20. Diamond EDGE 3D 2120XL Graphic card

Existing quantity: about 1

Collection value: 9 stars

In May 1995, nVIDIA released the first-generation display chips NV1 and STG2000. DIAMOND is the first customer to use the nVIDIA chip. This EDGE 3D 2120XL graphics card using the STG2000 chip was produced in August 1995. It is an engineering sample and the earliest known nVIDIA chip graphics card collected by hardware collectors.

21. nVIDIA Geforce 256 Graphic card

Existing quantity: about 5

Collection value: 9 stars

The Geforce 256 chip announced by nVIDIA on August 31, 1999 is called "the world's first GPU". In response to the Geforce 256 graphics card, the Voodoo5 6000 graphics card, which created 4 graphics chips by 3Dfx, was still outdated and was acquired by nVIDIA at the end of 2000. Geforce 256 is too powerful, and many display chip manufacturers have failed. ATi's Radeon 256 can compete with it only half a year later.

This nVIDIA Geforce 256 graphics card was manufactured in mid-August. It is the rare first GPU graphics card engineering sample. It is an epoch-making product with extraordinary significance.

22.XGI Volari Duo V8 Ultra Graphic card

Existing quantity: about 4

Collection value: 9 stars

In the era when nVIDIA and ATi joined forces to dominate, XGI, which was born out of SiS and acquired Trident, tried to occupy a place in the graphics card field. In September 2003, XGI released the dual-core graphics card Volari Duo V8 Ultra. Its exaggerated design caused a sensation, but its performance was unsatisfactory, and it withdrew from the market for a short period of time. Maybe it's because the sales volume is small, the collection demand is hot, the whole box has broken $1,500.

The picture is an engineering sample of XGI Volari Duo V8 Ultra graphics card. There are four of them temporarily, all of which are my collection. I bought one on Taobao.com in August 2007. After I received it, I felt that the card was worth collecting, so I asked the seller about the situation. It turned out that this card was dismantled from foreign garbage computers. There are still 7 in this batch, all of which work unstable, so I bought them together. After dismantling the heat sink more than a year later, it was discovered that these 8 graphics cards had three models, all of which were engineering samples, which should come from laboratory computers processed after XGI was acquired by ATI in 2006.

23. Creative AWE64 Gold sound card

Existing quantity: about 1

Collection value: 8 stars

The Creative AWE64 Gold sound card has two models: CT4390 and CT4540. This CT4390 sound card is equipped with the main chip of the CT4540 sound card. This CT4390 is a special engineering sample sound card.

The total amount of sound cards is much smaller than that of the graphics card, making the total amount of engineering sample sound cards only about one percent of the engineering sample graphics card. The engineering sample sound cards with ISA interface are much less than those with PCI interface, and I have seen only a dozen.

24. Creative Sound Blaster Live! sound card

Existing quantity: about 3

Collection value:9 stars

Creative Sound Blaster Live! sound card performance is very powerful and advanced, through it, innovation killed all opponents in 1998, dominate the sound card market. This model CT4620 sound card is the earliest Sound Blaster Live! sound card engineering sample.

25. OAK OAK200 audio and modem combo card

Existing quantity: about 1

Collection value:8 stars

The OAK OAK200 was released by OAK in 1997. At that time, it was the first combo card that supported both AC’97 audio and 56K bps modem. It was only provided as a reference board for manufacturers and not retail. It seems that no company adopts this kind of ridiculous reference design, but it is quite suitable for collection and appreciation.

26.Crystal Clear wavetable daughter card

Existing quantity: about 1

Collection value:9 stars

　 This Clear wavetable daughter card is a reference board for engineering samples, and the reference design has been adopted by some manufacturers. Sound cards plus Wavetable daughter cards to play MIDI music have only been popular for 5 years, so the number of Wavetable daughter cards is not much, and there are fewer engineering samples of Wavetable daughter cards. The total amount is close to one percent of the engineering sample sound cards. I have only seen three of them over the years.

27.DEC RF30 hard drive

Existing quantity: about 4

Collection value:8 stars

The DEC RF30 hard drive is a bit big, 5.25 inches, but the capacity is only 143MB. These four hard drives are engineering samples in the late 1980s. An engineer from DEC participated in the research of this hard drive and kept four souvenirs privately. Today, I have never seen the second engineering sample of an antique hard drive.

