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waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | I don't really have any interest in the Amiga stuff other than it's a novelty to me, like a PS/2, I really can't think of a use for beyond what I can already do with what I have. I would much rather have a NEXT system personally, but the Video Toaster is about the only thing that I have ever seen for an Amiga that would give me an excuse to actually use an Amiga, if just for a little while till I got bored with it I guess. I have a similar JVC vcr, except mine is black. Picked it up for a couple dollars at a thrift store years ago. Mine works great but I seldom use it because SVIDEO decks that work have gone up in price, and I have a couple other VCR's that are working just fine as it is. I personally thought that JVC unit was built very cheaply, as were most units at the "turn of the century" and after, but it does it's job for now. Good to know about the gear thing on those. Knock on wood, heh wood, my Sharp from 1993 is still working like a champ as good as ever, though the display has dimmed a little since it was new. Sharp made some really good stuff at one point, can't say I ever had a bad product from them. I have a Sharp LCD TV since 2007, a cd player from 1991 and the vcr and all working just great. Panasonic though, IDK, while they have a reputation with the Technics line of products, I never really found Panasonic to be leaps and bounds better than anyone else. Seems like their stuff breaks just as much if not more than other brands that are thought of to be a cheap brand. Those Panasonic AG-1980 and similar models of editing VCR's are always up for sale broken and wanting a lot of money for them. Nice looking units but damn, seems like those were a less than par unit with how many of them have broke over the years, and we're talking about more than a simple belt problem too. Didn't you have something else you thought came from a Mental Health facility? Hey with all of these little CRT monitors you got now, you should keep warm in the winter with those on! I'm curious to see where the heck you put those with all that space you don't have there. Edited by waybacktech 2017-09-21 5:00 PM | ||
Deksor |
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Chips 386 Posts: 34 | I just received that screen : http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-sharp-LM121SS1T509-LM121SS1T53-12-1-800... (I didn't pay that much though. I "only" paid 20€ including shipping) to replace that one : http://www.ebay.fr/itm/IBM-Thinkpad-760EL-LCD-Screen-46H3600-/23221... According to the thinkwiki they're the same ... except that they're NOT ! They look pretty much the same, but the circuitry is different and sadly the connector don't fit AT ALL. The most annoying thing is to see that in the US the "good" screen is cheap while there's none in europe (or at prohibitive prices) and shiping the US units to europe costs way too much I thought I was finally done with old pentium laptops, that finally I'd have one that would allow me to game properly as it doesn't have these crappy CSTN screens ... but nope :'( | ||
CyrixInstead |
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Intel P5 Posts: 85 Location: UK | You know I'm sure I've heard that In my dream song before, just can't place it. Very well done anyhow | ||
CyrixInstead |
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Intel P5 Posts: 85 Location: UK | As to the Amiga, I think they are wonderful machines, but for me are used as nothing more than games consoles, that has always been the case too. I bought my 500 back in 1988, was a pretty expensive purchase back then, £400 or so. At the time I was working for a local newspaper as a junior reporter(one of my first ever jobs, and one of the most fun), we had Amstrad PCW 8512 machines with Locoscript word processor , now for those of you who might not be familiar with these very forgotten machines today, they were pretty much an entire serious use machine with everything you'd need right out of the box, CP/M, Locoscript, a great BASIC, Z80 512K computer, disc drive, green 80-column monitor, nice keyboard for typing and even a decent enough quality printer for that same £400 yep less than 1/4 the price of a IBM XT or Apple Mac never mind the printer. Locoscript was very powerful once you'd learned it's system, the keyboard was good and the the screen was easy on the eyes. In my opinion the PCW was the best 8-bit machine to be made for actual work and certainly Amstrad's finest product. A large number of British authors cut their teeth on the PCW, I wonder how many unfinished novels are now rotting away on those non standard 3 inch disks in shed and lofts? To have made the Amiga as useful as the PCW at the time would have cost perhaps £1500, and the only WP program I saw was frankly crap in comparison. but it made a bloody excellent games system, no doubt of that! | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | Ohh yeaa... I remember them PCW's. They were real workhorses. :-) I only know of one person that were actually using them. Though they were really nice systems and the floppy disks were something strange to look at. He used it to write fantasy novels on. That was around 1996 or something like that, so he got it really late. Regarding work being done on Amiga's. Then I know about two persons that used it for real work. One did all his highschool work in wordworth on an A1200. The other used his A1200 for programming in tech college. He was programming in machine code, doing the initial code by hand, using paper and pencil. When he got home after school, he typed in the code and so on. | ||
