H3nrik V! wrote on 2020-01-09, 07:59:

Predator99 wrote on 2020-01-08, 20:17:

...quite surprised my price proposal was just accepted for this: - Voodoo 3 AGP - SS7 AGP Mainboard - 2 XEON CPU - some kind of […]
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...quite surprised my price proposal was just accepted for this:
- Voodoo 3 AGP
- SS7 AGP Mainboard
- 2 XEON CPU
- some kind of SBC?
....
s-l1600 (1).jpg

Well, I see 3 Slot 2 XEONs in that image 😀

I only see 2 Slot2 Xeons, and a single Slot1 (non-Xeon).

there's a naked PIII xeon on the right

imi wrote on 2020-01-09, 12:02:

there's a naked PIII xeon on the right

Excactly, there are the 2 Xeons in enclosure, then to the right is the SBC, and THEN the "naked" PIII Xeon (Cascades Core, I guess?)

H3nrik V! wrote on 2020-01-09, 12:13:

imi wrote on 2020-01-09, 12:02:

there's a naked PIII xeon on the right

Excactly, there are the 2 Xeons in enclosure, then to the right is the SBC, and THEN the "naked" PIII Xeon (Cascades Core, I guess?)

So there is... good spot.

My Duron 1300 came in the mail finally. Now I can build a stupidly overpowered DOS PC to play Quake at obscene resolutions in software mode.

derSammler wrote on 2020-01-05, 19:19:

Just won a lot of ISA cards (>30) for almost exactly 1€/card. I don't care for most of the cards, but there are two very interesting sound cards included. 😀 Also a couple of 3Com ethernet cards, which are always good to have.

More when the lot arrives.

The cards just arrived. Not really well packed, but apart from some bent pins, all cards look good.

This is the card that made me bid on the lot in the first place:

Terratec Maestro 16/95 - nice. 😀

There were also some other interesting cards included, like a Seagate ST08A IDE/Floppy controller from 1987. Have to do research on some of the cards, however, as I have no idea what a few of them are at all.

gex85 wrote on 2020-01-06, 13:42:

When browsing eBay Classifieds the other day, an ad with a lot of mainboards and expansion cards raised my interest. In the orig […]
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When browsing eBay Classifieds the other day, an ad with a lot of mainboards and expansion cards raised my interest. In the original photos, the cards were piled so that most of them weren't fully visible, but there was one on top of the pile that couldn't be overlooked.
When I asked for more photos, I was pleased to find that there was acutally one more rare card in the lot.
1578169127648.jpg
Who can spot the cards that caught my attention? (One is very easy, the other one not too difficult either) 😄

According to the seller, most of the stuff should work (and there was quite a bit more in the lot that isn't in this picture) so I decided to get it for 55€ shipped.

Received the lot today, everything was literally thrown into a box with no cushioning at all.
The CT1350B looks quite good, no visible damage apart from a few scratches, so let's hope it works!
The Voodoo 5 5500 on the other hand has suffered a bit more. Three SMD caps ripped off on the front, one bent coil, one SMD resistor almost ripped off on the back. The card was on the very bottom of the box and I guess it was mostly intact before it was thrown in there. However, from a mechanical perspective this is fixable, so I will solder the components back on and see if it's alive.

The other sound card turned out to be a CT2290 (not 2910) which is really dusty but seems OK otherwise.
I still have to look through the other stuff, but there were some mainboards (2x A7V266-E, TMC PCI48AL, two Socket 7, one Super Socket 7, two MSI Slot 1), some VGA cards (an ATi Mach64 PCI, a Tseng ET4000 ISA and some more), heaps of network cards and modems, some less interesting sound cards, various controller cards of all sorts, a bag of RAM, 6 CPUs (the interesting ones being a 486DX4-100 and an AMD K5 133). A few CD-ROM drives, floppy drives, mice, trackballs, KVM switches and so on.
I will probably keep the most interesting stuff and get rid of the rest as quickly as possible. Don't have storage space (and use) for all of it...

Man, what is it with people and not putting protection (anti-static bags, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, and other padding) inside of boxes? When I bought cards from shopgoodwill.com one time, they had only bubble wrap around the inside of the box and nothing for the cards (anti-static bags with bubble wrap around them) and the 1 cap on my AIW 7500 broke off. I even repaired the cap issue, but the cap broke off again.

I hope the system I'm bidding on gets packed like a tank and not sent via FedEx.

Wasn't really looking to get one of these, but saw one come up cheap on eBay so grabbed it for my Acorn Electron:

I've only ever seen them on eBay for stupid prices like £60-£70, so this was a steal at under £10!

