brassicGamer wrote:

- Quantum LTO-3 drive with unopened tapes and cleaning tape (slight upgrade from my DDS-3 drive)

This is neat thing! Wish I had it someday... 😀

brassicGamer wrote:

Edit: also, Toshiba Tecra 710CDT. I love these old Pentium-era Toshibas. Not only are the screens excellent quality (actually this one's a bit dim but at least it's active matrix), but the build quality is awesome, the batteries still hold charge and some have OPL3. Not sure if this one does yet - my other Tecra has a Crystal chipset which produces abominable emulation.

This thing is AWESOME! Sadly the one I had died on me few days after I got it. It came with complete accessories - case, mouse, everything. Wish I could repair it somehow... 🙁

krivulak wrote:

brassicGamer wrote:

- Quantum LTO-3 drive with unopened tapes and cleaning tape (slight upgrade from my DDS-3 drive)

This is neat thing! Wish I had it someday... 😀

Sadly, it has some hardware problem, which I suspected (it's usually the case when a tape is still in the drive). I ran the full diagnostics and it always encounters write errors around 13GB. It's done it 3 times now. Back to DDS3 for me 🙁

Found this in the street recently. It was in surprisingly good condition - I picked it up and carried it home, but on the last few meters I managed to drop it and make a lot of scratches on the case 😖
Anyway It still powers on, posts, but gives a blue screen during windows loading. I haven't done anything else with it, but it might well be fully functional once I install a new OS.

It's a Lenovo Thinkcentre, Core2 Duo E8400, 4gb RAM, w/ Windows Vista license. I am not familiar with these OEM systems but It looks like a typical office machine.

MMaximus wrote:

Found this in the street recently. It was in surprisingly good condition - I picked it up and carried it home, but on the last f […]
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Found this in the street recently. It was in surprisingly good condition - I picked it up and carried it home, but on the last few meters I managed to drop it and make a lot of scratches on the case 😖
Anyway It still powers on, posts, but gives a blue screen during windows loading. I haven't done anything else with it, but it might well be fully functional once I install a new OS.

It's a Lenovo Thinkcentre, Core2 Duo E8400, 4gb RAM, w/ Windows Vista license. I am not familiar with these OEM systems but It looks like a typical office machine.

Schools bought those by the hundreds. Not bad actually as IIRC they have full height expansion slots and most support quad cores.

I deployed the shit out of those a few years ago. Popular business config.

Going through some addenda to the big haul. I'll be posting here a fair bit...

First up, a couple handy GeForce cards! Haven't tested them yet. Just about everything else has worked fine though.

A GTX280 1GB and an 8800GTS 512MB (why the hell do they make these model numbers so meaningless & confusing?)

The only PC I have running with a GeForce right now already has a 9800GTS so not sure if it's worth tearing apart to upgrade. I could replace the Radeon HD4670 I have in a different one but that involves taking it out of its rack. 😜

Secondly a Core 2 Quad ... manual and sticker. Well, the sticker can go on the machine that I just upgraded to a C2Q, which I bought somewhere else entirely.

Incidentally this is a Dell Vostro minitower, it seems the majority of these that shipped with a Core2 Duo got a motherboard that can't handle a Quad, but I lucked out and mine got a revised version that can. Works great! (This is the same machine with the 9800GTS.)

I set this one up specifically to play Prince of Persia 2008 on, which was originally written for the PS3 and is fully multi-threaded, reportedly taking advantage of up to 6 cores. I actually noticed a small improvement in smoothness despite going from a 3GHz C2D to a 2.5GHz C2Q. The overall framerate hasn't changed but the occasional jitter or hop that was present on the Duo is no longer there. Not bad.

(I bought the C2Q itself for $10, which is the most I've paid for a CPU in years.)

xjas wrote:

Going through some addenda to the big haul. I'll be posting here a fair bit... […]
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Going through some addenda to the big haul. I'll be posting here a fair bit...

First up, a couple handy GeForce cards! Haven't tested them yet. Just about everything else has worked fine though.

01-geforce.jpg

02-geforce.jpg

A GTX280 1GB and an 8800GTS 512MB (why the hell do they make these model numbers so meaningless & confusing?)

The only PC I have running with a GeForce right now already has a 9800GTS so not sure if it's worth tearing apart to upgrade. I could replace the Radeon HD4670 I have in a different one but that involves taking it out of its rack. 😜

Secondly a Core 2 Quad ... manual and sticker. Well, the sticker can go on the machine that I just upgraded to a C2Q, which I bought somewhere else entirely.

03-quad.jpg

04-quad.jpg

Incidentally this is a Dell Vostro minitower, it seems the majority of these that shipped with a Core2 Duo got a motherboard that can't handle a Quad, but I lucked out and mine got a revised version that can. Works great! (This is the same machine with the 9800GTS.)

05-quad.jpg

I set this one up specifically to play Prince of Persia 2008 on, which was originally written for the PS3 and is fully multi-threaded, reportedly taking advantage of up to 6 cores. I actually noticed a small improvement in smoothness despite going from a 3GHz C2D to a 2.5GHz C2Q. The overall framerate hasn't changed but the occasional jitter or hop that was present on the Duo is no longer there. Not bad.

