That ISA card with the 8-pin DIN I'm 90% sure is actually to go with a hand-held scanner. The wide expansion port on the Matrox card is almost certainly for a standalone MPEG decoder.
Quarantine... As I'm watching this in 2021, and watching all of LGR vids in chronological order... I can't wait to get to the review of the game based on what life has been like for a year.
Early sound cards included IDE controllers as they offered early PC's the option to add a CD-ROM drive for CD audio. Sound cards and modems were integrated occasionally as the old dial up modems were based around analog audio data transfer. Video cards with a parallel port are a little rarer, the parallel port would have been included for use with touch screen monitors in the days before USB touch controllers were standard. As for CPUs with built-in GPUs, most modern Intel CPUs have built-in Intel HD graphics chips - www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/processors/000005568.html
wolarts the 1st sound blaster I saw had a controller for a pre-IDE Sony CD. By the time I bought my 1st cdrom they were all IDE, but for a long time SB cards had a 2nd IDE controller in a different i/o address, I think I have never connected anything to that ports.
One of the first channels ive found that is run by one person that is worth subscribing to since i started using youtube in 2007. Thanks for the videos mang
I actually just figured out what that card at 06:50 is! Turns out, I actually have a serial cable with 2 of the standard connectors, but with an additional connector that is basically a "Mini-Serial" of sorts. Also on some of the earlier Apple Macs the serial interface used the same miniDIN connector to save space, but I believe it is compatible with PC-serial. Thanks for continuing to make great videos, cant wait for a new LGR Thrifts episode!
This is a lot of fun! I had an SB16 a long time back, but man, a whole system with games and software! You got some good people sending you great things!
Keep up the good work mate. Loving all the vintage pc reviews and old dos games etc.This brings back lots of awesome memories starting from my microbee PC!
I belive this was the first LGR video that I saw probably about 3 or 4 years ago. I was browsing some videos to help me sleep and I found this. Since than I have been a follower of yours mr. LGR. Great videos and you are now may favorite youtuber
The first unknown card might be the interface card for a handheld scanner, as those used mini-DIN plugs. My first guess was a bus mouse controller, but the circuitry looks a bit too complex to be that. The unknown sound card might be one of the Aztech Sound Galaxy series of SB and SBPro clones, as they used that kind of yellow circuit board. Many of those were built for use by OEMs such as Packard Bell. And that Trident video card may not work without any RAM chips installed!
The Matrox Millenium was an awesome card. It was actually very tolerable in installing 2 Matroxes or 1 Matrox and another one, to generate the dual screens. Awesome card. A lot of cards i have too, including a variety of the Trident TVGA8900 and 9000, but also the Mwave modem. The one i have runs 33.6kbps. One of the nicest cards i have is a Dialogic D4/PCI, which has 4 RJ11 ports. To come back on the SB16: there are PNP versions for ISA-slots and at that time a whole bunch of people couldn't believe ISA could be PNP, yet i had the proof. Also notable mentions in my collection: OTI VGA 077, Terratec DMX Fire 1024, Creative 3D Blaster Banshee, Creative Vibra16 and even some cards which had a VESA local bus (VLB). Cool hardware :)
@phreakindee You are welcome. That 27 pin connector you are talking about, was actually for the breakout box where you plugged in the video and audio input.
Oh this is sooooooo taking me back. I saw each of these as state if the art...then secondary stuff....then dusty on shelves and at flea markets. Now...nostalgia...
I remember getting the Soundblaster 32 my first high end sound card. I was playing Daggerfall at the time, and while the soundtrack was decent, it was like night and day after I got the AWE working correctly in Roland emulation. I was blown away by the soundtrack quality compared to FM synthesis. It almost sounded like an orchestra was playing.
I have the same card you have at 7:15 and it is for a hand help scanner on my computer. Not sure what the port is called though, or what else it can run.
Bus port aka InPort, made for early mouses before ps2 and serial style, used for hand held scanners in the late 80s. Maybe more, but that's all I know.
Anchor electronics made just about the best beach metal detector back in the day, the barracuda pulse induction, they still fetch silly money today in good working condition, so much so that there have been 3 attempts to clone the hardware using modern chips, but they are inferior to the original and no one clone has all the features of the Anchor built units, a masterpiece of metal detector technology that was way before its time.
Did you ever review Quarantine? That was a great game from the mid 90's - fond, fond memories of screaming pedestrians and a really great soundtrack. It had elements of gameplay that would later be refined in the Grand Theft Auto series. It was also interesting because the soundtrack was essentially audio tracks on the game's CD-ROM that followed the data part of the CD, and when playing the game you could essentially put any audio CD and listen to it while playing the game. Another interesting fact - it was developed for the PC and 3DO. It is a bit of a cult classic. Would love to see your review of it if you have time to review it! PS. I discovered your channel a week ago and I have been watching your videos non-stop every day since. You are the most down-to-earth and naturally funny RUclipsr I've ever seen here. Your channel is my favorite! Thanks for making wonderful videos for all of us to enjoy! :)
The channel Accursed Farms on RUclips runs a show called the Game Dungeon and some years ago Quarantine was reviewed on that channel. Not by LGR but a comedic but insightful review none the less. Language is more colorful than LGR's more educational style.
