psychofox wrote on 2022-05-06, 05:57:

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luck […]
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Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luckily works like charm, nice sharp picture these cards have ! Anyone knows the manufacturer of this card?

Plus deck 2c. Strange device for converting audio casettes to mp3. I actually have not very much audio cassettes left, but since it is so cool looking device, i had to buy it 😀 Hope it has drivers for W9x.

Wow, that card is tiny. I think my Creative 3D Blaster Banshee is twice as big. Cool find.

Got these from local site all for 60 euro (a bit much then what i prefer to pay, to lests say like 30 euro but whatever). Still the condition is 98% preserved so i dont have complains. Seems the same guy have more Voodoo cards and some dual socket board and other stuff. Is nice to find good and well preserved parts, not some scrap garbage... Seems i like now Blue PCB 3Dfx cards (also others like the blue Gigabyte 370 boards) , will collect as many different models as i can.

psychofox wrote on 2022-05-06, 05:57:

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luck […]
Show full quote

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luckily works like charm, nice sharp picture these cards have ! Anyone knows the manufacturer of this card?

Plus deck 2c. Strange device for converting audio casettes to mp3. I actually have not very much audio cassettes left, but since it is so cool looking device, i had to buy it 😀 Hope it has drivers for W9x.

It literally have Super sticker on it.. Is some cheap crap brand i saw them making ISA audio cards and other S3 cards and stuff.. Dont know what exactly you like in this card aside from the chipset of 3Dfx the PCB and everything scream CHEAP... Prefer Gigabyte Blue PCB Banshee or Creative 3D Blaster Banshee ot ELSA some quality brand not cheap crap.

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-05-06, 09:49:

psychofox wrote on 2022-05-06, 05:57:

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luck […]
Show full quote

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luckily works like charm, nice sharp picture these cards have ! Anyone knows the manufacturer of this card?

Plus deck 2c. Strange device for converting audio casettes to mp3. I actually have not very much audio cassettes left, but since it is so cool looking device, i had to buy it 😀 Hope it has drivers for W9x.

It literally have Super sticker on it.. Is some cheap crap brand i saw them making ISA audio cards and other S3 cards and stuff.. Dont know what exactly you like in this card aside from the chipset of 3Dfx the PCB and everything scream CHEAP... Prefer Gigabyte Blue PCB Banshee or Creative 3D Blaster Banshee ot ELSA some quality brand not cheap crap.

What exactly do you reckon is bad about this card that makes it inferior to others?
The sticker on the EEPROM?

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-05-06, 09:49:

It literally have Super sticker on it.. Is some cheap crap brand i saw them making ISA audio cards and other S3 cards and stuff.. Dont know what exactly you like in this card aside from the chipset of 3Dfx the PCB and everything scream CHEAP... Prefer Gigabyte Blue PCB Banshee or Creative 3D Blaster Banshee ot ELSA some quality brand not cheap crap.

Hey, the price i paid was cheap, the card works, picture is crisp, cooler is silent. And most importantly for me, it is Voodoo. What else you want from graphics card? I am building an Pentium II period PC right now, it fits there like a glove 😁

Doornkaat wrote on 2022-05-06, 10:00:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-05-06, 09:49:

psychofox wrote on 2022-05-06, 05:57:

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luck […]
Show full quote

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luckily works like charm, nice sharp picture these cards have ! Anyone knows the manufacturer of this card?

Plus deck 2c. Strange device for converting audio casettes to mp3. I actually have not very much audio cassettes left, but since it is so cool looking device, i had to buy it 😀 Hope it has drivers for W9x.

It literally have Super sticker on it.. Is some cheap crap brand i saw them making ISA audio cards and other S3 cards and stuff.. Dont know what exactly you like in this card aside from the chipset of 3Dfx the PCB and everything scream CHEAP... Prefer Gigabyte Blue PCB Banshee or Creative 3D Blaster Banshee ot ELSA some quality brand not cheap crap.

What exactly do you reckon is bad about this card that makes it inferior to others?
The sticker on the EEPROM?

That anything that bears the name Creative Labs is definitely not "cheap crap" is, well, kind of somewhat, maybe, debatable.
ELSA, bit if a fanboy here myself, but they probably, as the French say, only cook with water. Also, they're designed in Aachen, where people look like this.
That little Voodoo - it's a Voodoo. And like many digital devices, it may just be binary. Either a one or a zero.

Meatball wrote on 2022-05-06, 04:04:

Added a verified working Canopus Pure3D to supplement the failed one I already one (which is undergoing repairs, but I don't know if it will survive).

Very nice! 😃👌
Could I trouble you to determine the pinout on the passthrough cable and post it here?
There's a pinout avaliable online but I've read rumours that it was inaccurate.

psychofox wrote on 2022-05-06, 05:57:

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luck […]
Show full quote

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luckily works like charm, nice sharp picture these cards have ! Anyone knows the manufacturer of this card?

Plus deck 2c. Strange device for converting audio casettes to mp3. I actually have not very much audio cassettes left, but since it is so cool looking device, i had to buy it 😀 Hope it has drivers for W9x.

