The MII-400GP's might be a bit more expensive though, $10-$20 usually.

feipoa wrote:

The MII-400GP's might be a bit more expensive though, $10-$20 usually.

They don't come up very often either . . . mostly in scrap lots from what I've seen recently (and often it's hard to tell if there's no list of chips and limited quality pictures). And, unless you want to invest in a load of mixed old CPUs in unknown condition for a fair chunk of cash, that's not a very good option either. (some of those lots are in worse cases than others -and some imply that most/all of the chips are broken) Plus, some lots seem to sell for more than their practical value as scrap too (ie more than the gold content-processing costs) . . . makes you wonder how well informed some scrap-buyers are. (or how many of those scrap-only auctions are actually won by tech dealers/collectors -if they bought the lots, tested the CPUs for mostly working and re-sold the more marketable ones -maybe even some broken ones with collector interest- that would make sense too -though poorly-informed scrap buyers is also a real possibility)

I bought two MII-400GP's within the past 2 months, so I know they are still out there. It only took me about 2 weeks of asking around to find the first one, and another 3 weeks to find the second. You need to actively hunt down the eBay scrappers and ask them exactly which Cyrix MII's are in the scrap lot. I used to inquire about MII-366GP 2.2V, -400GP, and -433GP, but now only ask about the 433GP because I have enough of the others. I will probably never find the 433GP and have slowed my inquiries for now. You need to be willing to accept CPUs as-is if you want any chance of getting them. Most of the scrap sellers were more than willing to piece out their not-yet-bidded lot if you break down for them how much they get for each CPU in a lot, which is generally between $2-8. If you mention that you'll pay DOUBLE for a singe CPU ($10-15 each), their ears perk up. I also like to go on about loosing a part of history by destroying this CPU for gold content.

I've had discussions with gold scrappers/recycles. They are actually quite excited about how much people are over paying for CPU gold content. He said that after the extraction (he also extracts), most of his eBay buyers can only break even if lucky. The only way that will make any profit is if gold prices continue to rise.

If you are really determined about a particular CPU (as I usually am), you can message sellers on CPU-world who you think may have the CPU you need based on the type of CPUs they have sold in the past on public listings. This has worked fantastically for me. This also works for messaging eBay sellers who have sold a lot of your class of CPU. The key elbow grease from you, the buyer, is perseverance.

feipoa wrote:

I've had discussions with gold scrappers/recycles. They are actually quite excited about how much people are over paying for CPU gold content. He said that after the extraction (he also extracts), most of his eBay buyers can only break even if lucky. The only way that will make any profit is if gold prices continue to rise.

It looks like recycling circuit boards is a much more practical gold-reclaiming option. (much less gold per-weight, but a much better value and much broader scrap market -especially if you can find a local source) Actually, that's what most DIY gold recycling guides were suggesting/promoting a few years ago when I first noticed it going on on ebay.

[/quote]If you are really determined about a particular CPU (as I usually am), you can message sellers on CPU-world who you think may have the CPU you need based on the type of CPUs they have sold in the past on public listings. This has worked fantastically for me. This also works for messaging eBay sellers who have sold a lot of your class of CPU. The key elbow grease from you, the buyer, is perseverance.[/quote]
Good points, I'll keep that in mind, but I'm definitely not as deep into this as you (let alone experienced), so I'm probably going to stay on the casual and low-budget side of this for now. (that, and I might end up finding some more of my dad's own old parts, though that probably won't include any 6x86s -it could include a 486DLC and Pentium Overdrive though, and I recently found a 386-20, AMD 8088, and NEC V30 😉)

And back on the original topic of this thread: it's interesting that 3DBench was significnatly faster for the 6x86MX-200(166) vs K6-200, but the integer and floating point benchmarks were both lower. (I'd imagine 3DBench is integer-only in any case)

OK, here's something funny.

Windows 98SE, I can shut down properly, but if I try to restart, Windows hangs while booting.

It seems OK if I restart Windows, but hit the reset button when the POST screen appears, to do a cold reset.

Any ideas?

SquallStrife wrote:

OK, here's something funny. […]
Show full quote

OK, here's something funny.

Windows 98SE, I can shut down properly, but if I try to restart, Windows hangs while booting.

It seems OK if I restart Windows, but hit the reset button when the POST screen appears, to do a cold reset.

Any ideas?

This happens routinely on my 486, but the system is still able to reboot, but the network card will not function. Everything else will work fine. If I cold reboot the system, the network card works as expected. I think it has something to do with Windows 98 and the BIOS not releasing various system resources at soft reboot. This seems to be a problem specific to Windows 98 as this issue does not occur in NT 4.0, nor Win2000 on the same 486 system. I have not bothered to investigate this further since I only use Win98SE for testing and do not need to soft-reboot much. If you find a solution, please let me know.