Post PICs of your old cards!

Man, this brought back my idea of going back to my parents house and getting all my old computer stuff and rebuilding my old computer so I can play all my old 3Dfx games. I still have my Monster3d, VoodooII cards with pass thru cable and my V5 5500 card. I still have my old mobo and proc too. I just have to 1 or 2 sticks of ram I think so I can play my old legacy games and non-xp games. I have backed up all my old drivers thru the years so I still have my old voodoo drivers.
 
The Resident said:
At the risk of posting off-topic, here's some pictures of an old system of mine. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to really take it apart properly and get the best photos.


casefront5vh.jpg


It's my old 25 MHz 486 SX! This wasn't my first computer, but it the first one I really dug into and learned about computers on (which, being a 486 SX, you really had upgrade to make feel like a 486. See below..).


caserear4ls.jpg


Here's the rear. As you can see, the video was onboard. Also notice the sound card all the way to the right... an EXTERNAL volume control wheel: one of my most-loved and most-hated features of the sound card.


topdown0rp.jpg


The motherboard is mostly obscured by a power supply/drive chassis. I can't communicate just how much of a pain it was to have to remove the chassis everytime I needed to get to the good stuff. Here's a top-down view of the exposed parts of the motherboard.

Hey, what's that secondary Intel chip with the stubby heatsink?


cpuoverdrivecloseup9my.jpg


Why, that's an Overdrive sub-processor! The 486 SX CPU itself didn't have a floating-point unit, so all the floating-point math had to be done in software, which was DOG SLOW even for the time. See this sordid story on Wikipedia about the SX. Anyway, I had enough of that and wanted to upgrade, so I went out and got the Overdrive, which delivered the hardware floating-point processing I wanted, but also included an extra 128 KB of cache! Of course, it was the actually extra cache that brought up my FPS in Doom 1.

And damn it, AST required me to order that specialized daughterboard to install the Overdrive. The pain in the ass was two-fold: 1, I needed a daughterboard; 2, it had an LIF socket as opposed to ZIF socket!! The Overdrive had to be brute-forced onto the daughterboard! I was certain I had killed it by simply squeezing the hell out of it getting it installed. Fortunately, it all worked the first time...


drivechassis3ji.jpg


This system had been through 3 hard drives, and this was the only one that didn't come from the manufacturer. It was also the last one and it still works!


isacards8sc.jpg


Here's the ISA cards. The one in back obviously is a Sound Blaster 16. The middle one is a Suncom joystick card. (I didn't actually use joysticks that often, but I was fooling around with connecting a Mattel Power Glove to the system and needed a clean source of +5 V, which joystick ports provided. Fortunately, the card was cheap.) The front card is either a US Robotics Sportster or the original 2400 baud modem.


sb169ee.jpg


Closeup of the SB16. Notice the IDE-like cable connected to the rear. That was actually a Creative Labs-unique CDROM interface. The card and CD-ROM drive came as a big multimedia package, back when everyone was exclaiming that "multimedia is going to change the world!!!" Anyway, it was totally unique to Creative Labs, so it required specialized hardware/replacement parts. I didn't have any concept of "future-proof" at that age. All I cared about was playing 7th Guest. =)

Yeah, I know - no video card pictures this time. As I mentioned earlier, the video card was onboard. When I get more time to thoroughly take this system apart, I'll snap some pictures of the motherboard proper. The neat thing about the onboard video card (which was actually on the mobo's VESA Local Bus) was the huge grid of upgradable VRAM slots.
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Reminds me of the days back when I was 12/13 years old and got my first 486 SX/2 50MHz PACKARD BELL:D . It came from the factory with (2) 2x speed cd-roms drives and I thought I was the coolest on the block. That was the first computer that I actually learned from. I bought a power stacker 5x86 CPU upgrade from Compusa for near 400 dollars with brought it to near P100 speeds (IIRC) and when I got home I realized I had no clue what the hell I was doing, but said to myself, F*ck it I've broken stuff worth more then this:) . I lifted my VERY FIRST ZIF socket lever arm, removed the 486 sx2 50MHz, while my hand was shaking from being so happy that my PC might have a chance to play duke nukem 3D better, I gently install the power stacker chip. I then installed my creative labs AWE 32 sound card with the included 4x cdrom drive (this was like 300 dollars to) I now made sure the wiring was routed properly, then I thought I would stare at the inside of a PC cause I thought it was neat (This happened for about 15 minutes) slid the PC's cover on the desktop case, connected all the cables again, and with my fingers crossed I pressed the power botton, and BOOM, all was good. If I can remember properly, the POST screen said AMD 5x86 PR133:D . Needless to say, I no longer had to exit windows to go into DOS mode to play Duke Nukem 3D anymore, I could execute it in windows95 and the game played great with my new sound card, and CPU! Those where the days.
 
gdonovan said:
Heh, I'll take that as a compliment!

I'm thinking about posting a picture of every single 3dfx card here in the collection... hmmm.. I have one very rare piece in route soon, perhaps I'll do it then.

One of only 2 complete known and the only one that somewhat functions.

Come on Fed-ex!
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I always tune in because the VooDoo II era was probably the peak of my PC gaming. So all your collection hits the right time frame for me. :)
 
GF4MX.jpg


Geforce4MX440 is the oldest thing I can find at the moment. I have an old Ensoniq audio card and a Voodoo Banshee somewhere but I can't figure out what I did with them :(
 
DSCN0868.JPG


Rare- New boxed Maxigamer SLI set from the UK.

Not to many vendors sold Voodoo II boards in SLI sets, Hercules is the only other that I know of and there is only one known boxed Hercules set =)
 
gdonovan said:
DSCN0868.JPG


Rare- New boxed Maxigamer SLI set from the UK.

