Found three HD5870s in the trash today. All are missing the fan and shroud but are working fine. Even after 4 hours Heaven benchmark in my Vista box.
Have built a frankenstein cooling solution for now. Keeps it under 90°C even under high load.

Here’s something interesting I picked up out of an old piece of lab gear that was getting scrapped. We have a big metal box full of cards:

Well, inside is a standard ATX board and one of the most complicated ADC+datalogging+power delivery systems I’ve ever seen:

I think it’s neat how the casing is only just bigger than the motherboard itself.

Incidentally:

^^ noted.

Here’s the datalogging setup that came out. Three ISA cards and a PCI card all strung together with ribbon cables. These might have had production numbers in the tens of thousands, and possibly cost that much in dollars too. As mentioned, the bottom card also acted as the power supply and was connected directly to the ATX power header on the motherboard.

I wish I had some way to use all this or some application for it. I can think of things to do with more typical multi-channel ADC boards but this is a little intense for me. 😜

With all that removed I powered it on and it fired up to a bog-standard PC BIOS, as I kind-of expected. The mystery CPU turned out to be a non-MMX P133.

I have no idea how this thing was supposed to boot, there was no storage medium attached and no boot ROM on the ethernet card (still installed in the above pic.) Didn’t seem to be anywhere to mount a HDD in its original home. It’s possible it had a DOM fitted that was removed before the instrument got shoved out to disposal.

^^ Close-up of the motherboard. Standard socket 7 stuff; 16MB of ECC EDO RAM and S3 Trio 64v onboard. There’s a lot of fine black dust everywhere (which I was a little worred about considering where it came from), but fortunately it’s not oily or greasy and just brushes off.

Here it is (mostly) empty, seems like a pretty nice board. This has SIX(!) ISA slots along with everything else you’d expect. i430TX chipset. It’s “pure” ATX rather than an AT/ATX hybrid so I’m guessing it was made pretty late for Socket 7.

I just had to highlight this as it’s the nicest block of front panel connectors I’ve ever seen. Why can’t modern boards space them out like this? None of these were hooked up, making me wonder how the switch-on process worked in the original machine. It’s interesting to see such a bog-standard board used in such a specialized way.

I'm probably going to keep this together with the enclosure, it's too neat to scrap and it's so well fitted to this board it'd be a shame not to use it. It'll need a few extra holes drilled but there should be enough room to mount a FlexATX PSU and HDD/CF drive on the inside. I have visions of a plexi window and RGB lighting. 😉 Should be a fun project.

This is no "bog standard board". but a pretty unusual DFI ITOX586, designed as an industrial board, complete with onboard VGA and huge numbers of ISA slots. It actually strongly reminds me of the Intel AN430TX (including those cool front panel connectors), but then modified with less PCI, more ISA and that VGA chip.

As for how power on could be triggered without front panel connectors - if the power supply goes via that ISA board, so does the switching. I don't immediately see anything I recognize, but one way or another it goes via that card.

dionb wrote:

This is no "bog standard board". but a pretty unusual DFI ITOX586, designed as an industrial board, complete with onboard VGA and huge numbers of ISA slots. It actually strongly reminds me of the Intel AN430TX (including those cool front panel connectors), but then modified with less PCI, more ISA and that VGA chip.

As for how power on could be triggered without front panel connectors - if the power supply goes via that ISA board, so does the switching. I don't immediately see anything I recognize, but one way or another it goes via that card.

Seeing as it's ATX, it may simply short the green wire to black once it's plugged in.

Just got back from an interesting pick-up for free: an IBM PC330-P75, model 6576 - 36H, together with two bags of 'accessories'.

Unfortunately beggars can't be choosers, so the keyboard it was photographed with (a 1992-vintage Model M) wasn't in the package having been sold separately, and the rest was incredibly smoky. Also, much of it was old ISDN stuff, which is even less useful than POTS modems. Given the smoke, I've binned anything not compellingly interesting, but that still leaves me with three IBM mice (two white ones with balls in good shape, one early optical more physically worn than I've ever seen a mouse, but still working, a null-modem cable, an external serial 33k6 modem, some USB stuff and also about 40 3.5" floppies, half of which comprise an OS/2 Warp 3 FixPak (32 to be precise). This is far more than I would ever want in the way of floppies, probably half are dead and they really stink, but I'll leaf through them for any unique driver versions etc before binning all but the cleanest.

The monitor is an IBM 2264 (15" 0.28 dot pitch CRT). Oh, and the PC330 had sound added: a CT3670 SB32, connected to a 6x Creative CDRom drive with original "MPC Multimedia PC" logo.

