Got this g400 max for my SS7 build for a tenner. nice and cheap! apparently lots of people dont know they have g400 max and just list it as matrox video cards.. spot the 2 wire fan and your golden.

Bought a few AM2 CPUs. This era is all a bit unknown to me, so I'm doing lots of research. AM2 CPUs seem to be a lot easier to find compared to the 939, which is nice 😀

BloodyCactus wrote:

Got this g400 max for my SS7 build for a tenner. nice and cheap! apparently lots of people dont know they have g400 max and just list it as matrox video cards.. spot the 2 wire fan and your golden.

That's how I got mine. Bought it from a seller in the UK.
Was listed as an regulair g400 and not Max, at an extremely low price on eBay.
(some times there is luck on that site)

Shameless repost from here.

And now, the news you (probably weren't particularly) waiting for: I got the cards! […]
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And now, the news you (probably weren't particularly) waiting for: I got the cards!

It ended up being way easier than I thought. The club manager stopped me midway through explaining why I wanted the cards, telling me to stuff as much as I could fit in my backpack and that they would appreciate the freed space.

So, this is what I got, from left to right, top to bottom:

Accton EN1666 (ISA) Ethernet card. This will go in my 486.
Compaq Premier Sound (ISA) with an ES1869.
Voodoo3 3000 (AGP) with S-Video out. In less than two months I've gone from having nothing 3DFX at all to one Banshee, one V3 2000 and now two V3 3000s... crazy.
Geforce 2 Ultra (AGP)
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz (PCI)
Cirrus Logic GD5430 (PCI).
Geforce 256 (AGP)
Hercules Thriller 3D (PCI) with a Rendition Verite V2200. Now my Pentium rig can have a proper 3D accelerator.
ATI Rage XL (PCI)
AWE64 CT4520 (ISA) Also put this in my Pentium rig.

They have even more, too, that's free for the taking later. I've almost gotten most of the better cards in their hoard, but they still have a GF2 Ti, Trident Blade and 3DImage cards, several Matrox cards, Nvidia Vanta, and some more that I've forgotten.
Overall I'm super happy I got to save some tech artifacts and will no longer have to pay in body parts on eBay for all of these.

Got this little thing in the mail today. (New old stock)

I've bought it only by luck...
Voodoo 3 not from STB like allmost all but from PowerColor... notice old 3Dfx logo and strange Vodoo 3 logo...

It's a PowerColor EvilKing3 pro 16MB AGP

Bought a cute little (working) Japanese PC system with a Pentium 200 MMX processor, all-in-one motherboard (VGA, sound, ethernet, serial & parallel ports, 2 USB ports, PS/2 mouse & keyboard, 2 PCI? slots on a riser board, 96 Mb of RAM), fax modem board, small form factor case, 3Gb HDD, FDD, and slimline CD-ROM drive (opens but does not read), running Japanese Windows 98. Looks like an early netclient. Interestingly, for a Japan-only system it seems to have a power supply that can be switched between 100V and 230V.

I see this as a necessary step in assessing whether a Japanese system is accessible enough without knowledge of the language to considering buying a NEC PC-98 system.

My Wildcat II and Compaq Portable III showed up today. I also had a AWE64 Gold show up today, but the seller used Media Mail and USPS is quite angry about it.

yawetaG wrote:

Bought a cute little (working) Japanese PC system

you mean you bought a "kawaii pasukon" right? 🤣

kanecvr wrote:

yawetaG wrote:

Bought a cute little (working) Japanese PC system

you mean you bought a "kawaii pasukon" right? 🤣

Yeah, I guess so. Although the system is small compared to what was made at the time, it's not really "small form factor" as we currently understand it...

Just became a proud owner a NIB (Includes ports and two voltage regulators) Tyan S1662D dual socket 8 motherboard for $41 shipped; my first socket 8! I have one SL23M 200MHz chip that I can use, but I don't have a heatsink / fan for it.

Not very retro (yet)

I'm jealous! Nice deal!

Brickpad wrote:

Just became a proud owner a NIB (Includes ports and two voltage regulators) Tyan S1662D dual socket 8 motherboard for $41 shipped; my first socket 8! I have one SL23M 200MHz chip that I can use, but I don't have a heatsink / fan for it.

