mpe wrote on 2021-02-06, 20:23:

Would you mind capturing/sharing high-res picture of the chip sticker?

This is as good as it gets using my current equipment. Examined more closely it seems the original quality of the screen printing wasn’t that high to begin with. I’d suggest using this as a template for building an Illustrator replica.

Got it thanks! It is going to be fairly small when printed so should be OK.

First attempt. Need to fix round corner, print them a bit bigger and also do BIOS stickers...

Also not sure if the Turbo version shouldn't have the newer darker blue sticker with slightly different design...

After being able to resist buying ANYTHING for the last 8 months, I could not let go of a dual PPro Compaq Proliant 2500 with additional storage tower.

While it fits the curbed in conditions I set myself (only duals), it hardly fits in my room 😀.

Sadly only one PPro 200 is installed, with 384 MB of EDO Dimm ram. I had a faint hope of discovering 2 PPro's overdrives, but I'll have to stick to the 2 installed in the Pr440FX I have had for the last 20 years now.

Eveyrthing is operational, including the LCD display. Thank you HPE for still hosting the disk images for the Softpaq and the system partition.

Still, if anyone has the iso to the smartstart 4.60 ...

Ha just look how big that external tower is for just seven drives!

I used a good few ProLiant 1600 servers back in the day and was a fan - they look pretty similar.

flupke11 wrote on 2021-02-07, 14:49:

After being able to resist buying ANYTHING for the last 8 months, I could not let go of a dual PPro Compaq Proliant 2500 with additional storage tower.

Those are in rather good shape considering their age. That era of Proliant servers is part of the reason I have lower back issues to this day. I worked in a data center in the late 90s and early 00s chalk full of various Proliant server racks. Heavy ass beasts, BUT you could probably throw those things off a cliff and they would still work. Compaq built those chassis like tanks. The only thing that annoyed me to no end were the drive sleds. Those squeeze buttons on the pull handles could be very stubborn at times. I believe the company I worked for at the time eventually auctioned them all off. Probably close to a hundred systems in all.

Some sellers...

Very clear pictures of little stacks of CPUs. Upside-down stacks of CPUs. And no, no pics of top available. So no idea exactly what is in there, but did a lowball offer. After a week, nobody had topped it (apart from one person who insisted picking it up, but then concluding it was in a different country and he couldn't make it back before curfew...), so I'm getting the lot.

2x So168
5x So478
1x So775
4x OPGA So7
2x OPGA So370
5x So939/940/AM2
1x CPGA So370 (looks like a C3)
1x green SoA
2x brown SoA
2x ceramic SoA
2x green So370 (top one is CuMine)
1x completely unknown, looks like So370, but can't make out what

Really only needed an early SoA CPU to test a board with, but there's bound to be something else interesting in there (if only that weird So370 CPU). We'll see mid next week 😀

Finally got around to building the mATX LGA775 Windows 98SE/XP dualboot box with working PCI DOS Sound (Solo-1) project. It turns out the last IDE DVD-ROM I had is dead so I went ahead and bought a couple SATA ones. I will try my luck with those later.

Don't have any pictures yet, but currently have an old Compaq Portable 2 with a 10MB hard drive, an XT clone that has a 10MB Tandon hard drive, Packard Bell 386 laptop, Zeos 386 laptop a few Toshiba laptops, Stealth 3D 2000 Pro,
Stealth 64 Video, STB Systems Trio 64V+ card, an old Cirrus Logic video card, couple of Audigy cards, an AWE64 Gold. I'll have to dig it out and snap some pictures.

