mpe wrote on 2022-10-15, 15:44:

Yet another fine VLB card (#9 GXE): […]
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Yet another fine VLB card (#9 GXE):

She's super fine. I had a GXE64 Pro VLB when I was a kid, and really want another one. Really great cards and very cool looking.

libby wrote on 2022-10-16, 19:35:

Jed118 wrote on 2022-10-16, 15:23:

There's a new Value Village at my end of the city, so I got 2 90s amplified speakers, a serial mouse, and a 17 inch monitor. I wish they'd supply the whole computer that mouse came with...

Oh hey Jed. 😉

Hey! Now you found me on here 😉

EvieSigma wrote on 2022-10-16, 18:15:

Jed118 wrote on 2022-10-16, 15:23:

There's a new Value Village at my end of the city, so I got 2 90s amplified speakers, a serial mouse, and a 17 inch monitor. I wish they'd supply the whole computer that mouse came with...

Relatable, I found a Micron branded keyboard the other day at the thrift store but I'd much rather find the computer...I've been looking for a Micron Pentium MMX tower for a couple years and I keep coming up empty handed.

Back in the early-mid 2000s, you could buy a whole 486 from Goodwill for like $10. I rarely see a complete system, and they are P4s at best - anything earlier is sent to eWaste.

I DID find a box of 5.25 inch diskettes, as well as 25 720k NOS diskettes once. And a Model M keyboard once! Usually I just get my I/O for my builds there, it's a fairly reliable source. 4:3 LCDs are getting harder to find, and are like $20 now! I remember not that long ago I could get them for $5...

Jed118 wrote on 2022-10-17, 02:30:

4:3 LCDs are getting harder to find, and are like $20 now! I remember not that long ago I could get them for $5...

Six months ago my local thrift shop had a whole rack of LCD monitors. Went there yesterday and they only two. They were virtually cleaned out of any computer equipment.

You know how some days you buy retro gear and it doesnt always work out to be what was advertised ?

About a week ago I jumped on a item lot of mixed model used 10 64gb sata SSD drives for ~30 USD, thinking they would be great to use with an adaptor for a few retro builds due to their small size. What arrived was 10 80gb Intel 320 SSD sealed drives, none of these drives show any signs of having ever been used, even the screw holes are unmarked, no idea if the seller made a mistake here or simply ran out of the original drives but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

80gb drives are just as nice, new unused ones are even better.

Got this Conner for cheap, it even works, but has bad sectors after 350MB-400MB, so isolating after 350MB will prob make it work fine.. WIll need to find program for that..

stef80 wrote on 2022-10-12, 08:32:

Got this beauty recently ... and it works :). 20221012_101821.jpg […]
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Got this beauty recently ... and it works 😀.
20221012_101821.jpg

Now, dilemma is cooling. I'm inclined to go with NOS Zalman VF900, since original Asus cooler is completely flat surfaced and may cause premature death of the GPU 🙁. Considering blue (or red) porcupines for BGA memory chips. Memory is 2.5ns Hynix and it doesn't seem to run too hot, so maybe without porcupines? I'd really like to use the card 😀.

PS: Playing with Nvidia Riva cards lately, I completely forgot how insanely good image quality is on those Radeons 😀. You can notice it from post screen.

Got one of these some years back, and was ded (as usually with shitty ASUS..) it was with the original cooler too, missing fans, but the GPU was totally dead massive artifacting, could not see anything, did try to bake the card in the oven and this shit happened...

Now the card is on the wall on a colleague`s basement 🤣 ..

Yes Radeons have better image quality and colors, some ppl claim that is false, but it is true.. not to mention aside from the Radeon 9700 pro, 9800 and x800 series, rest of the Radeon family are alot more durable then 80% of GEforce models out there, that just die, or artifact hard...

pampilhoso wrote on 2022-10-12, 19:10:

Something that I was seeking for years as a Compaq lover, a near mint Compaq G80-11800 mechanical keyboard (1994), PT layout, with vintage Cherry MX browns for a reasonable price of 50$. I absolutely love it and I'm gonna use it on my main rig.

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Very nice found, i am looking myself for this exact model, but never have seen it here locally, or to know any collector to have it.. At least i have MX Black and MX Blue keyboards... Really prefer the MX Blues over the MX Blacks.. Compaq is a love for sure, one of the great old brands, they did not cheap out on any of their computers, they are build like tanks, that was expected from IBM ( a big corporation), not from someone small as Compaq was... I think this Compaq was one of the very few mechanical keyboards they did have.. There was some older ones like Compaq Enchanted Keyboard series, but they was not with Cherry MX, but foil and foam BS of switches...

I will be alot more happier, if i manage to find NorthGate Omnikey 101, since they are the ultimate ALPS keyboards... Or maybe Cherry G80-1000 MX Blue model..

Where did you bake that? Pinned onto a skewer over a campfire? 😁

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-10-17, 09:32:

Got one of these some years back, and was ded (as usually with shitty ASUS..) it was with the original cooler too, missing fans, but the GPU was totally dead massive artifacting, could not see anything, did try to bake the card in the oven and this shit happened...

IMG_20161116_134710.jpg

Now the card is on the wall on a colleague`s basement 🤣 ..

You're not supposed to drop cards in a volcano 😀

...or put it below a starting Delta Heavy for more than 5.391247 x 10^-44 s

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-10-17, 05:58:

You know how some days you buy retro gear and it doesnt always work out to be what was advertised ?

