there is no power brick on these armadas. Another reason why I love using these. It's internal and uses a standard power cable (somewhat)
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Planet Zaxxon
Lazerbeat wrote:
It looks switchable to me! is that from the power brick? Does it have the output on it?
I got the specs about the power from CNET:
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Tokyo, Japan
Holy wow. That looks to me like they take 100v to 240v. Monitoring ebay uk like a hawk now, thanks. Heavy ass unit though!
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Planet Zaxxon
Yea they are bulky, but worth it and solid! 
they are getting hard to find these days, but when you do, you can be like... CHA CHING!
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London, UK
So, I searched the evilbay for some compaq/toshiba and I was lucky enough to win both a Tecra 8000 and a Compaq Armada 7400..
can anyone confirm/deny that they have the proper chip? which one is better? not talking about hardware specs as I already know the Tecra 8000 is better, I am just concerned about the quality of sound/latency etcetera.
any help appreciated
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Planet Zaxxon
I have tried out a 7400, seems good to me. I am not sure what exact version of the ESS it has, but worked with no issues with Impulse Tracker, Adlib Tracker II, and all the games I tried.
I am not familiar first hand with any Toshiba (or Tecra) brands. It's nice that they are Pentium II's though!
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Tokyo, Japan
o2star isnt it about time you dropped a monster of an adlibtracker 2 album?
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Planet Zaxxon
Lazerbeat wrote:
o2star isnt it about time you dropped a monster of an adlibtracker 2 album?
I have retired. But my homie Warez Waldo has his album coming out next month. 12 tracks all adlib tracker II, with some alpha juno synth on it.
https://soundcloud.com/planet-zaxxon/sets/warez-waldo
Last edited by O2star (Sep 17, 2014 4:10 pm)
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Tokyo, Japan
Awesome, my buddy Copl3PO wants to do an adlib ep maybe with a little SID after we find a nice laptop!
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Planet Zaxxon
Copl3PO, NOW THAT IS A NAME.
Lazerbeat wrote:
Awesome, my buddy Copl3PO wants to do an adlib ep maybe with a little SID after we find a nice laptop!
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Planet Zaxxon
New model to add:
Compaq Presario 1640.
This one has some neat features:
JBLpro Speakers
Tiny LCD display to monitor battery live and things
MAX ram is only 96 mb, but thats ok.
ESS AUDIODRIVE 1869, which is fully sb16 compatible.
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Jelly Stone park, MD USA
O2star wrote:
New model to add:
Compaq Presario 1640.
This one has some neat features:
JBLpro Speakers
Tiny LCD display to monitor battery live and things
MAX ram is only 96 mb, but thats ok.
ESS AUDIODRIVE 1869, which is fully sb16 compatible.
Does the ESS chip ;emulate the OPL or is it a 'real' FM? I've got a 1625 that needs a HD, but had no idea it may be good for AdLib II. I'll have to spend some time sorting it out!
Yogi
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Italy
yogi wrote:
O2star wrote:New model to add:
Compaq Presario 1640.
This one has some neat features:
JBLpro Speakers
Tiny LCD display to monitor battery live and things
MAX ram is only 96 mb, but thats ok.
ESS AUDIODRIVE 1869, which is fully sb16 compatible.
Does the ESS chip ;emulate the OPL or is it a 'real' FM? I've got a 1625 that needs a HD, but had no idea it may be good for AdLib II. I'll have to spend some time sorting it out!
Yogi
Seconding that question for another ESS chipset... Does anyone know about this?
http://www.cnet.com/products/compaq-arm … ies/specs/
I'm afraid it's too "new" to be part of the full sb16 compatibility era, still CNET claims it has Sb16/pro compatibility.
What I'm specifically interested in, of course, is the ESS Maestro-2E. If anyone knows about it, let me know please! I've found a bunch of these laptops in good conditions on ebay and even if they are a bit pricey they seem to be in an almost perfect shape, also coming with a new power supply.
They'd totally rock if they were good with adlib tracker
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London, UK
I second the seconder (secondception), got a buddy with an E500 and he's also interested whether it's viable for a good sound or not 
Merutochan wrote:
Seconding that question for another ESS chipset... Does anyone know about this?
http://www.cnet.com/products/compaq-arm … ies/specs/
I'm afraid it's too "new" to be part of the full sb16 compatibility era, still CNET claims it has Sb16/pro compatibility.
What I'm specifically interested in, of course, is the ESS Maestro-2E. If anyone knows about it, let me know please! I've found a bunch of these laptops in good conditions on ebay and even if they are a bit pricey they seem to be in an almost perfect shape, also coming with a new power supply.They'd totally rock if they were good with adlib tracker
Last edited by Sonic Boy (Sep 22, 2014 11:25 am)
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Planet Zaxxon
I was under the impression that almost all of the ESS cards are just emulated SB16. Some older ones, may have had an actual opl3 chip on it, but these later ESS ones emulate SB16, hence being SB16 compatible.
The ESS Maestro-2E, is not SB16 compatible. Well, easily. I tried and tried with that one and could never get MSDOS to detect it. I looked on some other forums and people who actually did get it to work, said it sounded very thin and the worst ESS they have heard. So I gave up on the ESS Maestro-2E cards, heh.
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Planet Zaxxon
I found this neat application for MS-DOS a while back, and it works for the ESS AUDIODRIVE cards too. "SBVOL.EXE," It allows you to adjust master output as well as the master volume of the FM chip. Or even your line input. You can download it here:
http://www.planetzaxxon.com/sbvol.zp