I can still remember obtaining various used VGA cards when I was lucky, and I'd always do tests on things like the fill rate to determine which was best. I seem to remember that Trident always came out ahead. The Matrox Millennium I and II's daughterboard was for extra video ram. Mine had it installed. I was a fan of Matrox for a short while, mostly for games like Flight Simulator. Though Half-Life wouldn't work on it; most of the textures were black. Then I got a Voodoo, at which point the Matrox was only there to handle my 2D. Though once I got the Voodoo3, it was time to retire the Matrox Millennium II entirely.
CirrusLogic, Trident, Tseng Labs, and later S3 made most of the VGA cards in the start of the Taiwan era, in the mid to late 90s. Matrox made the fastest and dual monitor cards, and I think they came from the high end CAD market. Best for straight framebuffer stuff, but didn't survive the 3d wars. From my inexact memory.
I am so happy that you just said the Soundblaster 16 CT2290 is one of the best models. I just bought a fully working one! It cost me £55, which I consider to be OK. Certainly better value than some of the other retro parts I have bought.
That thing at ~7:05 could be a Mouseport Card. Have the same port on an ATI MACH32 ISA Card. So your guess with 'some kind of serial connection' isn't wrong. The Matrox Millenium was one of the best PCI cards of the Time. 3D Acceleration was useless for games but you'd want that card for a Voodoo Setup because of the Amazing 2D Quality (doesn't filter too much and makes the picture blurry). And the Ports you put your Finger on was for Memory Upgrades. And the Rainbow Runner Video Editing update Module. Rather Rare but should be amazing for the time...
I had a rainbow runner. Allowed me to edit video at decent resolution and full frame rate. MJPEG compression. Had a breakout cable for the non-vga port on the back of the Millennium. I forget what CPU I had at the time. But it really worked great.
Lucky you! I've got an MSX2 but it's an older unit with no floppy disk (a Wavy 23) and the cartridge-based floppy controllers and drives are really expensive and rare. The MSX machines are a favourite of mine. Some amazing software.
30 pin SIM's were not yet EDO, it predated that, the sound-blaster you have there needs 30 pin non parity memory. The card at 7:15 looks like an old hand scanner card or possibly a mouse card, some mice did not have a serial/PS2 interface
Oh man, I had a Gravis Gamepad, that thing was the Holy Grail of PC gaming in my childhood. I remember playing Jazz Jackrabbit on it as well alongside Commander Keen 4. Good stuff!
@phreakindee the 27 pin connector was for the breakoutbox that allowed you to connect video in and audio in for the video module. And I think they are rather hard to find. I got mine from a guy in the UK who gave me the module in exchange for editing some videos for him.
Those cards do bring back memories from the 90s. The reason for so many audio cards were due to Multimedia Kits. The sound card/modem came in IBM value point machines.
The Orchid 3Dfx is actually a 6MB version, which is pretty unique for a Voodo 1. If I remember correctly, you could play Diablo2 on GLide in these. Cool. Want one.
As for the AWE64's expansion modules, a 3rd party company in Singapore manufactures AWE64 memory add-on adapters that allow for standard 72-pin SIMMs to be used with an AWE64 or AWE64 Gold (the products are called SIMCONN and SIMCONN Gold). They work pretty well, as long as the memory is 60 ns EDO RAM (non-parity, unbuffered). Memory upgrades for these cards (even the AWE32) are worth it if you want to hear sets of high quality MIDI instruments.
The sound card at 8 minutes, with volume at the back seems to be a Sound Blaster 1.5. One of the 1st Sound Blasters ever. Try to run it and find the software Dr. Sbaitso. Very funny. It answers questions using the voice channel, which was the new feature of this board, comparing to Sound Blaster 1.0. Keep doing great vídeos. Enjoying a lot of your channel. Thanks!
So you have MSX, and just about everything else that was obscure or unknown in North America in the '80s... but do you have a NEC PC-8001A? That was my dad's first home computer, and also the first one I used. It was basically a TRS-80 Model I clone, but with color graphics, and a hardware add-on called "The Wedge" provided 3-voice sound and four(!) Atari joystick ports, so it did have some pretty decent games. Its replacement, the PC-8800 series, is famous for "Super Mario Bros. Special".
The SB AWE64 sold (if I recall) in both the standard and gold editions. The connectors at the back of the card were for the SoundFont memory expansion, which, unfortunately, required Creative's proprietary memory modules (they went away from the standard 30-pin SIMMs used in the AWE32). The SB AWE64 gold is different in that it uses RCA audio outputs in the back to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Unfortunately, the memory upgrade modules are extremely rare.
I had that Matrox Millenium card, the daughter card was a video capture module, which I had back then, which allowed me to watch tv through feeding it SVHS in and audio in. It was awesome.
That Rage 3D Card is actually an 8Meg Card. 4 Meg onboard with another 4meg over the SO-DIMM socket. And it is SGRAM -> Synchroumous Graphics RAM, so pretty awsome for that time... And probably best of the class of what ATI had at the time... As for the Matrox Millenium: That really is a 2meg card. The connectors on the card are either for memory upgrade or for the Matrox Rainbow Runner video editing thingy...
