m1919 wrote:

Wonder what's inside? Maybe a dual slot-1 or dual socket-8 board?

Yep, 440BX / dual slot-1 up to 600MHz I believe (don't think it supports Coppermine), AGP, Ultra Wide SCSI, up to 768MB ECC RAM. It's a tight enclosure with a bunch of internal ducting to route airflow around the CPUs. Basically a perfect NT4 workstation box. I was thinking about using it to benchmark my collection of vintage 3D accelerators since it can accommodate full-length boards.

Went to the thrift stores around town looking for another LCD monitor that worked for < $15 and didn't find one. Found this at one store though... Socket-7 computer tower! Was marked $9.99 with yellow sticker, and guess what.. today yellow stickers were -80% off. So $2 + tax out the door. Don't even know what CPU it is yet.. have to go eat dinner before I can play with it.

EDIT: After dinner I at least popped the heatsink off to see what CPU I bought..... My first ever IBM Chip I've ever owned. Never had one before.. yay! This'll be fun to play with.

EDIT: Took it out and looked at the back of the chip.. boo it's a Cyrix. Thought it was an actual IBM chip or something special. Still it'll be fun to play with something different than all the Intel/AMD stuff I've owned so far to date.

Nice find, kithylin! I like how you live in Texas, and the close-up shows a TI chip with their Texas logo. 🤣

Nice find!

kithylin wrote:

EDIT: Took it out and looked at the back of the chip.. boo it's a Cyrix. Thought it was an actual IBM chip or something special.

All the IBM 6x86 chips use Cyrix dies. It's still a great chip - the CPU alone is worth five times what you paid for the system in that condition 😀

Lukeno94 wrote:

Can't think of ANY vaguely mainstream computer of that vintage - or even significantly older - that is legitimately worth $600!

Ever looked at Amiga machines like the 3000 or 4000? If you haven't you will crap a brick sideways when they come up on eBay especially when it has all the nice upgrades.

yawetaG wrote:

They still are usable today, if you limit yourself to PowerPC software. Even browsing the web is pretty decent using solutions like TenFourFox.

To the same extent G4 systems are but both are very limited in terms of modern use which is very sad, you can still do youtube on these machines but you have to download the videos first then watch them with vlc. There is a lot of nice and interesting software for these ppc machines to the extent I am surprised that more attention isn't being payed.

Got a soft spot for those Powerbook G4s 🤣

STB Velocity 3D with RAM upgrade. I didn't really need this card, but I love a nice S3 card for DOS, and this one is hard to find for a reasonable price. I paid $14. It's in cherry condition.

Bought quite a few bits on eBay. They haven't arrived yet, so no pictures but I've got incoming:

• Intel DX2-66 Enhanced with Write Back Cache
• AMD DX2-66 Enhanced with Write Back Cache
• AMD DX4-100
• Cyxrix DX4-100
• ST DX4-100 (should be itentical to the Cyrix)
• 3 ESS AudioDrive cards because they are talked about here a lot recently
• 50 M3 and 50 6-32 computer screws 😁
• Two Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound cards
• Two Cirrus Logic PCI graphics cards
• Some bike parts

My main bike (retro parts mule) was out of order. So I used my backup bike, haven't got a photo, it's a cheap full suspension bike, also a pannier at the back, but no rack, just one of these seat-post mounted mini racks.

The bottom bracket fell apart, so I got a cartridge replacement from eBay and it's up and running again. Got rid of the baskets at the back and switched to bags, they are more practical and look nicer 😀

nforce4max wrote:

yawetaG wrote:

They still are usable today, if you limit yourself to PowerPC software. Even browsing the web is pretty decent using solutions like TenFourFox.

To the same extent G4 systems are but both are very limited in terms of modern use which is very sad, you can still do youtube on these machines but you have to download the videos first then watch them with vlc. There is a lot of nice and interesting software for these ppc machines to the extent I am surprised that more attention isn't being payed.

Got a soft spot for those Powerbook G4s 🤣

That soft spot ends very quickly when you try and repair them. And when they start eating keyboards.

Lukeno94 wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

Got a soft spot for those Powerbook G4s 🤣

That soft spot ends very quickly when you try and repair them. And when they start eating keyboards.

