vetz wrote:

Also got this Zenith Service manual for my Zenith Z-386/20 machine I got for free earlier. It's a great addition to the system! It has insane amount of details and it also include manuals for other contemporary Zenith computers if anyone is interested. I now know every jumper on the whole motherboard and their functions. It also explains the BIOS in very high detail and the function behind the LED diagnostic lights. It also contains the business card of the repair person who used to own it as well as confidential papers on replacement parts and Zenith's testing results.

Today's documentation really does reflect how commodified computers have become, even parts; references like this were a labour of love for the manufacturer I'm sure, and back in the day most of us did RTFM 🤣

Speaking of which, I just spent some time looking through the manual for this beautiful specimen that I purchased recently:

It's an LTE Elite 4/75, a 486SL DX4/75 with 8MB RAM and 340MB drive. I'm a vintage Thinkpad man at heart, and even worked for Big Blue for a time, but this is a sensational little machine. Stacks up well next to my 755CD, the onboard power supply is so handy. Screen mounted trackball actually feels kind of natural. Hope to have more time to spend playing with it soon.

Also bought the bottom case recently, to add to the beige stack in my "cupboard of shame":

It must have had a 386 or 486 whose battery leaked as it has a little acid damage at the rear; nothing too concerning. As a bonus, all of the expansion cards are still screwed to the backplane, which I am yet to check out, and it has an AT PSU inside. The smoked plastic cover over the LED is a nice touch too. Plan is for a 486DX2/66 build (provided my board still works).

Stojke wrote:

Damn thats expensive, when i bought mine boxed Ultrasound max i paid 5$.

Been on the lookout for a cheap Gravis Ultrasound for 3 years, nothing... I've been lucky with other rare hardware and paid less than nothing, but the Gravis have eluded me. You win some, you loose some. Like all the Roland devices I have the most I've ever paid for one unit is 50 euro for the SC55mkII, and now I have 2x CM32L, 2x CM500, 1x MT32 and 1x boxed MU80. All that is win 😀

Since they are just going up in price I figured I'd bite the bullet and just buy a card when I saw one for a lower price than normal.

You are right about that, after some time of waiting you simply care less for how much will you spend.
When i bought my gravis and awe64g i didnt know what i had, i just started getting into the whole retro thing back than.
I didnt have any source of income and i thought that those cards may not be worth 10$ total 🤣

That Compaq laptop's screen looks in fantastic shape! Typical of Compaq to do something daft like putting the trackball there.

Lukeno94 wrote:

That Compaq laptop's screen looks in fantastic shape! Typical of Compaq to do something daft like putting the trackball there.

The whole machine is surprisingly fresh - the keyboard is barely used as well, and there are no programs on the hard disk other than the basic installation of Windows. I was surprised when it arrived. For the first time in a while I had a used keyboard that I could bear to touch without sterilising first!

JidaiGeki wrote:

Also bought the bottom case recently, to add to the beige stack in my "cupboard of shame":

Wait a minute! I can understand putting the Powermac 7200 in the "cupboard of shame", but why the Motorola Starmax and Power Computing machines? What's wrong with them? Those are actually a lot more collectible than the Apple machines because you don't see them as often.

Lukeno94 wrote:

Typical of Compaq to do something daft like putting the trackball there.

Au contraire, this trackball is exceptionally well designed (I once had the same laptop). Also I wonder why the idea with the integrated power supply didn't become more widespread, I'd love to see that in a modern subnotebook.

5u3 wrote:

Lukeno94 wrote:

Typical of Compaq to do something daft like putting the trackball there.

Au contraire, this trackball is exceptionally well designed (I once had the same laptop). Also I wonder why the idea with the integrated power supply didn't become more widespread, I'd love to see that in a modern subnotebook.

Basically, any laptop without a PSU would sell better as it would be lighter and smaller than the same one with a PSU. Besides, given how hot mid to high-end laptops run, the farther away from the PSU the better.

