bofh.fromhell wrote on 2020-06-06, 19:05:

Going through my stash of "I'll check that later" things. And found this mobo: […]
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Going through my stash of "I'll check that later" things.
And found this mobo:

Generally I like Asrock, they tend to do weird and sometimes useful and cool stuff.
But to my eyes this is just a cheap generic Socket A with no interesting features.
Add bulging caps to that and it feels like a recycling thing to me.
Or am I missing something?

It's certainly not the world's most desirable socket A board . That said, these things are getting rarer all the time as no more will ever be made, so I always try to avoid recycling if it can be reused (and repaired, if required) by trying to find a new home for the things I don't need/won't use . Bad through-hole caps are a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things .

Never forget that one person's trash is another person's treasure .

I second Darry's statement

Going price for a proper refurbished one is $50 at the moment and is likely to go up. Right now it is the 486/socket4/5/7 fetching crazy prices, these things will be next in a few years. Repair it, sit on it for a while, it will reward you no doubt.

Socket A boards are more or less of no value, and Asrock is almost as bad as it could get. A set of new caps to replace the bulging ones will cost you more than the board is worth. I don't see much reason not to recycle it if you have no use for it and don't want to become a hoader. Last year, I trashed a pile of about 20 similar Socket A and 775 boards, because they were all nothing special and would have required recapping. I know many people don't like that, but not everything old has value.

Going price for a proper refurbished one is $50 at the moment

Buy-it-Now prices from traders of retro hardware are completely unimportant. Check for what was actually sold. Even working ones with manual and driver disc included don't even hit 30 bucks.

never destroy/recycle ANYTHING that is working.

Even if you never plan to use it.

There may come a day where you need to test some old hardware. Do you risk your "valueable" boards or do you put this on the testbench?

It is a somewhat interesting board because of the SIS chipset. What model number is the C-Media audio chip?

To me, the most noticeable thing at first glance would be that it's using a SiS chipset. So that could be seen as something that is perhaps somewhat unusual if you consider that sA seems to be mostly Via and NF territory.
Can't remember having ever used a K7S8X before. Asrock seemed more like a budget Asus at the time, only coming to fame later with their oddboards 😜

I genuinely only recycle things if they're broken or damaged, even unwanted cables I'll often rubber band up and donate to the thrift store. Sometimes I'll recycle a computer that's technically working but in really sorry shape if I find a basically identical replacement in much better shape and/or better equipped with cards/drives, like I recently did with a Gateway Pentium 4 machine.

Alright you convinced me, its a keeper and a future project then.

The stack of broken 9800 PRO's however is going!
Zero chance of fixing those fried GPU's

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2020-06-06, 21:12:

Alright you convinced me, its a keeper and a future project then.

The stack of broken 9800 PRO's however is going!
Zero chance of fixing those fried GPU's

Stick them up on eBay. Somebody will buy them.

I keep plenty of socket A boards around in case I need one down the road after my favorites die.

Generally anything you don't want or need is somebody elses treasure so don't recycle working parts just send them to somebody else who needs them.

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2020-06-06, 21:12:

The stack of broken 9800 PRO's however is going!
Zero chance of fixing those fried GPU's

Dare I ask, how do you fry a stack of 9800 PROs...

It was quite common that the GPU cooked itself to death due to the inadequate factory cooler

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2020-06-06, 21:12:

Alright you convinced me, its a keeper and a future project then.

The stack of broken 9800 PRO's however is going!
Zero chance of fixing those fried GPU's

Perhaps someday you will want to desolder the working (and by then extremely rare!!!11) memory chips off of those boards 😜

But to be serious, even nonworking parts will still look nice when on display at some collector's house.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-07, 10:06:

It was quite common that the GPU cooked itself to death due to the inadequate factory cooler

I actually was gifted a Medion 9800XL a long time ago and I never dared to use it because I knew how hard to find these had already become when wanting to finding a working part. It's supposed to be in working condition though, but I'd better remove the shim first + adding better cooling before I test it out.

I'm a bit of a hoarder but even I have to offload hardware from time to time.
My rule is ebay it off at a .99 start price. If it doesn't go by the 3rd attempt it's off to hardware heaven.

if it doesn't go for .99 the 3rd time try putting it all in as a lot... I often don't go for even the cheapest items I'd want even, because shipping costs for single items just make it too expensive in the end, but I often go for lots because of that reason.

Even with 462 boards becoming harder to find I don't thing this one is worth saving other then for a test bead system.

austinham wrote on 2020-06-08, 14:34:

Even with 462 boards becoming harder to find I don't thing this one is worth saving other then for a test bead system.

I'm wondering how feasible it would be to repair the old 5v PSUs with the beefy 5v rails?
Because this is one of the more major issues when dealing with sA boards these days. Still I would probably keep that Asrock board if only because of the chipset and because I have the space for it anyway.

i guess you can keep it, the bios is socket-ed so you can take the bios chip or using the board as a cheap bios programmer (i'm using an old asus 865p board to flashing the bios w flashrom)