It's definitely little! I never seen a Banshee this compact 🤣
I wouldn't mind having such a card available in my stash 🙂

I actually still have a whole bag of old cassettes left, but I can bring em to a friend of mine as he already has everything needed to digitize those.
Last time I checked, they still worked xD

Tetrium wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:24:

It's definitely little! I never seen a Banshee this compact lol I wouldn't mind having such a card available in my stash 🙂 […]
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psychofox wrote on 2022-05-06, 05:57:

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luck […]
Show full quote

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luckily works like charm, nice sharp picture these cards have ! Anyone knows the manufacturer of this card?

Plus deck 2c. Strange device for converting audio casettes to mp3. I actually have not very much audio cassettes left, but since it is so cool looking device, i had to buy it 😀 Hope it has drivers for W9x.

It's definitely little! I never seen a Banshee this compact 🤣
I wouldn't mind having such a card available in my stash 🙂

I actually still have a whole bag of old cassettes left, but I can bring em to a friend of mine as he already has everything needed to digitize those.
Last time I checked, they still worked xD

Storage on magnetic tapes is not made to last. The magnetic layers tend to slowly copy themselves onto each other. Just ask NASA about the Apollo data.
So, the tapes may be fine physcially, but the information on them will at least fade away. AFAIK, you'd at least have to rewind them to the other side once in a while.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:29:

Storage on magnetic tapes is not made to last. The magnetic layers tend to slowly copy themselves onto each other. Just ask NASA about the Apollo data.
So, the tapes may be fine physcially, but the information on them will at least fade away. AFAIK, you'd at least have to rewind them to the other side once in a while.

Not really true. Magnetic tape storage is made to last. Magnetic tape storage is still the most reliable way for long term archivization (I've been working in the library business for over 20 years, I created infrastructure for one of the biggest digital libraries in Poland, so I know thing or two). There are better solutions available (ie. object storage on JBOD arrays which self-heals and refreshes data on HDDs) but those are costly and not as compact as tapes. Also tape has a single VERY significant adavtage over other media - you can pull it out of the drive/autoloader/robot and take away wherever you need.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:29:

Tetrium wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:24:

It's definitely little! I never seen a Banshee this compact lol I wouldn't mind having such a card available in my stash 🙂 […]
Show full quote

psychofox wrote on 2022-05-06, 05:57:

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luck […]
Show full quote

Bought this nice little Voodoo Banshee. Since it has been sold as an unknown graphics card unknown condition, got it cheap. Luckily works like charm, nice sharp picture these cards have ! Anyone knows the manufacturer of this card?

Plus deck 2c. Strange device for converting audio casettes to mp3. I actually have not very much audio cassettes left, but since it is so cool looking device, i had to buy it 😀 Hope it has drivers for W9x.

It's definitely little! I never seen a Banshee this compact 🤣
I wouldn't mind having such a card available in my stash 🙂

I actually still have a whole bag of old cassettes left, but I can bring em to a friend of mine as he already has everything needed to digitize those.
Last time I checked, they still worked xD

Storage on magnetic tapes is not made to last. The magnetic layers tend to slowly copy themselves onto each other. Just ask NASA about the Apollo data.
So, the tapes may be fine physcially, but the information on them will at least fade away. AFAIK, you'd at least have to rewind them to the other side once in a while.

True, but I mean that I literally used them less than a year ago in my NOS walkman and (to my surprise actually) they still sounded pretty much like I remembered them 😋
I didn't try all of them btw, so personally I wouldn't be surprised if some have gone knackers by now as I used all kinds of tapes from a multitude of different brands etc.
But at any rate, the most important tapes are still sounding pretty much great less than a year ago and these are tapes that by now are, like, 25 years old or so?

HanJammer wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:34:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:29:

Storage on magnetic tapes is not made to last. The magnetic layers tend to slowly copy themselves onto each other. Just ask NASA about the Apollo data.
So, the tapes may be fine physcially, but the information on them will at least fade away. AFAIK, you'd at least have to rewind them to the other side once in a while.

Not really true. Magnetic tape storage is made to last. Magnetic tape storage is still the most reliable way for long term archivization (I've been working in the library business for over 20 years, I created infrastructure for one of the biggest digital libraries in Poland, so I know thing or two). There are better solutions available (ie. object storage on JBOD arrays which self-heals and refreshes data on HDDs) but those are costly and not as compact as tapes. Also tape has a single VERY significant adavtage over other media - you can pull it out of the drive/autoloader/robot and take away wherever you need.

That is quite an impressive background you got there btw!

In my case it's the plain ol' audio tapes I was referring to. I'm not sure how reliable these will be, I mean these are plain consumer products in the end and not professional material.
But those that I tried last year were still working as intended 😜

HanJammer wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:34:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:29:

Storage on magnetic tapes is not made to last. The magnetic layers tend to slowly copy themselves onto each other. Just ask NASA about the Apollo data.
So, the tapes may be fine physcially, but the information on them will at least fade away. AFAIK, you'd at least have to rewind them to the other side once in a while.

