Are these IDE CD chargers common ?
Never seen one before.
Looks incredible !

Dated late 1996

I was aware of their existence in the 90s, but they were $$$$$$$$, would be bought by the kind of dude that had a dual PPro for his home PC and for business critical applications. They didn't make sense for most people. So probably something like 1% market penetration vs same era single disk optical. They did fall in price a bit relatively as the 2000s hit and you might have got one for just double what a higher end optical cost. So later ones might be more common. Anyway, they'd probably be like Number Nine TTR2 cards, not in huge numbers on the market, pros wanted them at the time, do nothing for gaming, price might be lower than true rarity in comparison to other hardware due to low interest for retro.

Edit: actually I think I remember a college prof managing to get one for his machine, due to several journals he frequently referred to putting back issues on CD and it made it a lot easier to flip between volumes or titles. So there was that kind of use case.

i remember cd changers being a thing in cars more than in computers - but they existed and they cost plenty! i've never seen one in person though, wonder how they deal with multi-cd installs for example, possibly make it easy!

gerry wrote on 2023-10-04, 15:14:

i remember cd changers being a thing in cars more than in computers - but they existed and they cost plenty! i've never seen one in person though, wonder how they deal with multi-cd installs for example, possibly make it easy!

Depends how implemented. I had a buddy who got his hands on a 10 year old at the time 6 disk 4x speed CD changer for SCSI, the way that one worked was to assign a drive letter to each disk. So E, F, G, H, I, J and most multi CD installs, if you start on drive E, it'll be stubborn and go "Please put disk 2 in drive E" ... same thing that happens if you've got dual drives most of the time unless you have a particularly smart and well coded installer.

Edit: Speaking of the car version, I believe there were server versions that used much the same mechanism, and being large non-standard sized lumps in consequence. The fact that they appeared to leverage "commodity" hardware didn't seem to make them any much cheaper. Probably the reverse, from ridiculous network vendor markup.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-04, 15:18:

Depends how implemented. I had a buddy who got his hands on a 10 year old at the time 6 disk 4x speed CD changer for SCSI, the way that one worked was to assign a drive letter to each disk. So E, F, G, H, I, J and most multi CD installs, if you start on drive E, it'll be stubborn and go "Please put disk 2 in drive E" ... same thing that happens if you've got dual drives most of the time unless you have a particularly smart and well coded installer.

ah yes, that would spoil it!

it is irritating when you have 2 cd readers and a 2 cd install and the game simply refuses to believe that any one could ever do such a thing as put cd2 into another reader! it would be more irritating if you had invested in a multi-cd and encountered that! being able to reassign the letter 'on the fly' would be good though

i'll wait for one of the big youtube channels to do something on multi cd readers (maybe they have and i missed it), then look forward to some crazy prices 😀

Kingston 286 to 386SX upgrade. I have one of these but couldn't get it working. This unit sold for only $88. Are prices starting to come down?

Wow, that certainly fell between the cracks considering the prices some of those have gone for. One lucky SOB is hardly a trend though. I'd have almost considered buying it for that, and I'm a tightwad. Though to be honest, I'd end up creating a problem for it to solve, rather than really having a use for one, my one original 286 machine (not pieced together) a Packard Bell 286, I'm happy leaving as such.

edit: wait, I remembered where there's a Tandy 286 🤣
editII: no I don't... there was a 1000TX listed for sale somewhere I thought was well out of the way, bookmarked it a few days a go, the seller listing it for sale publicly, only had the cheek to actually SELL it when I wasn't looking 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-07, 22:37:

is hardly a trend though.

Quite a few items have been selling for less than I expected, I just didn't post them here. They are usually the middle ground items, not necessarily the most in-demand.

I was looking on pricecharting for clues. The older systems and games have seemed to fall off the covid hump and are back on the steady shallow slope upward trendline... So if DOS hardware hasn't really adjusted from that yet we're back to 2019 pricing soon. Meanwhile though 21st century stuff is showing a strong uptick, late millennials buying back childhood I guess.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-08, 01:27:

I was looking on pricecharting for clues. The older systems and games have seemed to fall off the covid hump and are back on the steady shallow slope upward trendline... So if DOS hardware hasn't really adjusted from that yet we're back to 2019 pricing soon. Meanwhile though 21st century stuff is showing a strong uptick, late millennials buying back childhood I guess.

