RED LETTER DAY!!!! A while back someone posed 3 AT style cases on craigslist for free. I was too slow and didn't get them, I did however leave my name and number with the guy in case he ever got more. This was a good month ago. Well lo and behold I get a call in the morning and he has 3 more and 3 newer ones for free! YAY! I quite literally fly across Denver, and turn a 40 minute trip into a 20. here are some pictures:

BOX #1: No hard drive, random S3 video card, soundblaster 16!

Box #2: No hard drive, basic pentium 1, free modem drivers, messed up hard drive bracket 🙁 CYRIX -166

Box #3: No hard drive, no cards, CYRIX 120 processor

Best part! It turns out he had a SEVEN IBM model 25 Type 004 PS/2 machines in his shed. I got to take them for free also!!! The first picture is what I looked like when he said i could "just take them and get them out of my way"

They are all COLOR 8086 machines! All seven have token-ring cards installed as well. I took a random machine, plugged it in and it came to life like the years it spent in a shed were nothing to it. I love the look of the IBM PS/2 series! This has COMPLETELY screwed up my weekend plans for "cleaning the garage." Because the space I cleaned up now has a pile of computers in it. 🤣

The other 3 machines aren't worth pictures. 2 are pentium 2 class compaq junk boxes, and the third looks to be a hp pentium 4. I'll probably scrap them and junk them tomorrow. 😜

The cyrix CPUs have cyrix stickers? do you have a close up pic of those coolers?

Wow, congratulations on getting those IBM machines. Awesome find!

Whoa, nice score luckybob!!

luckybob wrote:

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Daft Punk sticker. Respect. Almost makes up for the rest of the stickers on there. 😜

Watch out - take the Morcheeba sticker off and you void the warrantee!

I bought this $20 mystery lot on eBay the other day, the description was just a one liner but I could see some AT cases in there so decided it was worth a crack. They mostly turned out to be socket 7 stuff and a few Pentium II’s:

95% of it was rubbish but there were a few diamonds in the rough:

A new in box AT case. It's not the most beautiful thing in the world and doesn't come with a PSU unfortunately, but I haven’t seen a new one for a long time:

There are about 4 of these things; a software driven expansion card to turn an XT into a 286. I can’t imagine anyone finding a use for this oddity anymore – I certainly won’t!

A few boxes of XT bits:

Sound Blaster 16 CT2230

VLB, caching IDE card

Turtle Beach Vortex

I’m looking forward to trying this thing out against my other Ark Logic VGA card, which is very fast in DOS. This one has a newer chipset.

Diamond Voodoo Banshee.

A PA-2005 Socket 7 board. A good board apparently.

An ATC-1545 Socket 7 board, a very bad board apparently! The CPU socket has “BETA” stamped into it, which doesn’t bode well. And it uses the “Viper” chipset, which is supposed to suck.

And finally this socket 5 board which broke my heart by being badly damaged by a leaked battery. Why were they still using those acid bombs at this late stage?! I don’t recognise the chipset and it might well of been crap anyway, but I would have liked to see this VLB / PCI / ISA board up and running:

It could just be that the picture doesn't show enough detail, but that Socket 5 board looks salvageable... needs a good cleanup with vinegar, and maybe need to patch a couple traces and replace the one resistor, but I've certainly resurrected things that looked worse.

I dunno much about the Pentium-era Forex chipsets, but the ones they made for 386 systems were some of the faster ones available. And I don't imagine that their Pentium VLB chipset can be any worse than the Opti one.

Those Orchid accelerator boards are interesting... they're not 286-based, rather, they use a 186. And people do still play around with accelerator cards, I have one that I'll be putting in my PC6300 once I can hunt down some software for it. Even if you have no use for them personally, I think you could get a pretty good return from selling them.

It's not a great pic; there are a few traces that have lifted right up so I'm pretty sure there'd be some soldering required, and that's where I draw the line. I've hung it on the wall of my outdoor toilet now, so people will be enjoying it for years to come!

And RE the orchid cards - I will look to get rid of them and the boxes of XT ISA cards shortly; my first preference is always to give them away to a fellow nerd but I haven't had much luck with that, so I might put them on eBay and see what shakes loose.

I might buy one of those Orchid accelerator cards - I've got a 5150 here that needs some TLC, might come in handy one day

badmofo wrote:

It's not a great pic; there are a few traces that have lifted right up so I'm pretty sure there'd be some soldering required, and that's where I draw the line. I've hung it on the wall of my outdoor toilet now, so people will be enjoying it for years to come!

