Some PowerSpec 6430 with a Sempron in it. Tossed in an HD and it works fine running Windows Me http://imgur.com/a/PSzDo

A few days ago, a neighbor gave us this Planar PL1700 LCD Monitor for free, It works fine although there's one minor issue - it makes a hissing noise when turned off, not sure if that's normal behavior for its kind or if there are dying capacitors on the circuit boards inside, haven't opened it up yet.

SaxxonPike wrote:

I definitely won an empty case. It had a Bigfoot drive in it and this motherboard, that's about it. This is an era of hardware I am not familiar with.

Looks like some Matsonic/PCChips AT/ATX board for slot1. Good to see it working, I had experiences that these were unreliable as new.

Interesting motherboard, AT Slot 1 without AGP slot? Intel Chipset (LX?) and both DIMM and SIMM memory banks.

SaxxonPike wrote:

I definitely won an empty case. It had a Bigfoot drive in it and this motherboard, that's about it. This is an era of hardware I am not familiar with.

20170521_155517.jpg

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Interesting motherboard, AT Slot 1 without AGP slot? Intel Chipset (LX?) and both DIMM and SIMM memory banks.

SaxxonPike wrote:

I definitely won an empty case. It had a Bigfoot drive in it and this motherboard, that's about it. This is an era of hardware I am not familiar with.

20170521_155517.jpg

The board is a PC Chips M715/Amptron PII 2100 and it does have AGP, but is hidden behind the IDE/floppy cables, it uses a 440LX or 440EX chipset and only supports FSB 66 Pentium II and Celerons

Thanks! No AGP didn't make sense to me without onboard video. I had a look and thought that there could not be an AGP slot hiding there but I was wrong 😀

Carlos S. M. wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Interesting motherboard, AT Slot 1 without AGP slot? Intel Chipset (LX?) and both DIMM and SIMM memory banks.

SaxxonPike wrote:

I definitely won an empty case. It had a Bigfoot drive in it and this motherboard, that's about it. This is an era of hardware I am not familiar with.

20170521_155517.jpg

The board is a PC Chips M715/Amptron PII 2100 and it does have AGP, but is hidden behind the IDE/floppy cables, it uses a 440LX or 440EX chipset and only supports FSB 66 Pentium II and Celerons

I've experiences only with "BXcel", "BX100" or "BXpro" branded PCChips motherboards simmilar like this one - but those were Ali or VIA based. If this is i440LX or EX, then might not be so bad 😀 In fact I've never seen running a slot1 CPU with EDO SIMMs, the CPU performance would be quite bottlenecked right?

mv_cz wrote:

I've experiences only with "BXcel", "BX100" or "BXpro" branded PCChips motherboards simmilar like this one - but those were Ali or VIA based. If this is i440LX or EX, then might not be so bad 😀 In fact I've never seen running a slot1 CPU with EDO SIMMs, the CPU performance would be quite bottlenecked right?

The first chipset for the Pentium II was the Intel 440FX, reused from the Pentium Pro plataform and it only supported EDO SIMM/DIMM and no AGP, 440LX came shortly after it, so Pentium II with SIMM is not that rare

Not really PC hardware, and not really found in a dumpster, but it is retro hardware and I did save it from going in a dumpster.

A friend of my wife and I had received an old Sony AV amplifier from family and didn't know what to do with it - I offered to take it, as it looked like one from the early-ish 80's and in good condition.

It's a Sony STR-AV470, awful cellphone picture below.

I was looking up the model this morning to see what it was - I really hadn't looked at it that closely at this point.

Started seeing mentions of AM Stereo in the Google results.

"Wait, this has AM Stereo?"

I looked back at it.

"Holy **** it's got AM Stereo!"

First AV equipment I've ever had that has it.

The specs suggest that should be an excellent receiver with AM stereo as a nice bonus. I suspect it might require some maintenance, though.

To be honest, I'm having a hard time finding the spec sheets for it.

Definitely have my contact cleaner ready to go though. Still looking for a decent pair of floor speakers - I've got some nice bookshelf speakers (A pair of Paradigm Micro V2s I dumpster found a bit over a year ago that sound wonderful for the size, and a pair of off-brand Missil speakers that sound surprisingly nice for the 30 bucks I paid new) but no floor ones at the moment.

Carlos S. M. wrote:

mv_cz wrote:

I've experiences only with "BXcel", "BX100" or "BXpro" branded PCChips motherboards simmilar like this one - but those were Ali or VIA based. If this is i440LX or EX, then might not be so bad 😀 In fact I've never seen running a slot1 CPU with EDO SIMMs, the CPU performance would be quite bottlenecked right?