07:00 I had an old nVidia Geforce 4 card that had one of these but it was 'VIVO' (video in, video out). I ended up having to buy the connector to make my own at the time because the only VIVO leads were in the US of A and I couldn't wait. I would agree that the card is probably some video in/out thing. Not sure about the DIP switches on the card though
RE: Sound Blaster AWE64 - I think colour coding is a great idea that makes life a little bit easier when you have several jack sockets that look the same, but serve very different purposes. Why is it a great idea? Well it's been well over a decade since I've owned an AWE64, so obviously I don't remember the connector layout, but just by looking at the colour of the jacks I can tell what each one is for: black - speaker out, green - line out, pink - microphone, blue - line in.
Thanks for sharing! Memories... surging... back... through synapses! I once had both a Gravis Ultrasound and a SB AWE32. The Gravis was a bitch to get to work, it's compatibility was a bit low and it didn't work out to well with my MOD/S3M production at the time. I ended up trading it for something I wanted more, which was probably stupid in retro. The AWE32 was sweet, before it died years later. The on board synth was like an EMU Proteus, came in handy with Sound Fonts and music in general.
I think honestly I would really like to see some quickies of the floppy disks you got with the computer. That would probably be interesting and it looks like you have a good selection there.
Hey, dude... I removed the metal trim from a modem expansion card, and I used it as a body ground link to mount a taillamp to a bicycle with a 12 volt negative ground system, and to be specific, I used a flame-shaped LED ornament you plug into a cigarette lighter 12 volt outlet, and I did some special wiring trick to convert it to a permanent but fashionable taillamp for a bicycle.
The IBM MWave card sold with IBM Aptivas during the mid '90s. It was SoundBlaster Pro compatible (though not SB16 compatible in my tests with most MS-DOS games). It also had an integrated 28.8 kbps fax/modem. IBM stopped supporting the MWave card around 1996, which created serious problems for early DirectX/Windows 95 games. As a result, most of us swapped the MWave for an SB16 and 56k modem. Finding drivers for the MWave will be a pain unless you have an original Aptiva recovery CD.
I had an AWE32 back in the day... I don't know about yours, but mine took 30-pin memory, and capped out at 2MB of RAM on it because you couldn't get 30-pin with more than 1MB per SIMM. And the card you're holding up while I type this (about 7:00) is a bus mouse controller. :) The sound card right after it looks like a Zoltrix SB 16 knockoff (that I also had back in the day). Will post another when you run into more that I can help with. ;) keep making the vids, love 'em. :)
Hi! The daughter card for the matrox graphix card is called "Rainbow Runner" and is a pretty sweet video capture card. If I remember correctly the second port on the card is not for multisync monitors but for video input etc. :)
I had a Matrox Millennium back in the day. It was a very nice 2d accelerator. If memory serves (excuse the pun) it came with 1Mb video ram and those two plugs were indeed for an extra 1Mb upgrade. Mine didn't have that oddball plug on it though.
Can't wait for the MSX reviews ! I have the same one from a yard-sale together with boxed games (vampire killer,...) and a phillips monitor .... 3 euros :D
Hi. I had a realtek VGA like yours in my first PC and it was crap. I changed it for a 32bits VLB, and then for a S3-864 VLB, which was great. The AWE32 was marvellous. I resold it to a musician, with a Roland add-on and 28 MB of RAM. About the Matrox video cards, Matrox made video capture add-on cards with Zoran hardware MJPEG, and the DB27 or DB15 depending on the model was made to hook the video input and output cables.
MN12Bird. A Ford Thunderbird enthusiast. 88-97. I had a 1991 Ford Thunderbird SuperCoupe. Supercharged V6 with 250HP to the rear wheels. Good times. Memories. MN12 is the body platform. I miss that car. It was ahead of its time.
That AWE32 was a monster. I have a SB32 PNP, and it's not much smaller. I've also got several Matrox cards -- a couple of Milleniums MGAs, a Mystique, and a G400. They were the 2D cards of choice to pair up with a Voodoo (due to their high-quality signals). The G400 was a good 3D card in it's own right when it came out -- comparable to a TNT2.
I remember the MWave from an old Acer Aspire. They were ok (save for certain NES emulators back in the 90s having odd sound issues when set to higher frequencies) for the time, but had a crippling flaw. You cannot use the card's wavetable features at the same time as the modem. Thankfully cards like the ones you've shown featured a header for daughterboards like Roland's SCB-55 or Yamaha's DB50XG. Or one could possibly use an external module as well. Because we all like looking at displays.
The Panasonic MSX2+ with the built in FDD was awesome...and yes you could make disks in your PC the run on it...you can run the Metal Gear 2 ENG hacked version if you can't understand Japanese...
I've come across several of these cards when I worked at a computer shop two years ago and decided to start building Windows 98 machines. Pretty crazy things.
Scart adapters come in a couple of variants catering for input and output or switchable. Mind you there is a Japanese video connector that looks like a scart connector but it is not. This Euro scart connector probably will do proper composite video out. Your set needs to be able to handle 50hz PAL though...
10:01 Meh, so many times I've worked with people's computer in hard to access desks or amid a sea of cables where it's just enough to peek at the color coding from an angle, and find the green one easily for speaker output, despite the ability to know what the etched port names meant, if I was able to get to them.
