TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

What the hell? How did something like that even get sold, hell even patented, without Nintendo hitting them with a corporate sized law suit?

Because it is a Nintendo-branded release. It was official.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be working correctly. It fails calibration in Wing Commander and even when using joycalib program it is incredibly spastic/unruly... maybe it was only meant to work with Win9x

Just picked up an Intel Socket 8 FX motherboard. Have yet to test it 😀

A Quadro 4 980 XGL

Should i flash it to a Ti 4800 or will it preform the same as one anyway?

I mean, it is nowhere near to retro, but this thing seriously baffles me.

Found this standing in electronics recycling center areal right on heavy rain. My idea is that I always take monitors without broken display panels, because 95% of them are fixable and sellable. So I took it home, it was seriously dirty from pollen which is flying around now like crazy and it was dripping water, so I took it home and let sit for a week to dry out. Yesterday I tried to power it up. Guess what? Came right on with no problems whatsoever.

I mean why would somebody throw this away? It is bigger and it even has higher resolution then the display I am using with my main PC.
Yeah, it has seven scratchmarks little bit to the right and top from center (those white points on photo), but anything serious. Maybe it will come off somehow, but it isn't visible too much when the display is on. (BTW. If you have idea how to remove those spots from display - please tell me 😀 )

candle_86 wrote:

A Quadro 4 980 XGL

Should i flash it to a Ti 4800 or will it preform the same as one anyway?

IMAG0050[1].jpg

Is clocked just the same as the Geforce variant, so it'll likely perform the same

Someone near my neighborhood left an old Socket 478 PCI-E system in really bad condition with almost all parts missing and the motherboard broken with caps missing, i tried to resolder the missing caps and the battery holder and managed to revive this board

The motherboard is an AsRock P4i945GC, one of the few Socket 478 DDR2 PCI-E motherboards using an Intel chipset

Carlos S. M. wrote:

Someone near my neighborhood left an old Socket 478 PCI-E system in really bad condition with almost all parts missing and the motherboard broken with caps missing, i tried to resolder the missing caps and the battery holder and managed to revive this board

The motherboard is an AsRock P4i945GC, one of the few Socket 478 DDR2 PCI-E motherboards using an Intel chipset

Very nice work on the soldering! And I think you got very lucky with getting it to work again.

krivulak wrote:

I mean, it is nowhere near to retro, but this thing seriously baffles me. […]
Show full quote

I mean, it is nowhere near to retro, but this thing seriously baffles me.

Found this standing in electronics recycling center areal right on heavy rain. My idea is that I always take monitors without broken display panels, because 95% of them are fixable and sellable. So I took it home, it was seriously dirty from pollen which is flying around now like crazy and it was dripping water, so I took it home and let sit for a week to dry out. Yesterday I tried to power it up. Guess what? Came right on with no problems whatsoever.

I mean why would somebody throw this away? It is bigger and it even has higher resolution then the display I am using with my main PC.
Yeah, it has seven scratchmarks little bit to the right and top from center (those white points on photo), but anything serious. Maybe it will come off somehow, but it isn't visible too much when the display is on. (BTW. If you have idea how to remove those spots from display - please tell me 😀 )

Paint stripper in very small amounts. That's how I got something similar off of mine. You can get this at any home supply store. Don't over do it though or you'll make the display thin in that area which will make it look different and then you have to do the entire display to even it out.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

krivulak wrote:

I mean, it is nowhere near to retro, but this thing seriously baffles me. […]
Show full quote

I mean, it is nowhere near to retro, but this thing seriously baffles me.

<snip>
Found this standing in electronics recycling center areal right on heavy rain. My idea is that I always take monitors without broken display panels, because 95% of them are fixable and sellable. So I took it home, it was seriously dirty from pollen which is flying around now like crazy and it was dripping water, so I took it home and let sit for a week to dry out. Yesterday I tried to power it up. Guess what? Came right on with no problems whatsoever.

I mean why would somebody throw this away? It is bigger and it even has higher resolution then the display I am using with my main PC.
Yeah, it has seven scratchmarks little bit to the right and top from center (those white points on photo), but anything serious. Maybe it will come off somehow, but it isn't visible too much when the display is on. (BTW. If you have idea how to remove those spots from display - please tell me 😀 )
<snip>

Paint stripper in very small amounts. That's how I got something similar off of mine. You can get this at any home supply store. Don't over do it though or you'll make the display thin in that area which will make it look different and then you have to do the entire display to even it out.

