Found this CH FlightStick at a thrift store for $5. This is after I took it apart and cleaned the previous owner's pawprints and grime from it. Now nearly new condition.

Funny thing is this is the first PC joystick I've ever owned. The only other was a joystick on an Apple II many years ago.

Time to enable the gameports on my systems and try it out. What are some good DOS games to try this out on?

Those are nice sticks, comfortable and sturdy. Comanche plays well with those, or Terminal Velocity.

I got a CRT!! I had pretty much ruled out ever finding a decent CRT, but I found an eBay listing for a ViewSonic 17" A70 that I'm sure had an incorrect shipping weight entered because the shipping cost from US to CAN was only $50 when it is usually about $250 for CRTs. So, I took a gamble and bought it - and the seller let it go through and shipped it.

And it arrived yesterday! It was packed in an almost malicious amount of styrofoam peanuts and bubble wrap - but that's what's needed to USPS a monitor without the original packaging. Certainly $50 worth!

So the monitor itself is obviously used - has some household-looking paint on the cord. But I don't care - it works and isn't too dim. It also uhhh, kind of dominates my desk:

Did we all used to pull our desks a foot away from the wall for our CRTs to hang off? I feel like that was a thing.

ubiq wrote on 2023-05-25, 21:30:

Did we all used to pull our desks a foot away from the wall for our CRTs to hang off? I feel like that was a thing.

It was opposite, we planted our nose a foot from the monitor which helped with reaction time. 😉

I had a friend that cut a hole in his wall for his huge 20" monitor. He forgot all about it for years until he upgraded to lcd and we had a good laugh.

ubiq wrote on 2023-05-25, 21:30:

Did we all used to pull our desks a foot away from the wall for our CRTs to hang off? I feel like that was a thing.

That Viewsonic is a pretty decent monitor. And it's showing a great demo 😁
Good catch.
Yes, we didn't push them close to the wall. And some placed the monitor in the corner which saves a lot of space but viewing it from an angle is not ideal.
How deep is your desk?

ubiq wrote on 2023-05-25, 21:30:

Did we all used to pull our desks a foot away from the wall for our CRTs to hang off? I feel like that was a thing.

old computer desks also tended to be deeper and more sturdy than nowadays.

HanSolo wrote on 2023-05-25, 22:22:

That Viewsonic is a pretty decent monitor. And it's showing a great demo :-D Good catch. Yes, we didn't push them close to the w […]
Show full quote

ubiq wrote on 2023-05-25, 21:30:

Did we all used to pull our desks a foot away from the wall for our CRTs to hang off? I feel like that was a thing.

That Viewsonic is a pretty decent monitor. And it's showing a great demo 😁
Good catch.
Yes, we didn't push them close to the wall. And some placed the monitor in the corner which saves a lot of space but viewing it from an angle is not ideal.
How deep is your desk?

When LCD got more affordable my first one was Samung 5:4 1280x1024 19" LCD for three reasons: Larger viewable area, less space needed and much less heat. This replaced a 17" CRT Samsung.

Cheers,

ubiq wrote on 2023-05-25, 21:30:

I got a CRT!!

I'm glad it made so much joy to you, but I little bit don't understand. It's just a crappy CRT, pretty under-average, and 50$ is too much in my view, to be honest, even 20$. These dont have any value here, like every month there is like 10-20 offerings for free, when you stop personally for them. Only trinitrons, highend samsungs 19-20'' and similiar, are for at least some price, but even that for 20$ or 30$, and it already generates hate in retro community, when someone post such auction and ask even 30$.

Or is the situation in your country so bad?

Ran across this on the site people love to hate:

What's in the box?

Is this really just a dtk serial port card with a custom board that plugs into the dip sockets?

HanSolo wrote on 2023-05-25, 22:22:

That Viewsonic is a pretty decent monitor. And it's showing a great demo :-D Good catch. Yes, we didn't push them close to the w […]
Show full quote

ubiq wrote on 2023-05-25, 21:30:

Did we all used to pull our desks a foot away from the wall for our CRTs to hang off? I feel like that was a thing.