Finally, let's look at the thunderous APPLE hardware products.

Any senior computer hardware collector will have a few pieces of APPLE hardware, after all, APPLE's influence is pervasive. The first generation of Apple computers, Apple-1, came out in 1976, five years before IBM's PCs. Apple-1 computers sold less than 200 units at a price of US$666.66 that year. Very early and very rare, Apple-1 became the bellwether in the collection of complete computers. Most of the less than 70 Apple-1 computers still in existence are collected. The highest auction price of the Apple-1 computer was US$815,000 in 2016, and a high price of US$375,000 was also sold in 2018.

28. Apple IIe

Existing quantity: about 10

Collection value:10 stars

In the year when the IBM PC was born, the APPLE IIe computer motherboard codenamed SUPER II engineering samples were also born early. The Super II motherboard PCB date is 8103 weeks, that is, January 1981. Two R&D personnel names are printed on the motherboard: Walt Broedner and JOHN MACPHEE, demonstrating that Apple respects technology and talents. Less than 100 Super II motherboards are produced. This serial number No. 4, used to be a sample of Apple's retained, also passed a complete test on September 29, 1989. I won the bid in 2019 for $2025.

The picture below is the motherboard in the APPLE IIe computer, which is not much different from Super II.

29. Apple Lisa 1 memory board

Existing quantity: about 5

Collection value:9 stars

The memory board of this Apple Lisa 1 computer is an engineering sample in 1981. There are 72 Hitachi 8KB memory chips on a PCB board larger than A4 paper, with a capacity of 512KB+64KB. The two-finger-wide memory modules currently in use have a capacity of up to 512GB, a difference of 1024×1024=1,048,576 times. In 40 years, the speed of technological development is terrifying.

30.Apple Ringer network card souvenir

Existing quantity: about 1

Collection value:8 stars

This is a souvenir for Apple to celebrate the successful development of the RINGER network card. The production date of the Ringer network card engineering sample is 1991 weeks. It is easy to calculate that the RINGER network card was successfully developed in May 1991. Apple occasionally releases a certain number of engineering samples to promote the brand and products and indirectly promote the development of computer hardware collections. What about this article?

Thirty rare computer hardware collections tell the development history of modern technology, and also declare the powerful vitality of computer hardware collections. I hope that every splendor of modern technology can stay with us and break away from the fate of disappearing.

Very interesting read. Thanks for the pictures and info.
Wonder if any of the items are in working condition ?

Yes some good info but have an issue with your some of your collection value # specially with Engineering samples. Example: Have some early ES samples that are quite rare (one is a first ES gen P.Pro straight from Aloha campus) but it only runs on special modded Prelim Intel 440FX board, will NOT run on a retail Intel Venus (VS440FX). I do agree that CpuShack has the greatest cpu collection ever.

pshipkov wrote on 2020-12-29, 16:41:

Very interesting read. Thanks for the pictures and info.
Wonder if any of the items are in working condition ?

I bet most of the stuff (except from CpuShack) will not work or requires a specific board/bios/PSU/etc that also is so rare you cannot prove it works ...just my opinion 😀

yjfy wrote on 2020-12-29, 14:06:

The Computer collection was born in the 1990s. At the beginning of this century, CPU collection and Computer board & card collection gradually emerged.

I have to disagree with your dates. I was collecting CPUs as far back as 96. I forget when I started collecting graphics card as well. I know there were other collectors for hardware years before you set up your website.

Great thread other than that 😀

And I found this introduction often lacking. I wanted to read why things are interesting. Instead, I just found ultra rare items, underlined why they're rare. But I came for intersting details or stories and not for something that's indistinguishable from empty bragging.

Where are the Acorn Risc systems? They were the for ARM(originally Acorn Risc Machines before the accronym was used for other risc systems.) systems for consumer use. How many years has it taken Apple to realize ARM is the way to go..?

Basically, these collections have not been tested. First, the production date is relatively early and the test conditions are not available. Second, because they are engineering samples, they are inherently defective. Third, my focus is on collecting, identifying, and studying computer hardware.
This article is to promote the collection of computer hardware. Thank you for pointing out the shortcomings.

Looked at your web site - good stuff.
Is that just you - a single collector, or it is a group of people, or even organization ?

A single collector