I got this box full of retro hardware.

From time to time I get some hardware donations for my channel and recently I found this box full of retro hardware in front of my door. In this video I would like to take a closer look at the parts, try to repair and test them if possible. It contains some common sound cards from Aztech, but also very old Hercules graphics card, 486 mainboards and some parts, like TIGA accelerator, which I never saw before.
Unisound - universal sound driver:
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?...
Patreon:
/ necroware

[@miketech1024]

Seeing those two Aztech cards fit together made me unreasonably happy LOL. I’ve long wondered if there was some practical reason behind those funky PCB shapes. Now I know there is!

[@kosmosyche]

Ancient Aztech puzzle solved... But ngl it felt strangely satisfying to see the 2 cards perfectly fit together.

[@wskinnyodden]

TIGA Was in fact one of, if not THE, first real GPUs, before that all that we had was pretty much graphics chipsets/framebuffer managers not actually programable in any way that would allow it to work alone on its own. Absolutely AWESOME.

[@menotyou8369]

Yikes, had a look on eBay, scalpers want $60 or more just for that TI chip. Dirty rotten thieves.

[@absalomdraconis]

There was IBM's PGA (or whatever the acronym was) before TIGA, I think before EGA even, but I'm not sure if the programmable aspect of that (because it _was_ apparently programmable) was actually published or not.

[@markgomersbach9265]

Love that the automatic subtitles states [MUSIC] while the modem was talking at 16:12

[@GigAHerZ64]

About color and mono rca connectors - a composite signal without color burst can transmit a lot sharper monochrome picture. Color burst can mess around with high frequency (high resolution black and white pixels interlaced) monochrome pixel data.

[@BobHannent]

Correct, although it's not the burst itself which causes the issues, the colour burst is only at the blanking area, out of the picture. But the whole colour signal adds more high frequency noise which takes away from the monochrome definition especially on sharp edges.

[@skywatcher122]

Seeing another Necroware video, I complete it till the end

[@notneb82]

That Mirror card looks really interesting. Imagine having all of that storage space back in the early 80's and all it took, besides the card, is a VCR and blank tape.

[@nelizmastr]

Funny thing is, tape backup is still alive and kicking, just not the size of a VHS tape. Must've been exciting though, 90 MEGABYTES of capacity in the early 80's :O

[@ocudagledam]

Hi Necroware, Adrian's Digital Basement recently had a video card with two RCA outputs (title of the video: This clone CGA/MDA card has a couple of surprising hidden features). The colour one is meant to be used with a TV and the mono one with a black and white display. Plugging a black and white display into the colour jack would work, but it would result in artefacts.

[@Astfgl]

Came here to say this. Adrian's video goes into some very deep detail about the quirks of CGA/MDA and how each port and video mode works. It well worth a watch!

[@absalomdraconis]

It's also worth noting that some IBM cards from around the time had two RCI connectors that just lead to a pin header: they were specifically used with daughter cards to convert the card's outputs to non-IBM monitors. The stereotypical case was Wang branded monitors, which expected sync signals on the green line, but I believe that all of the output signals were actually on the pin headers. I'm not sure if they're meant for this, but there _are_ two sets of pin headers close to where the bracket would go.

[@phirenz]

That Covus mirror card is interesting. It actually has a full z80 CPU on the card. It appears they just shrunk the standalone Mirror server (which bitsavers have pictures of the PCB) down to fit inside a PCB. The Z80 has 2KB of SRAM and a ROM. Then there is 4KB of SRAM near the ISA slot, which I'm guessing is shared between the two. The protocol for communication between the PC and Z80 is probably reasonably high-level, something where the PC writes the data into the shared RAM and the Z80 writes it out to the VCR (and then in reverse the process to read). If you dump the ROM, someone could easily RE the card's side of the protocol. Then it's just a matter of working out how at 4KB of SRAM is mapped into the PC address space and if there are any other IO ports or IRQs wired up.

[@iicaie]

Putting things into perspective with the 56k modem was just awesome. Please do that more in future videos

[@markae0]

You make me feel better about my hobby. Thanks!

[@the_beefy1986]

I had one of those Aztech sound cards in my Packard Bell PC (Pentium 150Mhz). Brings back memories.