DXZeff |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | @WaybackTech; Still no toaster for me, I like the thing, I find it interesting, but I cannot justify owning one at all. Sharp were pretty good, or they were from what I've used from them, Mullet Man's boombox is a Sharp and they had a great reputation in that field. With VCRs I always liked Ferguson and Roadstar, nobody ever mentions them yet those are the units which have outlasted everything else, unfortunately they're mono units with limited capabilities, the Roadstar is especially cool because of its yellow gas display, most of them are blue. The drum is slowly giving in to age on that one however and the speed detection isn't as reliable as it once was. It is also a 1993 unit. Panasonic do one thing well, cheap camcorders often under the JVC brand, they easily outdo anything else in the same price range. I used to like the Sanyo stereos as well, but I'm heavily biased on that one of course, still rocking that GXT 7000. Not sure about other stuff from mental health, possibly. Unfortunately the video wall has nowhere to live here, but the small monitors are seeing use from time to time, usually to watch audio levels or to use with machines I can't be bothered to move when testing things, I intend to restore the wall some day, in some way. @Deksor; Obviously I already saw this on Discord, but yeah, that really sucks, I can't even think of a way around this either as it isn't like the screen fits anything else you have as far as I am aware. I've learned (sometimes the hard way) over the years that information online cannot always be trusted. @CyrixInstead; Long story behind the song, a very peculiar one, not sure I want to even attempt to explain it, I may do so, some time. As I look at PCW 8512 I have a memory of a machine like that, I am almost certain the local newspaper still had just a few running in the 90s when we went there with my school and that they used it for some specific task. If I remember correctly the newer systems, seemingly just PCs, handled pages with color graphics and articles where the older systems still did the bulk of the work because it worked out faster and the software apparently more capable in that regard, I could be wrong though, it was ~20 years ago. I swear it was those, seems journalism was their thing then. I distinctly remember the editor they used on that system not being WYSIWYG. I wrote my novel in Microsoft Word 97, hopefully this doesn't cause me problems down the line, using my Toshiba 410CDT, I'm almost finished. Determined to publish it, just to say I did it, I don't care how badly it fails, the characters are kinda horrible, it just seems like one of those things you have to try and do before you get old and boring. @Brostenen; I'm sure some graphics and music for DOS stuff would have been created with Amiga systems at one time, DOS used to really suck at that stuff and it wouldn't surprise me if creating assets on the Amiga and converting them over was faster or easier in some way. ---------- My Akai sampler is going to paperweight. The OS disk is dying and I can't write a new one, can't copy or even image the old one, can't use emulators in the sampler. Akai were morons, truly, to a level I have not seen before, sucks to see a perfectly working unit becoming useless because of a dumb floppy disk. Not sure what to replace it with when it goes, no point buying another used OS disk, it'll just die too. The S samplers of the time have a distinct sound quality that I want, but they all suffer these issues. I could go for the more popular 1000 as getting those over to solid state is better documented, but they're far too costly in working condition and the screens use an EL strip, like the Korg, something which is also prone to failure and difficult to repair without busting the screen. Before Akai's retarded disk writer - oddly, DOS only, yet the sampler was only supported on Mac, go figure. It also asks for the wrong disk type, a density the sampler cannot read but fails either way and mangles the disks regardless - destroys every diskette in the world I gave up and worked on something else. | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | #DXZeff: True... Between 1987 and 1992, most games on the Amiga dwarfed MS-Dos games by miles. I say most, because around some 90/91, Dos games would steadily become better than Amiga games. It was slow, yet by 1993, the Amiga was in fact the underdog. For media created on the Amiga. I know of one example wich is Pinball Fantasies. The music was created in a Tracker program, and directly converted to the pc. Regarding Amiga being better. We must allways think of what consumers had access to and what was normally sold to consumers. Shure