Not sure what to do with the system. On the one hand it's working as it is. I can replace the SB32 with an mWave sound/modem combo card and add a Lexmark-era Model M to make it complete & pretty authentic. Or I can strip out the P75 (somehow early P54C never really interested me) and stick in a PS/1 486 board I have that doesn't fit into the non-IBM LPX case I'm using it in now. Or I can dump Windows 95 and install OS/2 Warp instead. Or I could just clean it up and sell it.

Most interesting aspect of the system board is that all cache SRAM and the tag are socketed SOJ (similar to socketed DRAM for video). Never seen that before... apart from that it's an early i430FX thing with S3 Trio64 onboard - which makes this a very late & low-end P75. In any event the board can handle anything up to a P200, and I could just play around with a Powerleap adapter I go past that.

But first things first clean off all the yellow tar :r

cyclone3d wrote:

If it still smells, use some fabreeze on it and it should take care of it.

I have found that cigarette smell + febreeze = cigarette smell + febreeze.

Scrub Free with Bleach or Scrubbing Bubbles with Bleach will remove the smell, just don't wear nice clothes because the bleach *will* get on them.

I cleaned several HORRIFYING cases and a laptop that smelled like it was inside a smoker with this stuff.

People do tend to give up a little quickly on smoker stuff, though I admit it's a chore the only thing I haven't fixed is documentation. I think there's a way but I keep forgetting to test recommendations (I have a sealed box of smoky docs).

Merovign wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Scrub Free with Bleach or Scrubbing Bubbles with Bleach will remove the smell, just don't wear nice clothes because the bleach *will* get on them.

I cleaned several HORRIFYING cases and a laptop that smelled like it was inside a smoker with this stuff.

People do tend to give up a little quickly on smoker stuff, though I admit it's a chore the only thing I haven't fixed is documentation. I think there's a way but I keep forgetting to test recommendations (I have a sealed box of smoky docs).

I also had some success with simply vigorously airing, i.e. let parts/machine sit by an open windows or outside. This laptop I had went from awful to pretty good within a couple of weeks just from scrubbing the case with alcohol and airing out for long stretches by the kitchen window. There still is some condensate sticking to the fan, for instance, but since that requires full disassembly I've put it off.

henryVK wrote:

Merovign wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Scrub Free with Bleach or Scrubbing Bubbles with Bleach will remove the smell, just don't wear nice clothes because the bleach *will* get on them.

I cleaned several HORRIFYING cases and a laptop that smelled like it was inside a smoker with this stuff.

People do tend to give up a little quickly on smoker stuff, though I admit it's a chore the only thing I haven't fixed is documentation. I think there's a way but I keep forgetting to test recommendations (I have a sealed box of smoky docs).

I also had some success with simply vigorously airing, i.e. let parts/machine sit by an open windows or outside. This laptop I had went from awful to pretty good within a couple of weeks just from scrubbing the case with alcohol and airing out for long stretches by the kitchen window. There still is some condensate sticking to the fan, for instance, but since that requires full disassembly I've put it off.

I once bought a 6-inch telescope mirror that reeked incredibly of cigarette smoke. For obvious reasons I didn't scrub it with anything (not wanting to damage the reflective coating - except for the backside which I did lightly cleanse with alcohol) but instead stuck it in my attic which is open to air. Two years later it still reeks of cigarette smoke.

dionb wrote:

This is no "bog standard board". but a pretty unusual DFI ITOX586, designed as an industrial board, complete with onboard VGA and huge numbers of ISA slots. It actually strongly reminds me of the Intel AN430TX (including those cool front panel connectors), but then modified with less PCI, more ISA and that VGA chip.

I didn't mean it was a common board that every Joe Bloggs would have in their Win95 home computer, but that it behaves exactly like any other mainboard from this era. 😀 Standard BIOS, chipset, I/O, jumpers for CPU support & voltage (lots of options too), common VGA chip, no custom firmware and not specific to this application in any way. It really is just a PC in a box.

I find this fascinating. If the machine it came from were ten years older it probably would have been 100% custom and cost an order of magnitude more.

Just got this Micron Monitor and the NEC computer that goes with it. So that's 2-3 CRT I'm planning for my house purchase in a year. I'm getting it in exchange for data recovery of the hard disk (assuming I can get it to spin and get the data to become availible).

From what I can tell, the PC itself is all original. IT needs a bath badly after living in an HP Pavilion box for god only knows how long in a garage. But I'll get my friend's data off of it and then it's mine.