At least the battery isn't glued into place like on modern Mac laptops 😢 . Got a G4 PowerBook here that is still working quite well after 11 years of intensive use (it has a dead battery, the fans are getting squeaky, and the backlight sometimes doesn't come up when waking from sleep - my biggest fear is the power adapter failing). Contrast that to my 3 year old MacBook Pro, which is starting to make weird noises now already, has wonky LAN, is very slow to wake from sleep, and that was delivered from the factory with a corrupted install of MacOS X (+ horrid service from Apple) 😠 . Mac OS X 10.4.11 also feels much more reactive than 10.8.5...

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Bought quite a few bits on eBay. They haven't arrived yet, so no pictures but I've got incoming: […]
Show full quote

Bought quite a few bits on eBay. They haven't arrived yet, so no pictures but I've got incoming:

• Intel DX2-66 Enhanced with Write Back Cache
• AMD DX2-66 Enhanced with Write Back Cache
• AMD DX4-100
• Cyxrix DX4-100
• ST DX4-100 (should be itentical to the Cyrix)
• 3 ESS AudioDrive cards because they are talked about here a lot recently
• 50 M3 and 50 6-32 computer screws 😁
• Two Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound cards
• Two Cirrus Logic PCI graphics cards
• Some bike parts

Nice lot! I'm very fond of the Santa Cruz, looking forward to your take on it. I see you're planning on extending your 486 series too. 😉

Glad you got the bike back up and running!

clueless1 wrote:

Nice lot! I'm very fond of the Santa Cruz, looking forward to your take on it. I see you're planning on extending your 486 series too. 😉

Glad you got the bike back up and running!

Got a cheap P4 board today, early mode, with 1.7 GHz CPU and some memory. I think the P4 has to be the cheapest retro system at the moment.

Yea I want to do a few more 486 videos, but then move on. I will leave the PCI and 133 MHz 486 stuff for another time.

^ you need to do some XT stuff Phil 😀

keropi wrote:

^ you need to do some XT stuff Phil 😀

Nahhh, 386 is where I draw the line 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

Nice lot! I'm very fond of the Santa Cruz, looking forward to your take on it. I see you're planning on extending your 486 series too. 😉

Glad you got the bike back up and running!

Got a cheap P4 board today, early mode, with 1.7 GHz CPU and some memory. I think the P4 has to be the cheapest retro system at the moment.

Yea I want to do a few more 486 videos, but then move on. I will leave the PCI and 133 MHz 486 stuff for another time.

model and specs?

I guess that 1.7 Ghz model can be a willamette P4

Carlos S. M. wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

Nice lot! I'm very fond of the Santa Cruz, looking forward to your take on it. I see you're planning on extending your 486 series too. 😉

Glad you got the bike back up and running!

Got a cheap P4 board today, early mode, with 1.7 GHz CPU and some memory. I think the P4 has to be the cheapest retro system at the moment.

Yea I want to do a few more 486 videos, but then move on. I will leave the PCI and 133 MHz 486 stuff for another time.

model and specs?

I guess that 1.7 Ghz model can be a willamette P4

It's an Intel Intel 845BG. Yea, I expect it to be a Willamette.

keropi wrote:

^ you need to do some XT stuff Phil 😀

I second that 😀

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Carlos S. M. wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Got a cheap P4 board today, early mode, with 1.7 GHz CPU and some memory. I think the P4 has to be the cheapest retro system at the moment.

Yea I want to do a few more 486 videos, but then move on. I will leave the PCI and 133 MHz 486 stuff for another time.

model and specs?

I guess that 1.7 Ghz model can be a willamette P4

It's an Intel Intel 845BG. Yea, I expect it to be a Willamette.

Nice, acording to Intel, the mobo only supports 400 MHz FSB and Willamette/Northwood CPUs

I have an Intel D850EMV2 which uses the Intel 850E with the expensive Rambus memory

You can look to all the documentation there: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/234 … G?product=50328

Cool thanks!

Got a bit lucky today: scored nice bunch of motherboards as a bulk deal:

*MSI MS-4145 486 PCI board
*GA486AM/S 486 PCI board with 120 MHz AMD CPU
*AMD 286-10 board
*some socket 4 board
*ASUS TX97-XE socket 7
*few more 486 boards, with ISA and VLB

Tested the 486 PCI boards, all of them fire up nicely, most of them have AWARD BIOS.