That soundcard at 8:00 minutes is a soundblaster clone mostly sold in europe. I had one and the interference from the PC was really bad. Actually, the interference was louder than the actual sound. You could even plug in the CMS chips in there from the original Soundblaster. Mine was called Sound Master (which was a real original name).
Nice MSX! I think Snatcher also started on the MSX right? That would be awesome to check out! Anyway, glad you got all my goodies. The SCART adapter should work but the video signal might be in PAL since that MSX came from Europe.
i think it would be neat to show vintage computer stuff and show how much we have come from it by showing new parts like processors maybe mother boards and sound cards maybe even video cards
8-pin DIN card could be a rare later Apple Localtalk interface card, but those mostly had the older DB9 port on them. A Zilog 8530 is usually a dead giveaway on those, at least the eariler ones. The 2nd unknown card screams Soundblaster 2.0 clone card to me, the missing chips are likely for CMS support. If there is an FCC ID on these mystery cards, run it and see what comes up! I had the Orchid Righteous 3D card, notable since it was the first retail VooDoo 1 board on the market.
@phreakindee: Definitely looking forward to an MSX review featuring Metal Gear. There is (was?) a freely-available Metal Gear 2 English fan translation floating around that you should also check out. Also, Vampire Killer = Castlevania I think. There's also a Japanese MSX version of Firehawk (Thexder 2) that has an intro sequence not in the PC prot.
Nice, lucky you! Some time ago I think I read about two PCI (or was it ISA, not sure) display adapters in one computer in some kind of ancient SLI setup, which used those connectors some of them have. You should try that, I belive someone I knew had two Voodoo 2's in SLI. (long time ago)
That first mystery card you held up, it looks similar to the PC-to-PLC interface cards I've been using at school... I have no idea if it is, I'm not a computer expert by any means, but that port is used with older OMRON PLCs.
The Matrox daughterboard is for extra RAM. BTW that Diamond Edge is awesome. I'd love to have one. My oldest 3D card is the Voodoo1. I wont count the Matrox Millenium as 3D because it didnt really work so well.
Regarding "value editions", while I don't know much about how things were on your side of the pond, the "value editions" of hardware often came with less bundled software, which might well have been the main difference for the creative cards.
My first PC graphics card (had home computers before that) was a Cyrrus Logic 5428. I still remember it. I kept it for a year lol. The rest of the hardware, I am pretty sure I had some of them, for example a SB16, and a Voodoo2 12MB (creative). It was a bad time to be a PC gamer in some ways. Way too many settings and memory allocation and drivers and huge compatibility issues and a new way of handling graphics which required a new card, and etc etc. It felt like I was upgrading every month
is it bad that when you mentioned 2MB vram and said how good that was, I actually agreed with you. These kids dont know how good they have it....am i showing my age yet?
20k viewers... you're sitting at 1.2 million now. Congrats, and happy to see you in better spirits.
That ISA card with the 8-pin DIN I'm 90% sure is actually to go with a hand-held scanner. The wide expansion port on the Matrox card is almost certainly for a standalone MPEG decoder.
PhonicUK I know this is an old post but I van confirm that the DIN card is a handheld scanner controller card.
20k -> 1.1Mil in 7 years. Good on you LGR!
1.2 now. He's unstoppable. Haha. I enjoy the content anyways. Especially the thrift store shopping.
@@denniswoycheshen try 1.35 mill in 2020 :-)
@@denniswoycheshen Yes...more LGR thrift.
@@denniswoycheshen he is ... inevitable ... :)
1.44Mil in December 2020, he now has 3.5" floppy capacity :D
Quarantine... As I'm watching this in 2021, and watching all of LGR vids in chronological order... I can't wait to get to the review of the game based on what life has been like for a year.
Sound cards with IDE controllers and modems, video cards with parallel ports, what are they gonna come up with next, CPUs with built-in GPUs?
Early sound cards included IDE controllers as they offered early PC's the option to add a CD-ROM drive for CD audio. Sound cards and modems were integrated occasionally as the old dial up modems were based around analog audio data transfer.
Video cards with a parallel port are a little rarer, the parallel port would have been included for use with touch screen monitors in the days before USB touch controllers were standard.
As for CPUs with built-in GPUs, most modern Intel CPUs have built-in Intel HD graphics chips - www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/processors/000005568.html
you guys took him so literally, he was obv making a joke.
twas a joke, lad
wolarts the 1st sound blaster I saw had a controller for a pre-IDE Sony CD. By the time I bought my 1st cdrom they were all IDE, but for a long time SB cards had a 2nd IDE controller in a different i/o address, I think I have never connected anything to that ports.
I doubt that will ever happen, like how were never gonna see any CPU break the 4 GHz barrier.
One of the first channels ive found that is run by one person that is worth subscribing to since i started using youtube in 2007. Thanks for the videos mang
I actually just figured out what that card at 06:50 is! Turns out, I actually have a serial cable with 2 of the standard connectors, but with an additional connector that is basically a "Mini-Serial" of sorts. Also on some of the earlier Apple Macs the serial interface used the same miniDIN connector to save space, but I believe it is compatible with PC-serial.
Thanks for continuing to make great videos, cant wait for a new LGR Thrifts episode!
