I haven't purchased a motherboard in a long time, but tonight I did a search on eBay from a list I have. I check the list about once a year. I found this Gigabyte GA-5486AL motherboard for $18+$7 USD. I am wanting to gain a good understanding of the less common ALi M1489/1487 PCI 486 chipset. There seem to be only a few brand name boards which used this chipset. Perhaps for a reason? Well, I intend to find out.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/192041545390

Richo wrote:

Today got me a old coppermine for parts (needed the Graphics cards desperately for a new project). after testing only the HDD ha […]
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Today got me a old coppermine for parts (needed the Graphics cards desperately for a new project). after testing only the HDD has some problems starting windows XP (some bad sectors I guess and the CMOS battery was dead so I am going to replace it before selling.

- Intel PIII Coppermine 1000 mhz/256/1,7
- Aopen ATX 250W
- Nvidia 256 (guilemot) (cleaned it and put new cooling paste underneath the fan)
- Microstar MS 6309 Lite
- Realtek RTL8139D 10/100 PCI (going to save this one)
- Pci-usbvia6212-3 (dunno anything about this one couldn't find anything)
- Old case
also an unknown modem/sound card

Think I might have seen potential in the case I purchased and decided to keep it:

Bigger picture image 1
Bigger picture image 2

Cleaned it, sanding, first layer of primary primer, then spray painted the case in Ral 9010 and the blue part was done with spray paint for my old car (metallic blue for a Volvo 264 '78). Quite satisfied with the result.

feipoa wrote:

I haven't purchased a motherboard in a long time, but tonight I did a search on eBay from a list I have. I check the list about once a year. I found this Gigabyte GA-5486AL motherboard for $18+$7 USD. I am wanting to gain a good understanding of the less common ALi M1489/1487 PCI 486 chipset. There seem to be only a few brand name boards which used this chipset. Perhaps for a reason? Well, I intend to find out.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/192041545390

That's mighty cheap, nice find.

Today I recieved this mid range VLB controller. Looks pretty standard.

Rawrl wrote:

Don't most boards have problems with 4gb DDR2 dimms? Or is this registered RAM for one of your Xeon systems or something?

Yep its registered ram. It for a 1207 system. I bought 2 6 core CPUs for 4$. There only 1.8ghz but there 6 core and pull 40 watts.

I have a few 2.3ghz quads for the system too. But with a 1ghz HT and a 115w tpd the 1.8ghz 6 cores make more since. They pull up to 60w and have a 2.4ghz HT. I may have to down clock the HT to 2ghz.

DTK PPM-1630C motherboard, 386SX-16 with Cyrix 83S87 FPU, 1MB on-board, slots for another 4MB:

http://www.arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/m/C-D/30050.htm

Nice 386 board....
You need to focus on that leaking battery, if not allready taken care of.

brostenen wrote:

Nice 386 board....
You need to focus on that leaking battery, if not allready taken care of.

Correct.

Looks like it hasn't made it to the motherboard proper yet. I'll have to remove that battery quickly.

Bought an IBM Aptiva 2168-A90 http://imgur.com/a/hhXlW

Not very retro, but I fitted an IDE SSD to my ThinkPad T43, and no joke, it feels like a brand-new laptop! It's amazing just how sluggish XP can be on mechanical hard drives, even compared to newer OSes.

Lukeno94 wrote:

Not very retro, but I fitted an IDE SSD to my ThinkPad T43, and no joke, it feels like a brand-new laptop! It's amazing just how sluggish XP can be on mechanical hard drives, even compared to newer OSes.

Did the same to my T61 as well. Huge difference and really breathed new life into it.

Artex wrote:

Lukeno94 wrote:

Not very retro, but I fitted an IDE SSD to my ThinkPad T43, and no joke, it feels like a brand-new laptop! It's amazing just how sluggish XP can be on mechanical hard drives, even compared to newer OSes.

Did the same to my T61 as well. Huge difference and really breathed new life into it.

T61s are dual core and use SATA HDDs, so the fact that the T43 performs so well is rather more surprising! The only question is; WTF were IBM thinking when they designed the HDD caddy?!?

In early 90's when I had a "slow" PC - I think I had 486slc at the time and did some calculations how much faster would Win 3.11 boot if I could use ramdisk instead of HDD. Of course I had too little ram to actually test it.

I remember Asus EEE 700 when it was released with Celeron 900 and 16GB SSD. The thing was way faster then Celeron 900 was supposed to be - at least when booting WinXP and loading different apps. SSD is really a great improvemet in storage area. I use CompactFlash cards on my retro systems and even 286 benefits with it.

Artex wrote:

Lukeno94 wrote:

Not very retro, but I fitted an IDE SSD to my ThinkPad T43, and no joke, it feels like a brand-new laptop! It's amazing just how sluggish XP can be on mechanical hard drives, even compared to newer OSes.

Did the same to my T61 as well. Huge difference and really breathed new life into it.

Did you install Middleton BIOS? For T61s you can unlock SATA II speeds so it will be even faster.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Rawrl wrote:

Don't most boards have problems with 4gb DDR2 dimms? Or is this registered RAM for one of your Xeon systems or something?

Yep its registered ram. It for a 1207 system. I bought 2 6 core CPUs for 4$. There only 1.8ghz but there 6 core and pull 40 watts.

I have a few 2.3ghz quads for the system too. But with a 1ghz HT and a 115w tpd the 1.8ghz 6 cores make more since. They pull up to 60w and have a 2.4ghz HT. I may have to down clock the HT to 2ghz.

Didnt you scrap like 50 2GB sticks of enthusiast DDR2 not that long ago (along with some nice ass controllers) for there gold just because nobody would buy them?... And now you're buying more DDR2?

oeuvre wrote:

Artex wrote:

Lukeno94 wrote:

Not very retro, but I fitted an IDE SSD to my ThinkPad T43, and no joke, it feels like a brand-new laptop! It's amazing just how sluggish XP can be on mechanical hard drives, even compared to newer OSes.

Did the same to my T61 as well. Huge difference and really breathed new life into it.

Did you install Middleton BIOS? For T61s you can unlock SATA II speeds so it will be even faster.

Yup! You got it!

Won this on ebay the other day. Diamond Monster MX300 with a Yamaha DB50XG and Manual. £28.50 Shipped for both which i think is quite the bargain. This will be my first Midi Daughter board.

Bancho wrote:

Won this on ebay the other day. Diamond Monster MX300 with a Yamaha DB50XG and Manual. £28.50 Shipped for both which i think is quite the bargain. This will be my first Midi Daughter board.

Nice work!

Received this Radeon HD3850 AGP. Tested and works fine. Not very retro I agree, but makes a nice addition to my AGP lineup.
It's also the first card I ever got from any of the Radeon 2xxx, 3xxx or 4xxx series - at the time they were contemporary I was firmly in the nvidia camp.

Great, FAST AGP card. Definitely one of my favorites.