EVGA FX 5900 128 for $25 and a 1gb kit of rdram for $15 all from amazon, I don't do eBay for obvious reasons.

Gigabyte GV-3D1 (Dual 6600GT)

Got another MT-32 (old) in yesterday so that was fun. 😀

And I've put an 80GB hard drive in the Vaio, which runs Windows 98 perfectly. The battery definitely doesn't hold its charge that well below about 70% - it begins to drop rapidly, but you'd probably get half an hour of light use out of it.

Just picked up a Pentium Pro 200 Compaq Proliant 2500 beast...

Also a very useful 4 port startech KVM switch which allows switching with USB, DVI, VGA (both at the same time for 4 dual monitor setups!), and Audio switching as well....

I also added another sony vaio to my collection (not very retro, I know)...I really like the case design of these type of vaios (I know the 3 other ones I have are made by Foxxconn...I am not too sure about this design. From what I have seen online and on eBay, these are getting more rare and seem to have been more popular in Japan than in North America. Anyways...I have already gutted it and replaced the old S775 P4 board with an asus P5K-VM to use as a backup XP machine...the only drawback is that I cannot fit my GTX280 in this case, but I do have an older QuadroFX card that is pretty good that fits nicely. I am working on maybe finding XP drivers for the original TV tuner/video capture card that came with it to use with the revised setup since I would like to keep the S-Video out and input functionality (there are S-Video and RCA Video and stereo rear and front (hidden) inputs that I would like to keep functional).

I picked up this XPS720 for about $40 (again, not so retro). I have another one of these in the exact same color scheme that is currently doing duty as my main workstation/XP gaming rig, but this one came with a slightly inferior Core2Duo CPU, but nonetheless, I had to have it for that price. I like the unique case design.

found at the thrift store. unfortunately the screen is a bit messed up with lots of horizontal lines. its still mostly readable but still. other then that it booted up with no issues.

soviet conscript wrote:

found at the thrift store. unfortunately the screen is a bit messed up with lots of horizontal lines. its still mostly readable but still. other then that it booted up with no issues.

Very nice....I love old 286 laptops. I have a similar issue with the screen going all wonky on me with an old Tandy 1400LT I got though a local classified ad, so I just hooked it up to an external RGB monitor via the 9 pin external connector and it works like a charm. I believe that it's worth saving these old laptops even if they have issues with the screen if you can hook up to an external monitor.

Can you take some internal shots for Compaq Proliant 2500? Its awesome.

soviet conscript wrote:

found at the thrift store. unfortunately the screen is a bit messed up with lots of horizontal lines. its still mostly readable but still. other then that it booted up with no issues.

That's a gas plasma display, isn't it? Really cool to have

Auzner wrote:

soviet conscript wrote:

found at the thrift store. unfortunately the screen is a bit messed up with lots of horizontal lines. its still mostly readable but still. other then that it booted up with no issues.

That's a gas plasma display, isn't it? Really cool to have

If I'm reading the #s in the pic, and Wikipedia, correctly - yes it is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba_T3100

retrofanatic: very cool on the VAIO! Is that Dell one of the ones with the 7900GX2?

obobskivich wrote:

retrofanatic: very cool on the VAIO! Is that Dell one of the ones with the 7900GX2?

thanks...I love the VAIO's of that era and always buy them when they pop up at a good price.

As for the Dell XPS...it's supposed to have come with the 7900GX2 I believe, but instead mine had just one 7900GT...I think there was an option at one point to get two 8800GTX's in SLI configuration as well. I am using a GTX280 in my other XPS720 I have, on WinXP with a Core2Duo 6850 (1333MHz FSB) and it's surprisingly a very fast system.

retrofanatic wrote:

obobskivich wrote:

retrofanatic: very cool on the VAIO! Is that Dell one of the ones with the 7900GX2?

thanks...I love the VAIO's of that era and always buy them when they pop up at a good price.

As for the Dell XPS...it's supposed to have come with the 7900GX2 I believe, but instead mine had just one 7900GT...I think there was an option at one point to get two 8800GTX's in SLI configuration as well. I am using a GTX280 in my other XPS720 I have, on WinXP with a Core2Duo 6850 (1333MHz FSB) and it's surprisingly a very fast system.

