Got my reply: got blocked by the guy. I'll have to involve the auction site on this one.
Doesn't matter, wife got home with this:

A chess computer from 1979.

Miphee wrote on 2020-05-15, 08:18:

Here is a little game of Find the problem.

Apart from the CPU...
It may be just the picture but ISA slot 3 looks a little strange. Apart from that I wonder where did all those tantal caps at the RAM sockets go?

CMB75 wrote on 2020-05-15, 13:28:

Apart from the CPU...
It may be just the picture but ISA slot 3 looks a little strange. Apart from that I wonder where did all those tantal caps at the RAM sockets go?

No idea, I couldn't leave this board and fixed it, working fine now. Third slot has a little dirt on it, no biggie.
Since it didn't post or beep at all my first choice was the BIOS ROM and it was indeed empty. Flashed a new BIOS and voilá:

Miphee wrote on 2020-05-15, 15:12:

CMB75 wrote on 2020-05-15, 13:28:

Apart from the CPU...
It may be just the picture but ISA slot 3 looks a little strange. Apart from that I wonder where did all those tantal caps at the RAM sockets go?

No idea, I couldn't leave this board and fixed it, working fine now. Third slot has a little dirt on it, no biggie.
Since it didn't post or beep at all my first choice was the BIOS ROM and it was indeed empty. Flashed a new BIOS and voilá:

Glad you got it working, however in situations like this I usually have a conflict: do I ask for partial refund to the seller? after all, the board arrived in non-working conditions and the seller blocked you after you contacted him/her, but then again, the item works after some small fix...

It was sold as working, so the seller lied about its condition. I don't see a conflict here. You are not supposed having to repair something that was sold as working - even if you can and have the tools/knowledge to do so.

I received a package full of nice little parts yesterday... capacitors and the like... oh there were also a few GPUs in there that they belonged to... *sigh*

just carelessly thrown in a box that was like half empty, so the just rattled and flew around in there... they were sold as "defective"... but that's no reason to pack them this shoddily, especially considering I also bought "working" parts from the same seller, that were in the same half empty box that now got thrown around together with the other stuff... the working cards were in bags... but still.

edit: so I just went through my messages, because I was pretty sure I asked the seller nicely to pack them so they won't get damaged... i.e. wrap them in newspaper or something, sure enough I did.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-05-15, 15:25:

Glad you got it working, however in situations like this I usually have a conflict: do I ask for partial refund to the seller? after all, the board arrived in non-working conditions and the seller blocked you after you contacted him/her, but then again, the item works after some small fix...

Thanks. Since it was not on Ebay, money back guarantee is not 100%.
I learned from past experiences that sometimes you just have to let things go and fix things yourself.
The refund process takes time, shipping something back takes time and money, and sometimes it's just too much fuss for too little gain.
These XT boards are a dream to repair with barely any SMD components anyway.
And one more thing: I wanted this board! It's nice and clean and these boards are hard to come by here.
If it was a board full of SMD chips then I'd probably return it immediately.
Seller is a POS but I have a thick skin.

derSammler wrote on 2020-05-15, 15:28:

It was sold as working, so the seller lied about its condition. I don't see a conflict here. You are not supposed having to repair something that was sold as working - even if you can and have the tools/knowledge to do so.

You are very right but I had a choice: either I send it back and lose a potentially nice XT board or attempt a repair that fails and I lose the board AND my money.
I don't know man, I like a challenge and it wasn't too expensive, also the chip is socketed so no harm in trying a new BIOS or fiddling with RAMs.
Gambled and won.

Flea markets being closed because of this Covid-19 lockdown situation, I spent a little more time on local classified ads and auction sites, went a little deeper with my searches and found an ad with this photo. Spotted immediately the socket 3 VLB mainboard(on the left) and the sound card from the bottom of the picture. Managed to identify the mainboard, it'a a PC Chips M912 and I was like 90% sure that the sound card is a Sound Blaster Pro 2 CT1600.

So, I called the seller, it turned out to be just a scrapper of basically everything. I managed to set up a video call with him to show me what he had on those bags... but he had a week signal or a cheap phone, I couldn't identify anything by the labels or anything written on the boards.... Anyway, I'we picked up 5 mainboards, 10 expansion cards and some CPUs. Although I specifically asked him several times to pack all the boards at least in some newspaper or something similar, and he agreed, he just put some cardboard between the mainboards and throw in the rest of the cards and the CPUs on top of the mainboards... in a large cardboard box... 🙁 f@#$ing scrappers...

And here is what I picked up, sorry for the poor quality photos...

1. PCChips M912 v1.4 with 128 kb real cache + tag - not POSTing, but it shows some life; it beeps with certain memory sticks...
2. FIC 485-VIP-IO2 - this one is completely dead
3. QDI Advance 9 P6V693A/9 - has damaged RAM slots; probably I will throw it out
4. PC Chips/Ampthon M754LMR(???) with "GFXPRO" chipset(Ali Aladdin TNT2) - not tested yet

5. ECS K7S5A ver: 3.1 - this is in great shape, not even dusty; it works great paired with an Athlon 1100 T-bird

1. XFX GeForce 8800 GTS - has all of the connection side of the card ripped off. I don't know how I didn't saw that...
2. Palit Geforce4 TI 4200 - it needs a recap, but it's working fine
3. Cardex 9207-04 Tseng ET4000Ax VLB 1Mb - working
4. some Trident TGUI9440AGi 1 Mb VLB - working
5. Matrox Mystique 220 4Mb + Rainbow Runner Studio - the Mystique is working, but the RRS add-on capture card is badly scratched on the back, at least 10 traces are cut...🙁
6. Creative SB PRO 2 CT1600 - yes, indeed it was this card the one from the seller picture; and it's working perfectly! 😀
7. Creative SB32 CT3670 - it was full of mud, but after cleaning and testing it, it turns out to be working, but it picks up noises from the motherboard... At least one cap is broken, right at the end of the ISA slot connector(C141)
8. Creative SB Live! CT4830 - not tested yet, also not an interesting card...
9. BTC 1853L ESS Audiodrive ES1868F - not tested yet
10. DTK PTI-227B(Winbond W83757F) IDE FDD controller card - not tested yet