MT32 dwarfed any Amiga, and only about 10 Amiga games ever supported MT32 or Midi devices. Yet PC owners did not have money for MT32 stuff. Basically speaking.... Yes the Amiga was better as such, compared to other platforms. And only between 1987 and 1992, and only for video editing, sound production, games and only in configurations that a normal consumer could afford. Wich makes the Amiga kind of short lived. Yet it is an amazing machine. Simply awesomme on its terms. | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | Been batteling with the VLB Controller card, that I bought. It is working 100% and not bad for some 8 US Dollars I might say. DXZeff was right. It is indeed a Pine controller. More accurate a "Pine PT-627 VLB Controller". Now... I had some issues getting the darn thing to run perfectly. It turns out that I had to set "DRQ" jumper from disabled to 3. After that, it would detect my 16gb Seagate drive (as a 8gb drive) and I was able to partition the drive. Before that, even a simple 512mb CF card would not run. Only a 540mb Seagate platter drive. If someone knows anything about that controller, I would know if DRQ is dma request. And I would really like to know what that so called "DACK" setting is. That is something not even google can answer. The card is now in my Dx2-80 system. It is a nice system as it is right now.... - Abit AH4T Motherboard. - Amd 486-dx2-80 CPU. - 16mb 60ns Ram. - Spea7/mirage7 (or something like that) S3-805 VLB. - Pine PT-627 VLB Controller. - Creative Labs CT2890 Vibra16 with OPL-Chip. - Seagate 16gb HDD (the model with a kind of black rubber around) - CD-Rom drive (old 8 speed) - 1.44mb Floppy A quick and dirty benchmark, gave some 3.1 to 3.2 mb readspeed on the HDD, around 6.5ms seektime and 3D-Bench gave some 52 to 53. Doom 1 and 2 runs butter smooth, Dynablaster runs with all the sound, and no vertical spaghetti lines on a LCD monitor. What a beauty that machine is. Actually that exact setup I was drooling over, in december 1994. This machine has nearly the same feel that my Dx2-66 had. The one I owned from 1995 to 1999. So I am quite pleased with this build. Only minus is, that I really would like to own an Iwill Side JR Pro VLB controller again. Yet they are nowere to be found these days. If only I had kept that card, as it was so insanely awesomme. Edited by Brostenen 2017-09-29 12:07 AM | ||
DXZeff |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | Indeed, I always placed 1993 as being around the time when DOS started to overtake... took long enough. DACK to me suggests "DMA Acknowledge" but I could be wrong. On my POD board they are both set to 3, that's on the motherboard though, not a separate card, but it does use VLB. Think it's the same UMC chip on the board to be honest. But yeah, seems like a good enough system, I'm of the mind of "anything but Sound Blaster" by now but they work, I get the impression that's what you were going for instead of screwing around with things every time you want something to run. Where I worked all the "Time" systems had those drives with the rubber straps around them, we used to call them the 'pointless panties' or 'stupid drive bikini' more often than not from what I remember, Seagate claimed it improved drive reliability somehow. Don't know anything about that Iwill card, but if it's a caching controller they do come up from time to time, just not that brand and be prepared to sell the house to pay for it. Anyway, some stuff still isn't here and the quad monitor is declared lost. On the up side - Currently running on broken RAM. Old BIOS version also has a few issues, but I can update it, don't have the ROM image from the other board. This board is immaculate, shame it is missing the USB / PS/2 card like my old one, wonder if I could make one to be honest, shouldn't be too hard to figure out what's going on there. Odd that the CPU is reporting 400MHz when set to 2x66 - the fastest the busted RAM will boot at, have working modules that need cleaning - but it will do that at 5x100 too because the old one did. Amusingly Chaintech never intended this board to run anything faster than a K6-2-300 where TMC meant for theirs to go faster. Hopefully this thing works out as well as the old one. I did also manage to dump the original OS disk for the Akai, but I'm sick of messing with it and can't write a new one reliably, nor am I prepared to run on floppies forever, so; Needs a new backlight and I will replace the SCSI drive with flash of some kind in the future, this is well documented and far less complicated on the S3000 series. Almost got an S1000 which is kinda what I set out to get, but I think I can get the muddiness out of the S3200 and it does more stuff whilst costing less even after the fixes it will need, plus it's pretty much maxed out already, even has the optical board in there. Just a reminder, 486u and I fixed the image tags, so you don't have to worry about resizing images or using weird tags anymore, you should be able to just copy / paste the ones from Imgur or whatever you're using now. You might have to hit "CRTL + SHIFT + R" / "SHIFT + F5" in Chrome, "CTRL + SHIFT + R" / "CTRL + F5" in FireFox, should be similar in IE and Edge. Hopefully this