It does pose problems in the future should I ever want to get an SD card adapter, but for now I'm happy loading tape images. 😁

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-09, 16:52:

Man, what is it with people and not putting protection (anti-static bags, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, and other padding) inside of boxes? When I bought cards from shopgoodwill.com one time, they had only bubble wrap around the inside of the box and nothing for the cards (anti-static bags with bubble wrap around them) and the 1 cap on my AIW 7500 broke off. I even repaired the cap issue, but the cap broke off again.

I hope the system I'm bidding on gets packed like a tank and not sent via FedEx.

It's just the relative value of everything - buying scrap parts for scrap prices or only slightly better, I think that the sellers just think it's rubbish and expect that we're melting it all down for gold.
Maybe we should tip sellers so that they can afford some bubblewrap?

Another thing though, is it's just been Christmas, I haven't had a smashed to bits package all year, but over christmas I got two of them, both had clearly been kicked around and with the amazing Amazon box shown here, the plastic of my Toshiba Portege 320CT didn't fare too well.

I think I can thank some temporary workers through the christmas period for this, though playing laptop jigsaw puzzle was pretty relaxing.

Oy vey. There was a Grinch of an Amazon delivery guy that ran over someone's package twice and ran off. Fortunately, they had it on video (gotta love those Ring doorbells and security cameras).

Got a socket 775 Zalman cooler today for 5 EUR. Not exactly retro for my area of retro interest (the nineties), but still, when I see a Zalman cooler on a local flea market site, for a reasonable price, I buy it. It's a thing 😀

Thermalwrong wrote on 2020-01-09, 18:42:

It's just the relative value of everything - buying scrap parts for scrap prices or only slightly better, I think that the selle […]
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bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-09, 16:52:

Man, what is it with people and not putting protection (anti-static bags, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, and other padding) inside of boxes? When I bought cards from shopgoodwill.com one time, they had only bubble wrap around the inside of the box and nothing for the cards (anti-static bags with bubble wrap around them) and the 1 cap on my AIW 7500 broke off. I even repaired the cap issue, but the cap broke off again.

I hope the system I'm bidding on gets packed like a tank and not sent via FedEx.

It's just the relative value of everything - buying scrap parts for scrap prices or only slightly better, I think that the sellers just think it's rubbish and expect that we're melting it all down for gold.
Maybe we should tip sellers so that they can afford some bubblewrap?

Another thing though, is it's just been Christmas, I haven't had a smashed to bits package all year, but over christmas I got two of them, both had clearly been kicked around and with the amazing Amazon box shown here, the plastic of my Toshiba Portege 320CT didn't fare too well.

I think I can thank some temporary workers through the christmas period for this, though playing laptop jigsaw puzzle was pretty relaxing.

Did you can (will) sue the company for the damage?

So, just a quick follow-up on the damaged Voodoo 5: Two of the three caps that came off were still good so I could solder them back in place, for the third one I had to salvage a replacement from an old WinTV card first. The resistor on the back was also still there and the solder joint could be repaired.
I then cleaned it up a bit and gave it a try.
Needless to say I was more than happy to see that it does at least output video at all!
Still have to test it in Windows + games, but hey, this is more than I even hoped for!

MKT_Gundam wrote on 2020-01-09, 20:10:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2020-01-09, 18:42:

It's just the relative value of everything - buying scrap parts for scrap prices or only slightly better, I think that the selle […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-09, 16:52:

Man, what is it with people and not putting protection (anti-static bags, packing peanuts, bubble wrap, and other padding) inside of boxes? When I bought cards from shopgoodwill.com one time, they had only bubble wrap around the inside of the box and nothing for the cards (anti-static bags with bubble wrap around them) and the 1 cap on my AIW 7500 broke off. I even repaired the cap issue, but the cap broke off again.

I hope the system I'm bidding on gets packed like a tank and not sent via FedEx.

It's just the relative value of everything - buying scrap parts for scrap prices or only slightly better, I think that the sellers just think it's rubbish and expect that we're melting it all down for gold.
Maybe we should tip sellers so that they can afford some bubblewrap?

Another thing though, is it's just been Christmas, I haven't had a smashed to bits package all year, but over christmas I got two of them, both had clearly been kicked around and with the amazing Amazon box shown here, the plastic of my Toshiba Portege 320CT didn't fare too well.

I think I can thank some temporary workers through the christmas period for this, though playing laptop jigsaw puzzle was pretty relaxing.

Did you can (will) sue the company for the damage?