The things you can do with monitors. The PCB on the back of my 26" LG IPS display was overheating (measured it at around 120c with my IR thermometer) and causing it to drop hdmi signal occasionally at random. I just superglued a heatsink off of one of my old dell PERC raid cards onto the chip, mounted a small 5v fan on it that I'm powering off a random DC power adapter plug I found in a box of em and it hasn't happened in about 5 days now. And IR thermometer reads PCB @ 35c now. Only thing is I can't put the plastic back.. back on it, and use it without it now but I don't care. I only ever see the front of it so who cares.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Paint stripper in very small amounts. That's how I got something similar off of mine. You can get this at any home supply store. Don't over do it though or you'll make the display thin in that area which will make it look different and then you have to do the entire display to even it out.

Well, under further inspection the dings looks to be deep sadly enough. Will try it, but there is one problem. I haven't ever seen paint stripper in stores 😁
What is it based on? Is it acetone or something like that?

krivulak wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Paint stripper in very small amounts. That's how I got something similar off of mine. You can get this at any home supply store. Don't over do it though or you'll make the display thin in that area which will make it look different and then you have to do the entire display to even it out.

Well, under further inspection the dings looks to be deep sadly enough. Will try it, but there is one problem. I haven't ever seen paint stripper in stores 😁
What is it based on? Is it acetone or something like that?

I'll check my can tomorrow and report back. I believe it's just a very fine abrasive. I removed duct tape residue from the duct tape I had covering the screen on my old Gateway LCD the time I decided to paint it chrome. I swear that screen looks factory new (ans this is a 18 year old LCD I'm talking about). I tried everything short of dynamite to remove that stuff. Paint stripper was the only abrasive enough thing I had around. I believe the effect it will have there should also be desirable. Just don't go overboard, I doubt you'll be able to completely remove them but you should be able to improve them enough to make the monitor tolerable to use.

I'm not even sure this is sold in the Czech Republic. I'm from the good ol' land o' Trump. I'm unfamiliar with the chemicals laws of your country. Living in a borderline dictatorship (last I check anyways) doesn't do you alot of favors in that way.

EDIT: looks like old 15-20 year old stuff like my can (it comes in a compressed air can. It comes out like a foam) migh hard to obtain as it contains lead and this appears to be banned by the European Union.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

banned by the European Union.

Well, EU is banning everything, but it is still being sold, but under other name 😁

If these marks are deep scratches you can fill them with petroleum jelly.

krivulak wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

banned by the European Union.

Well, EU is banning everything, but it is still being sold, but under other name 😁

I'll be glad when the world's political situation finally causes the EU and United Nations to implode on themselves.

While it is awesome that you could save the monitor from the trash bin its death sentence has already been spoken as it got wet in the rain. It doesn't matter whether you let it dry out or not. The initial process of corrosion has started. Letting something dry out slowly is imho the worst thing you can do. Best advice is always to get rid of wet spots immediately.

krivulak wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

banned by the European Union.

Well, EU is banning everything, but it is still being sold, but under other name 😁

You should be able to find paint stripper at a Do-It-Yourself store...even in the EU. 🤣

blurks wrote:

While it is awesome that you could save the monitor from the trash bin its death sentence has already been spoken as it got wet in the rain. It doesn't matter whether you let it dry out or not. The initial process of corrosion has started. Letting something dry out slowly is imho the worst thing you can do. Best advice is always to get rid of wet spots immediately.

No, that's not true. Why do you think old Macintosh SE boards are washed in dishwashers? To get rid of leaked capacitor fluids. Also, it is pretty warm and dry in my workshop, so I think it is not a problem at all. I am still going to open it up to take a look at the caps if they are not bulging, but I won't bother more.

Jade Falcon wrote:

If these marks are deep scratches you can fill them with petroleum jelly.

Already tried that, it came right off and the scratchmarks are still the same.

Found the oddest mainboard in a trash PC: Gigabyte GA-MF3

It's an AM2 motherboard with DDR2 and usual connectivity, except for one thing - it has an AGP 8X slot for graphics. I've seen mainboards that sport both PCI-E and AGP (one of witch being crippled) but this is the first AM2 motherboard with AGP I've seen. Unfortunately BIOS doesn't officially support AM2+ chips like the Athlon II or Phenom II but i've seen links to beta BIOSes (and custom jobs) with support for triple and quad core chips. It runs the Nforce 3 250 chipset, witch means it has win98 support (gigabyte site lists some win98 drivers).

The board came with a 4000+ installed witch made me think it was a regular 939 board - until I took a closer look at the ram - 2x1GB of Geil DDR2 800MHz CL5-5-5-7 - I was so close to trying to stick a single core 939 3800+ in in (and destroying the chip) too 😀 .

No idea what to do with it. I already have a LGA775 machine (Asrock 4coredual-sata2) running a 3GHz Pentium Dual Core E6600 setup with win98, winXP and win7 witch I use for testing, benchmarking and stuff.

Yesterday's haul.

I plan to gut out the machines to see if there's anything good in them. The tall tower turned out to be mostly hollow.