This is a lot of fun! I had an SB16 a long time back, but man, a whole system with games and software! You got some good people sending you great things!
Keep up the good work mate. Loving all the vintage pc reviews and old dos games etc.This brings back lots of awesome memories starting from my microbee PC!
I belive this was the first LGR video that I saw probably about 3 or 4 years ago. I was browsing some videos to help me sleep and I found this. Since than I have been a follower of yours mr. LGR. Great videos and you are now may favorite youtuber
Glad to hear you stuck around :)
Thank you man :)
The first unknown card might be the interface card for a handheld scanner, as those used mini-DIN plugs. My first guess was a bus mouse controller, but the circuitry looks a bit too complex to be that.
The unknown sound card might be one of the Aztech Sound Galaxy series of SB and SBPro clones, as they used that kind of yellow circuit board. Many of those were built for use by OEMs such as Packard Bell.
And that Trident video card may not work without any RAM chips installed!
I like how you show off your new things and you don't even try them yet, as if sharing your joy of nostalgia with some friends just as you got them.
I wish i discovered your channel today, so that i could've watched all of your awesome reviews for the first time again!
I don't know how did you manage not to play with all those cool new toys that you have. Can't wait for more videos. Oh and happy 20 K subs.
More than half a mil subs now bro congrats. I still enjoy ur videos. Love old Pc stuff from my childhood.
The Matrox Millenium was an awesome card. It was actually very tolerable in installing 2 Matroxes or 1 Matrox and another one, to generate the dual screens. Awesome card. A lot of cards i have too, including a variety of the Trident TVGA8900 and 9000, but also the Mwave modem. The one i have runs 33.6kbps. One of the nicest cards i have is a Dialogic D4/PCI, which has 4 RJ11 ports. To come back on the SB16: there are PNP versions for ISA-slots and at that time a whole bunch of people couldn't believe ISA could be PNP, yet i had the proof. Also notable mentions in my collection: OTI VGA 077, Terratec DMX Fire 1024, Creative 3D Blaster Banshee, Creative Vibra16 and even some cards which had a VESA local bus (VLB). Cool hardware :)
I remember pairing my Matrox with a Voodoo and loving it.
@phreakindee You are welcome. That 27 pin connector you are talking about, was actually for the breakout box where you plugged in the video and audio input.
The 27 pin connector also connected to a box that would let you hook up to an extra couple monitors.
Oh this is sooooooo taking me back.
I saw each of these as state if the art...then secondary stuff....then dusty on shelves and at flea markets.
Now...nostalgia...
I remember getting the Soundblaster 32 my first high end sound card. I was playing Daggerfall at the time, and while the soundtrack was decent, it was like night and day after I got the AWE working correctly in Roland emulation. I was blown away by the soundtrack quality compared to FM synthesis. It almost sounded like an orchestra was playing.
Quarantine, Man I can't wait for the review. Awesome memories, and despite it's bugs and quirks, a game WAY ahead of it's time.
I have the same card you have at 7:15 and it is for a hand help scanner on my computer. Not sure what the port is called though, or what else it can run.
i have a logitech scanman handheld scanner and the card has that same port as well
yes this is for hand held scanners! the next one has audio amplifiers with volume knob
Bus port aka InPort, made for early mouses before ps2 and serial style, used for hand held scanners in the late 80s. Maybe more, but that's all I know.
What I was thinking too. I had a ScanMan. Neat little device!
@7:25 - that's an 8 bit Sound Blaster 2.0 clone made by Anchor Electronics - an Anchor Electronics Media Concept 2.0 to be exact.
Yep, it even has empty sockets for gameblaster chips which was a total waste of circuitry.
Anchor electronics made just about the best beach metal detector back in the day, the barracuda pulse induction, they still fetch silly money today in good working condition, so much so that there have been 3 attempts to clone the hardware using modern chips, but they are inferior to the original and no one clone has all the features of the Anchor built units, a masterpiece of metal detector technology that was way before its time.
Did you ever review Quarantine? That was a great game from the mid 90's - fond, fond memories of screaming pedestrians and a really great soundtrack. It had elements of gameplay that would later be refined in the Grand Theft Auto series. It was also interesting because the soundtrack was essentially audio tracks on the game's CD-ROM that followed the data part of the CD, and when playing the game you could essentially put any audio CD and listen to it while playing the game. Another interesting fact - it was developed for the PC and 3DO. It is a bit of a cult classic. Would love to see your review of it if you have time to review it!
PS. I discovered your channel a week ago and I have been watching your videos non-stop every day since. You are the most down-to-earth and naturally funny RUclipsr I've ever seen here. Your channel is my favorite! Thanks for making wonderful videos for all of us to enjoy! :)
The channel Accursed Farms on RUclips runs a show called the Game Dungeon and some years ago Quarantine was reviewed on that channel. Not by LGR but a comedic but insightful review none the less. Language is more colorful than LGR's more educational style.
Congrats on the 20k subs! Loved the show from the start!
I can still remember obtaining various used VGA cards when I was lucky, and I'd always do tests on things like the fill rate to determine which was best. I seem to remember that Trident always came out ahead.
