Mandrew wrote on 2023-06-19, 09:17:
bloodem wrote on 2023-06-19, 09:07:
I would generally agree with that, however this is a special case.
People who buy this card don't really care about any of that (and I wouldn't either). I would repair it myself, or - worst case scenario - send it to Oskhar and he'd fix it for 500 - $1000.
Probably true, I'm just allergic to getting items DOA and having to deal with the hassle of fixing it myself. Holding a dead V56K would feel like someone hit me over the head with a baseball bat and told me to get over it. 🤣 I always get that feeling when I buy something and it just refuses to work. Like expecting a PS5 for Christmas and getting a Nintendo classic mini with 500 preinstalled crappy games instead.
Thankfully this one is working and has already been repaired and tested by Oskar and LTT, the "As Is" tag is simply to stop the evil bay fraudsters, there is zero reason to believe that this particular card is dead or will be DOA.
All of this aside, I wouldn't actually buy this card to use it, it would be going into a nice perspex environmentally controlled storage case to be put on display, its a historical piece not a use and abuse piece, and even if it was damaged sending it to Oskar is all you would need to do to get it working again.
If you do want a V5 6k in fully working daily use condition then you can buy a new reverse engineered model for ~2k that even comes in PCIe, there is also new Voodoo 5 5500 cards available too. (3DFX for sure made a fuck ton of spare VSA100 chips and the rest of the components are off the shelf parts)
Not every seller on eBay is out to screw you over and there are a good number of good and reputable retro hardware guys on there just looking to shift their parts to other like minded people. Try not to be so jaded, sometimes just talking to the seller will quickly tell you which is which and can even lead to good deals.