works and you don't have to reset your browser's cache. Edited by DXZeff 2017-10-03 5:28 PM | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | #DXZeff: Nice board. It is not one of them "got all bells and wistles" like being an ATX board or anything like that. You know... GA-5AX, PA-2013 or P5A. Though a board wich looks like it is a decent board, still retaining early 90's feel of a motherboard. I like how it has both ATX and AT power connectors. :-P It's funny... It reminds me of that Epox MVP3-C board that I once had, and sold off in order to get money for Socket3 stuff... I found what DACK is. Yeah... It is DMA Acknowledge. Been told that it has to be set at the same as DMA request. So I have it set to DMA-3. My soundblaster uses 5-5-1 for IRQ/DMA. Nothing like a bit of conflicting stuff. :-D I am quite pleased with my Dx2-80 build. Working like a champ, and fits that 1989/1993 gap beautifully. I have that 486dx4-120 and that 5x86-133 systems, for later Dos gaming. And for really late era Dos gaming, I have that P-166 system. For early Dos gaming, I have that Unisys Pw/2 Series 300, that are an 286-8/10mhz system, with Vga and YMF-719 card plus 40mb SCSI harddrive. External SCSI CD-Rom drive on that Unisys as well. That system is for 1984 to 1989 games. For Win98 setups, I have a K6-III-400 (Voodoo2/TNT2-setup) and a P-III-933 were I swap AGP cards from time to time, just for gaming on a different card. Only changing AGP cards in that system, and I have a mix of GF2/3/4, Matrox-G400max and Voodoo3-3500 to choose from. The oldest rigs are build to a certain spec's and will not be exposed to any swapping of hardware. | ||
waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | Jumping waist deep into another K6 project huh? Hope it goes better than the last one. Seems like a typical MVP3 board from the looks of it. Shouldn't be any real surprises. Back when these boards were new, when I would purchase one they never came with that USB/PS/2 card / cables, and those were always an extra purchase either wasn't stocked or wanted a shit load of cash for, though they would be sometimes kind enough to show you a picture of the card you needed in the manual. In fact I am pretty sure my FIC 503+ is like that actually which I bought new in '99. | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | Bought yet another controller..... This time from Italy. 20 Euro plus 13 Euro in shipping fee. (Sellers picture) (caching-isa-controller.jpg) Attachments ---------------- caching-isa-controller.jpg (409KB - 492 downloads) | ||
DXZeff |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | @Brostenen; Haha, I like the little 80186 in the middle of the card, now you can claim to have a Dual-CPU machine running. @WaybackTech; That board is the same model I had before, in the K6 which worked. It seems quite unlikely that it will present any problems. -------------------------------------- On another note, the sampler is here, seems to be working aside from a flaky floppy drive. Still, as it doesn't need that to load the OS (Which is in ROM) and I will be swapping the floptical storage for flash down the line, I'm not really bothered. In the meantime the backlight isn't as dead as I thought, so I can dabble with it already until I've got the funds to replace that. Seems my image didn't show up last time, so here - Edited by DXZeff 2017-10-06 9:42 PM | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | #DXZeff: That is a nice looking piece of equipment that you got there. I do not play music, yet that one looks like a nice one. If you make some recordings with the use of it. Then I will be looking forward to hear it. :-) Regarding the controller card. Now you mention that 80186 CPU. Yeah... I have not noticed it before you brought it up. Have always wondered how something with a 186 will operate. Dual CPU. Nice. Never thought that I would even own one in something. What was the idea behind the 186 CPU? I know that the old Danish answer to BBC micro's was running 186's and CP/M operating systems. They were named Picoline, and I have been using one, back in school. | ||
waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | Akai was pretty high end stuff. I bet this cost quite a few pretty pennies when they were new. Every time I see the name Akai I think of Y2Khai | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | Bought one of these It is an LCD monitor, that can synch to 15khz. Going to buy a buffered Amiga-RGB to VGA adaptor too. For what I can see on youtube, it will display beautifully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd-S8Ce6QA8 EDIT: Acording to the link below... It will work on Atari Falcon030 as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoLnpnUhlGY Edited by Brostenen 2017-10-08 5:54 PM | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | For the 15khz monitor, I have just paid for an RGB-VGA adaptor. (19 Euro including shipping) It is the second/#2 that are in metal case and it is buffered, just in case I should somehow own a bigbox Amiga in the future. I really like that it is buffered, and in a metal case. Much like the original Commodore version. As far as I understand, they are hand build. In my book, it is a big plus. Hand build in Europe. :-P (Even has a real 23pin plug) Bought it from this Amibay seller. | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | Recieved the Amiga RGB-to-Vga adaptor this week. Now I am waiting for the NEC monitor that can sync to 15khz wich I have ordered. (IMG_20171013_105958439.jpg) Attachments ---------------- IMG_20171013_105958439.jpg (554KB - 490 downloads) | ||