The Matrox Millennium I and II's daughterboard was for extra video ram. Mine had it installed. I was a fan of Matrox for a short while, mostly for games like Flight Simulator. Though Half-Life wouldn't work on it; most of the textures were black. Then I got a Voodoo, at which point the Matrox was only there to handle my 2D. Though once I got the Voodoo3, it was time to retire the Matrox Millennium II entirely.
@20:36 The daughter board for the Matrox Millenium 2 was a TV Tuner card.
"this card is awesome!" *proceeds to not use card for 10 years*
Would like to see a Tech Tales video about Creative :)
So would I, I was thinking about that a few hours ago.
+1 for a Creative episode!
Could the 8-pin Mini-DIN at 7:06 be an RS-422 port? I know that Apple used those RS-422 interfaces for LocalTalk and printers in the 80s and 90s.
CirrusLogic, Trident, Tseng Labs, and later S3 made most of the VGA cards in the start of the Taiwan era, in the mid to late 90s. Matrox made the fastest and dual monitor cards, and I think they came from the high end CAD market. Best for straight framebuffer stuff, but didn't survive the 3d wars. From my inexact memory.
I had a old Packard bell in the mid 90s and it came with a cirrus logic video card with I think 1 megabyte of memory lol
I am looking forward to watch reviews of these delightful devices in action!
I am so happy that you just said the Soundblaster 16 CT2290 is one of the best models. I just bought a fully working one! It cost me £55, which I consider to be OK. Certainly better value than some of the other retro parts I have bought.
That thing at ~7:05 could be a Mouseport Card.
Have the same port on an ATI MACH32 ISA Card. So your guess with 'some kind of serial connection' isn't wrong.
The Matrox Millenium was one of the best PCI cards of the Time. 3D Acceleration was useless for games but you'd want that card for a Voodoo Setup because of the Amazing 2D Quality (doesn't filter too much and makes the picture blurry).
And the Ports you put your Finger on was for Memory Upgrades. And the Rainbow Runner Video Editing update Module. Rather Rare but should be amazing for the time...
I had a rainbow runner. Allowed me to edit video at decent resolution and full frame rate. MJPEG compression. Had a breakout cable for the non-vga port on the back of the Millennium. I forget what CPU I had at the time. But it really worked great.
Lucky you! I've got an MSX2 but it's an older unit with no floppy disk (a Wavy 23) and the cartridge-based floppy controllers and drives are really expensive and rare.
The MSX machines are a favourite of mine. Some amazing software.
30 pin SIM's were not yet EDO, it predated that, the sound-blaster you have there needs 30 pin non parity memory.
The card at 7:15 looks like an old hand scanner card or possibly a mouse card, some mice did not have a serial/PS2 interface
Oh man, I had a Gravis Gamepad, that thing was the Holy Grail of PC gaming in my childhood. I remember playing Jazz Jackrabbit on it as well alongside Commander Keen 4. Good stuff!
at 6:50, the card is for an old type of mouse, some graphics cards had that port on them too.
@phreakindee the 27 pin connector was for the breakoutbox that allowed you to connect video in and audio in for the video module. And I think they are rather hard to find. I got mine from a guy in the UK who gave me the module in exchange for editing some videos for him.
Those cards do bring back memories from the 90s. The reason for so many audio cards were due to Multimedia Kits. The sound card/modem came in IBM value point machines.
The Orchid 3Dfx is actually a 6MB version, which is pretty unique for a Voodo 1. If I remember correctly, you could play Diablo2 on GLide in these. Cool. Want one.
As for the AWE64's expansion modules, a 3rd party company in Singapore manufactures AWE64 memory add-on adapters that allow for standard 72-pin SIMMs to be used with an AWE64 or AWE64 Gold (the products are called SIMCONN and SIMCONN Gold). They work pretty well, as long as the memory is 60 ns EDO RAM (non-parity, unbuffered). Memory upgrades for these cards (even the AWE32) are worth it if you want to hear sets of high quality MIDI instruments.
The sound card at 8 minutes, with volume at the back seems to be a Sound Blaster 1.5. One of the 1st Sound Blasters ever. Try to run it and find the software Dr. Sbaitso. Very funny. It answers questions using the voice channel, which was the new feature of this board, comparing to Sound Blaster 1.0. Keep doing great vídeos. Enjoying a lot of your channel. Thanks!
So you have MSX, and just about everything else that was obscure or unknown in North America in the '80s... but do you have a NEC PC-8001A? That was my dad's first home computer, and also the first one I used. It was basically a TRS-80 Model I clone, but with color graphics, and a hardware add-on called "The Wedge" provided 3-voice sound and four(!) Atari joystick ports, so it did have some pretty decent games. Its replacement, the PC-8800 series, is famous for "Super Mario Bros. Special".
The SB AWE64 sold (if I recall) in both the standard and gold editions. The connectors at the back of the card were for the SoundFont memory expansion, which, unfortunately, required Creative's proprietary memory modules (they went away from the standard 30-pin SIMMs used in the AWE32). The SB AWE64 gold is different in that it uses RCA audio outputs in the back to significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Unfortunately, the memory upgrade modules are extremely rare.
I had that Matrox Millenium card, the daughter card was a video capture module, which I had back then, which allowed me to watch tv through feeding it SVHS in and audio in. It was awesome.
