meljor wrote:

Today i recieved an Asus pci/i 486sp3g complete with original box, manual and brackets, including ps/2 ! In the box are 3 extra […]
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Today i recieved an Asus pci/i 486sp3g complete with original box, manual and brackets, including ps/2 ! In the box are 3 extra bios chips with different versions, they are labeled (never had this happen before, very nice).
It also came with an intel dx2 66mhz and an amd dx4 120mhz.

Since it doesn't support 40mhz fsb (as far as i know) i put in an intel dx4-100. The board works fine.

Finally i found an Asus 486 pci for my Asus collection!

Congrats... 😀

tabm0de wrote:

Compaq Presario 7220 for $30 inc shippment.

Pentium 100mhz whit 16mb ram.

Owner was going to throw it out since he couldnt install os on it, it was way to clean to pass that out 😀

Looks so shiny.... So clean... Damn it's a good purchase.

Microsoft Sidewinder Steering Wheel Force Feedback counts as 'retro', does it not?

Well considering you started this whole damned thread.... yes?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Microsoft Sidewinder Steering Wheel Force Feedback counts as 'retro', does it not? […]
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Microsoft Sidewinder Steering Wheel Force Feedback counts as 'retro', does it not?

Nice JBLs, those are the L###t series right?

so much force the left speaker starts to fall apart 🤣 🤣 🤣

Got a second LIbretto 70CT today. It works, but the screen is beginning to decay in the bottom left (it's turned white), so I bought it to steal the extras for my other one. So that's a 16MB RAM module, better battery, original charger, docking station, car charger (yes, really!) and a random Microsoft serial port mouse. Will probably resell the donor soon, it came with another battery and I have a PSU and floppy drive (albeit untested right now) spare to go with it.

Got a pair of AMD K7 based CPUs for 5 € shipped

An Athlon XP 2000+ Palomino and an Athlon 900 Thunderbird

Carlos S. M. wrote:

Got a pair of AMD K7 based CPUs for 5 € shipped

An Athlon XP 2000+ Palomino and an Athlon 900 Thunderbird

I loved my Palomino 2000+ 😀
It's still in my A7V133 rig, I should get it out of storage someday.

A Thunderbird 900 was one of my most used testing CPUs and it actually survived a couple accidental overclocks to 1200MHz 🤣, very sturdy lil bugger 😅

Iirc Thunderbird cores came in 2 different colors (due to some having been made using copper interconnects while others were not), one was more greenish-blue and the other more purple or pink (depending on the light).

The Canopus Spectra 8800 that I mentioned in a previous post arrived at 7am this morning. Took only three days from Japan to Australia. Not bad!

Unboxing and some commentary below. My proper camera is off being repaired at the moment, so phone pics will have to suffice. There aren't many pics of this around on the Internet, so should be something new for some people regardless.

A big thanks to the forwarding company from Japan I used. They placed the bid on Yahoo Auctions for me, accepted the delivery, re-packed it very well and had it to me in just over a week of the auction ending.

Front of the box.

Back of the box. No idea what anything says.

Opening the box, we're greeted with a whole lot of paperwork, manuals and other assorted documents.

The big one on top is an envelope with Japanese on the back. It has the service support manual, I guess?

This is what was inside the envelope. 17 years has not been kind to the adhesive.

Under that is the manual, support booket, what seems to be a warranty/registration card, and a brochure. Everything is in Japanese, there's no English in the manual at all.

Under that we have the card itself.

And here it is. This thing is a beast. It weighs a metaphorical ton, it's built like a rock and just screams quality when you hold it. Sanyo Os-con capacitors. Molex is made with 16AWG wire. There's nothing cheap about this board at all. Except that crooked High Temp sticker placement, probably. 😉

VGA port is on a daughterboard. Marketing gimmick or quality improvement? We'll never know. But I can't wait to jump onto the "Super Signal Highway" 😲

Just a shot of the back of the board. The heatsink is held in with screws (with rubber washers underneath), none of that push pin rubbish!

And just for fun - a size comparison between a V5 5500 PCI, the Canopus Spectra 8800 and a reference Quadro2 Pro/GF2 Ultra board.

