Old sleeper computer? I don't really know what the term means. 🙁

Nice internal zip drive, too!

You know what a sleeper car is right? Same idea but with computer hardware disguised in an unassuming shell.

(In case you don't a sleeper car refers to a car that is mundane looking on the exterior but under the hood it's been performance modified)

Nice AT case you got there, King_Corduroy!

That board is a PCChips M715. I have one of those, but in my case it's a dead specimen! 😁

I always wondered how well it performs. Strangely this model has an actual Intel 440LX chipset, somewhat rare for PCChips which is more associated to the renamed chipsets "VXPro", "TXPro", "BXPro".

King_Corduroy wrote:

You know what a sleeper car is right? Same idea but with computer hardware disguised in an unassuming shell.

(In case you don't a sleeper car refers to a car that is mundane looking on the exterior but under the hood it's been performance modified)

Thanks. Now I know what that is. I have only come across it once before, wich are in one of Phils videos.
Never really thought about it until now. Regarding cars, then I have never heard it before.

The V2 SLI sleeper PC?

Haha, yes, that was the idea.

A boring modern uATX case, but turn it on, and retro awesomeness is unleashed...

A problem with that idea is cooling. Having fan holes+grills in the side panel at the least will imply an awesome PC no matter the generation

King_Corduroy wrote:

Having built a modern sleeper myself I just couldn't help but share this one. It's just too cool that I stumbled onto someones old sleeper computer. 😁

The original owner probably bought an "upgrade kit" that was popular back in the day.

The idea was that rather than buying a whole new computer, you "save money" by buying a mobo+CPU+RAM kit to retrofit your existing setup (hence the bizarre AT-form Slot-1 board with the non-aligned PS/2 port).

Really you didn't save money, because you soon replaced your crappy old video card, got a bigger HDD, maybe got the newer version of Windows, spent hours of your own time assembling and troubleshooting, and before you knew it, you could have bought a whole system.

Gabe, 9, and Honour, 4, playing Wacky Wheels on a K6-equipped Aptiva.

Fighting with Eagle to design a PCB for HardMPU. 😀

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Testing and blanking all my drives with my new USB to IDE&SATA gadget. Works like a charm! […]
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Testing and blanking all my drives with my new USB to IDE&SATA gadget. Works like a charm!

I have found 3 broken drives already, what do you guys do with those? Just throw em out? Rip out the magnets? Any fun experiments?

If a drive is really non fixable in no other way i would just throw them out. If the PCB is fine i would disassemble that, perhaps the motor and the magnets. Maybe also the head if this in exellent shape.
Would hold these parts as spares. Rest i would throw it away.

If i have dead motherboards, really would go for the full 100% procent to get them back to business. If there is nothing to do to repair them (because of big damage, like big acid non-repairable damage) i would get the most usefull parts of the board.. (like pci slots / isa slot, sockets, hard to find resistors. ect.)
PCB would be scrapped.

brassicGamer wrote:

Gabe, 9, and Honour, 4, playing Wacky Wheels on a K6-equipped Aptiva.

20160820_135948-1600x900.jpg

They really got the hang of it.. Nice to see that your childeren like your computer hobby too.

Rare earth magnets are fun to play with and useful. Best refrigerator magnets ever. They can hold up a small child. 🤣

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PeterLI wrote:

Hit 80486 miles on my Avalon yesterday.

Were you going 66 MPH when it happened?

Last night i wasnable to test out the Value Village PC's. Antec P4 psu had a bad voltage regulator and a bulged out primary cap. Scrapped that and tested the rest of the system, 2.5gb of ram is good, intel 875 478 board is good, 2.8 prescott is good and the Asus ti4200 it came with was even still good! Cheapo ecs board has an e4400 on it and works great as well!

PeterLI wrote:

Hit 80486 miles on my Avalon yesterday.

Dude. Your car needs a good clean.

stamasd wrote:

Fighting with Eagle to design a PCB for HardMPU. 😀

Gave up on Eagle. It's too quirky, trying to connect nets randomly works or not, it's forcing me to use external libs then complains about the external libs etc.
Switched to KiCAD, so far works much better.

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PeterLI wrote:

I have not cleaned my car since I bought it in 2015. I do not see very well so it does not matter to me. 😀

😵