[@mikes989]

1 day after I watched this video, reading a BYTE magazine I just stumble in that add for the IBM Mirror card, what a coincidence lol!!!

[@nodaitsu]

You want the monochrome composite out for clearer 80 column text, and color for...well, color. Some cards would have a switch and only one RCA connector instead. Keep up the fun videos!

[@shadowtheimpure]

Monochrome composite was offered on EGA/CGA cards of the period because of issues with text sharpness/clarity caused by NTSC color artifacts when using color composite output. Folks primarily doing text applications would use the monochrome output to get much clearer text.

[@GadgetUK164]

Wonderful! Looking forward to seeing more on some of these boards!

[@ricargoncalves]

Glad to see you back 😃Great video as usual, keep them coming 😛

[@MatthewDoye]

This was a blast from the past. One of my first employers used a VCR backup like the Mirror.

[@douro20]

The first computer to use a light pen was the Whirlwind built at MIT.

[@chuizune]

Wow! That blue Corvus card is beautiful!

[@Constantin314]

so many beautiful old cards you have there, Necroware. if you were to have a museum with them, i would visit :)

[@dustinhipskind7665]

That 486 was definitely the highlight as I am truly interested in the mods for improved performance.

[@Xaltar_]

Had the same Oak VGA card in an IBM 8088 clone PC back in the day. I loved it, it allowed me to use my monochrome display with EGA games which was a huge upgrade from the MDA card I had in it before. It fell flat on it's face when I upgraded to a 486 SX33 however, so slow but I threw it back in my 8088 system when I got an upgraded VGA card, if memory serves it was a 2mb Cirrus Logic VLB card. Playing DOOM with the scale set to about the size of a postage stamp is a fond memory, being able to play DOOM at all was a huge deal back then where I grew up. Some interesting stuff in this haul, never did see the Mirror cards in the wild.

[@ferrellsl]

Your videos remind me of the days when computing was so much fun. New hardware from today just doesn't excite me as much as this retro hardware did back in the day.

[@warrax111]

new hardware is simply boring. It started to be boring around LGA775 - Ivy Bridge era.

[@SireSquish]

OOOh, Necroware got some new things to play with. Awww yeah.

[@AlbertAGhazaleh]

Another great video and beautiful walk down memory lane!!

[@Stratotank3r]

Very nice donations. So cool to see these giant Cards still working fine and the repair of the PT Mobo was a walk in the park, right?

[@necro_ware]

Yeah, that was luckily really quite easy and it was nice to find the expansion cards and this mainboards both in the same box :)

[@schmatzler]

That Aztech sound card was the first one I ever got, it came with a Fujitsu-Siemens PC. I remember it sounding a little harsh, but the Soundblaster compatibility is excellent.

[@ruawhitepaw]

When viewing black and white text on a colour composite output, the colour bleeding tends to be horrific. The separate monochrome output lacks the colour burst at the start of each scanline of the video signal, which disables colour decoding in the monitor. This means that bleeding doesn't happen, resulting in much more readable text.

[@alexloktionoff6833]

Prince of Persia doesn't support Hercules 720x348 mode, it tweaks HGC into "CGA compatible" 640x200 mode.

[@awd42]

I looked up the VGA timings and don't think you'll be missing the 35.5 MHz crystal on the Oak VGA card that much. The only mode using it is 720x400@85Hz, although it could be probably be substituted for the 36.0 MHz timing used for 640x480@85 and 800x600@56. The other crystals: - 25.175 = 640x480@60Hz (VGA graphics) - 28.322 = 720x400@70Hz (VGA text); also CGA/EGA resolutions - 40.0 = 800x600@60Hz Later cards used a programmable clock chip so any mode could be used, limited only by VRAM size and maximum RAMDAC speed.

[@stevehunter6040]

Excellent video as always! When i think of how many of these things I used to have it makes me despair! lol

[@jasmijndekkers]

Great video and content. I like to see more videos. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands

[@JVHShack]

Finally, here is proof of the theory I had years ago with the triangle shaped sound cards. Somehow, I immediately knew why they were cut in such a manner when I found one on Ebay and bought it a few years ago. It, too, was an Aztec based sound card, but it wasn't as good as the two in this video. I liked this video and look forward to whatever comes next!