I don't really care, it arrived even if not in one piece. The hardware is so rare that it's not something that's replaceable or compensatable. The laptop itself "works" pretty well, with plastic top case extensively repaired. I'm honestly pretty happy with it and putting it back together has taught me a fair bit about fixing plastic casing - if I sand this down, it'll look pretty good.

I can chastise the seller, but that's all really, it's their fault but there's no undoing their mistake. Amazon boxes are just terrible and should never be re-used.

To put it all back together, I used my TS100 iron at 280C, melted in some capacitor legs as the metal strengthener - quite cathartic really. I can see why Arts & Crafts are so relaxing for people (compared to fixing electronics)

gex85 wrote on 2020-01-09, 21:19:

So, just a quick follow-up on the damaged Voodoo 5: Two of the three caps that came off were still good so I could solder them b […]
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So, just a quick follow-up on the damaged Voodoo 5: Two of the three caps that came off were still good so I could solder them back in place, for the third one I had to salvage a replacement from an old WinTV card first. The resistor on the back was also still there and the solder joint could be repaired.
I then cleaned it up a bit and gave it a try.
Needless to say I was more than happy to see that it does at least output video at all!
Still have to test it in Windows + games, but hey, this is more than I even hoped for!

Wonderful 😁 Especially with the V5 5500 being on the outside of the box - before now I've received scrap laptops on the outside of a box and they've effectively been armour for the contents inside - a forklift shaped hole through the motherboard & screen. Great to see one more working V5 5500 - especially as that one was missing a fan?
That was one great scrap lot btw, I sort of miss my SB 2.0, I think it went in the bin back in the day.

gex85 wrote on 2020-01-09, 21:19:

So, just a quick follow-up on the damaged Voodoo 5: Two of the three caps that came off were still good so I could solder them b […]
Show full quote

So, just a quick follow-up on the damaged Voodoo 5: Two of the three caps that came off were still good so I could solder them back in place, for the third one I had to salvage a replacement from an old WinTV card first. The resistor on the back was also still there and the solder joint could be repaired.
I then cleaned it up a bit and gave it a try.
Needless to say I was more than happy to see that it does at least output video at all!
Still have to test it in Windows + games, but hey, this is more than I even hoped for!

Please show it running some games if and when it happens. Very nice you have it posting.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2020-01-09, 23:06:

I don't really care, it arrived even if not in one piece. The hardware is so rare that it's not something that's replaceable or compensatable. The laptop itself "works" pretty well, with plastic top case extensively repaired. I'm honestly pretty happy with it and putting it back together has taught me a fair bit about fixing plastic casing - if I sand this down, it'll look pretty good.

You are a much more patient man than I. In all honesty, I would absolutely send the seller pics of their Shih Tzu pack job and ask for a refund. Promise you they wont want it back and you keep it plus get your money. There is just no excuse for that and Ebay almost 100% of the time backs the buyer so you really can't lose.

liqmat wrote on 2020-01-09, 23:23:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2020-01-09, 23:06:

I don't really care, it arrived even if not in one piece. The hardware is so rare that it's not something that's replaceable or compensatable. The laptop itself "works" pretty well, with plastic top case extensively repaired. I'm honestly pretty happy with it and putting it back together has taught me a fair bit about fixing plastic casing - if I sand this down, it'll look pretty good.

You are a much more patient man than I. In all honesty, I would absolutely send the seller pics of their Shih Tzu pack job and ask for a refund. Promise you they wont want it back and you keep it and get your money. There is just no excuse for that and Ebay almost 100% of the time backs the buyer so you really can't lose.

I've dealt with a few of these people on ebay and most of them aren't particularly competent at shipping or as sellers, but my view is that these people have held on to this hardware for so long so they deserve some patience. Things like vintage laptops or corroded motherboards are extraordinarily hard to get hold of through other means and would just be disposed of as scrap electronics for recycling, so I err on the side of caution and try to be polite regardless of the outcome. Honestly though, I paid £19 for the laptop and £8 for shipping. Perhaps I'll complain about the shipping cost, but regardless of what happens during the shipping process, I'm still quite happy with the laptop got here. Like I said though, this (and another lot of motherboards) are the only damaged packages of the year, most have arrived just fine and I've spent far more on things like Librettos (finally got a 70CT!).

I've got a Libretto 50CT with a dead hard drive. Need to take care of that...

Today spent $20 at a local thrift store and got these, not really anything great but the NOS boxed keyboards and the Logitech serial mouse is nice (it came that clean, didn't do anything to it). The HD's are a 3Gb and 13Gb IDE and not tested yet, hoping they both work. Got the BF1942 thrown in free (all disks present and look good unlike the box) 🤣 added: Anyone need a PS/2 Keyboard ? might put one up in the "free" thread........