20,000 subscribers back in late 2011... And now in 2018 you have roughly 930,000...
you've come such a long way, Clint!
That Rage 3D Card is actually an 8Meg Card.
4 Meg onboard with another 4meg over the SO-DIMM socket.
And it is SGRAM -> Synchroumous Graphics RAM, so pretty awsome for that time...
And probably best of the class of what ATI had at the time...
As for the Matrox Millenium:
That really is a 2meg card.
The connectors on the card are either for memory upgrade or for the Matrox Rainbow Runner video editing thingy...
5:00 is probably a mouse controller. There was a mouse connector other than ps2 and serial that was in use before ps2 ports became common.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_mouse
07:00 I had an old nVidia Geforce 4 card that had one of these but it was 'VIVO' (video in, video out). I ended up having to buy the connector to make my own at the time because the only VIVO leads were in the US of A and I couldn't wait. I would agree that the card is probably some video in/out thing. Not sure about the DIP switches on the card though
really looking forward to the msx system review! please do it as soon as possible
RE: Sound Blaster AWE64 - I think colour coding is a great idea that makes life a little bit easier when you have several jack sockets that look the same, but serve very different purposes. Why is it a great idea? Well it's been well over a decade since I've owned an AWE64, so obviously I don't remember the connector layout, but just by looking at the colour of the jacks I can tell what each one is for: black - speaker out, green - line out, pink - microphone, blue - line in.
My friend and I found one great use for those sound card/modems back then... making prank calls and recording them directly onto the computer.
Thanks for sharing! Memories... surging... back... through synapses!
I once had both a Gravis Ultrasound and a SB AWE32. The Gravis was a bitch to get to work, it's compatibility was a bit low and it didn't work out to well with my MOD/S3M production at the time. I ended up trading it for something I wanted more, which was probably stupid in retro.
The AWE32 was sweet, before it died years later. The on board synth was like an EMU Proteus, came in handy with Sound Fonts and music in general.
I think honestly I would really like to see some quickies of the floppy disks you got with the computer. That would probably be interesting and it looks like you have a good selection there.
The first magazine was a collection of maps for the game Gradius.
Hey, dude...
I removed the metal trim from a modem expansion card, and I used it as a body ground link to mount a taillamp to a bicycle with a 12 volt negative ground system, and to be specific, I used a flame-shaped LED ornament you plug into a cigarette lighter 12 volt outlet, and I did some special wiring trick to convert it to a permanent but fashionable taillamp for a bicycle.
The IBM MWave card sold with IBM Aptivas during the mid '90s. It was SoundBlaster Pro compatible (though not SB16 compatible in my tests with most MS-DOS games). It also had an integrated 28.8 kbps fax/modem. IBM stopped supporting the MWave card around 1996, which created serious problems for early DirectX/Windows 95 games. As a result, most of us swapped the MWave for an SB16 and 56k modem. Finding drivers for the MWave will be a pain unless you have an original Aptiva recovery CD.
I had an AWE32 back in the day... I don't know about yours, but mine took 30-pin memory, and capped out at 2MB of RAM on it because you couldn't get 30-pin with more than 1MB per SIMM. And the card you're holding up while I type this (about 7:00) is a bus mouse controller. :) The sound card right after it looks like a Zoltrix SB 16 knockoff (that I also had back in the day). Will post another when you run into more that I can help with. ;) keep making the vids, love 'em. :)
Hi! The daughter card for the matrox graphix card is called "Rainbow Runner" and is a pretty sweet video capture card. If I remember correctly the second port on the card is not for multisync monitors but for video input etc. :)
I think im in love with your voice over skills
I had a Matrox Millennium back in the day. It was a very nice 2d accelerator. If memory serves (excuse the pun) it came with 1Mb video ram and those two plugs were indeed for an extra 1Mb upgrade. Mine didn't have that oddball plug on it though.
7:33 Was made by ViewSonic its a genereic sound card,was probably sold by other companies aswell, I saw a view of them back in the day
Can't wait for the MSX reviews ! I have the same one from a yard-sale together with boxed games (vampire killer,...) and a phillips monitor .... 3 euros :D
Hi. I had a realtek VGA like yours in my first PC and it was crap. I changed it for a 32bits VLB, and then for a S3-864 VLB, which was great. The AWE32 was marvellous. I resold it to a musician, with a Roland add-on and 28 MB of RAM. About the Matrox video cards, Matrox made video capture add-on cards with Zoran hardware MJPEG, and the DB27 or DB15 depending on the model was made to hook the video input and output cables.
MN12Bird. A Ford Thunderbird enthusiast. 88-97. I had a 1991 Ford Thunderbird SuperCoupe. Supercharged V6 with 250HP to the rear wheels. Good times. Memories. MN12 is the body platform. I miss that car. It was ahead of its time.
That AWE32 was a monster. I have a SB32 PNP, and it's not much smaller. I've also got several Matrox cards -- a couple of Milleniums MGAs, a Mystique, and a G400. They were the 2D cards of choice to pair up with a Voodoo (due to their high-quality signals). The G400 was a good 3D card in it's own right when it came out -- comparable to a TNT2.