[@o0Donuts0o]

I’d been struggling to remember my first computer’s motherboard and then you said the words “Pine Technology” and then the memory flood happened. PT319A.

[@mikes989]

by the way,I've recovered about 3 sound cards with those Cristall chips. one have a lot of corrosion (seem coming from a PC close to the sea), the 2 others are like new

[@carlosjuniorfox]

10:08 The two composite video outputs are because of the chroma information. To get a color signal over composite, you have to mix the chroma and luma signals. This compromises the horizontal resolution quite a lot, which makes this kind of connection improper for text-based applications. So, with that in mind, you have a monochrome composite output without the chroma signal, only containing the Luma, increasing the horizontal resolution and the video quality for text based applications quite a lot

[@2dfx]

"PC Cheaps" LOL

[@ricardog2165]

Corvus is the genus name of the crow.

[@douro20]

The smaller socketed chips on the CGA/parallel printer card are PALs. It's not uncommon for these to be socketed.

[@rodhester2166]

Thanks for the video.

[@peterkornaukhov9990]

Awesome and very interesting, it reminds of the golden PC time when the 5.25 floppies had being sold in MOW book shops as well as the encyclopedical PC tutorials, the hardware was going almost totally direct from China and it was a deal to assemble system and made its parts compatibility... thank you so much great.

[@absalomdraconis]

I think it would have been Taiwan more than China, as I don't recall China being a major manufacturer in the 80s.

[@briangoldberg4439]

I think the CGA card with the B&W composite RCA output is there in case you are using a B&W monitor, it produces a cleaner graphics image in B&W than does the color output signal because it is free of the noise caused by artifacts

[@Spyd77]

I have a TIGA. It was used on a Tulip 486DX with two monitors. It cannot be used by itself as it doesn't have any BIOS code, so you need any other standard card installed to use the computer. Then you need a compatible software, an easy example is AutoCAD for DOS. R11 and R13 is the ones I used. And you need the AutoCad drivers for the TIGA card. When you install AutoCAD, there's a point where you're asked for video (or accelerator?) drivers, you then provide the disk and also select if you're using a single monitor or two. If you select two monitors, the standard card is used exclusively for the console, while the TIGA output is exclusively used for the graphics display. The output connector and protocol for the TIGA card is 100% compatible VGA, so any VGA monitor should work. I'm not sure what's the other connector, I don't remember my TIGA card having more than one connector. The difference between using a 486 with a VGA card and the same computer with a TIGA card properly configured was astounding. A regen command to redraw a complex drawing that would take several seconds on a VGA card, would be almost instantaneous with the TIGA card.

[@mhyzon1]

The color RCA output has a color sync burst for use with color composite monitors. The B&W RCA port doesn’t have the color burst signal. If you use the color signal on a monochrome composite monitor, there will be some noise you can see, but if you use the BW signal on the monochrome, then the signal will be cleaner and the image more crisp.

[@necro_ware]

Yes, that must be it. I will have to test it :)

[@absalomdraconis]

​@@necro_ware: There were also some cards that wired RCA jacks to a pin header on the card, for daughter cards to use. If there isn't a video signal to either of the RCA plugs, then check to see if they're tied to pins on a pin header.

[@pvc988]

Scrappers sometimes amaze me. They destroy the board that could go for $50-$100 just to get a piece of aluminium that's worth about 20, maybe 50 cents.

[@stonent]

If you run color composite into a black and white or color composite monitor, the text can be slightly blurry because of the color burst signal bleeding out. Stripping out the chroma will make the text sharper. So if you only use text applications you will get a better picture especially if you're running it into a television.

