Extremely RARE Advanced Gravis Ultrasound Extreme 3.0 GUS ISA vintage / ViperMAX


What's up with these absurd prices?

These were not as rare as you think. My friend had one of these.
And ISA ? Who has one of those these days? The newest board that I can recall that supported ISA was the Abit BH6, with the best model being the rev 1.1 / 1.2 versions, that had the 1/4 divider for 33 mhz PCI at 133 mhz FSB, as well as the Socket 370 version. And even these boards got flamed for having more than one ISA slot. I think they came with 2, so you could plug in your Soundblaster 16 and Roland SCC-1 Sound Canvas, or similar wavetable music synth board. Plus there was the common problem of Windows 2000 not supporting direct access to hardware so you couldn't access your cards without a special driver.
 
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What's up with these absurd prices?

These were not as rare as you think. My friend had one of these.
And ISA ? Who has one of those these days? The newest board that I can recall that supported ISA was the Abit BH6, with the best model being the rev 1.1 / 1.2 versions, that had the 1/4 divider for 33 mhz PCI at 133 mhz FSB, as well as the Socket 370 version. And even these boards got flamed for having more than one ISA slot. I think they came with 2, so you could plug in your Soundblaster 16 and Roland SCC-1 Sound Canvas, or similar wavetable music synth board. Plus there was the common problem of Windows 2000 not supporting direct access to hardware so you couldn't access your cards without a special driver.

It's probably rare now. most people probably toss away older hardware when they are clearing out some clutter. I know I tossed some decent old hardware away which I now wish I would have kept since they are worth decent money to people who are building retro PC's.
 
It's probably rare now. most people probably toss away older hardware when they are clearing out some clutter. I know I tossed some decent old hardware away which I now wish I would have kept since they are worth decent money to people who are building retro PC's.

I'm aware of that but why would someone pay $350 for a worthless piece of hardware?
If it's to play old games, well, DOSBOX can do that better than any old computer would. My 486 DX2-66 ran everything ok from 1989-1994 (until Strike Commander ruined everything), and it had the "8 mhz" turbo disable switch so that games like Ultima 6 ran properly with PC speaker bleep sounds at the right pitch, but the first Pentiums were just hot trash, and the first decent Pentium, the 166 MMX (I forgot but I think certain SKU's were the one that were overclockable to 262.5 mhz with the 83 mhz onboard FSB jumper) was the first true "overclocking screamer". But you already had problems getting some older DOS games to run at the right speeds, and while AT-Slow 3.0 actually worked great and didn't have "Video draw" issues (some newer programs, like myslow, and that one Russian slowdown program and others, would cause issues like slow draw speeds), but AT-slow didn't work well on anything faster than the 166 MMX. Anyway I'm ranting.
 
I'm aware of that but why would someone pay $350 for a worthless piece of hardware?
If it's to play old games, well, DOSBOX can do that better than any old computer would. My 486 DX2-66 ran everything ok from 1989-1994 (until Strike Commander ruined everything), and it had the "8 mhz" turbo disable switch so that games like Ultima 6 ran properly with PC speaker bleep sounds at the right pitch, but the first Pentiums were just hot trash, and the first decent Pentium, the 166 MMX (I forgot but I think certain SKU's were the one that were overclockable to 262.5 mhz with the 83 mhz onboard FSB jumper) was the first true "overclocking screamer". But you already had problems getting some older DOS games to run at the right speeds, and while AT-Slow 3.0 actually worked great and didn't have "Video draw" issues (some newer programs, like myslow, and that one Russian slowdown program and others, would cause issues like slow draw speeds), but AT-slow didn't work well on anything faster than the 166 MMX. Anyway I'm ranting.

it's not the same thing. People want to have complete vintage machines running vintage software.
I myself am not really into that complete retro/vintage thing.

I did recently setup an older machine with Windows XP so that I could run my old Matrox Video Capture/Editing card though,
IMG_2408.JPG
 
I'm aware of that but why would someone pay $350 for a worthless piece of hardware?
If it's to play old games, well, DOSBOX can do that better than any old computer would. My 486 DX2-66 ran everything ok from 1989-1994 (until Strike Commander ruined everything), and it had the "8 mhz" turbo disable switch so that games like Ultima 6 ran properly with PC speaker bleep sounds at the right pitch, but the first Pentiums were just hot trash, and the first decent Pentium, the 166 MMX (I forgot but I think certain SKU's were the one that were overclockable to 262.5 mhz with the 83 mhz onboard FSB jumper) was the first true "overclocking screamer". But you already had problems getting some older DOS games to run at the right speeds, and while AT-Slow 3.0 actually worked great and didn't have "Video draw" issues (some newer programs, like myslow, and that one Russian slowdown program and others, would cause issues like slow draw speeds), but AT-slow didn't work well on anything faster than the 166 MMX. Anyway I'm ranting.

great info, why don't you post up one of your hobbies so we can crap all over it? thanks.
hobbies do not need to be logical.
 
Prices are crazy for some things. That being said, I refuse to pay these stupid high prices and just watch and wait for cheaply priced stuff to show up and get that.

That being said, DOSBOX is just not the same and never can be... maybe not never, but there is a massive amount of things that DOSBOX doesn't emulate and it is highly unlikely that it will ever emulate.

Sure you have basic sound and some video emulation, but there just isn't a real practical way to emulate a lot of the different wavetable based sound cards.

Then you also have the fact that it is really only meant for DOS. What about Windows 9x and Windows XP?

Some games and software will not work on a newer OS. And you also have A3D and EAX type stuff that was hardware accelerated back then. A3D requires an older OS and EAX, while able to be used vie Alchemy, some games will not work properly with a newer OS.