Ultimately, I'm really happy with this. It cost me a grand total of $105 AUD ($80 USD, 75 EUR, 65 GBP at the time of writing) after all the fees, exchange rate costs were paid, but I couldn't be happier. I've been after this card since I first heard about it back in the day. It was never sold locally. I'm just glad I happened to stumble across it when I was looking for a present for my housemate on yahoo auctions.

Unfortunately at some point it did seem to come from a smoking household, it just has that smell. But with everything in the box, I can't complain. It's rare to find a GF2 Ultra, rarer to find a non-reference model, and even rarer to find one complete in box.

I can't wait to build my new PIII system and put it in now!!

Something I always wanted but always put off.
I got the ups for $280 shipped and the reserve banks for 100$, they were asking 380$. The reserve bank is new.
That's the most I spent in a long time. But it will pay for itself.

Tetrium wrote:

I loved my Palomino 2000+ :) It's still in my A7V133 rig, I should get it out of storage someday. […]
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Carlos S. M. wrote:

Got a pair of AMD K7 based CPUs for 5 € shipped

An Athlon XP 2000+ Palomino and an Athlon 900 Thunderbird

I loved my Palomino 2000+ 😀
It's still in my A7V133 rig, I should get it out of storage someday.

A Thunderbird 900 was one of my most used testing CPUs and it actually survived a couple accidental overclocks to 1200MHz 🤣, very sturdy lil bugger 😅

Iirc Thunderbird cores came in 2 different colors (due to some having been made using copper interconnects while others were not), one was more greenish-blue and the other more purple or pink (depending on the light).

Well, i already have a Palomino 2000+ before getting that, but i couldn't ressit about getting that lot because of the Thunderbird 900 and the low price

x0zm_ wrote:

The Canopus Spectra 8800 that I mentioned in a previous post arrived at 7am this morning. Took only three days from Japan to Aus […]
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The Canopus Spectra 8800 that I mentioned in a previous post arrived at 7am this morning. Took only three days from Japan to Australia. Not bad!

Unboxing and some commentary below. My proper camera is off being repaired at the moment, so phone pics will have to suffice. There aren't many pics of this around on the Internet, so should be something new for some people regardless.

A big thanks to the forwarding company from Japan I used. They placed the bid on Yahoo Auctions for me, accepted the delivery, re-packed it very well and had it to me in just over a week of the auction ending.

Front of the box.

Back of the box. No idea what anything says.

Opening the box, we're greeted with a whole lot of paperwork, manuals and other assorted documents.

The big one on top is an envelope with Japanese on the back. It has the service support manual, I guess?

This is what was inside the envelope. 17 years has not been kind to the adhesive.

Under that is the manual, support booket, what seems to be a warranty/registration card, and a brochure. Everything is in Japanese, there's no English in the manual at all.

Under that we have the card itself.

And here it is. This thing is a beast. It weighs a metaphorical ton, it's built like a rock and just screams quality when you hold it. Sanyo Os-con capacitors. Molex is made with 16AWG wire. There's nothing cheap about this board at all. Except that crooked High Temp sticker placement, probably. 😉

VGA port is on a daughterboard. Marketing gimmick or quality improvement? We'll never know. But I can't wait to jump onto the "Super Signal Highway" 😲

Just a shot of the back of the board. The heatsink is held in with screws (with rubber washers underneath), none of that push pin rubbish!

And just for fun - a size comparison between a V5 5500 PCI, the Canopus Spectra 8800 and a reference Quadro2 Pro/GF2 Ultra board.

Ultimately, I'm really happy with this. It cost me a grand total of $105 AUD ($80 USD, 75 EUR, 65 GBP at the time of writing) after all the fees, exchange rate costs were paid, but I couldn't be happier. I've been after this card since I first heard about it back in the day. It was never sold locally. I'm just glad I happened to stumble across it when I was looking for a present for my housemate on yahoo auctions.

Unfortunately at some point it did seem to come from a smoking household, it just has that smell. But with everything in the box, I can't complain. It's rare to find a GF2 Ultra, rarer to find a non-reference model, and even rarer to find one complete in box.

I can't wait to build my new PIII system and put it in now!!