[@necro_ware]

Yes, that must be it. I will have to test it :)

[@mikes989]

Oh! boy. Acquaintances have given me various parts and pieces and entire systems from the 80s and 90s. I literally had to rescue a PS/2 model 50 from the garbage and mud where its owner had thrown it a few days before, and now I am restoring it (damages in the MB, almost useless keyboard, the bottom part is missing and I have to replicate it, and I don't have the original monitor, but I have almost restored the PC to an almost like-new state). this in addition to some things I have bought But then, I literally go once a month to the city's sorting/recycling center (actually, the provincial one) to dig through the "electronic waste" (garbage for some, treasure for others), a few days before Everything accumulated throughout the month is transferred to be truly recycled. Currently, most of it is industrial electronics and hardware from between 2002-2010. Less than 1% is something from before 2000. The really difficult thing is for something from before 1990 to appear. But something always appears. The last time, a couple of months ago, I was able to recover enough ICs and transistors (packaged in small packages according to their type) to fill a sack, I spent three days sorting and listing them by name and function. TTL and CMOS, from Motorola, TI, NEC, Toshiba, Tesla (Czech), Soviet and German (GDR) chips , etc. However, there were not enough memory ICs that I need to complete some systems. but I think I can build almost anything with what I have, LOL. I have been trying to restore a 386 motherboard, and an interesting multifunction card (I just for a budy to give me the programming data for a PAL). I have been able to recover several video cards, but they are mostly PCI, I need ISA and some 8-bit ones. I am going to modify the only ISA that I have, a Trident, to be able to use it in 8 bit, make the use or not of the ALE signal selectable, since I need it to test some XT motherboards.

[@absalomdraconis]

For that Trident graphics card, see if there's enough space to mount the card connector for the 16 bit section in place of part of the card, and still have it fit without losing any components. If so, then you can mod it to just need a plain PCB to tie the two 16-bit sockets (one on MB, one on ISA card) together to restore 16 bit operation, making it much more flexible for you. Regardless, you'll want to use some (probably high-value, maybe in the mega-ohm range) resistors to tie some of the 16 bit pins to reasonable values.

[@mikes989]

​@@absalomdraconisI ll put a 3 pin jumper in the back side of the card, so I can switch to one mode or the other. quoting a web: "The original IBM PC, the original IBM XT, and XT clones that closely follow IBM XT schematic do not implement the ALE signal properly. In these computers the ALE signal occasionally activated during DMA cycles, for example during memory refresh, while the address on the address bus is invalid. This confuses the Trident TVGA controller. The following rework is required to make ISA Super VGA work in these computers: The TVGA9000 ALE signal needs to be disconnected from the ISA ALE signal, and connected to the 5V power signal" I tested and is true. so I will do the necessary mod. is valid for many 16 bit but 8 bit friendly VGA video cards

[@Sarah-qr3pw]

luv the video as usual !

[@compugamesarg]

nice to see!!

[@golimonkey]

To someone who is a bit younger this looks like alien tech.

[@necro_ware]

LoL 😂 For some parts I feel the same.

[@Chriva]

It could just be me but I took my sweet time to connect the dots when you said thirtyfour-zero-twenty That whole series is pronounced as three-ten, three-twenty,three-fourty etc :)

[@necro_ware]

LoL 😂

[@borlibaer]

I would be happy for the spea hilite TIGA GA with the missing TI graphic processor as an memory upgrade for mine. It was my second/third GA beside Hercules clone and Speedstar 24 I used for STRAKON CAD. 🤤

[@necro_ware]

I'll try to find some time to make it complete and see, if I can show something.

[@rallyscoot]

The card on 13:00 also misses the 4th XTAL.. I have that same card over here. I can tell its a XTAL OSC 44.9000 Mhz Card seems to be DRara branded.

[@necro_ware]

That's true. Thank you for the frequency, I'll leave a note by that card to remember which OSC will be needed later.

[@herauthon]

lurk lurk.. slurp slurp.. so many Videos ahead..

[@tomekrv942]

I have seen many motherboards with such damage of chipset. These idiots who are doing this don't know that they can get much more money for working board than just for heatsink. Nice video.

[@EternalxFrost]

Scrap hunting for computer parts should be illegal and passible of jail time. It's literally computer history going down in flames for the mighty dollar

[@nickwallette6201]

And not even THAT much. How much does a gouged-up second-hand heatsink go for on the open market? ugh...

[@simontay4851]

A couple of cents at most. the complete working board would be worth 10 times that.

[@TheLevitatingChin]

My dad said hercules and I have to agree.

[@eugenioarpayoglou]

please make a video with the vhs backup card

[@sandmanxo]

How weird am I that I listened to the modem handshake several times to see if it was actually a v.90 56k or just a v.34 28.8-33.6k handshake lol. I used to dial so many bbses and later my isp that I knew the rough speed I would connect at just by sound.