And RE the orchid cards - I will look to get rid of them and the boxes of XT ISA cards shortly; my first preference is always to give them away to a fellow nerd but I haven't had much luck with that, so I might put them on eBay and see what shakes loose.

I'm interested in one of the 186 upgrades. If you look at the big post I made just before yours you can see why... ^.^ Maybe we can work something out?

serial->ps2 adapter arrived and opened 🤣

I will test it tomorrow at my 386DX machine and report back 😁

edit:
main chip is an Intel 8051 microcontroller and more specifically the 80C51BHP, that has encrypted ROM data ... 😖

Tseng Labs ET6000
A bunch of SiS 6326 AGP 4/8MB
Two 3DFX Voodoo Banshee
Diamond Stealth 2500
Diamond Stealth 2000 3D
Diamond Speed Star A50
OPTi 82c931
Dell at101w
Geforce 2 GTS/Ultra

Total cost, only $16!

vmunix wrote:

The cyrix CPUs have cyrix stickers? do you have a close up pic of those coolers?

you shall receive!
http://i.imgur.com/a7NGk.jpg

Anyway, the three systems are checked out. The first is sold to a friend, Whole box. turns out it was a pentium 166. 512kb cache. soundblaster 16, with special cd drive. Its making a cross country trip starting tomorrow.

system #2 was a Cyrix 166 PR Had a nice opti 82c924 sound-card that supports all the old cd drive connections. I'm probably going to toss this card into a Compaq 486 and offload it on craigslist. The motherboard I still have. its a biostar 8500tvx. Nothing too special for socket 7. comes with 512kb cache and a onboard ps/2 header. i'll probably toss the board on ebay for $5 bid and see what happens.

system #3 was caked with dust. all that was salvageable were the floppy drives, the case itself and the cpu. The motherboard was a pentium FAKE CACHE board. It was "upgraded" with a 256kb coast card. I tossed this board into my pcb scrap pile. It had a 1996 bios, but was not Y2k ready. /facepalm

I must report that this adapter works PERFECT.
CTMOUSE reports the mouse as a "Microsoft mode" one and everything I tried worked fine, no lag - no input delay whatsoever. The green led also flickers when there is mouse activity 🤣
I don't know if "microsoft mode" has problems with any games/apps but I don't see why...
So basically if one sees a "RARITAN CONVERTER FOR SERIAL MOUSE" "Serial Port to PS/2 Mouse Converter for MasterConsole" grab it if the price is nice 😉

as most keyboards & mices were USB these days, would appending USB to PS2 adapters into that adapter works too?

^ only if the devices also support the ps2 protocol... pure usb devices won't work (same thing with serial->ps2 adapters that don't have an ic inside, the device must support both protocols)

Been a while since I last bought some retro hardware.

Today I was lucky and bought 3 white non-yellowed DVD drives (and a DVI cable), the drives were only €3 each (the cable was only like €1 or so). They had more (it was a thrift store you call it in English? A second-hand store) but those were yellowed.

It'll get harder to find white DVD drives in the future and for this price I just couldn't not buy them 😁
The drives are kinda old, manufactured around 2003/2004 and will look very nice in a white/beige computer case 😁

keropi wrote:

I must report that this adapter works PERFECT.

So basically if one sees a "RARITAN CONVERTER FOR SERIAL MOUSE" "Serial Port to PS/2 Mouse Converter for MasterConsole" grab it if the price is nice 😉

I can also confirm this device works perfectly!

386DX40 with a logitech laser ps2 mouse, perfect, awesome buy!

More Roland fun! No more stuck notes...

keropi wrote:

I must report that this adapter works PERFECT. CTMOUSE reports the mouse as a "Microsoft mode" one and everything I tried worke […]
Show full quote

I must report that this adapter works PERFECT.
CTMOUSE reports the mouse as a "Microsoft mode" one and everything I tried worked fine, no lag - no input delay whatsoever. The green led also flickers when there is mouse activity 🤣
I don't know if "microsoft mode" has problems with any games/apps but I don't see why...
So basically if one sees a "RARITAN CONVERTER FOR SERIAL MOUSE" "Serial Port to PS/2 Mouse Converter for MasterConsole" grab it if the price is nice 😉

I TOTALLY want one of those!
*Looks on Ebay and co* crap, nothing 😒