Not to many vendors sold Voodoo II boards in SLI sets, Hercules is the only other that I know of and there is only one known boxed Hercules set =)
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MMMmmmmmm, geek envy. Original box!

Going to have to bust out my camera and clue you all in on the oldest graphics card in pc history (afaik)....
 
Man I cleaned out my back room and found a old 1meg trident video card ISA slot to boot, should have taken a picture for posterity purposes... instead I simply threw it out
 
gdonovan said:
DSCN0868.JPG


Rare- New boxed Maxigamer SLI set from the UK.

Not to many vendors sold Voodoo II boards in SLI sets, Hercules is the only other that I know of and there is only one known boxed Hercules set =)
Click to expand...

oh... man! Thats so badass. Must say, thats a rarity

this is so cool my thread still lives in some people!
:D
 
box_v2_hercules.jpg


Warrior said:
oh... man! Thats so badass. Must say, thats a rarity
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Only known boxed Hercules SLI set (and new to boot) heck just the regular Hercules Voodoo II in a box is next to impossible to find.

I got real lucky on this set, if the seller shipped overseas chances are I would have been outbid.

Yup I cracked the seals on this one, I just had to know what the set looked like.
 
Kinda old :D

oldcards001.jpg


Also, still have the box, I'll get a picture of this one later, though, it's really not THAT old :D

oldcards002.jpg
 
if peple actually read the thread before they post or post a pic. Remmeber any card that you have upgraded from is concidered an old card. They are our history... :D

i cant wait till i can post my 6600gt...lol.. havnt been able to upgrade it forever... i play too much Tibia to care...
 
I think it's time for me to bust out with the GUS MAX again.. in all it's glory with the 512mb upgrade (to 1mb total for midi) and full retail packaging. :D pics tonight.
 
ebay_voodoo5.jpg


V5-5500 I just placed on Ebay- dual Voodoo 3 heatsinks and custom downclocked bios.

Made a nice silent video solution that still had some punch in my old workstation (now retired from service)
 
I wish I still had my old 386/33 setup. (My first IBM/Compatible PC) Then I could show you the amazing Math Co-Processor I bought so the Falcon 3 would run smoother!
 
Here's something I bet none of you have ever seen: an old promotional mousepad for IBM's PS/2 line.

And yes, that was their cheesy sales pitch:

ibmmousepadoc8.jpg
 
I have not seen any old Herc monochromatic cards yet. Or am I getting too old. The ones that did text only and then the herc monochromatic graphics cards.

I would take a pic of one of my old Herc cards but I am still using that computer today.
 
Here's a Socket 3 486 AMD Processor from a recent pull. Their was no thermal paste at all just a bear clean heatsink on it:
amd_486.jpg


Here's a really old ISA Modem:
isa_modem.jpg


A Sound card that's just as old
isa_soundcard.jpg


A Trident Video Card:
trident_videocard.jpg


And to top it all off, the PC I pulled these components out of had a TURBO Button!
turbo_button.jpg
 
Leon2ky said:
Here's a Socket 3 486 AMD Processor from a recent pull. Their was no thermal paste at all just a bear clean heatsink on it:
amd_486.jpg

[snip]
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3.45v!!! :eek: lol

nice pics :)

edit:
revenant said:
I think it's time for me to bust out with the GUS MAX again.. in all it's glory with the 512mb upgrade (to 1mb total for midi) and full retail packaging. :D pics tonight.
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lol.. I forgot I was supposed to do this.. damn.. I hate saying and not doing. :p
 
Some more #9 love :

Number Nine Imagine 128 series II , 8 MB vram .

-----------------------

nines.jpg



nine.jpg


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:D
 
ok, some shots I finally got from my gusmax box and contents :) aka a little bad-ass sound card love cerca 1994. ;)

gusmax.jpg

gusmax1.jpg

gusmax2.jpg

gusmax3.jpg


lol.. exchange.. yes, I returned my AWE32 for this card.. the AWE's digial sound was shit compared to this one..

gusmax4.jpg


move over 8800GTX, here's the ~real~ long peripheral card ;)

gusmax5.jpg

gusmax6.jpg

gusmax7.jpg

gusmax8.jpg

gusmax9.jpg

gusmax10.jpg

gusmax11.jpg


no, I haven't tried to call yet.. I should tho.. "uhm, yeah, I want a new sound card, almost?" ;)

gusmax12.jpg


installation requirements: one free isa slot. wtf is that??? ;)
 
I had a number 9 Revolution IV 32 MB AGP card, and it had all kinds of Beatles lyrics silkscreened all over the PCB. Does that Imagine 128 have the beatles on it?
 
I've got an old Banshee Blaster, a Cirrus PCI card, and TNT2 card somewhere in my house.

I forgot what I had in my 486 but it was ISA. Long gone...
 
crewzen said:
I have not seen any old Herc monochromatic cards yet. Or am I getting too old. The ones that did text only and then the herc monochromatic graphics cards.

I would take a pic of one of my old Herc cards but I am still using that computer today.
Click to expand...
See no problem here, have plenty of these oldies, but hard to say which one is hercules and which one CGA, EGA...... :)
td3088af.jpg

mcg2502f.jpg

um6845rf.jpg
 
yoo82 said:
x2 lol turbo button...remember those, thought it was pretty awesome.
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What did the "TURBO" button actually do? I had an old (New at the time though) 486 SX 33MHz VERY LARGE FULL TOWER CASE AST computer back in 1993 that had this button on it, but nothing really made a difference.
 
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