Most/all of you would think I am crazy for having the amount of retro hardware I have. I am going to thin it out soon though.
 
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My barn collapsed a few winters ago, I lost a bunch of vintage stuff, including a Roland LAPC-I and a Sound Canvas SCB-55 daughterboard for Soundblasters. I also had the cassette tape that showed you the difference between the Roland, Soundblaster/Adlib and pc speaker, I think it used one of the King's Quests as an example. Oh and my full Thrustmaster setup I used for Falcon and Mechwarrior.

So much fun back in the day!
 
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My barn collapsed a few winters ago, I lost a bunch of vintage stuff, including a Roland LAPC-I and a Sound Canvas SCB-55 daughterboard for Soundblasters. I also had the cassette tape that showed you the difference between the Roland, Soundblaster/Adlib and pc speaker, I think it used one of the King's Quests as an example. Oh and my full Thrustmaster setup I used for Falcon and Mechwarrior.

So much fun back in the day!

Really sorry to hear about your loss :(
 
My barn collapsed a few winters ago, I lost a bunch of vintage stuff, including a Roland LAPC-I and a Sound Canvas SCB-55 daughterboard for Soundblasters. I also had the cassette tape that showed you the difference between the Roland, Soundblaster/Adlib and pc speaker, I think it used one of the King's Quests as an example. Oh and my full Thrustmaster setup I used for Falcon and Mechwarrior.

So much fun back in the day!

I had my Roland SCC-1 until two years ago.
Threw it in the bin along with my two Canopus Pure 3d2's. System didn't POST anyway and I never used it anymore. It just wasn't worth the hassle to deal with trying to fix it or messing with it, when I could just get most of the stuff running with DOSBOX.
Nice you had a LAPC-1. Never knew anyone who had that. My friend had a RAP-10, which was basically a SCC-1 with some sort of onboard audio DSP, which barely worked in anything.

The SC-55 daughterboard.. I had that too. Epic waste of hot trash money. The CARD Was fine but no one knew this at the time, but certain revisions of Creative's soundblaster 16 DSP caused hanging notes problems when used with daugherboards. This information wasn't available easily way back then. And you couldn't fix it anyway.
 
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I had my Roland SCC-1 until two years ago.
Threw it in the bin along with my two Canopus Pure 3d2's. System didn't POST anyway and I never used it anymore. It just wasn't worth the hassle to deal with trying to fix it or messing with it, when I could just get most of the stuff running with DOSBOX.
Nice you had a LAPC-1. Never knew anyone who had that. My friend had a RAP-10, which was basically a SCC-1 with some sort of onboard audio DSP, which barely worked in anything.

The SC-55 daughterboard.. I had that too. Epic waste of hot trash money. The CARD Was fine but no one knew this at the time, but certain revisions of Creative's soundblaster 16 DSP caused hanging notes problems when used with daugherboards. This information wasn't available easily way back then. And you couldn't fix it anyway.

AGGGHHHHH.. That poor hardware. :cry:

Hanging note bug sucks.. but pair a daughterboard with a card without the hanging note bug (certain Creative and all non-Creative cards) and you are set.

I recently acquired a Roland LAPC-I along with the external box in a trade for some other retro hardware.
 
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My barn collapsed a few winters ago, I lost a bunch of vintage stuff, including a Roland LAPC-I and a Sound Canvas SCB-55 daughterboard for Soundblasters. I also had the cassette tape that showed you the difference between the Roland, Soundblaster/Adlib and pc speaker, I think it used one of the King's Quests as an example. Oh and my full Thrustmaster setup I used for Falcon and Mechwarrior.

So much fun back in the day!

So sad to hear of that hardware being lost.
 
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AGGGHHHHH.. That poor hardware. :cry:

Hanging note bug sucks.. but pair a daughterboard with a card without the hanging note bug (certain Creative and all non-Creative cards) and you are set.

I recently acquired a Roland LAPC-I along with the external box in a trade for some other retro hardware.

I almost bought a Roland SC-88 Super Sound Canvas. I was crazy about sound. Too crazy.
Would a SC-88 even be able to be used with a modern system now?
 
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I almost bought a Roland SC-88 Super Sound Canvas. I was crazy about sound. Too crazy.
Would a SC-88 even be able to be used with a modern system now?

Yeah, as long as you have a midi port on your computer.

SC-88 is general midi so it will work with anything that supports MIDI.

Some games that were made with the SC-55 in mind supposedly don't sound quite right on the SC-88 but I haven't actually tested that out myself.

My external Roland modules:
MT-32 (old - rev 2)
MT-100 (MT-32 new with sequencer)
MT-120
MT-200 (SC-55 with sequencer)
MT-300s (In between SC-55 and SC-88 with sequencer and stereo speakers)
SC-7
SC-88VL
 
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Yeah, as long as you have a midi port on your computer.

SC-88 is general midi so it will work with anything that supports MIDI.

Some games that were made with the SC-55 in mind supposedly don't sound quite right on the SC-88 but I haven't actually tested that out myself.

My external Roland modules:
MT-32 (old - rev 2)
MT-100 (MT-32 new with sequencer)
MT-120
MT-200 (SC-55 with sequencer)
MT-300s (In between SC-55 and SC-88 with sequencer and stereo speakers)
SC-7
SC-88VL

That's damn impressive, man.
I was never any composer but I always wanted high end parts for anything I liked, even if I had absolutely no use for it. I just liked shiny things.
I almost bought an Oscilloscope for $500 last week (yes, dumb) just to try to read CPU and motherboard voltages, before realizing that they aren't intended for that purpose, until last minute questions research showed i was making a big mistake...
 
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