MrConfusion
Very Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2013
- Messages
- 331
Hello Pandorians and Pyrates 
.
As the title says, I'm about to sell My Precious.
The thread topic handles the audio side of things, which is obviously the main attraction here.
The PC itself is basically "built for DOS". It is a collection of stuff I've scavenged from my old machines during the years. The CPU is an Intel Pentium@75MHz. It is a +100MHz chip underclocked and undervolted to run cool without excessive fan noise. I do not even remember the original MHz (or whether it is an MMX model) anymore, but I doubt a DOS game with MIDI support exists that would need more speed. And that's the "cutoff" point for this build.
It is possible to switch off the internal cache of the CPU which basically means you can slow down this PC all the way to IBM PC level without any timing issues (I haven't hit issues caused by the branch predictor in my gaming, YMMV).
There's 64MB of RAM (a "bit" too much for DOS apps to utilize... this machine has also run Windows for a time). For video there's a speedy TsengLabs ET6000 VGA (PCI) card. It is compatible with the ET4000 which was very well supported by DOS programs.
For mass media it's got a IDE CD-ROM drive, a 20G laptop IDE drive in a 5.25" HD caddy (though MS-DOS can only use 2 G of that drive...) and there's a 3.5" floppy drive that works. I'm also including a DB15 joystick as seen in the picture.
Oh, and the motherboard is an ATX one. Not an AT one. Which means you can pimp this ride with a modern case and silent PSU easily enough (just make sure the LAPC-I fits as it's a full length card...).
Gaming has been only one aspect I used this machine for, I used to have synth hardware for which it was handy to own a real MS-DOS machine. But I've now gotten rid of all that old stuff.
I intend to give people here a bit of a headstart before I start selling elsewhere. You guys probably know better what you're buying than the average person. Still a reminder: Though this HW setup is tried and tested you'll still need to get familiar with (at the minimum) the joys of XMS and EMS memory... or rather running out of base memory :-D.
I'm not holding my breath to find a buyer here, because I'm asking for a lot of money: 750 euros. More importantly: I only sell to people who can pick this up. So, basically this offer applies only to anyone willing to visit me in southern Finland. Sorry. I don't even know how many other Finns visit these boards, but I understand that there are some.
PM me in Finnish if you are interested.
Discussion and even harsh criticism of the price is okay by me: it'll help me to price this bundle when I start selling it in wider known Finnish forums. 750 for the complete set is a lot less than the crazy 2000+ euros someone is currently asking for the LAPC-I alone ("surprisingly" no bids ;-). Though ebay doesn't seem to list these components separately at the moment, scavenging old listings and looking at "the wider web" would imply my pricing is not totally insane.
I won't sell parts. But I'll gladly give more LegacyPC/DOS compatible stuff in addition to the actual sales items if the buyer so wishes. I can throw in a PS/2 keyboard, a PS/2 mouse and a VGA display (flat) all of which I'll dig up from the garage - either to give away or to toss them to recycling. So that stuff comes without extra cost, of course. This motherboard does have a USB port too, but PS/2 mice and keyboards are more compatible with DOS. I've also got a PCI ethernet NIC here which might be handly if you want to do filetransfers by installing Linux to the 18 gigabytes you got free in that HD. To my knowledge, getting a TCP/IP stack to any old NIC is not trivial (or free!) in MS-DOS. Unless the buyer says he'll be getting a new cool looking case for it anyways, I'll also try to dig up an old beige case for this setup. Myself, I've been running it in the old ATX frame you see in the photo, which has laid comfortably behind a frontplate of an audio rack. And that's also where this setup is now headed back to after this photoshoot.
Reason for selling? It isn't getting enough boots to warrant the rackspace it takes! And the rack itself is now getting so empty this machine is about the only thing I need to get rid of to dismantle the rack itself. This isn't the only piece of hardware I'm selling now and practically all the valuable/desirable music making gear has already been sold. The little musicmaking hobby I got left has finally drifted "into the box". (This computer was not originally strictly for gaming, it was also a sequencing rig.)
The synth components of this machine have been with me in one form or another since the early 1990's! So I've had plenty of time to listen to them.
All patches and tunes I made myself have now been meticulously sampled and/or recorded track-by-track and archived to be laughed at when I'm 75 ;-).
(And obviously even without MS-DOS I got a backlog of games to keep me busy for the rest of my life... don't we all?)
