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Free to a good home

wmmullaney

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 21, 2008
Messages
589
Location
Columbia, SC USA area
Going through some stuff, found some things that aren't needed. Free + shipping from 29033
If you are interested, shoot a PM and I'll get pics

(Partial list)

2x serial printers for Commodore 64/128
1x Early version of the 1541 drive, I think the head is misaligned
1x 1571 double sided drive, I think the problems go deeper than alignment, may need some chips Intrest
1x HP Colorado 5gb tape backup system and ~5 tapes Intrest
Some old serial mice (without acrollwheels)
Sony Creative PC2 multimedia CDROM drive, with cables and software + SB16 value 16 bit isa card

I'll post more later, as I find it
 
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Wow, I didn't know they actually made those, update then, all serial mice have no scroll wheels and are db 9

Also have an unmarked motherboard in a gigabyte box with a IBM 6x86 in it Intrest
 
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IBM 6x86 meaning a Cyrix Pentium-class?

Do you have spare C64 serial cables around? I could use some of those. I could use another drive too, but can't afford to do the shipping necessary nor do I have experience aligning them.
 
When you said "Gigabyte Case" i thought you meant a computer case, heh.

Yes that's a socket 7 Pentium equivalent by Cyrix. Unfortunately Cyrix stuff, while on the top of it's game in the 486 era, had no improvements made to the FPU afterward, and the Pentium chips, using a 486-class FPU, failed in comparison to other offerings. The board is just an ordinary PCI/ISA Pentium class, the only curiosity being the combination of DIMM and SIMM sockets, but not unheard of. It's nice, but I have no interest in post-486 Cyrix offerings.

I will take the serial cable, however, as I am short on them. Shoot me a PM.
 
Haha, sorry I wasn't clear there. I meant I'm sure about the manufacturer, possibly gigabyte since it was it that box

It's a PCChips board... M559 VXPro II, to be exact. I'm not too familiar with the second series one, but I know the first series "VXPro" boards were just about the worst motherboards ever made. So, approach that one with caution.
 
I think the PCChips boards (under whatever badge they were sold) might have gotten a bad rap. I've got a couple of Amptron 8600s here and they're really not that bad. True, the L2 cache is, ahem, somewhat on the light side, but they do work. Mine were sold new with 6x86L PR300 chips and worked right out of the box. I've never had a bit of trouble with them, even though they're furloughed now. As a matter of fact, the Amptron boxes (as in cardboard box used to hold the motherboard) are labeled "6x86". For a budget-minded consumer, one could do much worse.
 
My little BookPC has a PCChips board.. it's a Celeron, a bit newer than the ones being discussed here, but the board's only problem seems to be lack of remaining support.
 
I've got a couple of Amptron 8600s here and they're really not that bad. True, the L2 cache is, ahem, somewhat on the light side, but they do work. Mine were sold new with 6x86L PR300 chips and worked right out of the box. I've never had a bit of trouble with them, even though they're furloughed now. As a matter of fact, the Amptron boxes (as in cardboard box used to hold the motherboard) are labeled "6x86". For a budget-minded consumer, one could do much worse.

Well, with the PM8600/VXPro was better than some in a few respects, since it did actually have some real cache on it. But, nevertheless, it was comparatively quite slow, and it was also notorious for its failure rate and mysterious unreliabilities. I think it was a case where, if you got a good one, then it would work OK, but there was a pretty good chance you wouldn't get a good one.

The VXPro II that the OP has looks quite different, though, so they might've worked out [most of] the bugs by then... I don't really know.
 
a PR300 6x86L :eek:ha:
i presume they were 6x86MX ;-)

Could be--one is probably a 6x86L PR200 (in the 8600C) and the 6x86Mx PR300 (in the 8600D). I'd know for certain if I were to dig the boards out and pop the headsinks off, but that's not going to happen.

Thrashbarg, I deployed about 10 of the things (mostly 8600C and 8600D) and never ran across a bad one. I guess I was lucky. I wonder if the early revs were the buggy ones?
 
I have a couple of those VX pro boards, they seem reliable but not the fastest so they are spares.
 
The main problem with those, at least the early ones, was fake cache. That made them much slower than another high end board. Like I said, with pleanty of others this looks like a keep for the heck of it-piece :)
 
FWIW, I used three PCChips boards with no issues; support also wasn't bad then as I recall.

I'm sure it wasn't bad when new, but most manufacturer's keep drivers and such available for 10 years or more after the product is EOL - PCChips has no drivers or even a mention of the board I have and it's from 2001 or so.
 
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