphics cards.

Today I think I'll swap out the 386 for my Slot 1 system so I can play all my DOS games. I think I can use the same CF card / DOS install!
 
cee-S-dee said:
if you look on ebay there is a retro m-atx case by a Company called Acme. Its pretty reasonably priced too.

Benchmarked my Radeon 850XT on the Xeon machine today. Fair to say it has no problems with 3D Mark 2000/2001SE :D:D:D
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Thanks for that tip.. I did come across them a month ago and forgot...

BTW, retrobrite your CD-Rom ;-) It works
 
It amazes me how basic looking the Adlibs are! I like the idea of the clone kits that were available but it seems they were only a fairly limited run. Would be fun to solder an entire soundcard by yourself
 
I realise I am now triple posting here but....
Just found a modded bios for my M5ATA which adds proper support for the k6 im running and mentions something about the cache.
Going to give that a try at some point today. Might even see a bit more performance?!
 
I’d have thought you’d see a mild uplift in performance if the mobo can actually run the chip properly at microcode level.

Your parcel arrived today. What are the symptoms of the motherboard?
 
paradigm said:
I’d have thought you’d see a mild uplift in performance if the mobo can actually run the chip properly at microcode level.

Your parcel arrived today. What are the symptoms of the motherboard?
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CPU in 3dmark now hits 6000, quite the uplift, in the dos 3dbench its up from 289 to 310

That motherboard will turn on but no post, no beep, cpu fan stops spinning after 2secs. Afterwards the power button does not turn the motherboard off it needs to be turned off at the wall. I hotflashed the bios but the behaviour remained the same.
 
Right OK. Have you tried both DIMMs and SIMMs in it, and what CPU(s)?

I ordered a bulk (35) of PCI and AGP cards today. £20 for amongst other things, 2 Geforce 2 MX 400s, two S3 Virge cards (PCI), an ATI Rage Pro Turbo (Compaq branded), two unknown AGP GPUs, an SB Live! 1024, an Audigy 2 zs, a VIA chooser USB 2.0 card (hopefully it'll fix my stuttering/performance issue with the K6-III machine). There's also 3 other PCI sound cards that I can't identify (though I think one is a Terratec), a handful of PCI network cards, an ALi chipset SATA card, and 7 802.11g cards. Obviously there are a few modems too, aren't there always.

Even if I throw away the modems and possibly the NICs, I think I can easily sell the GPUs and sound cards for three times the outlay.
 
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