Repo Man11 wrote:

Deksor wrote:

Fugutech = PCChips = Amptron by the way.

And I think the PCChips M506 is exactly the same as yours 😁

Thanks for the ID PC Hoarder. Yes, Google took me to a page that indicated that this was a PCChips board, and apparently is the infamous one that had fake cache chips on it! I'm still waiting for the AT to PS/2 adapter to see if it will boot to Windows, but in the meantime I bought a Biostar MB8500TTD for $39.00 shipped on Ebay. Not the TXP4 I would have liked, but the prices on those are downright silly these days.

You can still have real cache with a regular COAST module though.

Only PCChips brand, sadly.

It's a cash register.

It came with most of the peripherals and the netboot server, but the video display (either an LCD or a small monochrome CRT) and the LED customer display was missing, so I'm getting by with another LCD monitor.

Inside the register it's just a P233 and minimal spec hardware but it has one internal IDE port, so it's totally a DOOM-capable machine. 🤣

But can you play Doom using the integrated keypads?

I looked into that and it doesn't seem like that's easy to do without a driver. The keyboard isn't PS/2 but something serial like RS-485 with its own funky protocol. There IS however an optional PS/2 keyboard with TrackPoint nub that was available.

Of course, Deskthority has already found out about it....

What's inside? Is it a normal PC-like motherboard & PSU or something like a PC/104 embedded stack system? Or completely proprietary?

Pretty standard PC stuff in there with a PSU that runs the length of the case.

Which slots does that riser card have? I'd really like to get my hands on an old POS system and turn it into a DOS gaming rig someday.

Two ISA slots and one shared PCI slot.

I will hand it to IBM. Everything is modular to the brownish plastic skin of the CPU and when everything is removed you get a pretty nondescript box.

I stopped by a local ewaste place today to check out what they had left outside, and I found an AT keyboard and a Microsoft serial mouse! I can now fire up that computer and see if it will boot into Windows.

It booted up to Windows 98, and I found some very amusing files on it. The serial mouse began having difficulties, and I decided to disassemble and clean it, which had the final result of it no longer working at all! It's kinda hot here right now, so the AC is going and the indoor humidity is low - combine that with cleaning the circuit board with a toothbrush, and I think I static zapped it. The mouse is no longer detected when I power it up. But I can keyboard my way through. I'm looking forward to getting that Biostar TX chipset motherboard this week.

You can wait a while and check the mouse logic board for any bad traces, cold, or cracked solder joints and repair if necessary. It could also be a PSU issue as well, but I have my doubts on that. I have a few serial mice myself and the oldest one I have is a Logitech 2-button mouse from 1993 that I bought at a thrift store for $4. Needed some cleaning on the outside and the inside was clean as a whistle and I thought the mouse was broken. Turned out the mouse was plugged into COM2 (9-pin DIN) on my Socket 370 system, so after enabling that, the mouse was detected in both Windows 98SE and DOS mode (CuteMouse 2.0b4) and is 100% functional.

Repo Man11 wrote:

combine that with cleaning the circuit board with a toothbrush, and I think I static zapped it.

Yeah, toothbrush hairs are nylon, so that will have had approximately the same effect as rubbing it against synthetic carpet... 😵

My mother-in-law pulled through again.. my wife was over there and texted me saying she has a trunk full of computer stuff for me, but I probably won't want it. (LOL) It was all by the curb being thrown away down the street and she knows I collect computer stuff so she grabbed it. The cell phone service is shoddy there, so I could only receive 2 pictures of what was in her trunk.. Dell Optiplex GX1p, some Compaq Presario, and some other generic beige PC which may house something decent from the mid 90's. Oh, and she said there's a whole cabinet full of software she grabbed. Gotta go pick it up later this week. 😎

Time to buy a baker's rack for the basement since my computer room is already packed to the brim with over 20 computers.. 🤣

^--maybe a Pentium II 450MHz

^--possibly a Pentium MMX

Talked her into turning around to bring it home.. Update... holy effing crap. 🤣. This is the luckiest find ever courtesy of my mother-in-law, and my wife hauling it home. Here's just what I'm saving, nothing else of value or any good/working. The software was completely waterlogged and covered in mold. But, let's open these bad boys up. (yea, they are dirty as hell)

The Dell didn't have much besides 384MB of RAM, and a Pentium II 400MHz which I took out for parts. Looks like water got inside and ruined the ISA/PCI riser board. Very bad corrosion and mold, not really worth saving anything else from it since I have a bunch more at work I'm going to bring home.

The Compaq had this in it. 12GB Quantum Bigfoot TS

And this.. wait what's that in the PCI slot?

Closer..

Closer..

Voodoo 3 3000 PCI 16MB!!!!!!!!!

Inside the Proteva was a Chaintech M101 ATX motherboard, Pentium II 300MHz, 192MB of RAM, a PNY Geforce2 MX 200 and a Creative AWE64. 😁

Dude. Nasty systems, yet the parts are really nice. Make sure you wear gloves, safety goggles or glasses, and face mask when cleaning those things.

why is it that I can never find good stuff like you.

Repo Man11 wrote:

It booted up to Windows 98, and I found some very amusing files on it. The serial mouse began having difficulties, and I decided to disassemble and clean it, which had the final result of it no longer working at all! It's kinda hot here right now, so the AC is going and the indoor humidity is low - combine that with cleaning the circuit board with a toothbrush, and I think I static zapped it. The mouse is no longer detected when I power it up. But I can keyboard my way through. I'm looking forward to getting that Biostar TX chipset motherboard this week.

I tried the mouse again with the Biostar board, and it works fine (though it is reminding me of why I was happy to from a track ball mouse to an optical one all those years ago). Did the serial ports suddenly fail while I was using it with the M506, or did it develop an IRQ or some other resource conflict? I guess I'll never know.

After further use, I finally realized what the issue was; the mouse has a broken wire. When the cursor would stop, neither button would work. If I dressed the cable to the right, the wire makes good contact, and the mouse works fine. I might get ambitious and cut out the bad part of the wire at some point. Though the Biostar board has a PS/2 mouse connector, the case blocks it. I ordered a PS/2 cable knowing I'd have to rearrange the pins in the connector for my board. I initially did it just by the color code, but just to be sure I checked it with an ohmmeter, and it was a good thing I did. I used this image:

But in my case red was data, green was ground, brown was clock, and yellow was +5. I rearranged them again, and now the PS/2 mouse I found works. Now I need to find a Windows 98 driver so the scroll wheel also works.

Got these two graphics adapters yesterday. Not exactly a dumpster find, but I didn't pay for them either: dad "borrowed" them from his office. Needed another card for my Duron 700 Win XP / Win 98 machine because the Geforce 2 32 MB I had overheats in about one hour of operation and starts artifacting. Pity as I think Geforce 2 is more period-correct for this CPU than Geforce 4, but whatever.
The other card is interesting. I found some info by FCC ID, turns out it's S3 Savage 4. Is it valuable / collectible? Or is it junk?
Photos: https://imgur.com/a/NwzsKPx

A GeForce 4 MX440 is really a kind of Geforce 2 in disguise.
S3 Savage 4 was the first accelerated GPU I ever had, handy for a few things that use the MeTaL API.