Spotted, but ultimately decided not to go for this Dell Optiplex Gn the other day. Neat system - should be a P200, lots of PCI+ISA slots on a bottom-mounted riser & an S3 Trio64GX onboard - but I just don't need it. Only expansion card installed was a Sound Blaster 16, and surprisingly it still had its Quantum Bigfoot HDD which was un-mounted and just hanging inside by the IDE cable. Didn't feel like spending twenty-five bucks to mess with a Quantum Bigfoot. 😜 (The side panel was there, I just took it off for pics.)

Also passed on this boxed original Gravis joystick, seemingly in good shape:

I kind of want one of these for my 386, which also has an Ultrasound and a Gravis Gamepad, but I dunno if I $14.99 want one. It's been there for a few weeks though so who knows, maybe I'll wait for a sale day and grab it.

oh man I would've gone for that Gn tower, love those things.

I went thrift shopping again, found some interesting things, and purchased none of them. Time to bump this thread.

First up is this nondescript Acer tower (Pentium D-based, onboard everything), with a Zip 750 drive shoved way back into the case for some reason.

The drive predates this machine by several years so somebody must have upgraded & kept it.

I don't think I've ever even seen a 750MB Zip disk. I have tons of 100MB disks and maybe one or two 250s laying around. AFAIK the 750 drive can't even write to 100MB disks, so this is a thoroughly useless albatross. Definitely not worth buying the whole tower for $40 for.

Now this is kind of cool, a PCMCIA SCSI portable discman/CD-RW drive, new in box & sealed. The original price tag is still attached:

Somebody paid $350 for this, kept it in its box for a couple decades, then chucked it in the donation bin of a for-profit second-hand shop. Nice.

Was really tempted but I don't have literally any use for it. All my retro laptops with PCMCIA slots also have removable/interchangeable optical drives and most of them are CD-RW or DVD already anyway. I dunno, if it's still there next time I go (pretty likely, stuff like this doesn't move), maybe I'll grab it.

Finally a couple retro video cards hanging in a plastic bag on the Wall of Crap. WTF, I never see stuff like this put out there:

A GF4 MX440 AGP in some kind of hotted-up gold edition with a fan more befitting a TI4200, and an FX5500 PCI. Don't really need either, but I might have grabbed it if somebody hadn't butchered the gold I/O bracket on the GF4:

Why would you do this??

I did score a nearly-full spindle of inkjet-printable CD-Rs for $1.99, so win.

zerker wrote:

I found an original model iMac at the local Value Village one time. Don't really have room for it, though. Or any real Mac softw […]
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I found an original model iMac at the local Value Village one time. Don't really have room for it, though. Or any real Mac software that I'd want it for. If I did want to get into PowerPC Mac Stuff, a PowerPC Mac Mini would probably be more practical.

Hey, I have that exact iMac G3 Charcoal grey 600mhz.
Great iMac in my Collection. These Mac's where way ahead of the PC for there time.

Woolie Wool wrote:

I almost bought this, a loaded IBM PS/2 Model 90 with a 486DX, until I realized it was MCA only and got the seller to agree to cancel my bid, which had a maximum higher than the price it eventually sold for. I decided that I would never shop on eBay will high again. Perhaps I might get a 486 in the future, but not one like this!

Yeah, That PS/2 is a Nightmare. Get a PS/1 these are the Cadillac's of 486's and NO proprietary IBM parts.

Went to Value Village on a whim and saw some ISA cards on the "Wall of Crap", as xjas put it; might be the first time in a decade I'd seen PC stuff that old at one of those stores. One card was an OPTi 82C931-based sound card, model BTC-something, that I probably would have picked up ($4.99!) if I knew beforehand of the strange "22-voice, 52-operator" OPL3 equivalent that is supposed to lurk inside those chips. As it is, it's been a while since I last owned a working PC with an ISA slot.

There was also an ancient Ethernet card, old enough to have only the coaxial-type port; classic USRobotics 56K modem card from 1996, ATI-branded PCI TV tuner from 2000, and two budget-looking AGP cards; one of them was an Asus-branded "TNT2-VANTA" or somesuch with a chunk of blue Socket 7 heatsink glued to the GPU.

EDIT: And now that I check through the rest of this thread, I realize I should have snapped a few photos...

SHIT 😢 😢 😢 Totally crazy! I didnt expect this outcome as the item description didnt mention the words ADLIB GOLD 1000 at all....!

https://www.ebay.de/itm/1-isa-sound-karten-/2 … &orig_cvip=true

My bid was little below the winning bid and I was confident to win...but thats too much for a single card!

wat o_o

That's nothing. There was a 3DO Blaster, which went for 4500$ yesterday. Obviously not in my hands as I am not interested in 3DO junk but still interesting to see.