DXZeff |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 618 Location: Hull, UK | Well, I suppose I'll have to start work on this whole thing, all that waiting and the CGA-to-VGA converter doesn't even work with it, so filming off the screen it is. Luckily there's not much to show, you can't exactly do much with 8088 machines anyway, really. | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | DXZeff - 2017-10-20 10:10 AM Well, I suppose I'll have to start work on this whole thing, all that waiting and the CGA-to-VGA converter doesn't even work with it, so filming off the screen it is. Luckily there's not much to show, you can't exactly do much with 8088 machines anyway, really. Thats an interresting looking design. Rounded edges and such. I thought that every computer that old, had sharp edges and 90 degree angles. Hmmm... I guess it is good for restoring and using as a text editor or essay writing tool. Most interresting keyboard too. As for me... I bought some new stuff for my Amiga600: CF to PcCard adaptor, including a disk with drivers for workbench (waiting for the 4gb to arive, and will use the 512mb for transfer) The I bought the memory upgrade module in the link below... It has a lot of expandability options. a604n module Edited by Brostenen 2017-10-23 6:29 PM | ||
waybacktech |
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IDT WinChip Posts: 237 Location: USA | I sence an upcoming video in the works with that little Telecom. Interesting piece of laptop history there with that very early LCD technology, not too far away from a calculator display at that point in time. At least it is backlit! One long sought after component has turned up on ebay, for a reasonable price, new, with ram. This is, while not 100% the same board my first computer had, it is about 95% identical, with the same Eagle Memories, twinhead RTC, and physical appearancem, including chipset. Slightly better than mine was being this one has 8 memory slots instead of the 4 mine had. This will be the start of rebuilding my first computer, which I still have but I have lost the motherboard somehow that was in it. Eagle memory is rare in of itself, and I have found it to be slightly faster than other brands, so finding this whole package was great. This guy has some Amiga stuff for sale as well. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Eagle-JoinData-Systems-G486SLV-BRAND-NEW-48... Another 478 test platform. - https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-Motherboard-D33005-P4S8000-X-For-Parts... SIS chipset. Board is working fine. I will be doing a test between this and the fancy P4C800-e Deluxe. So far the bios is quite a bit more limited than the Deluxe board in terms of voltage and clock adjustments. Curious to see how the budget SIS chipset for S478 keeps up with Intel's 875P flagship chipset. Edited by waybacktech 2017-10-24 9:31 PM | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | A600 memory module arived today.... Installed it, and everything runs better. Came in this fancy box. Love the presentation. (IMG_20171026_243211851.jpg) Attachments ---------------- IMG_20171026_243211851.jpg (518KB - 530 downloads) | ||
CyrixInstead |
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Intel P5 Posts: 85 Location: UK | Just bought this lovely 386 DX 25 system as a birthday present to myself Was a very fair price, and from someone I have traded with in the past. Should be here in a week or so. specs are: - Intel 386DX 25 MHz - IIT 3C87-40 - TAM/25-O0 motherboard w/ external battery! - 8MB RAM (8x 1MB) - Trident 8900B VGA card - disk controller 2x HDD, 2x FDD - I/O card (no game port) - Seagate ST-1144A 130MB HDD - Panasonic JU-475-4AK0 5.25" 1.2MB FDD - 3.5" 1.44 FDD - AT desktop case w/ 200W power supply I love these old bonnet top AT cases, to me the machine is perfect Really looking forward to using this little machine. Here's the pictures: (DSC_0585.jpg) (DSC_0586.jpg) (DSC_0588.jpg) (DSC_0590.jpg) (DSC_0587.jpg) Attachments ---------------- DSC_0585.jpg (136KB - 482 downloads) DSC_0586.jpg (180KB - 513 downloads) DSC_0588.jpg (195KB - 492 downloads) DSC_0590.jpg (208KB - 492 downloads) DSC_0587.jpg (192KB - 479 downloads) | ||
Brostenen |
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TM Crusoe Posts: 671 | Mmmmm.... That's a nice 386 system. Love it. As for me. This below. Primaery an Amiga thing, yet I think it can be used for other stuff, like Playstation2 and so on. Upscaler with flicker fixer.... | ||
Old Guy 88 |
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Intel P5 Posts: 68 Location: N.E. Pennsylvania USA | Very nice machine here`s one for all the big spenders out there way out of my price range https://www.ebay.com/itm/Packard-Bell-Legend-68CD-Sumpreme-Multimedi... | ||
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