VOGONS


First post, by Skyscraper

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I am at my parents place.
I just found alot of hardware that I thought was thrown away a long time ago.
I moved from my parents place at the end of summer year 2000. I had finished school and found a job in a town quite a distance from my parents who lived in the country side.
After I got my new job I diddnt visit my parents more than on holidays. I was buisy tuning cars and chasing girls so altough computers had been my main intrest since I was a kid I diddnt care much what happend to the piles of hardware I had gathered at my parents place. I brought a few pieces with me, my Abit BP6 system and my Epox KP6 system both more or less new, my abit BH6, a nice 486 and the Soyo sy-5eas motherboard that I use in my retro build but not much more. From late 2000 to early 2004 (when I moved again to a more nerd friendly environment) I diddnt spend much time tinkering with computers. I still collected new junk though from the scrap containers at my work, the case im using in my retro build beeing one example.

Sadly most of my old stuff (some not that old) got thrown away soon after I moved out since my parents dosnt like having lots of junk filling their house.
But today I found 3 boxes! 2 AT systems built in late 1999 or early 2000 recycling old cases but with new motherboards and CPUs. At least the motherboards was bought brand new. One is a pc-chips Slot 1 the other unidentified super socket 7, but its probably another "no name" brand since I wanted to spend as little money as possible.
The plan was to sell the systems but for some reason it diddnt happen, perhaps the memory was needed for something else since nither of the systems had any when i found them. The third box was a p2 box which I really cant understand why I left behind. It has a QDI legend motherboard in it that I got from a friend who I helped upgrade to an athlon classic system. The case is a combined AT/ATX case which i bought new with the Soyo motherboard in 1997. No memory in the third box either but otherwise complete.

I found the boxes in a shed that dosnt even have a door but it has a wooden floor and the roof is sound
The boxes were closed and there are no signs of rust, inside or out exept on some screws. Lots of spiderwebs and dead butterflies though.
The caps on all boards looks perfect, no leaking from the button cells and exept for the dead insects all 3 boards looks brand new.
My parents diddnt even remeber that the boxes were in the shed, they have quite a few buildings and sheds on their estate and doesnt really use this one other than for storing some of mine and my brothers old junk but they insist that the boxes must have been there since fall 2000.

Since this is Sweden the temperature is ranging from under -20 degrees celsius to over +30 degrees celsius.
Its dry in the winter but humid in the summer.

Can computer componets survive such conditions for 13 years?
I dont have a camera with me exept for my phone which i cant connect to my parents computer but I will post pictures when I get home tomorrow evening.
It will be fun to test stuff that is more or less new but has spent more than a decade in a shed!

Im not sober so spelling and stuff will be even worse than usual

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 1 of 13, by Tiremaster400

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I would think that the motherboards will still work since they were dry. Over a year ago, I found a Gateway 2000 socket 4 p5-60 without the top thrown out for the trashman on side of the road. It was missing the cpu and harddrive and was pretty dirty. I picked it up, brought it home, put it in the backyard on a shelf on the side of the house and forgot about it for a year. I'm pretty sure the wind blew the rain onto it a few times and it is very humid in southern United States. I finally got to it 3 months ago, put in a Pentium 60 (without FDIV) a heatsink and fan and vacuumed out the scum that had accumulated and plugged it in and it works fine. Put in a Jazz 16 soundcard and played several hours of DOOM 2 on it.

As long as the caps are good, I say use it.

Reply 2 of 13, by Old Thrashbarg

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Since this is Sweden the temperature is ranging from under -20 degrees celsius to over +30 degrees celsius.
Its dry in the winter but humid in the summer.

Can computer componets survive such conditions for 13 years?

There's nothing extreme, or even particularly unusual, about those conditions.

If it's cold out, you should probably wait a few hours after bringing the stuff inside before you power it on, just to allow the temperature to equalize and avoid any condensation forming, but other than that there's really nothing to worry about. That's not to say that every part of every machine is definitely still going to work... despite the pretty mild storage conditions, it has been sitting around for well over a decade. Stuff does degrade over time... it wouldn't surprise me if a hard drive has developed stiction, or a CD/floppy drive has gotten sluggish from dried-up grease, or other such mechanical issues.

Reply 3 of 13, by Skyscraper

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Its not that cold in Sweden yet, its only a few degrees below freezing at night and quite pleasant during the day if the sun is shining. In a month or two the polar bear warni... no but it will be cold as *censored*
Good to hear that there is hope for the hardware. I dont care much for anything but the motherboards and a bag full of graphics cards that I forgot to mention. The socket 7 board seem to be PC Chips M577, The slot 1 board a PC Chips M747 or other Pc-chips board with simular layout. PC-chips or not those are late AT boards which are practically new. Both boards support AT and ATX power supplies, 3 sticks of sdram, AGP, 3 pci slots and 2 ISA slots. By now perhaps PC-chips have fixed most of their instability problems with bios updates 😀

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 4 of 13, by TELVM

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Skyscraper wrote:

... I was buisy tuning cars and chasing girls ...

