Thunderbird 700, the plan is to use a GFD and get this specimen to reach 900 or more.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-01-19, 12:40:

Today's shopping proved rather nice.

Very nice catch. May I ask where you are able to get all this awesome gear? In Australia, Queensland it’s illegal to sell any electrical equipment at recycle centers so everything goes to the dump 🙁

PD2JK wrote on 2024-01-19, 17:40:

Thunderbird 700, the plan is to use a GFD and get this specimen to reach 900 or more.

DSC_7909.JPG

Slot A: Aiming for the stars

I recently picked up these jewels for the back of the closet:

Quadro 700XGL (Ti4400 clocks except w/64MB) (x2) on the left
Ti4600 (x2) on the right

Can you guess which one of the cards doesn't (completely) work? Boot and 2D work but loaded driver results in black screen. It will be sent off for repairs in hopes it will become fully operational.

One was pulled from a working environment and stored in a cool dry place but untested.
One was guaranteed no DOA.
One was shipped like absolute crap... crap! Hall of fame laziness. See photo.
One was fully refunded by the seller and didn't want the card returned (great seller!)
One has 7+SMDs knocked off of the back.
Three of the four were completely untested.
Three of the four work beautifully.
One of the four were no returns.
One of the four were no returns except if DOA.

I got this cool ISA prototyping kit. It was brand new still sealed up. This is the first one I've seen with decode logic built in. The manual has the PAL code and schematics. It even came with the vintage 90s ICs.

zuldan wrote on 2024-01-19, 21:03:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-01-19, 12:40:

Today's shopping proved rather nice.

Very nice catch. May I ask where you are able to get all this awesome gear? In Australia, Queensland it’s illegal to sell any electrical equipment at recycle centers so everything goes to the dump 🙁

Classifieds, and in case of the 486 it was the same seller as the 694D Pro - we messaged back and forth on WhatsApp regarding the 694D and he happened to have the 486 for sale and a IBM 300GL as well.

The trick is that I usually try to be as fast as I can before someone else snipes it.

Similarly, the BP6 I own came from a former collector (who claimed to have had a Bull Micral 60 at one point as well) who has had to sell his stuff as his wife recently had twins, and the bunch of cards (among which I got a 2nd Adaptec 2940UW) were someone who had to clear his garage.

Meatball wrote on 2024-01-19, 22:47:

I recently picked up these jewels for the back of the closet: […]
Show full quote

I recently picked up these jewels for the back of the closet:

Quadro 700XGL (Ti4400 clocks except w/64MB) (x2) on the left
Ti4600 (x2) on the right

Can you guess which one of the cards doesn't (completely) work? Boot and 2D work but loaded driver results in black screen. It will be sent off for repairs in hopes it will become fully operational.

One was pulled from a working environment and stored in a cool dry place but untested.
One was guaranteed no DOA.
One was shipped like absolute crap... crap! Hall of fame laziness. See photo.
One was fully refunded by the seller and didn't want the card returned (great seller!)
One has 7+SMDs knocked off of the back.
Three of the four were completely untested.
Three of the four work beautifully.
One of the four were no returns.
One of the four were no returns except if DOA.

I wanna say the Leadtek - I know of at least one card similar to that that does weird stuff similar to what you're saying, for sale over here in Romania. Although the twist to that one is that it'll only do it once, and if you restart the PC, it works but at half the memory that's installed on it (64MB instead of 128MB)

Recently got this ABit BE6-II motherboard.

Interestedly, it's got a silkscreen error labeling it as a ABit BF6.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-01-19, 23:43:

Recently got this ABit BE6-II motherboard.

Interestedly, it's got a silkscreen error labeling it as a ABit BF6.

Abit BE6-II.jpg

There were a good number with this silk screen error, usually they have an orange sticker over the BF6 relabeling it as a BE6 II, this sticker is specific to the Rev2 model only, since your board has the 370 HP controller you have the best version of the BE6II.

Rev2 is one hell of a board and you can happily run a 1.133 Ghz 133 FSB Coppermine on this board with a Slotket. The Rev2 went on to become the ABIT BX133 Raid with the addition of a Raid controller.

Ah I got another one even though I don't really have room for them now - the plan is to make one good one from this and another parts machine with a bad VGA chip on the mainboard. I don't think I've ever seen a computer this dirty before, the palm-rest has been washed in the sink and look at how it cleaned up!
For the cleaning on the top of the lid I found that Isopropyl alcohol didn't touch it but melamine sponge did, then I found that regular old soap gets it all very clean. I think it's cigarette smoke stuff attached to the outside of the case?

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-01-20, 00:41:

Ah I got another one even though I don't really have room for them now - the plan is to make one good one from this and another parts machine with a bad VGA chip on the mainboard. I don't think I've ever seen a computer this dirty before, the palm-rest has been washed in the sink and look at how it cleaned up!
For the cleaning on the top of the lid I found that Isopropyl alcohol didn't touch it but melamine sponge did, then I found that regular old soap gets it all very clean. I think it's cigarette smoke stuff attached to the outside of the case?

