Picking up a purple 13"inch CRT television circa 2000-2003ish with under 100 hours on it soon for free. Should be good for some old console action and take up much less room than the silver 27" CRT I just got rid of 😀

Spotted some machines awaiting "recycling" (aka disassembly by child labor and consignment to an environmental catastrophe zone in the 3rd world) near my office. Fairly well stripped, mostly single-core K8 Athlons and Semprons. Didn't take a whole machine but I did manage grab a few interesting things:

ATI all-in-wonder X800 AGP (not bad!), Geforce 4 Ti4200, SB Live 5.1 SB0100 w/EMU10k1-SFF (is this the crappy "cost-reduced" version of the Emu 10k or the good version?), tidy PS/2 keyboard with nice quiet rubber-dome keys, plain Logitech optical mouse, two triangle Logitech Mousemen (score!), and a VGA-5BNC cable (double score!)

I might go back and grab the monitor that video cable was attached to - a *really* nice looking Mitsubishi 21" professional workstation CRT. Probably a $2000 monitor 15 years ago. But it's huge, and heavy, and I already have way too many damn CRTs... 🙁

xjas wrote:

...But it's huge, and heavy, and I already have way too many damn CRTs. 🙁

^^ Why do I even say stuff like that?

So, yeah, I had to go get it. It weighs at LEAST 25 kg, is 21 years old, uses ridiculous amounts of power, emits more heat than my car engine, and doesn't even fit on my desk. I had to go get a trolley cart to retrieve it. It is glorious.

Note standard-size coffee cup for scale.

Happily running in 1600x1200 @ 85 Hz. Unfortunately the display is going a *little* soft at this resolution but it's not noticeable unless you're less than a meter or so away.

I would like to know what the actual range of serial #s on these are. If they started at 51xxxx I could to have the 12th one ever made.

Fun fact EDIT: Feb. 1995 PC magazine lists this monitor at an MSRP of $2275. A 1997 Computer Shopper review states an "average mail-order price" at $1608, and it was already two years old then! Either way that's roughly two grand of monitor that I saved from the bin.

That is a beautiful CRT

Aww man I'm jealous!
Scored a Compaq 21" from work back in 2003 after it wouldn't power on. My mate fixed it but nether of us kept it as it was just so big, think we both regret that. A 3rd mate used it for his xbox

Technically, not a dumpster find, but I was cleaning my garage out and came across my old Cambridge Soundworks FPS 2000 speaker system I bought specifically to hook up to my Sound Blaster Live! Currently too dusty/dirty to share a photo of, but I relocated it to the basement so I can clean it up and test it when I have some time. I couldn't find the volume control cable. 🙁
http://assets.hardwarezone.com/2009/reviews/o … 00/fps-2000.htm

Not really something I found in the dumpster, rather it was given to me to put in the dumpster. 🤣

Toshiba Tecra 9000. Mobile PIII 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM (originally shipped with 512MB), 40GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, built-in WiFi. The optical drive has a date code of May 2002 on it, which seems about right for the specs. However, what surprises me is that it originally shipped in 2002...with Windows 98 SE!

It has since been upgraded to WinXP Home, but I'm genuinely surprised Win98SE was an available option so late in the game.

It does have some issues tho. About 50% of the time it won't power on, instead the power LED will just blink orange. It could be a faulty power adapter though, I'm using a cheap universal one because I don't have the original. When it does turn on though, it runs mostly fine...except for the fact that trying to use the WiFi crashes my router. 😵

I'm likely gonna DBAN the hard drive and stick Win2K on it, I currently have no vintage systems running it and this one would be good for that until I can get my planned Win2K custom rebuild done sometime down the road.

Not 'dumpster-find', but kind-of

Today I was having a walk on the countryside with my girlfriend and her dog, when I saw an old rusty computer right down a little hill (5 or 6 steps down from the road), that someone (very irresponsible) dropped there. For its aspect, it may have been there for years. I obviously had to look inside of it (as my girlfriend started remembering me 'how freak I am' 🤣 🤣, but who cares!).

It was in very bad shape as I said: contained a rusty 430VX mb, Trident ISA graphics card, an unidentified HDD mounted upside down, no cooler over the cpu, etc. I only grabbed the cpu, a Pentium 100 (wasn't in my little 'collection').I'd liked to take it to the recycling center at least, but it was in a pretty inaccesible place.

The cpu, one pin missing. I won't use it for anything, but luckily it's a +VCC pin

It works!

mmx_91 wrote:

Not 'dumpster-find', but kind-of […]
Show full quote

Not 'dumpster-find', but kind-of

Today I was having a walk on the countryside with my girlfriend and her dog, when I saw an old rusty computer right down a little hill (5 or 6 steps down from the road), that someone (very irresponsible) dropped there. For its aspect, it may have been there for years. I obviously had to look inside of it (as my girlfriend started remembering me 'how freak I am' 🤣 🤣, but who cares!).

It was in very bad shape as I said: contained a rusty 430VX mb, Trident ISA graphics card, an unidentified HDD mounted upside down, no cooler over the cpu, etc. I only grabbed the cpu, a Pentium 100 (wasn't in my little 'collection').I'd liked to take it to the recycling center at least, but it was in a pretty inaccesible place.

The cpu, one pin missing. I won't use it for anything, but luckily it's a +VCC pin

It works!