(I bought the C2Q itself for $10, which is the most I've paid for a CPU in years.)

I'm pretty sure a 9800 GTS doesn't exist. Only 9800 GT, 9800 GTX and 9800 GTX+

8800 GTS 512 (G92) is faster than 8800 GTX (G80) and the older
8800 GTS 320/640 MB (G80), compared to the 9000 series, is slightly below the 9800 GTX (sightly improved 8800 GTS 512) and faster than the 9800 GT

The GTX 280 was a old flagship on the GTX 200 series (untill it got superseded by the GTX 285 and then the GTX 480), unlike the 9800 series, it was a new arch and it outperforms the 9800 series considerably

Carlos S. M. wrote:

I'm pretty sure a 9800 GTS doesn't exist. Only 9800 GT, 9800 GTX and 9800 GTX+

xjas wrote:

(why the hell do they make these model numbers so meaningless & confusing?)

Carlos S. M. wrote:

8800 GTS 512 (G92) is faster than 8800 GTX (G80) and the older
8800 GTS 320/640 MB (G80), compared to the 9000 series, is slightly below the 9800 GTX (sightly improved 8800 GTS 512) and faster than the 9800 GT

The GTX 280 was a old flagship on the GTX 200 series (untill it got superseded by the GTX 285 and then the GTX 480), unlike the 9800 series, it was a new arch and it outperforms the 9800 series considerably

Noted. To be honest, the only way I had any idea which one was most recent was going by the amount of RAM.

Someone should make a timeline for GeForce & Radeon cards with how new the card is on the X axis and how far up the range it was on the Y axis, for those of us who like to browse the used ads but have no idea what we're looking at. 😜

(Just checked - it's actually a 9800 GTX in the Core 2 Quad system.)

Allright, next up is this grubby but complete HP XW6000 workstation:

This case is kind of interesting, it can be converted from tower to desktop by rotating the drive bays 90 degrees. It’s also a lot smaller than it looks (thinner and shorter than your typical P4 beige box) and a ton heavier. I’d guess it at a good 15kg.

I got all excited when I saw it was a dual-Xeon setup, but they’re Netburst-based Xeons and I already have one of those (that I’ve barely even powered on since I built it.) This has either two 2.4 or 2.66 GHz CPUs with hyperthreading so pretty close to what’s in my PC-DL based one.

Its 36GB SCSI HDD reportedly doesn’t spin up, but it does have some cool hardware inside, like 4GB of ECC DDR1 and an AGP GeForce 7600GT with 512MB. Unfortunately

…it is absolutely rotten with bulging caps. All over the motherboard and the VGA card. I think this one’s going back in the bin, after I strip it of anything useful.

Yep.

xjas wrote:

Allright, next up is this grubby but complete HP XW6000 workstation: […]
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Allright, next up is this grubby but complete HP XW6000 workstation:

10-hp.jpg

This case is kind of interesting, it can be converted from tower to desktop by rotating the drive bays 90 degrees. It’s also a lot smaller than it looks (thinner and shorter than your typical P4 beige box) and a ton heavier. I’d guess it at a good 15kg.

I got all excited when I saw it was a dual-Xeon setup, but they’re Netburst-based Xeons and I already have one of those (that I’ve barely even powered on since I built it.) This has either two 2.4 or 2.66 GHz CPUs with hyperthreading so pretty close to what’s in my PC-DL based one.

11-hp.jpg

Its 36GB SCSI HDD reportedly doesn’t spin up, but it does have some cool hardware inside, like 4GB of ECC DDR1 and an AGP GeForce 7600GT with 512MB. Unfortunately

12-hp.jpg

13-hp.jpg

…it is absolutely rotten with bulging caps. All over the motherboard and the VGA card. I think this one’s going back in the bin, after I strip it of anything useful.

16-hp.jpg

Yep.

If it powers up why not just keep it around until it implodes in on yourself?

Incidentally here's the RAM from the Xeon. Never seen that double-stacked configuration of chips before. Guessing these were pretty early 1GB modules, I don't remember them being all that common in the DDR1 era.

Next one I pulled out was this Asus P5K-V based machine in a nice looking (and way lighter) jobber case.

Nothing too esoteric but it's a Core 2 Quad with 6 GB of RAM. Is it just me or is this insane? Why would you throw this out??

I was so excited to get a C2Q CPU for $10 earlier and then I get this whole machine for free. Figures. 😜

It's complete (I have the side panels too) but pretty disassembled, even down to the heat sink being loose. I have no idea how that monster fan sitting in there was originally mounted.

The video card is a passively-cooled "short" GeForce 8500GT with 512MB, always useful. Seems I've gone from having zero modern GeForce cards to a small library of them in just a few weeks.

And of course, the last thing I snagged in this haul was another goddam Kinesis keyboard, this one mint in box. I'm actually starting to get good at typing on these things so a second one is nice to have.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

If it powers up why not just keep it around until it implodes in on yourself?