I remember the MWave from an old Acer Aspire. They were ok (save for certain NES emulators back in the 90s having odd sound issues when set to higher frequencies) for the time, but had a crippling flaw. You cannot use the card's wavetable features at the same time as the modem. Thankfully cards like the ones you've shown featured a header for daughterboards like Roland's SCB-55 or Yamaha's DB50XG. Or one could possibly use an external module as well. Because we all like looking at displays.
The Panasonic MSX2+ with the built in FDD was awesome...and yes you could make disks in your PC the run on it...you can run the Metal Gear 2 ENG hacked version if you can't understand Japanese...
I've come across several of these cards when I worked at a computer shop two years ago and decided to start building Windows 98 machines. Pretty crazy things.
Scart adapters come in a couple of variants catering for input and output or switchable. Mind you there is a Japanese video connector that looks like a scart connector but it is not. This Euro scart connector probably will do proper composite video out. Your set needs to be able to handle 50hz PAL though...
10:01 Meh, so many times I've worked with people's computer in hard to access desks or amid a sea of cables where it's just enough to peek at the color coding from an angle, and find the green one easily for speaker output, despite the ability to know what the etched port names meant, if I was able to get to them.
6:55 I could be wrong, but I believe that's a Bus port for a Bus type mouse, or some sort of proprietary Mouse interface.
my dad worked for philips. that's the version we had at home and I've kept it since... :D
Congrats on 20,000 subscribers
That soundcard at 8:00 minutes is a soundblaster clone mostly sold in europe. I had one and the interference from the PC was really bad. Actually, the interference was louder than the actual sound. You could even plug in the CMS chips in there from the original Soundblaster. Mine was called Sound Master (which was a real original name).
Congrats on the 20k subs!
at 7:00, this is a Bus mouse card, it was a propriatery mouse port used with more professional and apparently more accurate than RS232 or PS2
Oh man, saw you pick up that old Voodoo 1 and has a mini nostalgia-gasm. Great video.
I had one SB16 With a Volume control on the back years ago. They are quite rare.
Nice MSX! I think Snatcher also started on the MSX right? That would be awesome to check out! Anyway, glad you got all my goodies. The SCART adapter should work but the video signal might be in PAL since that MSX came from Europe.
i think it would be neat to show vintage computer stuff and show how much we have come from it by showing new parts like processors maybe mother boards and sound cards maybe even video cards
8-pin DIN card could be a rare later Apple Localtalk interface card, but those mostly had the older DB9 port on them. A Zilog 8530 is usually a dead giveaway on those, at least the eariler ones.
The 2nd unknown card screams Soundblaster 2.0 clone card to me, the missing chips are likely for CMS support. If there is an FCC ID on these mystery cards, run it and see what comes up!
I had the Orchid Righteous 3D card, notable since it was the first retail VooDoo 1 board on the market.
Quarantine! A little late to the party, but I would love to see a review by you of this.
I think I speak for everybody when I say that you really NEED to review that NV1 card! Always wanted one, never could find one...
@phreakindee: Definitely looking forward to an MSX review featuring Metal Gear. There is (was?) a freely-available Metal Gear 2 English fan translation floating around that you should also check out.
Also, Vampire Killer = Castlevania I think. There's also a Japanese MSX version of Firehawk (Thexder 2) that has an intro sequence not in the PC prot.
Nice, lucky you! Some time ago I think I read about two PCI (or was it ISA, not sure) display adapters in one computer in some kind of ancient SLI setup, which used those connectors some of them have. You should try that, I belive someone I knew had two Voodoo 2's in SLI. (long time ago)
Loving the non surface mount resistors, juicy!
I use to have one like that for an old cdrom Mtsumi and is for controlling the "IDE" and for amplify the audio output of the cdrom
Your microphone is absolutely AWESOME!!!
That first mystery card you held up, it looks similar to the PC-to-PLC interface cards I've been using at school... I have no idea if it is, I'm not a computer expert by any means, but that port is used with older OMRON PLCs.
24:56 Cool! It has a Scart output! Great stuff.
And yes, the added RAM on the AWE32 did make a big difference in terms of performance, especially when using it to emulate an MT-32 :)
Yeah, Quarantine! Can't wait for that review!
The Matrox daughterboard is for extra RAM. BTW that Diamond Edge is awesome. I'd love to have one. My oldest 3D card is the Voodoo1. I wont count the Matrox Millenium as 3D because it didnt really work so well.
Regarding "value editions", while I don't know much about how things were on your side of the pond, the "value editions" of hardware often came with less bundled software, which might well have been the main difference for the creative cards.
My first PC graphics card (had home computers before that) was a Cyrrus Logic 5428. I still remember it. I kept it for a year lol.
The rest of the hardware, I am pretty sure I had some of them, for example a SB16, and a Voodoo2 12MB (creative). It was a bad time to be a PC gamer in some ways. Way too many settings and memory allocation and drivers and huge compatibility issues and a new way of handling graphics which required a new card, and etc etc.
It felt like I was upgrading every month
If you want to get the cleanest image possible with those secondary 3D-only video accelerators, use them with the Matrox Millenium for 2D.
I had one of those AWE32 cards back in the day. I popped a couple of old Mac sims into it in order to load more sound fonts to play around with. =)
is it bad that when you mentioned 2MB vram and said how good that was, I actually agreed with you. These kids dont know how good they have it....am i showing my age yet?