Not really true. Magnetic tape storage is made to last. Magnetic tape storage is still the most reliable way for long term archivization (I've been working in the library business for over 20 years, I created infrastructure for one of the biggest digital libraries in Poland, so I know thing or two). There are better solutions available (ie. object storage on JBOD arrays which self-heals and refreshes data on HDDs) but those are costly and not as compact as tapes. Also tape has a single VERY significant adavtage over other media - you can pull it out of the drive/autoloader/robot and take away wherever you need.

Interesting. The self-copy issue is just what I've read about the the Apollo project. Mind you, that was 1960s tech. So, there might actually be some progress in magnetic tape storage since then. 😉

Tetrium wrote on 2022-05-06, 11:39:

In my case it's the plain ol' audio tapes I was referring to. I'm not sure how reliable these will be, I mean these are plain consumer products in the end and not professional material.
But those that I tried last year were still working as intended 😜

Depends on tape quality. I have some old 8-bit Atari tapes which are falling apart it looks like some sort of layer is peeling of and white flakes are falling out of the cassette. Yet my audio tapes (most of them are pretty cheap cassettes - some are as early as 1988 because that's when I got my first tape player) hold up pretty good. About month ago I checked all of them out and there are no problems whatsoever, audio is as clear as it was back in the day.

Probably deserves its own thread....

maybe this will make the prices of some older hardware drop substantially
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022- … ump-foreign-pcs
unless they just grind it all up and re use the raw materials.

I recently bought some 2GB 800MHz DDR2 modules, some USB extension cords and even some brand new floppy cables!
I had basically zero decently sized DDR2 modules (what I had was mostly stuff like 256MB 533MHz which kinda sucks and my only 2 1GB 800MHz modules were already used) so these are most welcome.
I don't like peripherals with short cables, which makes me a big fan of extension cords and the floppy cables were like 10 cents each so why not 😋

Tetrium wrote on 2022-05-06, 13:51:

I recently bought some 2GB 800MHz DDR2 modules, some USB extension cords and even some brand new floppy cables!
I had basically zero decently sized DDR2 modules (what I had was mostly stuff like 256MB 533MHz which kinda sucks and my only 2 1GB 800MHz modules were already used) so these are most welcome.
I don't like peripherals with short cables, which makes me a big fan of extension cords and the floppy cables were like 10 cents each so why not 😋

Yeah, cables are so boring, until you need them. Wasn't my main objective, but I just landed a 1€ heap of 20+ or 3.5 kg+ NOS mini-DIN, USB and IEEE1394 cables, some of those really weird like male-male-USB A ones. But, it may seem, I'm set for life, there. One I'm actually using right now to extend the wireless base of a keyboard, no shit.

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-05-05, 10:45:

Wow last time I checked ebay for them a year or two ago there were still some mx300s floating around for okayish prices and some […]
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Cuttoon wrote on 2022-05-05, 09:08:

That Diamond card has become a bloody unicorn, yes.
Does it have to be a Vortex 2? What about the original Vortex, will that do? Any good threads about the issue?

Wow last time I checked ebay for them a year or two ago there were still some mx300s floating around for okayish prices and some even cheaper turtle beach ones.
It seems like there were a few auctions not long ago and one went for 50 aud so there still are deals to be had.

I'm no expert but after doing some reading it seems like the vortex 2 did more stuff in hardware rather then offloading it to the cpu , plus the vortex 2 got some new features as well.

Heres some quotes from ZanQuance in some posts , he seems to know a bit

A3D Vortex 1 any good?

"Compare charts in the AU8820 and AU8830 product briefs.

AU8820 has 48 total voice channels, AU8830 has 96.
AU8820 lacks hardware HRTF, AU8830 has hardware HRTF support.
AU8820 provides hardware mixing for 32 channels to 16 and sample rate converters for 16 channels. AU8830 uses the same hardware.
AU8820 has hardware wavetable for 32 channels, AU8830 tacks on an extra bank for 64 total wavetable hardware channels, can be repurposed for directsound streams."

A3D 1.0 vs 2.0 vs EAX 1.0 vs 2.0

"In general A3D 1.0 only offers HRTF on 8 audio sources and these are rendered in software. No reverb support at all.
A3D 2.0 gives a whole slew of new features like Occlusions, Hardware HRTF, WaveTraced reflections and some other neat 3D audio features"

Thank you all for the hints on the Vortex 2 chips, I shall keep some Turtle Beach or the Diamond card on my "wanted" list, for now.

But, back then, I was firmly in the "for games, give me Creative Labs or death" camp.
So, I've decided to venture into the vortex on a beginners level and it seems, I just won a Terratec XLerate with the original beetle. For a single Øre, no one else wanted that thing. Am I missing something? It has a golden backplate, MIDI connector and bent pins, what's not to like there?

AU8820 is the Vortex 1. You want the chip labeled AU8830. This is very misleading.

It is a pretty looking card though.

For 1€ I would haven taken it as well!
I remember a thread were people were experimenting with upgrading Vortex 1 cards to Vortex 2. Not sure if it was successful.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the Vortex 1 is a great card for Windows. The only problem I have with it is the broken mixer in DOS. If this can be fixed, then the card would be much for useful, especially since none of the Vortex 2 features are available under DOS anyways.