I used to work on computers that mechanics used to hook up to truck engines. If they've been sitting in a shop exposed to diesel exhaust and shop grime for a few years, they'd end up looking like that. We tried a bunch of things and dish soap ended up working the best, probably because it's meant to clean grease. For any plastic parts, we'd soak them for a few hours in dish soap and the grime would come off easily. Obviously, you can't soak the entire laptop, but it might be worth trying something like soaking paper towels in dish soap and leaving them on the laptop for a few hours. I'm sure you could think of a way to make sure none of the electronics get wet, like covering the ports in plastic wrap.

Not a lot of stuff recently.
I got a 7950GX2 and a Radeon 2900XT but both were artifacting and i got my money back. (20€ each). I could keep the cards so I will definitely try to fix the problem with my hot air station.

Yesterday I got this P3 800 100fsb for my "best of 1999" system. It was the best PIII available (on paper) in 1999.It will replace the 700mhz I have and ill see if it overclocks above 1GHz.

Today I got a 80-conductor IDE UDMA66/100/133 cable and a ASUS CD-S520/A 52x max CD-ROM drive (IDE). Any opinions?

This one popped up on my local auction site. Since Matrox was missing from my collection I got it.

Back in the days I had G200. Still remember that Matrox failed to deliver proper OpenGL drivers. Well at least for Quake they provided mini driver and I remember it worked well with Quake II.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-01-20, 00:41:

I found that Isopropyl alcohol didn't touch it but melamine sponge did, then I found that regular old soap gets it all very clean. I think it's cigarette smoke stuff attached to the outside of the case?

Citrus based cleaners like Goo Gone are your best friend for things that isopropyl won't break up on its own. I've also used Dawn dish soap for anything that has a lot of grease.

Once you find what works for you, it would be advisable to disassemble everything to bits to make sure you've gotten everything clean.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-01-19, 23:09:

I wanna say the Leadtek - I know of at least one card similar to that that does weird stuff similar to what you're saying, for sale over here in Romania. Although the twist to that one is that it'll only do it once, and if you restart the PC, it works but at half the memory that's installed on it (64MB instead of 128MB)

The Dell OEM Ti4600 (top right) is the bad one. Many SMDs knocked off along with a nicely 'bowed' PCB.

The WinFast Ti4600 was shipped with no ESD protection, a thin and loosely wrapped bubble, and then shipped bouncing around in a bubble-wrap mailer. It works just fine and arrived undamaged, amazingly. It looks barely used, also. I'm going to try it out one more time in a week to see if it's still OK before I leave feedback for the seller.

I try to have all IBM Branded in my IBM computer, even Hard disk and RAM. This is for my PentiumII/III class IBM

Meatball wrote on 2024-01-20, 15:26:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-01-19, 23:09:

I wanna say the Leadtek - I know of at least one card similar to that that does weird stuff similar to what you're saying, for sale over here in Romania. Although the twist to that one is that it'll only do it once, and if you restart the PC, it works but at half the memory that's installed on it (64MB instead of 128MB)

The Dell OEM Ti4600 (top right) is the bad one. Many SMDs knocked off along with a nicely 'bowed' PCB.

The WinFast Ti4600 was shipped with no ESD protection, a thin and loosely wrapped bubble, and then shipped bouncing around in a bubble-wrap mailer. It works just fine and arrived undamaged, amazingly. It looks barely used, also. I'm going to try it out one more time in a week to see if it's still OK before I leave feedback for the seller.

Ouch. If the PCB wasn't bowed, and it's the card that you can't return, you could try to check if adding the SMDs back would work.
I just recently had to place back around a similar amount (9 SMDs total) on a Palit Daytona GF2 MX400. Worked fine but had some blue lines across the screen on higher resolutions. Added them back and the lines went away.

AlessandroB wrote on 2024-01-20, 16:22:

I try to have all IBM Branded in my IBM computer, even Hard disk and RAM. This is for my PentiumII/III class IBM

Beware of IBM "Deathstar" drives.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deskstar

I used to buy IBM branded drives in the 90s, believing that they would carry the brand reliability. I don't remember the details of the failure exactly, but I think my 80GB drive suddenly began reporting itself as having a capacity of 8MB everywhere, including my bootable partition manager. All data was lost.

I had been wanting another one of these 5000 series Presarios after a few years of not having one so I got one of the better specced ones Compaq ever made. Unfortunately the front panel is in pretty bad shape behind the translucent plastics and I can't find a replacement for sale on eBay...

supercordo wrote on 2024-01-19, 22:35:

PD2JK wrote on 2024-01-19, 17:40:

Thunderbird 700, the plan is to use a GFD and get this specimen to reach 900 or more.

DSC_7909.JPG

Slot A: Aiming for the stars

Asus K7M with missing caps is on the way. I'll post there in a few weeks!