SPECS - what I know poking around
- NEC built sometime around 1995, strange LPX Tower configuration like an old Packard Bell I once had was
- Looks like it either has an IR Reader or a DIgital Readout on the front, Cool
- It has a Modem installed, not sure what speed, full length card like you'd find in an XT, so that's a little crazy, but it does have some kind of purposeful link cable to the motherboard (audio?)
- It's a Socket 5 so that make's it a Pentium, and it has a Genuine Pentium CPU in the socket, but hte numbers are messed up from the heat spreader, so not sure what clock speed yet (if it even works)
- Baby AT PSU (2 cable) of unknown wattage
- IDE HDD, not sure the capacity, but probably small enough to back the whole thing up to a DVD assuming it still spins up
- old CD-ROM, not sure what interface, looks to be IDE, but could be Mitsumi or PAnasonic given the time period
- Motherboard has on-board Audio and SVGA, and the SVGA has 2 open PLCC Slots for SRAM, might bump this puppy up to 2-4 MB of VRAM depending on where it maxxes out at

Either way, not something you get anymore. The main thing is I get to keep it after Ig et the data off of it, which should be easy assuming the hard disk will at least spin up one more time and talk to my Win10 machine.

Couple of finds in trash systems:

Creative Graphics Blaster MA300 Cirrus Logic with RAMBUS

Orchid Voodoo 2

holdencars11 wrote:

Couple of finds in trash systems:

Creative Graphics Blaster MA300 Cirrus Logic with RAMBUS

how does it do in 2d?

Merovign wrote:

I have found that cigarette smell + febreeze = cigarette smell + febreeze. […]
Show full quote

I have found that cigarette smell + febreeze = cigarette smell + febreeze.

Scrub Free with Bleach or Scrubbing Bubbles with Bleach will remove the smell, just don't wear nice clothes because the bleach *will* get on them.

I cleaned several HORRIFYING cases and a laptop that smelled like it was inside a smoker with this stuff.

People do tend to give up a little quickly on smoker stuff, though I admit it's a chore the only thing I haven't fixed is documentation. I think there's a way but I keep forgetting to test recommendations (I have a sealed box of smoky docs).

Read and learn, grasshopper.
Re: Getting rid of tobacco smell.

Merovign wrote:

I have found that cigarette smell + febreeze = cigarette smell + febreeze. […]
Show full quote

cyclone3d wrote:

If it still smells, use some fabreeze on it and it should take care of it.

I have found that cigarette smell + febreeze = cigarette smell + febreeze.

Scrub Free with Bleach or Scrubbing Bubbles with Bleach will remove the smell, just don't wear nice clothes because the bleach *will* get on them.

I cleaned several HORRIFYING cases and a laptop that smelled like it was inside a smoker with this stuff.

People do tend to give up a little quickly on smoker stuff, though I admit it's a chore the only thing I haven't fixed is documentation. I think there's a way but I keep forgetting to test recommendations (I have a sealed box of smoky docs).

Maybe it also depends on the type of cigarette. I've had good results in the past by just cleaning with dish soap and water and then using fabreeze if needed.

mrau wrote:

holdencars11 wrote:

Couple of finds in trash systems:

Creative Graphics Blaster MA300 Cirrus Logic with RAMBUS

how does it do in 2d?

Only played around in win95 gui. It seems like 2D would be fine, 3D compares to Rage IIc
http://vintage3d.org/cirrus.php#sthash.IpGmikMn.dpbs

Cig smell is easy to clean off boards with just soap and water, the hard part is cleaning the fans on the CPU and power supply.

Predator99 wrote:

My new Monitor :neutral: IBM 8503 Monochrome Display […]
Show full quote

My new Monitor 😐 IBM 8503 Monochrome Display

The attachment IMG_0160r.jpg is no longer available

Saw it on the street for garbage collection very close to me. "I dont need further monitors". Walked home. But an IBM? Its going to be dumped if I dont do anything! Came back with my car 2 hours later and was still there 😐

So after some cleaning it looks quite good without scartches on the screen. But I like to take a look inside before turning on. Thats where I am stuck
Its a "tamperproof" Torx T-20 screws with center pins. The Torx driver must have a long, slender shaft (preferably magnetic) to reach the screw heads.

Dont have it...must wait.

Puhh...screwdriver arrived from China:

Wheen seeing this I am glad I didnt try to power this one before taking a look inside 😵 😵 😵 This one goes where it came from...

If somebody else needs to open this model: Latches are on the bottom side, above the 3 screws.

Are you sure nobody could fix that ? it looks a bit rusty, but not unfixable (plus the tube itself probably still works, could be useful for somebody having a smashed monitor with good electronic)

I have some respect of CRT in terms of the high voltage and vacuum and I am not trying to fix this....

If somebody likes to have it...its located in Germany 😉