That's a clean looking system ^^^ Love it when previous owners take good care of their systems and store them in climate controlled environments.

wiretap wrote:

luckybob wrote:

Leds don't really die. At least not the old red ones.

It's far more likely the jumpers are wrong.

Jumpers are correct. I have the schematic / jumper legend for it. LEDs are dead.

Or just a bad solder connection...

yawetaG wrote:

wiretap wrote:

luckybob wrote:

Leds don't really die. At least not the old red ones.

It's far more likely the jumpers are wrong.

Jumpers are correct. I have the schematic / jumper legend for it. LEDs are dead.

Or just a bad solder connection...

They're all fine, I performed continuity and resistance checks for all solder points. I already have a new 7 segment module on the way for $3 which will fix it.

LunarG wrote:

Bought myself a nice Acer 1120SX. The seller said it would start and show the bios screen, but he had no HD or boot floppies, so […]
Show full quote

Bought myself a nice Acer 1120SX. The seller said it would start and show the bios screen, but he had no HD or boot floppies, so he didn't know it it was 100% working.
I'll find out soon enough though. I've wanted a nice desktop model system for a while, and I've wanted a 386, so this should be a nice starting point.
I need to find a suitable sound card for it of course, and budget is an issue.
This will almost certainly need a Dallas replacement, and possibly a better graphics card, but I'll see about that as I test it out.

Dead sexy!! i love the sharp lines, nice bright beige, and the gray lettering.. that are the specs on it?

DaveJustDave wrote:

LunarG wrote:

Bought myself a nice Acer 1120SX. The seller said it would start and show the bios screen, but he had no HD or boot floppies, so […]
Show full quote

Bought myself a nice Acer 1120SX. The seller said it would start and show the bios screen, but he had no HD or boot floppies, so he didn't know it it was 100% working.
I'll find out soon enough though. I've wanted a nice desktop model system for a while, and I've wanted a 386, so this should be a nice starting point.
I need to find a suitable sound card for it of course, and budget is an issue.
This will almost certainly need a Dallas replacement, and possibly a better graphics card, but I'll see about that as I test it out.

Dead sexy!! i love the sharp lines, nice bright beige, and the gray lettering.. that are the specs on it?

It's a 386 SX 20. It apparently has 8MB of ram, which I have no reason to doubt. There an AVGA1 (Cirrus Logic 5401) graphics card in it, which I believe has 256KB of memory on it.
No HD, no soundcard. I'm guessing it will have that pesky 528MB drive size limit, and the smallest drive I currently have is 640MB.

Bought a GE Spacemaker 7-7160A (color). It has a EXT_ANT port, so I can hook up an RF Modulator box to it via 3.5mm-->Coax adapter. Should arrive in a few days.

LunarG wrote:

Bought myself a nice Acer 1120SX. The seller said it would start and show the bios screen, but he had no HD or boot floppies, so […]
Show full quote

Bought myself a nice Acer 1120SX. The seller said it would start and show the bios screen, but he had no HD or boot floppies, so he didn't know it it was 100% working.
I'll find out soon enough though. I've wanted a nice desktop model system for a while, and I've wanted a 386, so this should be a nice starting point.
I need to find a suitable sound card for it of course, and budget is an issue.
This will almost certainly need a Dallas replacement, and possibly a better graphics card, but I'll see about that as I test it out.

Awww.... Nice system. Clean and all that. The school I attended when I was in 9'th and 10'th grade, had the 386 or 486 version of Acer machines with that design. It is one of the more beautifull design's if you ask me. Especially the way they have made the led's. And then all them clean lines. Not too much of anything, like other brands, that just went nut's with all type of design features. Good, clean, sharp and straight lines. Just the way it shall be.

The design is very similar to the inwin cases in the second half of the 90s.

Received this one in the latest lot: HEATH P/N 15-307-3 EGA VGA 8-bit 😀 Dont know about performance, but from the look this is the nicest 8-bit VGA I know.

Noticed I already had this one but never got VGA mode running. I assumed it was damaged because the Ramdac was inserted the wrong way and I powered before I noticed it. But with these DIP seetings both work:

1 open
2 close
3 close
4 open
5 open
6 close

wiretap wrote:

Bought a GE Spacemaker 7-7160A (color). It has a EXT_ANT port, so I can hook up an RF Modulator box to it via 3.5mm-->Coax adapt […]
Show full quote

Bought a GE Spacemaker 7-7160A (color). It has a EXT_ANT port, so I can hook up an RF Modulator box to it via 3.5mm-->Coax adapter. Should arrive in a few days.

Nice! From what year is it? Looks like 1986 😊

Predator99 wrote:

Received this one in the latest lot: HEATH P/N 15-307-3 EGA VGA 8-bit 😀 Dont know about performance, but from the look this is the nicest 8-bit VGA I know.

Sometimes a beautiful piece of hardware is just nice to look at and that can be enough.

Some of you might remember the NEC Powermate Portable APC IV system I picked up last year.

Bought these (retro) hardware today

Well, I still have the beast and the BIOS only supports an internal 720K floppy drive, but it also supports an external 5¼" 1.2MB floppy drive as well. I haven't been able to find a decently priced external drive until now. Picked one up for less than $30 on Ebay and to my relief the drive works perfectly. Cleaned it up a bit even though it was near mint to begin with. Tested the drive as an internal drive on a different system and am now waiting for a 37-pin cable to arrive. Hoping the pin outs on the NEC are the same for this drive. I really wanted to find the NEC part which is shown in the manual here:

...but this should be a great fill in if it's compatible. Now I can move more data with ease to this system's whopping 20MB MFM hard drive.

