MasterKano wrote:According to your locations you're in Moscow, there are a few listings in the Russian Federation.
I'm probably the wrong person to ask — I've actually never sourced any part outside of Moscow. Regular Russian postal services are notoriously bad (e.g. damaged shipments, takes too long, can be confusing to deal with), which is why I always stayed away from shipping anything. There are premium delivery services, but all in all, shipping anything domestically or from abroad is just too much of a hastle for me. Besides, local prices are just much better than eBay — unless you deal with people who consider a common Pentium MMX machine a "rare vintage collector's item".
Whats your experience with buying parts in Russia?
Russians are hoarders by nature. 🤣 People often keep stuff they never use for a long time. Which is probably why we don't have thrift stores like people do in UK or USA — only stores that sell second hand clothes. So, everybody thinks they're really gonna need this Pentium Pro machine someday. And when they finally understand that they won't, I try to find them. 😀
It's really time-consuming, but for me it's part of the fun.
-it's an easy way to get your first Pentium machine with an S3 card, a Soundblaster clone (ESS or Crystal) of some sorts for free or really cheap (a normal price for such a machine would be 500-1000 rubles, or about 7,5-15 USD). Home users in Russia are unlikely to have pre-486 stuff, but it happens, too. So, basically, I never consider buying a machine for more than 15 bucks. A higher price would only make sense for a branded machine, like IBM, Compaq or HP.
- same goes for more advanced sound cards and video cards. This is where you need to be lucky: people who really cared for music and graphics back then usually know that collectors are after these parts. However, I have Voodoo 1, 2, 3 and Banshee for 15 bucks in total. I once got an AWE32 for 70 cents from a guy who thought it was a videocard.
- home users actually are a safe way to get working parts even if they can't test them. If a guy had an ISA Soundblaster laying around for 20 years, that means that at some point he just swapped it for an upgrade. If it weren't working back then, he would have thrown it out already. Basically, the only non-working parts I ever got were from a company that wanted to clear their storage.
Besides, I enjoy meeting real people. Many vendors get nostalgic once they learn that I'm buying their stuff for playing DOS games. We talk, and this way you can learn something about the computer market in the past. What was considered "cool" and high-end? Was the person proud of having this hardware back then?
Also, maybe it's just my luck, but I often visit weird places in my search for parts. 🤣 I once bought a Gravis Phoenix joystick at a stripclub's parking lot pretty late at night. My first Pentium MMX machine belonged to a son of an FSB officer (that's Russian CIA), and I had to get it from a place built for FSB people to live (which you normally would never get to see). Recently I got a CRT screen from a guy who looked like a rare mix of a hippie and a biker, ran a tattoo parlor at home and had a bunch of singing birds. My girlfriend always asks me about the parts I get because she loves the stories of how and where I got them.