It actually was fairly widespread in the early days, but companies moved away from it as laptops needed to get smaller, and as laptops got more powerful and hotter. Toshiba did it for years, Compaq did it a fair bit, and I'm sure far more companies did it regularly, up to probably about the middle of the Pentium era, where most companies moved away from that.

sliderider wrote:

JidaiGeki wrote:

Also bought the bottom case recently, to add to the beige stack in my "cupboard of shame":

Wait a minute! I can understand putting the Powermac 7200 in the "cupboard of shame", but why the Motorola Starmax and Power Computing machines? What's wrong with them? Those are actually a lot more collectible than the Apple machines because you don't see them as often.

🤣 as with a lot of retro comp ppl, I need to hide some things away from wife/parents/friends/children/authorities, hence the shame 😀

Of that stack, only the Mac 7220 works (it's the Asia-Pacific equivalent of a 4400), and it's my favorite of this pile (until the 486 gets built). The Starmax has battery corrosion and won't start despite a cleanup, and the PowerCenter won't boot either, despite a new battery/CUDA reset/PRAM zap.

Got 4 486 Motherboards in the mail today. One had a leaking cmos battery... not to much damage..

Cleaned the area with q-tips soaked in lemon juice..

There were 2 VLB motherboards
A FIC PIO-2 & a PC Chips PCI board with 1 VLB slot and a Cache slot

sliderider wrote:

JidaiGeki wrote:

Also bought the bottom case recently, to add to the beige stack in my "cupboard of shame":

Wait a minute! I can understand putting the Powermac 7200 in the "cupboard of shame", but why the Motorola Starmax and Power Computing machines? What's wrong with them? Those are actually a lot more collectible than the Apple machines because you don't see them as often.

It's like when people call their collection of un-played or un-finished games their "pile of shame".

It's not the games that are shameful, it's the owner! 😜

Bought a Pentium 60 in good shape for just under $20. Bought a 650 watt Antec Earthwatts for $5 and tried to convince Goodwill to allow me to purchase and save a beautiful full tower 386-pentium machine. Nope, they have a strict policy.

Yeah from all the times I've ever tried to reason with goodwill they've always been complete jerks. 😒

Plus their prices (at least in my area) seem to be getting a bit ridiculous. 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Yeah from all the times I've ever tried to reason with goodwill they've always been complete jerks. 😒

Plus their prices (at least in my area) seem to be getting a bit ridiculous. 🤣

"Good"will sucks. Their junk is overpriced and overall they are terrible.
And anything remotely good gets sold on ebay

Ya it stinks. They had an entire stack of AT class stuff today. Usually there might be a couple CRT's and a P3 in their stack but today it is like a hoarder unloaded their old stuff. First time seeing a 5.25 floppy drive any where around here.

It always annoys me when I hear of these shops that won't sell donated computers. It's almost always down to either greed (wanting to make the maximum dosh online) or ignorance (data protection-related fears).

Lukeno94 wrote:

It always annoys me when I hear of these shops that won't sell donated computers. It's almost always down to either greed (wanting to make the maximum dosh online) or ignorance (data protection-related fears).

More often it's a case of them having a contract with an electronics recycling firm, so they can't sell donated computers to anyone but them. The Goodwill locations near where I live have huge wire cages on wheels where they are required to deposit the donated computers and the cages are locked. Once they go into the cages, the only person that can open it to take them out is the recycler when he comes around to make his pick ups. Old computers take up a lot of space and take a long time to sell. They can get rid of them more quickly and free up space by selling them in bulk to a recycler than to put them out on display for the public where they might sit for months or years.

Both working fine 😀

I bought a Cambridge Soundworks for 7EUR at a thrift store 😀 Sounds great and matches my retro rig too.

Also got a couple of cards for free:
2 x ISA Etherlink III
ATi Rage IIC
+ another AGP card I cant identify