USA! USA! USA!

$10 says the actual drive was made in Taiwan.

luckybob wrote:

USA! USA! USA!

$10 says the actual drive was made in Taiwan.

oh probably, but i find it all part of the fun in a historical sense.

On my thrifting adventures, I bought a Dell Latitude D600 (similar to the Inspiron 600M, but better features, such as using a docking station that has a PCI slot) for $25 (was $49.95, was 50% off) and a custom built Pentium 4 system for $29.95 that has seen better days (dusty and the side panel for the case got bent a smidge, but, I can fix that). What was inside the Pentium 4 desktop? A PNY GeForce4 Ti 4400 AGP card covered in dust, no blown or bloated caps, and when I cleaned it, it was in nice shape. The fan didn't spin at all when I placed it into my Windows 98SE machine, but, after I took off the fan (thankfully, it's held in by screws on the heatsink) and sprayed electrical contact cleaner (DeoxIt) into the fan and spinning it around, the fan sprang back to life and it's working perfectly in my Windows 98SE machine.

My plan is to remove the components inside the Pentium 4 machine and put my Main PC into that case since the board won't work nicely, however, I'm planning on testing the board and see if it'll work as a Windows 98SE motherboard. It also has other peripherals in there, such as a Sound Blaster Live! card (will look into it), a capture card (composite and S-video in/out), and a network card.

I got a 6800ultra OC today. I brought a 6800gt the other day but it arrived damaged from crap shipping.

I got a Leadtek 6800GT a while ago but as soon as I installed drivers it started artefacting heavily. Seller refused to give me my money back. Havent been able to find any cheap 6800GTs or Ultras since, they're all overpriced to the sky... I remember a friend bought a fully working one for 10 euros not too long ago, so I feel like I shouldnt overpay either, but I do need one for my project

Did a bit of thrifting today! And I received a box of goodies from ebay. the items are intermixed in the images.

First off, I bid and won on a mystery box of hard drives and floppies. I probably wouldn't have even given this lot the time of day, but it had 3 floppy drives. Not just any drives, but IBM ps/2 drives which are ANNOYINGLY expensive. So, I got three of those with sleds. Also received:

25x NIB CD-RW media - I don't come across this stuff often enough. It's going to stay sealed, most likely.
Strange HP Cable that vaguely looks like scsi.
5-pin din to 3x mono 1/8" jack cable - this looks like a cable that would fit to an early 8-bit computer and let you use a cassette as a drive, maybe even for the IBM XT.
2x isa modems (right straight into the scrap bin)
1x Rigidyne(CDC) 128mb MFM stepper drive
1x IBM 60mb special snowflake hard drive (ps/2-55 by the looks)
1x Seagate ST-157R 50MB RLL certified drive (also ST11R controller card)
1x Kyocera KC-20b 20mb mfm drive
1x maxtor 7129AT (125mb ide)
1x maxtor 7080AI (80mb ide)
1x conner CP30121E (120mb ide)

This strange interposer for some sort of dip-40 package. It strikes me as some sort of mod-chip for a 40-pin cpu (z80,6502,808X). Has 2 PAL chips and a quad-buffer chip. Any insight as to what its for, i'm all ears.

External CD drive - has a 2x drive in it and a mitsumi interface. Was hoping it was scsi, but a parallel port is also okay.

Pair of Dell 2124's. In the thrift store I thought these were gigabit switches (and I was partially correct. But they are 10/100 with a gigabit uplink. And that's fine! For $5 (total, blue was 1/2 off), I can do much worse. I'll just set them on the shelf and they will be useful to make a slower network for older machines that's disconnected from my main one.

--not pictured---
sealed boxed copy of "Zip it" for windows 3.11/95 Not the quarterdeck version, but this one was made by vertisoft - crushed box, but salvageable

Predator99 wrote:

Received this one in the latest lot: HEATH P/N 15-307-3 EGA VGA 8-bit :-) Dont know about performance, but from the look this is […]
Show full quote

Received this one in the latest lot: HEATH P/N 15-307-3 EGA VGA 8-bit 😀 Dont know about performance, but from the look this is the nicest 8-bit VGA I know.

Noticed I already had this one but never got VGA mode running. I assumed it was damaged because the Ramdac was inserted the wrong way and I powered before I noticed it. But with these DIP seetings both work:

1 open
2 close
3 close
4 open
5 open
6 close

IMG_0722r.jpg

I am pretty sure I had one of these cards at some point, and they are in fact not VGA. They are analogue EGA cards. In other words, EGA cards designed to work with VGA monitors.

luckybob wrote:

Did a bit of thrifting today! And I received a box of goodies from ebay. the items are intermixed in the images. […]
Show full quote

Did a bit of thrifting today! And I received a box of goodies from ebay. the items are intermixed in the images.

First off, I bid and won on a mystery box of hard drives and floppies. I probably wouldn't have even given this lot the time of day, but it had 3 floppy drives. Not just any drives, but IBM ps/2 drives which are ANNOYINGLY expensive. So, I got three of those with sleds. Also received:
...

This strange interposer for some sort of dip-40 package. It strikes me as some sort of mod-chip for a 40-pin cpu (z80,6502,808X). Has 2 PAL chips and a quad-buffer chip. Any insight as to what its for, i'm all ears.

Nice! I was considering bidding on that lot. I had no idea about the PS/2 drives... I have one just like that but that's the only PS/2 part I've ever owned.

That interposer card reminds me a little of the cable used on the Tiny Turbo 286 upgrade card I have, just more complex.

https://www.amazon.com/photos/share/xvNDyfA8t … qqVIFC5d9c5qiYq