[@catriona_drummond]

Curious that they ripped off that heatsink but left those copper coils alone. I have thrown out a lot of otherwise mint looking boards where those coils were clipped off.

[@necro_ware]

True. I will never understand scrap hunters anyway, there must be a group among them, which is especially stupid. Sometimes they destroy hardware, which costs hundreds of euros to strip off a metal part and cut off the edge connectors to sell them for 20 cent in total.

[@nickwallette6201]

@@necro_ware Yeah. SMH. It's infuriating. Like, just send those motherboards, sound cards, video cards, network and SCSI cards to me instead of taking the OUNCES of aluminum from the heat sinks! I'm sure I've got 20 pounds of metal somewhere around here that I'm not using. Deal??

[@catriona_drummond]

@@necro_ware Well I can only speculate. There seems to be a subsection of youtube with people fascinated by melting and casting their own metal bars. Suppose the thrill of that undertaking sort of equalizes the economic nonsense of it. Or I don't know. I am guessing. Anyway, it's always sad when working and usable things are destroyed.

[@MrVipeg]

In my opinion, CGA text at 80x25 looks great. Much more interesting than VGA. )

[@necro_ware]

I also can't do anything about it, but I like it too! :) It looks incredibly retro to my eyes.

[@BandanazX]

80x50 FTW

[@mike13foxtrot79]

Got a Slot 1 adapter sitting on my desk as I watch this video. And I just unboxed a Brand new Soyo Socket A MB that has been in my basement for years. I am doing a retro build. Have 2 Athlon and 1 Sempron CPUs. Had 3 Athlons, but The first MB I grabbed was an ABIT, been on the shelf also. Installed the CPU cooler and powered her up. POP, the CPU is toast. 1 transistor blew out, the socket was bad. Also the SOYO had a 4 pin CPU power plug which the Abit did not. Gonna finish this weekend. Have 2 Brand New never used slot 1 MB one Intel and 1 Tyan I never built back in the day. My basement looks like a PC Store. 😁😁

[@blakecasimir]

34:40 worth taking off the caps anyway in case they leak?

[@evandrochaves9596]

I always get scared everytime I see a dial up modem, living in a slum jungle I had to deal with 33K dial up internet until the end of 2008, dire times....

[@nostalgicpchardware]

Awesome video. I also have some stuff id like to donate to you. How can I get in contact? Thanks

[@dougjohnson4266]

If that Hercules 2.0 card works, it is worth $$$. Where can we purchase one of those TTL to VGA adapters, or is it home made?

[@necro_ware]

It's "home made" open source project: kzbin.info/www/bejne/nGrVqpyMabqcgbs

[@dougjohnson4266]

Thank you sir.

[@johnathanpogues]

where do you get your parts??

[@ayan.debnath]

ONE QUESTION: why/how your CF Card Adapter working without power-plug?!

[@necro_ware]

The controller is modified, it sends 5V over the IDE connector.

[@ayan.debnath]

@@necro_ware Oh ok. I think that small jumper cable in the back.... right?

[@necro_ware]

@@ayan.debnath exactly

[@ayan.debnath]

@@necro_ware COOL! But we need to care never connect a real HDD, right?

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

Can you upload something newer like 3dfx or geforcec2 gts ?

[@gizmosx84]

The Crystal Sound card was a compatible issues back days always hard to install driver

[@Raul_Gajadhar]

In your intro... Stop being so cute!

[@Krivulda]

Error 13 on AMI and no beeps is a dead giveaway of a problem with KBC. That is later confirmed by the fact the error beeps are jjjuuuuussstttt ttttoooooooo ssslllllllooooooooowwwww since the KBC is multipurpose chip and deals with timing of beeps too. It doesn't have to be broken, just slightly incompatible. Try a different one, preferably paired for AMI BIOS.

[@necro_ware]

That could be that, but in this case it is not. I tried various controllers, the ones which worked didn't make any difference. The one, which you see in the video is an AMI. Forthermore, this slow beeps seems to be a feature (?) of this board. It starts with turbo off after CMOS reset, but as soon as you save the BIOS settings and reboot, the beeps are as fast, as they usually are.