Brickpad wrote:

Just became a proud owner a NIB (Includes ports and two voltage regulators) Tyan S1662D dual socket 8 motherboard for $41 shipped; my first socket 8! I have one SL23M 200MHz chip that I can use, but I don't have a heatsink / fan for it.

Nice. Great price, great board. I'd spend 50$ for such a board (shipped) - unfortunate they seem to go for over 100$. Add shipping, and it's not really worth the buy.

stamasd wrote:

Not very retro (yet) […]
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Not very retro (yet)

Nice, maybe not so retro, but rare for sure.....and love the colors of heatsink...they used to be so business like on older cards...

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Bought a few AM2 CPUs. This era is all a bit unknown to me, so I'm doing lots of research. AM2 CPUs seem to be a lot easier to find compared to the 939, which is nice 😀

Well it's quite easy :
1) 90nm > 65nm (L2 cache is slower on 65nm [latency wise, it was fixed in late 65nm revisions], also 65nm K8 can't clock much higher than 90nm K8.
2) AM2 MB can mount AM2+ CPU's (Phenom gen. 1), but not AM3 ones.
3) AM2 and S939 performance difference is... 0-5% (basicly, DDR2 bandwidth isn't needed for K8's x2 cpus).
4) Fastest AM2 CPU is Athlon64 6400+ x2 (it's 90nm 😀), and Athlon64 FX-62 is... pointless (assuming you don't need unlocked multi).
5) Watch out for 2x1MB vs. 2x512kB (I think all 65nm chips have 512kB L2 per core, 90nm can have either 1MB or 512kB per core).

PS. You need a "F" revision of K8 core, to have full hardware support for official versions of Windows 8.1 x64/Windows 10 x64.

agent_x007 wrote:

Well it's quite easy : 1) 90nm > 65nm (L2 cache is slower on 65nm [latency wise, it was fixed in late 65nm revisions], also 65nm […]
Show full quote

Well it's quite easy :
1) 90nm > 65nm (L2 cache is slower on 65nm [latency wise, it was fixed in late 65nm revisions], also 65nm K8 can't clock much higher than 90nm K8.
2) AM2 MB can mount AM2+ CPU's (Phenom gen. 1), but not AM3 ones.
3) AM2 and S939 performance difference is... 0-5% (basicly, DDR2 bandwidth isn't needed for K8's x2 cpus).
4) Fastest AM2 CPU is Athlon64 6400+ x2 (it's 90nm 😀), and Athlon64 FX-62 is... pointless (assuming you don't need unlocked multi).
5) Watch out for 2x1MB vs. 2x512kB (I think all 65nm chips have 512kB L2 per core, 90nm can have either 1MB or 512kB per core).

PS. You need a "F" revision of K8 core, to have full hardware support for official versions of Windows 8.1 x64/Windows 10 x64.

Thanks 😁

You mention a few CPUs I went for. I tend to get the top end models, that way I can simulate the lower versions by lowering the multipler. It's a really exciting period with lots of CPUs, switch to dual core, switch from AGP to PCIe, DX9 to DX10, very interesting.

I kinda went crazy on 3DLabs cards this week.

This one's still in the original shrinkwrap. Still debating whether to open it or not.

Picked up one of these Millennium II's.

I've always wanted a Millennium and this seemed like a fair price for it being "new". Plan is to compare it to the TNT2 M64 PCI in my Pentium DOS machine.

Nice 3DLabs picking 😀 Everybody has 3Dlabs now for few coins.

I havent 3DLabs but got another things.

PII Overdrive 333MHz socket8 without original cooler, just tried but looks not working (cpu heating) or MB not supporting, must read some PDFs.

another Willametes and Xeons

Fire GL2

Mystique

AIW 128

3dfx Rush

Appian Jeronimo J3, looks for 4x Cirrus, cant test now because atypical output

Asus Media Bus slot cards

MSI + 800MHz slot A

386SX

486DX2

VLB Cirrus

VLB S3 Vision

some new 360kB