Bring a screwdriver the next time and resque the motherboard and cards aswell. Many motherboards you see on Ebay have looked like this before they were resqued. 😀

This morning, while I was cycling to work, I found in front of a house an entire PC, along with two CRT 15" monitors, all in good condition, after all. Once brought everything home with my car, in the afternoon, I could have a closer look at the 'loot':

opened up the case, apparently in good condition and free from bruises, I could see right away that, with my surprise, it was a motherboard with dual socket PGA370, the Tyan Tiger 230T. Mounted on this one I've found a single Pentium III Coppermine @1GHz, 2x128mb PC133 SDRAM, VGA ATI Rage Pro, a x3 firewire card, a SoundBlaster PCIx model I think, and with my interest/curiosity, a card for receiving Sat TV directly on your PC, model 'Sky2PC '. Besides these pieces there were floppy drive (disconnected), 2x optical drives and 2x Samsung 40gb 7200rpm hard drives, identical models. Being SDR fan, I would be curious if you can use the Sat TV card for radio reception of some kind, a bit like what I do from time with USB sticks initially engaged for the same purpose of DVB and then modified for VHF radio reception.

Indrid Cold wrote:

it was a motherboard with dual socket PGA370, the Tyan Tiger 230T.

That, sir, is a ridiculously lucky find. The retro Gods were indeed smiling upon you.

Indrid Cold wrote:

This morning, while I was cycling to work, I found in front of a house an entire PC, along with two CRT 15" monitors, all in good condition, after all. Once brought everything home with my car, in the afternoon, I could have a closer look at the 'loot':

opened up the case, apparently in good condition and free from bruises, I could see right away that, with my surprise, it was a motherboard with dual socket PGA370, the Tyan Tiger 230T. Mounted on this one I've found a single Pentium III Coppermine @1GHz, 2x128mb PC133 SDRAM, VGA ATI Rage Pro, a x3 firewire card, a SoundBlaster PCIx model I think, and with my interest/curiosity, a card for receiving Sat TV directly on your PC, model 'Sky2PC '. Besides these pieces there were floppy drive (disconnected), 2x optical drives and 2x Samsung 40gb 7200rpm hard drives, identical models. Being SDR fan, I would be curious if you can use the Sat TV card for radio reception of some kind, a bit like what I do from time with USB sticks initially engaged for the same purpose of DVB and then modified for VHF radio reception.

Re: SDR
Maybe, if you can bypass the decoder and switch to a raw capture mode.

Indrid Cold wrote:

This morning, while I was cycling to work, I found in front of a house an entire PC

Maybe the guy was just bringing it to his car or something and you just nicked his computer 🤣

On a more serious note, congratulations for this find! But you might want to remove the pic showing the XP license.

torindkflt wrote:

I'm likely gonna DBAN the hard drive and stick Win2K on it, I currently have no vintage systems running it and this one would be good for that until I can get my planned Win2K custom rebuild done sometime down the road.

Let me know how you get on. I used to set these up and I vaguely remember 2k having massive problems with this model, but that may have been the 8100 (wifi, battery).

Thanks - so we can say this is a good motherboard? What are its strengths? I know Tyan brand, if I'm right it is known in the server business, mainly - but I've never had one of its motherboards, before.

I just noticed you removed the pic... but it still appears in gdjacobs post as he quoted your whole post, so you might want to delete the pic on postimg to make sure... 😉

TheDosPlace wrote:

torindkflt wrote:

I'm likely gonna DBAN the hard drive and stick Win2K on it, I currently have no vintage systems running it and this one would be good for that until I can get my planned Win2K custom rebuild done sometime down the road.

Let me know how you get on. I used to set these up and I vaguely remember 2k having massive problems with this model, but that may have been the 8100 (wifi, battery).

Other than having to manually download drivers from Toshiba's website and the lack of working WiFi (No WPA2 support, and my router seems to really, REALLY hate this computer for some reason), Windows 2000 actually seems quite happy on this system. From the research I've done, Win2K was actually one of the available OEM options for it from the factory.

The battery even still holds some semblance of a charge, albeit only about 15 minutes worth. 🤣

MMaximus wrote:

I just noticed you removed the pic... but it still appears in gdjacobs post as he quoted your whole post, so you might want to delete the pic on postimg to make sure... 😉

Fixed on my end 😀

gdjacobs wrote:

MMaximus wrote:

I just noticed you removed the pic... but it still appears in gdjacobs post as he quoted your whole post, so you might want to delete the pic on postimg to make sure... 😉

Fixed on my end 😀

Thanks 😀

mmx_91 wrote:

Not 'dumpster-find', but kind-of

Today I was having a walk on the countryside with my girlfriend and her dog, when I saw an old rusty computer right down a little hill (5 or 6 steps down from the road), that someone (very irresponsible) dropped there. For its aspect, it may have been there for years. I obviously had to look inside of it (as my girlfriend started remembering me 'how freak I am' 🤣 🤣, but who cares!).

It was in very bad shape as I said: contained a rusty 430VX mb, Trident ISA graphics card, an unidentified HDD mounted upside down, no cooler over the cpu, etc. I only grabbed the cpu, a Pentium 100 (wasn't in my little 'collection').I'd liked to take it to the recycling center at least, but it was in a pretty inaccesible place.

I'd say get a screwdriver and see if you can nick the mobo and the HDD if the screws aren't totally rusted out, that is...