Bought an Epson SD-800 (this'll be my second dual floppy drive and it'll be used in my 386 system).

that's even a "decent" price, I don't get why these are so insanely expensive

I just bought this video card locally and it's fully working:

It's a Radeon 9800 crippled with a 128-bit memory bus. The weird thing is that it has a LOT of this TSOP memory (256MB) and the R350 core appears to be fully enabled. In practice, it should be similar to a heavily overclocked Radeon 9500 Pro. I've paired it with a Pentium 4 running UT2004 at 1024x768 (no AA) at over 60fps. So not a great card... but an interesting one. Not bad for $5.

bZbZbZ wrote on 2021-02-08, 04:15:

I just bought this video card locally and it's fully working:
Radeon-9800SE.jpg

It's a Radeon 9800 crippled with a 128-bit memory bus. The weird thing is that it has a LOT of this TSOP memory (256MB) and the R350 core appears to be fully enabled. In practice, it should be similar to a heavily overclocked Radeon 9500 Pro. I've paired it with a Pentium 4 running UT2004 at 1024x768 (no AA) at over 60fps. So not a great card... but an interesting one. Not bad for $5.

Interesting card! I could be wrong, but to me it looks like a knock-off ATi card. Likely one of the ones you'd find in a box with lots of crazy buzz words and possibly wrong information on it, yet no real brand name.

The cheaper-looking through-hole electrolytic caps, fakey ATi sticker, large memory capacity and halved bandwidth all point to that IMO.

Still probably a very solid performer for early 2000s games though, despite the lower bandwidth. Not bad at all for $5. 😁

EDIT: Actually found a video of someone examining a fake 9800XT with some similar features to the one you have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hU1e8S387Q
One of the comments mentions unlocking the full 256bit bus on cards like this (though it may not be fully functional, as these may have been reject chips that were meant for a lower model but were sold to a Chinese manufacturer who instead just lied about what the chip was).

bZbZbZ wrote on 2021-02-08, 04:15:

I just bought this video card locally and it's fully working:
Radeon-9800SE.jpg

It's a Radeon 9800 crippled with a 128-bit memory bus. The weird thing is that it has a LOT of this TSOP memory (256MB) and the R350 core appears to be fully enabled. In practice, it should be similar to a heavily overclocked Radeon 9500 Pro. I've paired it with a Pentium 4 running UT2004 at 1024x768 (no AA) at over 60fps. So not a great card... but an interesting one. Not bad for $5.

Unfortunately it's one of the SE PCBs that you can't unlock to a 256-bit bus via driver modding:(

I have a 9700 Pro AIW that has 256-bit bus, but 128MB vRAM. It'll be a good card for my Socket 370 build since the Ti4400 AGP has a bad fan and needs to be inspected for damage.

This is the exact card (surprised the listing is still up, although it's "currently out of stock and it may or may not be restocked"):
https://www.newegg.ca/powercolor-radeon-9800- … 82E16814131412R

The brand is PowerColor, which is legit (certainly not Built by ATI). It performs decently... it's a nice compliment to other AGP Radeons (I have a Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO, a Radeon 9100 aka downclocked 8500, an artifacting 9700 RIP, a 9800 Pro, and an X850 Pro).

First thing I do with those Radeons is remove the cooler and flip off those bloody die shims!

The shims that make them die!

Picked up this for my Aiwa PC, allows use of Sega saturn controllers (including light gun) and comes with a copy of Virtua Cop 2 that supports PowerVR?

This oddity. Am creating a schematic so I can work out the bus pinout. It does seem to support parity, but the hi and lo data lines are combined so I'm guessing that means the banks can be switched between but not accessed simultaneously, effectively stimulating 16-bit bandwidth? Possibly from a quirky 386 motherboard. Or just a random printer...

Bought this 286 motherboard (Biostar MB-1221VE) from a Russian-language auction site:

A very, very late VLSI 82C311L single-chip 286/386SX chipset.

It's a bit scratched up - so may need some repairs here and there with some kynar wire, and there are some jumpers that are bent and may need replacing, but nothing that it looks like it can't be fixed, and no visible battery leakage, which is the main thing.

My Biostar MB-8433UUD-A mobo came today. The guy who sold it to me shipped it with some RAM and CPU that I didnt expect, very cool indeed.

The CPU is an IBM branded 100MHz (5x86-3V3100GF) in one of the purple-ish packages. Is it a collectable or is it a good performer? I think it's pretty cool to have an IBM branded CPU as I've never had one. It is essentially a Cyrix am I right? Our first Win95 PC was a cyrix 120 and I have fond memories of that one.