(Edited after a nights sleep and rereading: Did a minor text correction and added two more detaiied images of HW.)
.As the title says, I'm about to sell My Precious.
The thread topic handles the audio side of things, which is obviously the main attraction here.
The PC itself is basically "built for DOS". It is a collection of stuff I've scavenged from my old machines during the years. The CPU is an Intel Pentium@75MHz. It is a +100MHz chip underclocked and undervolted to run cool without excessive fan noise. I do not even remember the original MHz (or whether it is an MMX model) anymore, but I doubt a DOS game with MIDI support exists that would need more speed. And that's the "cutoff" point for this build.
It is possible to switch off the internal cache of the CPU which basically means you can slow down this PC all the way to IBM PC level without any timing issues (I haven't hit issues caused by the branch predictor in my gaming, YMMV).
There's 64MB of RAM (a "bit" too much for DOS apps to utilize... this machine has also run Windows for a time). For video there's a speedy TsengLabs ET6000 VGA (PCI) card. It is compatible with the ET4000 which was very well supported by DOS programs.
For mass media it's got a IDE CD-ROM drive, a 20G laptop IDE drive in a 5.25" HD caddy (though MS-DOS can only use 2 G of that drive...) and there's a 3.5" floppy drive that works. I'm also including a DB15 joystick as seen in the picture.
Oh, and the motherboard is an ATX one. Not an AT one. Which means you can pimp this ride with a modern case and silent PSU easily enough (just make sure the LAPC-I fits as it's a full length card...).
Gaming has been only one aspect I used this machine for, I used to have synth hardware for which it was handy to own a real MS-DOS machine. But I've now gotten rid of all that old stuff
.I intend to give people here a bit of a headstart before I start selling elsewhere. You guys probably know better what you're buying than the average person. Still a reminder: Though this HW setup is tried and tested you'll still need to get familiar with (at the minimum) the joys of XMS and EMS memory... or rather running out of base memory :-D.
I'm not holding my breath to find a buyer here, because I'm asking for a lot of money: 750 euros. More importantly: I only sell to people who can pick this up. So, basically this offer applies only to anyone willing to visit me in southern Finland. Sorry. I don't even know how many other Finns visit these boards, but I understand that there are some
.PM me in Finnish if you are interested.
Discussion and even harsh criticism of the price is okay by me: it'll help me to price this bundle when I start selling it in wider known Finnish forums. 750 for the complete set is a lot less than the crazy 2000+ euros someone is currently asking for the LAPC-I alone ("surprisingly" no bids ;-). Though ebay doesn't seem to list these components separately at the moment, scavenging old listings and looking at "the wider web" would imply my pricing is not totally insane.
I won't sell parts. But I'll gladly give more LegacyPC/DOS compatible stuff in addition to the actual sales items if the buyer so wishes. I can throw in a PS/2 keyboard, a PS/2 mouse and a VGA display (flat) all of which I'll dig up from the garage - either to give away or to toss them to recycling. So that stuff comes without extra cost, of course. This motherboard does have a USB port too, but PS/2 mice and keyboards are more compatible with DOS. I've also got a PCI ethernet NIC here which might be handly if you want to do filetransfers by installing Linux to the 18 gigabytes you got free in that HD. To my knowledge, getting a TCP/IP stack to any old NIC is not trivial (or free!) in MS-DOS. Unless the buyer says he'll be getting a new cool looking case for it anyways, I'll also try to dig up an old beige case for this setup. Myself, I've been running it in the old ATX frame you see in the photo, which has laid comfortably behind a frontplate of an audio rack. And that's also where this setup is now headed back to after this photoshoot
.Reason for selling? It isn't getting enough boots to warrant the rackspace it takes! And the rack itself is now getting so empty this machine is about the only thing I need to get rid of to dismantle the rack itself. This isn't the only piece of hardware I'm selling now and practically all the valuable/desirable music making gear has already been sold. The little musicmaking hobby I got left has finally drifted "into the box". (This computer was not originally strictly for gaming, it was also a sequencing rig.)
The synth components of this machine have been with me in one form or another since the early 1990's! So I've had plenty of time to listen to them.
All patches and tunes I made myself have now been meticulously sampled and/or recorded track-by-track and archived to be laughed at when I'm 75 ;-).
(And obviously even without MS-DOS I got a backlog of games to keep me busy for the rest of my life... don't we all?)
(Edited after a nights sleep and rereading: Did a minor text correction and added two more detaiied images of HW.)
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