OrangePC Card on IIfx

[Concorde1993]

Found the peripheral kit for the 386 card here

Seller is asking $89.99 (which I'm guessing is in US dollars). Seems tempting, although there appears to be no way of contacting the seller (besides joining their mailing list) and I'm unsure if this peripheral kit is compatible with my 486 card. The ad makes reference to a floppy disk drive controller chip, but I do not see the cable for the Apple 5.25" drive.

Is this too good to be true? What say you, 68K brethren?

 

[jeremywork]

Found the peripheral kit for the 386 card here

Seller is asking $89.99 (which I'm guessing is in US dollars). Seems tempting, although there appears to be no way of contacting the seller (besides joining their mailing list) and I'm unsure if this peripheral kit is compatible with my 486 card. The ad makes reference to a floppy disk drive controller chip, but I do not see the cable for the Apple 5.25" drive.

Is this too good to be true? What say you, 68K brethren?

This kit would suit the original Orange386, which had two ISA slots (one 16-bit, one 8) and an additional socket for the disk controller (accessed via the octopus breakout cable.)

I still have not found confirmation on what your model of card is called. It's 386-based (though some of the late 386-based chips used '486' branding) and it's a later, faster model which may have been sold as "OrangePC 200" alongside the higher spec 486 boards, or it may have assumed the Orange386 name from the prior card. I think the ports on the back are DB25 parallel and a serial DIN connector.

 

[mg.man]

the original Orange386

What a monster of a card!

 

[Concorde1993]

I still have not found confirmation on what your model of card is called.

I don't know either. You'd think with all the real estate that's on the card Orange Micro would have etched in the model number somewhere.

This kit would suit the original Orange386

So I'm guessing this is a hard pass?

 

[Unknown_K]

I have 2 of those cards, I think they are 386 S/X chips. Anyway, there are 2 sockets one for the floppy controller and one for something else and I think mine each have one chip installed.

Using the ISA expansion slots pretty much means giving up the Nubus slots next to it so I never rigged anything up in mine. The cards work well enough with the Macs built in video. Mine came with no cables as most get lost or trashed.

 

[Concorde1993]

Haven't done much with the OrangePC card in awhile. I'm currently on the lookout for a Sound Blaster card that's more in line with the 486 processor on the card (the AWE64 card I have works, but I agree with Byrd's previous assessment that the drivers are just too complex for DOS 6.1/Win 3.1).

I would like to obtain a complete boxed Sound Blaster set. Some (rather expensive) options on eBay at the moment:
(1) Sound Blaster 2.0 Deluxe (Sealed)
(2) Sound Blaster 2.0 (CT1350B) Late Revision
(3) Sound Blaster 16 Value ISA (SB-2770)

Thoughts?

 

[Byrd]

Also have a look at some of the Adlib and PicoGUS replicas being made, they are small and also good options for the era.

I ended up getting an 486 OrangePC card, no ISA slot so just got one of those $20 Covox parallel port clone devices, for low fi sound it’s pretty good. Using it in a IIci and finding full screen 320 X 200 video very slow unless I run it quarter size. Am unsure if that’s the IIci video limitations and may try it in another Mac soon.

 

[Concorde1993]

I ended up getting an 486 OrangePC card

Did it come with the unobtainium breakout cable?

 

[Byrd]

No this is the 290 which doesn’t need a cable, uses onboard video and only has COM and LPT ports along with PCMCIA slot.