About a week ago I jumped on a item lot of mixed model used 10 64gb sata SSD drives for ~30 USD, thinking they would be great to use with an adaptor for a few retro builds due to their small size. What arrived was 10 80gb Intel 320 SSD sealed drives, none of these drives show any signs of having ever been used, even the screw holes are unmarked, no idea if the seller made a mistake here or simply ran out of the original drives but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

80gb drives are just as nice, new unused ones are even better.

Nice. Also "around" seem to be near as dammit new pulls at used prices, of 128 and 256GB drives, because there's relatively high end business machines still shipping with lowish SSD sizes and systems integrators and IT depts are swapping them out for 1TB straight away.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-17, 14:51:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-10-17, 05:58:

You know how some days you buy retro gear and it doesnt always work out to be what was advertised ?

About a week ago I jumped on a item lot of mixed model used 10 64gb sata SSD drives for ~30 USD, thinking they would be great to use with an adaptor for a few retro builds due to their small size. What arrived was 10 80gb Intel 320 SSD sealed drives, none of these drives show any signs of having ever been used, even the screw holes are unmarked, no idea if the seller made a mistake here or simply ran out of the original drives but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

80gb drives are just as nice, new unused ones are even better.

Nice. Also "around" seem to be near as dammit new pulls at used prices, of 128 and 256GB drives, because there's relatively high end business machines still shipping with lowish SSD sizes and systems integrators and IT depts are swapping them out for 1TB straight away.

HDDs/SSDs seem to fluctuate a bit between there being a glut at great prices and fuck all at horrible prices, right now its towards there being a lot of the lower sizes being dumped.

Like I grabbed 4 160gb WD Velociraptors locally for 10 bucks a piece with the caddy, going to use 2 of the raptors in a XP Socket A NF7-S build along with a Sata300 PCI card, the card also has ATA133 IDE so that will be used for the CDRW and DVDRW. Going to throw the 9800XT or a GF6800 Ultra in it depending on what CPU I decide to throw at it along with 2gb of DDR500, should make for a very capable Athlon XP rig.

(Still mulling over what sound card to put in it, I have a NIB SBlive with the Live Drive that needs a home)

This socket 3 MSI 4144 equipped with a very nice AMD 486 DX4/100.

The board it's in a very good condition visually... As soon as I get a decent AT case I will make a fully functional 486 system.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-16, 14:03:

holy crap, seems later cards that you can actually verify have regular PCI are over a hundred bucks now. Lots of PCIe and AGP miscategorised though, but hopefully that means you'll catch someone listing at their prices rather than the crazy prices.

PCI GeForces/Radeons have been expensive for some time now. I started hunting for them in 2019.
You need to be patient and not search for PCI. Just go through all the AGP/PCIe cards until you find one, that is PCI but isn't categorized as such. Sort by date and check every few days. Eventually they will shop up.
Got a GeForce2MX, a GeForce4MX, two GeForce FX5200, a GeForce FX5500, two GeForce 6200 (one NOS, but not sealed) and three Radeon 9250 (one is sealed!).

Heh, that dude with a ton of NIB PCI 6200s for $20 must have sold out, got ppl relisting them at $200 now 🤣 ... I'd have bought a couple more the other year if I thought they could fund a V5 or something 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-17, 20:48:

Heh, that dude with a ton of NIB PCI 6200s for $20 must have sold out, got ppl relisting them at $200 now 🤣 ... I'd have bought a couple more the other year if I thought they could fund a V5 or something 🤣

They were Zotac, right? German seller? Around 2019?
I should have bought more, but money was tight.

EVGAs, Canadian seller out of Alberta. Meatball got one in Feb this year, I got mine in early 2021, so they were available for a year at least.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-17, 22:43:

EVGAs, Canadian seller out of Alberta. Meatball got one in Feb this year, I got mine in early 2021, so they were available for a year at least.

German seller had Zotacs for sale. 20€ each. Box is not sealed, but they're clearly not used. There's no wear on the contacts.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-17, 20:48:

Heh, that dude with a ton of NIB PCI 6200s for $20 must have sold out, got ppl relisting them at $200 now 🤣 ... I'd have bought a couple more the other year if I thought they could fund a V5 or something 🤣

I bought a couple of them to cover what I might use in a future build, but not very many. The FX 5200 and 5500 is a lot more useful for PCI. The 6200 is a really niche video card, as you need Windows XP for it to be useful (or Windows 2000? I never tried it...). At which point you're probably running hardware that's new enough to support either AGP or PCI-e.

I think that the 6200 is only really useful as a secondary video card for multiple monitors. It's really anemic as the primary adapter, even if it's from the 6000 series.

If you want a really good PCI graphics card for Windows XP, try and find a Zotac GeForce GT 430. It's the fastest PCI video card that was made. Ignore the GT 520 and 610. They have higher part numbers, but are much weaker cards.

Today I join the Dual Tualatin club!!

Got my hands on a working Gigabyte GA-6VTXDR, it comes with dual 1ghz Tualatin's but I have a pair of 1.4s 512k P3s in my box of goodies. Would have been great if it had AGP but I do have a X1300 Pro PCI that should work in it just fine, failing that I also have a FX5500 PCI if I need compatibility, the board also needs a couple of new caps as two are starting to bulge but the Seller does state the board works just fine and sent me photos of it working. Since it does need a few new caps I may just replace all the ones in the VRM area while im replacing the two bulging ones, not sure how difficult it will be to find replacement caps.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-10-16, 15:52:

Got this lovely boxed Epson CGA graphics card. It features a composite output, which makes curious to see how composite mode games compared to normal CGA output.

Pretty much every CGA card has composite out.