Awesome, if that means cheaper spare 80s and 90s parts for me and other people im all for it.

Guys, I'm amazed. How do you manage to find any trends at a chaotic eBay market where you can find exactly the same item at the same time for $20 and for $500? And it always was like that. Second hand items markets are in general like that. 🙂

By mentally subtracting the outliers and following more common sale values. If you fill up your eBay watch list or saved searches, not necessarily because you want that item, but perhaps because you already own the item and want to track its value, you can witness some general price trends for that same group of items. What is the limit these days on eBay's "saved searches"? All I know is that mine is full and I keep having to delete various items. My eBay "Watch List" is enormous, but there's nothing there's only 1% of items on there that I'm actually looking for - the rest, I track sold values for fun.

IDT Winchip 2A sold for $160. Wow.

Is the high selling point the large IDT logo, that is, rather than the more common (I think) WinChip logo? Or are the W2A chips with the giant WinChip logo just as expensive now?

feipoa wrote on 2023-10-09, 08:56:

IDT Winchip 2A sold for $160. Wow.

Is the high selling point the large IDT logo, that is, rather than the more common (I think) WinChip logo? Or are the W2A chips with the giant WinChip logo just as expensive now?
Winchip_2A.png

wow as in "that seems low" or wow as in "still not actually worth it" ?

i suspect former given some silly prices in the past

Well rating of usefulness of socket 7 architectures around the 200-266 range goes in descending order, Intel, AMD, Cyrix, Rise, IDT Winchip. With the top 3 being close. So it isn't really priced for the power under the hood. However, there's some really edge case, thin niches applications where in theory the Winchip is the fastest upgrade, but it's so narrowly above the fastest other makes despite the numbers looking good. i.e. Something like, socket 5 that takes 133 Pentium, but is limited to 7 or 8 amps by a weak linear regulator and you can squeak a 200-ish Winchip in there instead, but it only does FPU and heavy 32bit ALU like a 133 and has some 200+ type performance on some common instruction mix apps. Kinda like how a DX5 might out-Doom a Pentium, but the Pentium easily out-Quakes a DX5

gerry wrote on 2023-10-10, 15:37:

feipoa wrote on 2023-10-09, 08:56:

IDT Winchip 2A sold for $160. Wow.

Is the high selling point the large IDT logo, that is, rather than the more common (I think) WinChip logo? Or are the W2A chips with the giant WinChip logo just as expensive now?
Winchip_2A.png

wow as in "that seems low" or wow as in "still not actually worth it" ?

i suspect former given some silly prices in the past

If the chip in this auction contained the large WinChip logo, like most of the ones I've seen, "wow" would be high price. But since I don't see many or any Winchips with the large IDT printing, I suspect the high price was from some collector wanting the rarer and large 'IDT' print job. I don't think someone only wanting to run benchmarks with the CPU, not being a specific CPU collector, would care if it had large WINCHIP or large IDT.

This thread is a good reference to establish the price of components, it can be verified by the relationship between views and responses. I bet many sales prices are already established based on what has been discussed here. It's fun to read this thread from time to time.

Here's another example of what may be falling prices for the nice, but not so hot, items. About year ago, these Lucky Star LS-486E rev.D boards were regularly selling for a little over $100, and from the same seller. This listing just sold for $41.

feipoa wrote on 2023-10-12, 10:34:

Here's another example of what may be falling prices for the nice, but not so hot, items.

Sometimes it's $100, sometimes it's $41, normal auction stuff. This one is also untested with 2 low quality photos from a bad angle so a big gamble for $65 shipped. I'd rather pay $100 for a clean and tested board than $30 for a dirty, untested one with surface rust. Too much risk.

Here's an item I was watching that ended today. Its an VLB motherboard with an IBM 486SLC2-66. What caught my eyes was theQFP clip-on heatsink/fan assembly. I've not seen this before. Sold for $256 USD, which was a little higher than I thought.