At a guess, I'd say that the LEDs light up when their respective IRQ or DMA levels are currently triggered. So if some piece of hardware is causing your system to hardlock, you can identify which one by the LED that's lit up when it freezes.

My recent foraging has yielded:

- 2x MSI K7D Master motherboards
- 2x athlon 1600mp
- 4x athlon 2400mp
- 1x athlon 2800mp that appeared doa but I then killed for sure on further bungled testing. Now I'm certain it's dead - I saw the smoke - got distracted and only clipped the hsf one end.

- 3x Dynatron C62G hsf's for the above
- 1x boxed Sonic Tower
- 1x boxed fx5900 ultra
- 1x boxed voodoo2 12mb
- Asus M3A79-T to replace my Asrock agp/pci-e board - runs 30% faster in benchmarks!

The Dynatron's are, ehm, "amazing" in an ear-splitting sort-of way. I wonder if the fans can be turned down anyhow? Heavy copper heatsinks too, and such old stock that the plastic protection on the base had disintegrated and stained the surface [fixed with duraglit 😉].

Here's the link if anyone's interested:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt … em=170931987591

Another gem - Pentium 75 Overdrive - boxed! This one is a little more rare than the later MMX versions for the 'newer' Pentiums.

The OverDrive Processors for the Pentium 75, 90 and 100 were released (Socket 5, 3.3V), running at 125, 150 and 166 MHz (clock multiplier of 2.5). The 125 is an oddity, because Intel never made a Pentium 125 as a stand-alone processor.

Another interesting arrival today! This is the REVEAL Sound FX 32 Wave (SC600) - basically an Ensoniq SoundScape S-2000 Clone with the same 2MB ROM, but it has an additional chip for tone control. The MIDI should sound great!

More info:
Is this soundcard similar to one of the Ensoniq Soundscapes?

Damn, that sealed Pentium overdrive is one hot piece of hardware 😀

Haven't bought anything interesting recently, except some stuff for my Amiga 500 and a Lynx II handheld.

Its not a piece of retro hardware but I just bought a new IOgear 4-port KVM+A switch so I can finally link *all* my retro boxes..

My first PC!!

1991
Packard Bell 316SX
386SX-16 (8Mhz/16Mhz Turbo)
2MB RAM

Picked up this beauty for $35.00 shipped!

That looks exactly like the PB I used to have, mine was a 486SX/25 though. I always hated those little screw covers on the bottom front... I don't remember how many times I busted up my knuckles trying to snap those damn things loose, until I finally just decided to leave the screws out entirely.

I also got a couple 386SXs recently, just the bare motherboards, though. One is an Everex "Tempo 386SX" 16mhz board:

Pretty basic board, and I'm really not sure what I'm gonna do with it, but it was dirt cheap and I was getting another board from the same seller anyway, so I decided to go for it.

This is the main one I was after:

It's a Biostar "MB-1325C" 25mhz board. What makes it interesting is that the same board was also sold equipped with a 486SLC, as an MB-1425C. It has native BIOS support for the internal cache and whatnot. And it just so happened that I had an old junk laptop motherboard laying around with a Cyrix 486SLC2-50, which I have swapped over to this new board in place of the original 386SX-25. I also dug up a Cyrix 387SX for it, so it's pretty well decked-out now.

Totally hear you on those little screw covers. Almost took off my nail today trying to slide those covers up!

I got this nice gem off craigslist for $25 cash.

Dissapointed by the Intel board that doesn't support the Pentium 3-s models 😒

Artex wrote:

My first PC!! […]
Show full quote

My first PC!!

1991
Packard Bell 316SX
386SX-16 (8Mhz/16Mhz Turbo)
2MB RAM

Picked up this beauty for $35.00 shipped!

540mb HDD - someone must have upgraded that at some stage. What did the original have do you remember? 40mb or so?

Yep! Came with a 40MB drive originally. I was hoping for that but with everything else in such good shape, I can't be too disappointed to find an upgraded drive in there.

Just got this to put in the Packard Bell - a boxed CT1320-C!!! CMS chips on the way as well.

Thats an awesome find! 😀 Grats on the SB!

Cloudschatze wrote:

With very special thanks to forum member Jolaes76... […]
Show full quote

With very special thanks to forum member Jolaes76...

... holy cow! Congratulations. 😳

Now, you may debate whether this is actually 'retro' hardware, but I somehow think it falls into that category.

At least considering I bought both cards brand new today, at a local chain store, for the princely sum of US $8.50 each....
In a store, on display, brand new boxed ones. Discontinued stock. (wonder why, 😎 )
New, not used. Retail sticker said $140 for the first one($88 for the second).
I got them for $8.50 each.
😁 😁 😁

Too lazy to take a pic, but...:

It even is "ultra durable 2", whatever that REALLY means..
http://www.gigabyte.us/microsite/30/tech_070427_ud2.htm
Did I mention it cost me $8.50?

Second card:

$8.50 each. NEW. In a normal store.
In one of the most expensive countries in the world!

Just MUST be a sign of this being very very retro, or... 🤣 🤑
At least AGP is.

PS: Sad thing is, I don't I really need any of them right now, but just had to 'rescue' them - I mean, at that price, who could resist....
😅

Today the Turtle Beach Pinnacle Project Studio that I bought from fellow VOGONS member sprcorreia arrived. It includes the Kurzweil HOMAC MIDI daughterboard that I have been trying to find for the past few years. Thanks sprcorreia!

Brand new AGP cards for under $9 is always a nice deal. Those things aren't super fast, but they make nice general-purpose cards. I've used a few 6200s to upgrade older machines to run Win7, since they support Aero quite well.

It even is "ultra durable 2", whatever that REALLY means..

It just means it has the solid polymer capacitors rather than regular electrolytics. And that does actually make it 'ultra durable' compared to most other 6200s... most low-end cards like that use the infamous Sacon FZ caps, which are so bad that the company that makes 'em keeps changing its name every few years to try to get away from the bad reputation.

Seems like the first picture vanished somehow, perhaps now it is visible ?

This is the first card anyway(in case the pic goes away again):
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-4650-agp … ew-31659-2.html

Still $8.50 for that one as well....
Did I mention 'brand new' ? 😈

bestemor wrote:

Now, you may debate whether this is actually 'retro' hardware, but I somehow think it falls into that category. […]
Show full quote

Now, you may debate whether this is actually 'retro' hardware, but I somehow think it falls into that category.

At least considering I bought both cards brand new today, at a local chain store, for the princely sum of US $8.50 each....
In a store, on display, brand new boxed ones. Discontinued stock. (wonder why, 😎 )
New, not used. Retail sticker said $140 for the first one($88 for the second).
I got them for $8.50 each.
😁 😁 😁

Too lazy to take a pic, but...:

It even is "ultra durable 2", whatever that REALLY means..
http://www.gigabyte.us/microsite/30/tech_070427_ud2.htm
Did I mention it cost me $8.50?

Second card:

$8.50 each. NEW. In a normal store.
In one of the most expensive countries in the world!

Just MUST be a sign of this being very very retro, or... 🤣 🤑
At least AGP is.

PS: Sad thing is, I don't I really need any of them right now, but just had to 'rescue' them - I mean, at that price, who could resist....
😅

That's a really good deal! I wouldv'e purchased them myself if I had the chance! 😁