Dell actually intro'd QuadSLI back in 2005/6, with the 7900GX2 in a two-pack "brick" - it was a monster of a machine:

(image from here: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/video/g71-part4.html and more details from here: http://hexus.net/tech/news/systems/4332-dell- … uad-sli/?page=2)

And I remember they continued the GX2s in a few iterations of the XPS, but I've never nailed down specifically which ones. 😊 They're cool cards to play around with (not that 7900GT is a slouch). 😀 If your XPS supports QuadSLI (more specifically, if it can support the GX2s - not all motherboards can) it might be worth taking a look at. 😎

Out of curiosity (I forgot to ask initially; was blinded by glorious Dell power) - how many CPUs does that Compaq have, and are you planning to keep it as a server, or turn it into a gaming box?

retrofanatic wrote:

soviet conscript wrote:

found at the thrift store. unfortunately the screen is a bit messed up with lots of horizontal lines. its still mostly readable but still. other then that it booted up with no issues.

Very nice....I love old 286 laptops. I have a similar issue with the screen going all wonky on me with an old Tandy 1400LT I got though a local classified ad, so I just hooked it up to an external RGB monitor via the 9 pin external connector and it works like a charm. I believe that it's worth saving these old laptops even if they have issues with the screen if you can hook up to an external monitor.

its has an external display port but I haven't tested it yet. I know this thing even does some weird high resolution CGA mode that the AT&t 6300 could do. I wonder what my odds of finding a dead system with a good display in the wild and swapping displays are? not good i', sure. I read there's a 5 ISA port expansion bay for this thing out there, that would be a nice find.

Stojke wrote:

Can you take some internal shots for Compaq Proliant 2500? Its awesome.

Thanks. Yeah, I am liking this computer more and more every second...I took some more pics and started a new topic for it:

My COMPAQ Proliant 2500 beast

Slaventus86 wrote:

Gigabyte GV-3D1 (Dual 6600GT) […]
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Gigabyte GV-3D1 (Dual 6600GT)

How did I miss this beauty! Haven't seen one of those in ages; hows it work out? And do you have the special motherboard for it? (I remember these came "bundled" with a Gigabyte MB)

Slaventus86 wrote:

Gigabyte GV-3D1 (Dual 6600GT) […]
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Gigabyte GV-3D1 (Dual 6600GT)

OMFG!

Wasn't there also a 6800GT version of that card that could enable SLI with a mate? Or am I just imagining something that would've been really cool to have in 2004? 🤣

soviet conscript wrote:

found at the thrift store. unfortunately the screen is a bit messed up with lots of horizontal lines. its still mostly readable […]
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found at the thrift store. unfortunately the screen is a bit messed up with lots of horizontal lines. its still mostly readable but still. other then that it booted up with no issues.

Awesome find!!

Especially with the HDD in working order, they use a proprietary interface so you can't easily replace them when they die.

I have a T3200, but the HDD died, so I installed a SCSI controller and a 2.1GB HDD, there's just enough room under the plastic shell to run the ribbon cable from the back to the HDD bay, but it's a cramped and tricky operation! 😀

obobskivich wrote:

Wasn't there also a 6800GT version of that card that could enable SLI with a mate? Or am I just imagining something that would've been really cool to have in 2004? 🤣

Looks like the 6800gt version was quite a monster:

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1901&page=1

m1919 wrote:

I can confirm what card it has when I receive the box. It's being shipped to my forwarding service; I'm not gonna have it on han […]
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3Dude wrote:

m1919 wrote:

Scored an SGI 550L Visual Workstation. […]
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Scored an SGI 550L Visual Workstation.

I have no real interest in the case, just the hardware inside. Board is an M29A based on the i840 chipset. Runs 133Mhz P3 "Xeons."

Hopefully I didn't bidsnipe anyone on here 🤣 for this.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/161287048990?ssPageNam … 984.m1497.l2649

Hello, and congrats on getting that SGI 550L computer.
I was wondering what’s the graphics card installed in that machine. I have an SGI VPro VR3 graphics card that is based on the original nvidia quadro GPU; however, have been always intrigued about the existence of a SGI VPro VR7 (Quadro2 Pro)??. Do you have any way of telling what graphics card that SGI system comes with? thanks

I can confirm what card it has when I receive the box. It's being shipped to my forwarding service; I'm not gonna have it on hand until I have it shipped up. I believe it's running a Quadro variant of some kind, most likely probably either the VR7 or V7.

Lukeno94 wrote:

Looking at the datasheet, those shipped new with either the VR7, or the V7. Strange that it has an 800 MHz Xeon fitted when the specsheet doesn't list anything below a 866 MHz unit.

It'll probably run any 133Mhz FSB Xeon. I've got a pair of 1Ghz Xeons waiting for it.

Try it with Xeon 900MHz Cascades-2M. Works fine with compaq sp750.

Check bios on your chaintech 6itm, got 3 of them with '97 bios supporting booting from cd.