You can't see it in the photos (because I already vacuumed it :p) but it's really disgusting. NO desire to go on a massive resto project with this one. The case is also pretty banged up, panels don't fit together anymore, etc. It's a parts donor at this point.

Someone gave me a computer and brought this to my house. Since this was for free and was gifted, I think it fits better here then in the "What retro hardware did you buy"-thread.

When I saw it, I cheered! 😁

Yes it is! 😁

With key! 😁
Gotten an AT system in 2017! And except for being a complete AT system (which is a time capsule in its own right), the internals were basically totally non-interesting! 😁 Unbelievable! I never expected this, so I was pleasantly surprised!
VX Pro with as of yet unknown Pentium due to the underside having like 3 "warranty" or brand stickers 🤣, 2x16MB + 2x8MB, Trio64 (with empty memory sockets), no harddrive and one PCI card seems to have been removed. 16x CDROM, of course a modem, it did have a sound card which was kinda "meh" at first, I haven't taken it apart yet so I don't know the details yet.

But come on, an AT system gifted and delivered to one's doorstep for €0.00, that's gotta be worth for something 😁

@Tetrium -- congrats! That's really cool. Do share more details when you have time.

Tetrium wrote:

Gotten an AT system in 2017! And except for being a complete AT system (which is a time capsule in its own right), the internals were basically totally non-interesting! 😁 Unbelievable! I never expected this, so I was pleasantly surprised!

Yeah the later AT cases for Pentium systems were much less interesting than those from the 486 and 386 era, mostly as they lack the numeric LED display, but an AT case is an AT case, especially if the PSU works. 😀

Congrats Tetrium. Mine isn't exactly a dumpster find but I got a mystery AT system on a whim a few days ago, for $10 shipping inc. It's an Acer with a strange AT case (2 PS2 ports instead of AT connector, floppy drive at the top of the front panel etc.). I was hoping it would be an older Pentium (I knew the board was a Socket 7) but it turned out to be a 166MMX as well. The high points for me were discovering that it had a ceramic MMX CPU (I have none, so it will get replaced with a PPGA MMX) and a Yamaha OPL3 ISA sound card (which I will grab and replace with an ALS or ESS sound card). I will likely clean it, wipe the hard drive, install DOS/Win3.11, test and sell it off. AT cases are nice but I am running out of room for cases and systems..

I will maybe also make some OPL3 recordings of ESS first though..

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

If your dumpster finds keep on like this pretty soon your dumpsters shall be spewing forth 5150s and Amigas.

Not an Amiga but I found these. 🤣

There was also a bunch of Xboxes and a printer for the commodore but I didn't grab those cause I really don't need another dot matrix printer and honestly who likes the Xbox? 🤣

As for 5150's I pulled something very broken but much more rare out not too long ago (Think it was last year?):

IBM 3270!

Didn't work and I don't have it anymore as a result since honestly it was such a HUGE hunk of iron to hang onto and I have very limited space.

King_Corduroy wrote:

who likes the Xbox? 🤣

Me! Chuck on XBMC and makes a good media centre as long as you don't want HD.
or the 8GB IDE drives are useful for older PC's
But openly admit rest of your finds are much more interesting

chinny22 wrote:

Me! Chuck on XBMC and makes a good media centre as long as you don't want HD. or the 8GB IDE drives are useful for older PC's Bu […]
Show full quote

King_Corduroy wrote:

who likes the Xbox? 🤣

Me! Chuck on XBMC and makes a good media centre as long as you don't want HD.
or the 8GB IDE drives are useful for older PC's
But openly admit rest of your finds are much more interesting

Not just that, it's a great emulation machine. Although now we have better solutions they cost money compared to free xboxes.

Co-worker was cleaning out his office, and this was behind some books on his bookshelf. Thats a good spot to put a laptop! Complete with proprietary power brick! I snatched it up pretty quick when he was disgusted with the age of the thing.

Looking up the model and part it was supposed to be a 900MHz PIII with 1GB RAM and 20GB HDD, with Rage 128 Pro (8MB) and ESS Maestro. But, turning it on revealed something different... a P4 with 512MB RAM, 30GB HDD and Radeon 7500 (16MB). Not a bad machine I suppose but the thing that always holds laptops back from being good retro gaming rigs (in my opinion) is the relatively crappy video chip.

RJDog wrote:

Co-worker was cleaning out his office, and this was behind some books on his bookshelf. Thats a good spot to put a laptop! Complete with proprietary power brick! I snatched it up pretty quick when he was disgusted with the age of the thing.

Looking up the model and part it was supposed to be a 900MHz PIII with 1GB RAM and 20GB HDD, with Rage 128 Pro (8MB) and ESS Maestro. But, turning it on revealed something different... a P4 with 512MB RAM, 30GB HDD and Radeon 7500 (16MB). Not a bad machine I suppose but the thing that always holds laptops back from being good retro gaming rigs (in my opinion) is the relatively crappy video chip.

The Radeon 7500 was the flagship for ATIs mobility line at the time. Make no mistake it's a good GPU. I played Battlefield 1942 near max @1024 on one a couple of years back.