[@ChloefileFIN]

Makes me so mad that people destroy motherboards for getting tiny heatsinks.

[@matthewrichardson2467]

Hi Necroware! That Corvus card is interesting. Clint from LGR made a video of an competitors new version for Windows 95 on his channel: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ioa2YY2sZ6aDoLc

[@PatientXero607]

I know donations are donations, but it's becoming a reason for others to dump their less-desirable hardware and nonfunctional e-waste on someone else. Aztech, Crystal, Advance Logic, they were all the budget products of the day. Unless the hardware is truly a collectable, keep it in your parts bin folks.

[@necro_ware]

As the donor told me, all those parts were taken from the scrap yard and were to be shredded the next day. So I guess, it's ok if we can keep those longer in the community. I also sometimes exchange parts with other community members. In the past for example I exchanged such simple but working sound and graphics cards for damaged hardware with rare spare parts, which I needed.

[@Raul_Gajadhar]

You working again sweetie?

[@adamnagy4856]

Can i offer you a bigger box full of retro hardware?

[@necro_ware]

Haha, please no, I have to get through the projects which I already have first. There is no point for me to hoard it.

[@hgbugalou]

People who design things with center pin negative in DC jacks should be charged with a serious crime. Crimes against humanity even. 🤣

[@nickwallette6201]

I'm kind of baffled by this recent sentiment. Center-negative wasn't uncommon a couple decades ago. It's STILL super common for things that operate on battery power but have optional DC inputs, like guitar effects pedals. The jack has a switch that is actuated by inserting the plug, selecting the outer barrel of the plug instead of an alternate signal (the + pin of the battery contacts, in this case), while ensuring all the grounds (center pin) stay connected at all times. Which is a good thing. So there's a reason that polarity exists. OTOH, center-positive is nice because only the ground is exposed, so in the case that it makes contact with something it wasn't intended to (the metal chassis of a product), and where the voltage is not floating with respect to system ground, then it would do no harm. MOST of the time, we use them as the singular output from a galvanically isolated power source (i.e., a transformer), so it doesn't matter much, but not always. DC-to-DC connections sometimes use them too, and I've used products that had multiple parallel outputs distributed via barrel jacks. On those, a grounded outer conductor is definitely preferable. Ergo, they both have pros and cons, and under typical conditions, neither is actually better than the other. It's a coin flip. People get WAY too complacent with mixing adapters and devices that were not made to be used together. You just can't do that with impunity. Conditioning people to "assume" compatibility is probably not really in anyone's best interest, because it makes it more likely that poor assumptions will be made, and somebody will end up plugging a 19VDC adapter into a 5V device, because, hey, it fits, and that means it works, right? If you're not going to be meticulous about keeping like with like, then you have to take responsibility for knowing how to interpret the labels, or testing outputs and tracing the input path yourself. It's that, or manufacture a bespoke proprietary connector for literally every thing so nobody can eff it up. (Which is ONE reason some manufacturers do just that. And then people complain that you have to buy replacements directly from them....)

[@johnathanjamesjohnsonjr7408]

👏🎉🎯💯👍❗ ✨⚡⌨️🖱️🎮⚡✨ Also for the algorithm.

[@rkurbatov]

I recently bought the OTI-037C graphics card without DAC and both PALs. So it would be very, very interesting to see a video about such PALs and the logic hidden behind it. Seems like it was common to use either one 20v10 PAL or two 16v8 (the latter was used usually for dual EGA/VGA cards). They were used for decoding the addresses coming from ISA bus, 8/16 bit switching depending on jumper and so on. Probably 245 management, switching the direction of the buffer.

[@mikes989]

at least you can program a couple of PAL or GAL from a dump of those chips in that card , done by some good soul the DAC is a different stoy

[@rkurbatov]

@@mikes989 I have DAC replacement, that's not a problem. And as for GAL - I am interested in the decoding logic itself, not just dumping. That's not different from 'get the missing BIOS' to me and the card doesn't worth it.

[@michaelcloutier2225]

Why the hell do most of your card there not have their mounting brackets?

[@aspinx]

Probably they've been also removed by scrappers, just like the heatsinks.

[@necro_ware]

As it's been told to me, this whole hardware should've been shredded the next day. It came from a scrapyard.