Sploosh! For me it's the TNT2 version of that card that i'm after.

x0zm_ wrote:

Unfortunately at some point it did seem to come from a smoking household, it just has that smell. But with everything in the box, I can't complain. It's rare to find a GF2 Ultra, rarer to find a non-reference model, and even rarer to find one complete in box.

Stuff from smoking households is rather difficult to avoid on Y! Auctions Japan, Japan has a lot of smokers (could even just be that it was stored in a shop with a smoking owner). The card looks awesome.

Today I also received something from Japan, a copy of Japanese Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Upgrade, with all six boot floppies (IBM compatible x3, PC-9800 x3), both CDs, both manuals, and some registration paperwork and a slightly beaten up box. Also included was a Windows NT 3.5 CD (possibly the beta version that was distributed for free with a lot of Japanese computer magazines back in the day) and another CD from a computer magazine that also contains something NT-related (possibly a Service Pack). The Japanese version of NT Workstation is multi-platform, supporting PC/AT, PC-9800, MIPS R-series, Alpha, IBM PowerPC, and something else I can't read.
However, the most interesting stuff is one of the manuals, a hardware compatibility list, that enumerates every single computer model and other hardware available in Japan up to October 1996 on which NT 4.0 Upgrade can be used (and that bit is in English...). 106 pages of it. 😲 I will try to scan the whole manual and make a PDF out of it. There's a lot of information in it, including detailed lists of supported resolutions and color depth for tons of graphics cards, DirectDraw support, expansion bus type for all kind of cards, all of it mostly in English.

Today I received this "scrap" IBM 5x86C CPU with all those mangled pins I purchased on eBay for $12. I managed to get all the legs pretty straight except for two that were already barely hanging on and broke off to only about 1/3 of their original height. Sadly, in this state the CPU was DOA.

To replace the pins I snipped them flush and tacked on 2 new pins I robbed from a precision "machined-pin" socket. I had to file the "socket" part of the pin until it was almost flush with it's base which left a nice concave shaped surface with plenty of surface area that allowed me to get a strong solder jount to the bottom of the CPU. I used silver bearing solder for it's additional hardness, although I doubt it made much difference.

Here's the result, and the best part is the CPU now works perfectly!

Here's a picture from the eBay listing of it's original condition...

FesterBlatz wrote:

I haven't received it yet but I purchased an IBM 5x86c CPU that was being sold as scrap for gold recovery. I got it for $12 ship […]
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I haven't received it yet but I purchased an IBM 5x86c CPU that was being sold as scrap for gold recovery. I got it for $12 shipped!

It's going to take some time to straighten all these pins with a mechanical pencil, hopefully the thing will still work! Fortunately in my experience 486 pins have always been pretty forgiving when it comes to straightening.

The attachment IMG_1646.JPG is no longer available

The attachment IMG_1647.JPG is no longer available

FesterBlatz wrote:

Here's the result, and the best part is the CPU now works perfectly!

Bravo! I'm very impressed with the save you managed to pull off!

Nice work! Good to see a CPU being saved rather than trashed for a change.

Congrats on the successful CPU repair! Always nice to see things being brought back from the dead 😀

Wow, you are a hero for saving that CPU indeed.

luckybob wrote:

Well considering you started this whole damned thread.... yes?

The software is for Windows 98. Yes, it's detected and usable on XP, but you cannot use Sidewinder software with it. As such, you cannot adjust how strong the force feedback effect, etcetera, unless the game supports it.

xplus93 wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Microsoft Sidewinder Steering Wheel Force Feedback counts as 'retro', does it not? […]
Show full quote

Microsoft Sidewinder Steering Wheel Force Feedback counts as 'retro', does it not?

Nice JBLs, those are the L###t series right?

Thanks! 😀 They're JBL L20T's, driven by Sansui A-40. Sansui's warm, tube-like sound helps taming the JBL's titanium dome tweeter, which would otherwise sound very sharp and unforgiving.

It's my secondary system in my garage. My primary system is still down because many components need to be restored, but it also uses JBL titanium loudspeaker --JBL 120 Ti, that is. It will use Sansui AU-7900 for music and Yamaha RX-V663 for games, with speaker cable selector switch to choose which amplifier driving the speakers.

keropi wrote:

so much force the left speaker starts to fall apart 🤣 🤣 🤣

🤣