The first chipset for the Pentium II was the Intel 440FX, reused from the Pentium Pro plataform and it only supported EDO SIMM/DIMM and no AGP, 440LX came shortly after it, so Pentium II with SIMM is not that rare

Yes I've read about it, but PII was so expensive that it had barely spreaded here. Which is actually a good thing in the end, at least we had not underperforming PII systems 😁

LHN91 wrote:

To be honest, I'm having a hard time finding the spec sheets for it.

Definitely have my contact cleaner ready to go though. Still looking for a decent pair of floor speakers - I've got some nice bookshelf speakers (A pair of Paradigm Micro V2s I dumpster found a bit over a year ago that sound wonderful for the size, and a pair of off-brand Missil speakers that sound surprisingly nice for the 30 bucks I paid new) but no floor ones at the moment.

HIFI Engine has the user guide and service manual for the AVR460 which appears to be extremely similar. Unless Sony has further information, I think that's probably your best bet.

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

A few days ago, a neighbor gave us this Planar PL1700 LCD Monitor for free, It works fine although there's one minor issue - it makes a hissing noise when turned off, not sure if that's normal behavior for its kind or if there are dying capacitors on the circuit boards inside, haven't opened it up yet.

Hissing sounds like coil noise from the standby power, I suppose it might be made worse by dodgy capacitors

mv_cz wrote:

In fact I've never seen running a slot1 CPU with EDO SIMMs, the CPU performance would be quite bottlenecked right?

Very much bottlenecked. I have a Deskpro 4000 with the 440FX/EDO chipset and a P2-300. The CPU performance isn't anywhere near where it should be. When I upgraded from a 233 to a 300, there was barely any increase in CPU performance, indicating a platform bottleneck.

The CPU performs much better on a BX board. The BX board achieves over twice the memory bandwidth at the same 66MHz FSB.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

mv_cz wrote:

In fact I've never seen running a slot1 CPU with EDO SIMMs, the CPU performance would be quite bottlenecked right?

Very much bottlenecked. I have a Deskpro 4000 with the 440FX/EDO chipset and a P2-300. The CPU performance isn't anywhere near where it should be. When I upgraded from a 233 to a 300, there was barely any increase in CPU performance, indicating a platform bottleneck.

The CPU performs much better on a BX board. The BX board achieves over twice the memory bandwidth at the same 66MHz FSB.

I wonder now how would perform on an LX board + SDRAM, i have an LX board, but no a P2 300

gdjacobs wrote:

The specs suggest that should be an excellent receiver with AM stereo as a nice bonus. I suspect it might require some maintenan […]
Show full quote

The specs suggest that should be an excellent receiver with AM stereo as a nice bonus. I suspect it might require some maintenance, though.

I don't see anything on that receiver that would require DeOxit...

AM Stereo is awesome though...there's not a lot of stations that use it, but there's more than I thought there would be:

http://meduci.com/stations.html

I'm having a hard time finding AM Stereo stations here in Southern Ontario - but it's also a bit temperamental with FM Stereo at the moment too. Probably need to do some adjustments at some point.

probnot wrote:

I don't see anything on that receiver that would require DeOxit... […]
Show full quote

gdjacobs wrote:

The specs suggest that should be an excellent receiver with AM stereo as a nice bonus. I suspect it might require some maintenan […]
Show full quote

The specs suggest that should be an excellent receiver with AM stereo as a nice bonus. I suspect it might require some maintenance, though.

I don't see anything on that receiver that would require DeOxit...

AM Stereo is awesome though...there's not a lot of stations that use it, but there's more than I thought there would be:

http://meduci.com/stations.html

All of the mode switches will be susceptible to oxidation, not to mention the volume pots.

gdjacobs wrote:

probnot wrote:

I don't see anything on that receiver that would require DeOxit... […]
Show full quote

gdjacobs wrote:

The specs suggest that should be an excellent receiver with AM stereo as a nice bonus. I suspect it might require some maintenan […]
Show full quote

The specs suggest that should be an excellent receiver with AM stereo as a nice bonus. I suspect it might require some maintenance, though.

I don't see anything on that receiver that would require DeOxit...

AM Stereo is awesome though...there's not a lot of stations that use it, but there's more than I thought there would be:

http://meduci.com/stations.html

All of the mode switches will be susceptible to oxidation, not to mention the volume pots.

It's a fully logic controlled unit. Unless there are malfunctioning switches then the only cleaning necessary would be on the RCA inputs. Really what you have to worry about on units from that era are the VFL displays. Either they are worn out or have bad solder joints.