That Viewsonic is a pretty decent monitor. And it's showing a great demo 😁
Good catch.
Yes, we didn't push them close to the wall. And some placed the monitor in the corner which saves a lot of space but viewing it from an angle is not ideal.
How deep is your desk?

Gotta be honest, I didn't try to make it look nice - I just dumped the CRT exactly where my LCD was and was amused by just how different a setup it makes things. Pushed it back now and put my MiSTer mITX thingie under it as bit of a monitor stand. Diggin' it!

Bought some cd-rom and floppies.
Tested, all working.
Stuff is piling up and I don't have that much space anymore.

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-05-26, 00:34:

[...]
Is this really just a dtk serial port card with a custom board that plugs into the dip sockets?

It does seem to be the case, that extra board is probably to add isolation for the midi input
I would classify it along the other lpt/serial midi interfaces that were available.
It is probably only usable with the included software unless there is also a win3x driver available.
Cool find though! It is a unique approach, I wonder if they also did other modifications to the serial card - maybe something clock-related

cyclone3d wrote on 2023-05-26, 00:34:

Ran across this on the site people love to hate: PXL_20230525_231211763~2.jpg […]
Show full quote

Ran across this on the site people love to hate:
PXL_20230525_231211763~2.jpg

What's in the box?
PXL_20230525_231351701~2.jpg
PXL_20230525_231419521~2.jpg
PXL_20230525_231633891~2.jpg
PXL_20230525_231703427~2.jpg

Is this really just a dtk serial port card with a custom board that plugs into the dip sockets?

Holy cow, that's a weird one. Nice find!

Interested to know more about it.

^ apparently it does have a replaced xtal to achieve midi baud so I guess it works as an UART interface (just like the ones on SB cards)

Asus P2B and P3B-F from same seller for total 25€ (+ local shipping)

Unknown working status. The CPU retention brackets aren't in the pictures but seller will include them.

QDI P5I430VX-250 (Explorer) for 10€ in a broken state.

Seller states every CPU only runs with 66MHz. This will be interesting to debug.
It can't be worse than my experience with the ASUS P/I-P55SP4, can it? 🤣

schmatzler wrote on 2023-05-26, 10:56:

QDI P5I430VX-250 (Explorer) for 10€ in a broken state. […]
Show full quote

QDI P5I430VX-250 (Explorer) for 10€ in a broken state.

Seller states every CPU only runs with 66MHz. This will be interesting to debug.
It can't be worse than my experience with the ASUS P/I-P55SP4, can it? 🤣

s-l1600.jpg

will be interesting to see the outcome of that!

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-24, 10:48:

Elsa_Gladiac_511.jpg

Bought this ELSA Gladiac 511 (GeForce 2 MX400) for 6 EUR on my local classifieds. I only got it because I wanted an ELSA branded graphics card in my youth, but they were out of my price range at the time. This manufacturer used premium components and their GPUs always had outstanding image quality. And I'm happy to say that this card is no exception. Granted, it's not as sharp as a Matrox G400, but it's still much better than what most GeForce 2 cards display out of the box.

Now, if only I could find the official driver CD image for this card. Obviously, I know that I can just use Nvidia's reference drivers, but ELSA always had some customized driver options that I wanted to check out first hand. I've only seen those in period correct reviews and magazines.

You might check out archive.org: https://archive.org/details/winner-99-f

I don't know which drivers are included, but it should be fairly complete, being a full cd ...

Skorbin wrote on 2023-05-26, 12:26:

You might check out archive.org: https://archive.org/details/winner-99-f

I don't know which drivers are included, but it should be fairly complete, being a full cd ...

I did check a few ELSA images on there, but none of them worked for me.

They were either too old (pre-2001) or didn't want to install on this card (GeForce 3 drivers).