Well done, superb ladies i Sverige.

Skyscraper wrote:

... Can computer componets survive such conditions for 13 years? ...

There is only one way to find out but my bet would be yes. I had a Super 7 mobo in an attic (-17C winters, 40C+ summers) given for death for a decade, and it still works OK.

Let the air flow!

Reply 5 of 13, by Skyscraper

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Here are some images 😀

I was lazy so I only took two of the cases with me from my parents.
But I gutted the third so all important parts are here.
I removed much of the components from the other two boxes since they blocked the view of the motherboards
Also pictured lots of extra addon cards found in a bag beside the computers (there are even more pci vga cards)
And I found an unbroken Office 2000 box, a win NT 3.51 cd and OS2 Warp 3.

Warning! Large pictures ahead

p8cg.jpg

t9gw.jpg

q5f2.jpg

1ktm.jpg

3fj6.jpg

vk2i.jpg

z4aj.jpg

msf4.jpg

2bpz.jpg

yinb.jpg

I will report back when I have found out if the boards work or not
Im very tired so I dont think that will happen until tomorrow.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 6 of 13, by TELVM

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Well I'd bet money this board is alive:

Skyscraper wrote:
http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/1403/msf4.jpg […]
Show full quote

msf4.jpg

It's a PC-Chips M577 like the one that works after a decade of extreme temps in my attic.

Let the air flow!

Reply 7 of 13, by Skyscraper

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There is even a modified bios with k6-3+ support http://home.hccnet.nl/j.steunebrink/990309j2.zip
Manual and unmodified final bios are also avalible http://www.elhvb.com/webhq/manuals/pcchips/m577.zip
Now I just have to accept that I have to pay way too much money to ship a k6-3+ to Sweden from Germany.
Perhaps I should order more than one, im tempted to try one in the Soyo board.
I just checked the button cell on the m577, 3.00v 😀
Its a shame that I diddnt find the PS1/USB bracket, nobody used usb in 1999 so I never installed it.

The slot-1 board is a m747, pc chips have removed all downloads for slot-1 boards.
Does someone have the latest bios for the pc chips m747 rev:3.4? I found a bios for revision 5.0.
Perhaps someone have tried to flash their revision 3.x with a 5.x bios?

I have now played some with the m577, it works perfectly so does the voodoo banshee you se in the picture (AGP card with green heatsink)
Best of all, for some reason the system dosnt trigger the pascal compiler bug thingy. I could play tyrian with a k6-2 400. Every other machine over 233 mhz I tried wont let me run it.
55.4 fps quake timedemo demo 1 with the software renderer. No optimization.
.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 8 of 13, by ODwilly

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Hey, I hope this is not breaking the rules or anything. But I have a 333mhz k6-3 (not plus) I would be willing to donate if you are interested. I do not know how much shipping from the U.S. to Sweden would be 🤣

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 9 of 13, by Skyscraper

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That would be much appreciated as long as the shipping cost is within reason

If I were to mail a cpu to USA from Sweden the cost would be around 4$ as long as the weight is less than 100g (3.5 ounces)
If the weight is over 100g then the price is much higher but i think a cpu weighs less than 100g even with some protctive styrofoam .
The price is for sending the cpus as a uninsured letter.

With luck its even cheaper the other way around since you dont pay 25% v.a.t on everything 😀

Old hardware can be challenging 😀
I just reflashed the m577 with the modified bios.
The awdflash version bundled with m577 bios releases is awdflash 5.34, it freezed what ever I did.
The recommended version to use with these boards seem to be awdflash 6.28 which I could not find
I tried 6.31 which also freezed what ever i did. Then I tried some old random awdflash that I found on a floppy and it worked perfectly.

Now I could change the memory cas setting
Quake timedemo demo1 fps incresed to 67.4 fps from 55.4 fps

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 10 of 13, by bristlehog

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Good condition overall. I have seen much much worse - all covered with dust, dirt and rust... and yet working.

Hardware comparisons and game system requirements: https://technical.city

Reply 12 of 13, by Skyscraper

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Indeed, everything works 😁.

The M577 will replace then Soyo board as the performence part of my dual motherboard Leviathan build.
Its a very nice motherboard although its made by Pcchips.
I will post benchmarks in my build thread and some in the socket 7 cache thread.

Finding my old hardware led to some unforeseen costs 😀
I diddnt find the PS2/USB bracket belonging to the m577.
When installing stuff USB-sticks are very practical so I looked for a pinout diagram so I can build my own cable.
I found 3 conflicting sources. Why did pc chips have to come up with their own solution...
But then I found a m577 motherboard for 10 euro on ebay with the bracket, the shipping from spain was 12 euro.
I hope the other board and the all important bracket gets here next week.
If I only keep the spare motherboard long enough then perhaps I can get my money back 😉

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 13 of 13, by ODwilly

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Alright neat, go ahead and shoot me a PM! depending on the weight limit I will throw a 233mmx Pentium in there as well. The k6-3 has perfect pins btw 😀

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1