I'm no expert on early sound cards, but is that "Adlib Gold 1000" really worth that much? Anyway, I bet the seller was slightly surprised by the end result 🤣

Adlib Golds are quite rare and highly sought after.

I didn't buy a Geforce 4 ti 4600 because i don't want to pay this sort of money for it. and it's only one i can see on ebay at the moment

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VTG-Gainward-Nvidi … ca7Tz:rk:1:pf:0

Odd thing is i really don't understand the prices of these things because when I look in ebay completed (sold) listings I find several working geforce 4 ti 4600 that have sold for £30 or less since January. I just don't understand the huge variation in prices on retro GPUs. OK i get it some of them are boxed and collectible but basically I just wanna play games on it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_ … 0&LH_Complete=1

Plenty of Geforce 4 ti 4200 around on ebay but one could assume they must be a bit crap for gaming as they are always cheap it seems

Don't have any pictures readily available, but I've had to pass up quite a bit of old tech at an electronics-only Goodwill in Omaha, NE.

-Passed on a last-gen Bernoulli drive (predecessor to the Zip drive) because it was SCSI only & I have no computers with SCSI...really kicking myself on that one. 😵

-Passed on a G4 Cube with monitor, keyboard, speakers & mouse for only about $100...it was an "either/or" decision between the Cube and an AT&T PC 6300 (Rebranded Olivetti M24) with color monitor and keyboard for the same price, and I picked the AT&T. Granted it would be nice to have a G4 Cube in my collection, but I've heard they're quite a bit of trouble, so it may be for the best I passed it over.

-An old HP protocol analyzer, passed simply because I didn't know what I would have done with it (and IIRC also didn't have enough money at the time).

Plus other various miscellaneous bits and pieces that I cannot recall any specifics on, mostly parts and vintage video game consoles/cartridges.

blurks wrote:

That's nothing. There was a 3DO Blaster, which went for 4500$ yesterday. Obviously not in my hands as I am not interested in 3DO junk but still interesting to see.

I just don't get this at all. Hell, the box is worn and sun faded. I don't think some people realize that PC optical drives can read 3DO discs directly and emulation is near perfect. You don't need one of these anymore. Especially at that ludicrous price. I must be missing something. Trust me, though, I see one just sitting at a garage sale for $20 I'll grab it for sure. 🤣

Predator99 wrote:

SHIT 😢 😢 😢 Totally crazy! I didnt expect this outcome as the item description didnt mention the words ADLIB GOLD 1000 at all....!

https://www.ebay.de/itm/1-isa-sound-karten-/2 … &orig_cvip=true

My bid was little below the winning bid and I was confident to win...but thats too much for a single card!

Seen it when it was listed. It's funny how even with very bad description enough ppl found the ad to pull this kind of price.

dicky96 wrote:

I didn't buy a Geforce 4 ti 4600 because i don't want to pay this sort of money for it. and it's only one i can see on ebay at t […]
Show full quote

I didn't buy a Geforce 4 ti 4600 because i don't want to pay this sort of money for it. and it's only one i can see on ebay at the moment

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VTG-Gainward-Nvidi … ca7Tz:rk:1:pf:0

Odd thing is i really don't understand the prices of these things because when I look in ebay completed (sold) listings I find several working geforce 4 ti 4600 that have sold for £30 or less since January. I just don't understand the huge variation in prices on retro GPUs. OK i get it some of them are boxed and collectible but basically I just wanna play games on it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_ … 0&LH_Complete=1

Plenty of Geforce 4 ti 4200 around on ebay but one could assume they must be a bit crap for gaming as they are always cheap it seems

The reason why geforce 4 ti 4600 are rare is because they didn't sell well back then and that was because there was only really small difference in performance between 4200 and 4600 but big price difference. I also think the big difference in sales prices comes from that there are sometimes just one for sale and sometimes there are several for sale at same time. Also sometimes a rich person comes along and wants to buy something no matter what the price is.

ATi Radeon MAXX engineering sample. $4400 was a little steep for my budget. 😲

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ATI-RADEON-MAXX-Engi … rd/273724836287

That is (at least to me) much more interesting than a boring V5 6k. Hopefully it finds a good home.
Curious to know how these rare prototypes always end up in China when they were made in North America...

blurks wrote:

That is (at least to me) much more interesting than a boring V5 6k. Hopefully it finds a good home.
Curious to know how these rare prototypes always end up in China when they were made in North America...

I'm guessing people who don't know what they are e-cycle them, and folks in China pick them up? A lot of motherboard manufacturing was in Taiwan at the time, so maybe a lot of ES stuff ended up in that part of the world for testing and validation.