11. Intel Xeon 3 GHz SL6WB - badly scratched and missing SMD caps
12. Intel Xeon E5506 2,133 GHz SLBF8 - has a few SMDs missing from the bottom
13. Athlon 1100 MHz A1100AMS3B Thunderbird - working fine on the K7S5A mainboard
14. IBM BLUE LIGHTNING DX2 66 MHz - IBM26 486-V666GA - not tested yet, it had a lot of bent pins, but I hope it works...(not in the pictures)

Overall it is not a bad deal for the 65 euros I paid incl. shipping. I hope to recover at least one of the two VLB socket 3 mainboards. Still feel bad for the Rainbow Runner Studio, but anyway I don't have a cable for it...

Been lQQking for one of these "special" units for a good while...

Nvidia 256 DDR 32mb VGA/DVI

ISSI IS61C256AH-15N 32Kx8 28-pin PDIP SRAM (2 of them) for the PB450 and M912 v1.7 board
NEC UPD424260V-70 256Kx16 ZIP 70 FPM DRAM for a PB450 motherboard
5-pack 6.3V 22uF Tantalum SMD capacitors for the PB450
ISSI IS61C1024-15N 128Kx1 32-pin PDIP SRAM (4 of them) for the PB450
25-pack CR1220 battery holders
Another AMD Am5x86-P75 (AM486DX5-133V16BGC) CPU that uses 3.3V
Non-functional Packard Bell PB450 board with a CL-GD5429 and ISA riser card (I have a broken PB450 that'll be used for board component replacements and a BIOS chip to swap as well)
EverCool EC486 CPU heatsink fan for the CPU
LT1085CT0-3.3#PBF fixed 3.3V VRM for the PB450
TO-220 heatsink (1o-pack)
Cypress CY7C187-15PC 64Kx1 22-pin PDIP SRAM for the PB450

Item list

Finally...! Managed to pick up a Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 Motherboard. The one i picked up works but has horrid caps so will be replacing those. Really looking forward to doing a build around this board. Also this will be used to test and bench Video Cards I have/receive.

Decided I needed more PCI network cards in my life, ended up with 9 of them from a local seller selling them inexpensively:

2 x 3Com 3C905-TX
2 x 3Com 3C905C-TXM
1 x Acer ALN-315 (DEC 21143 chipset)
1 x SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI (SMC1211TX)
3 x Generic Realtek RTL8139 cards

All of them are tested and work.

We got to talking for a bit and he also had an old motherboard he didn't need anymore, a Gigabyte GA-K8U.

Needs a little attention with a recap, but it is a AMD Athlon 64, Socket 754 motherboard based on the rather uncommon ULi M1689 Chipset.

Included were an Athlon 64 Processor, its heatsink and fan, and 512meg ram. All boots up fine, but I think the battery is flat (big deal)

Hopefully this chipset supports ISA soundcard emulation abilities, allowing it to be another nice DOS system.

So it was a good day!

Last two posts = Attack of the Blue PCBs!!!

Bancho wrote on 2020-05-16, 11:15:

Finally...! Managed to pick up a Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 Motherboard.

This is a nice motherboard. I wonder if there was ever a CPU upgrade to the upper slot. Also cal you use both AGP and PCI-E card at the same time?

mpe wrote on 2020-05-16, 13:51:

Bancho wrote on 2020-05-16, 11:15:

Finally...! Managed to pick up a Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 Motherboard.

This is a nice motherboard. I wonder if there was ever a CPU upgrade to the upper slot. Also cal you use both AGP and PCI-E card at the same time?

There was an AM2 upgrade board... I have one.

Finally got my Am386DX40 today. It's been stuck in the machine that is the Dutch postal service for nearly a month. To be fair, I don't often have problems with any of the shipping companies I use, but occasionally stuff like this happens. I ordered this from China, about a day before ordering an XGecu TL866II programmer. Both were shipped through SpeedPAK by separate sellers, and arrived through Germany into the Netherlands at the same time at the 21st of April. The TL866II arrived shortly after, but the 386 was just getting "sorted" about three times over the last few weeks until finally this morning it was delivered to me. Wasn't in a hurry to get this, but it's weird how it got stuck. If it fell off the conveyor belt and was considered lost until someone found it again, I would expect nothing but radio silence, not repeat updates. Oh well, hopefully I'll soon get to build my 386 and enjoy this little chip.

Finally got around to actually testing this beautiful Pentium Pro Gateway I received three days ago. Now if only I had that front trim panel.

Dell 5V -> 3.3V interposer for Socket 2
+ brand new Intel DX4 CPU

Totdat I was at my storage unit, just to check if everything was all right.
I meet the guy from the unit next to me, got a bit chatting (at some distance of course) and he asks if I'm still interested in old computer junk. He got something he wanted to get rid of: an old computer case, white huge and needed almost a forklift.

So I said if it looks okay and is not too beaten up I might give ten euros for it. He says ok, sold, come and get it. It's got wheels so we can roll it over to your unit.

Short story: here it is. Not too neat, but fairly complete and quite rare by now. Almost feels like I robbed him, but he's just glad he got some money and didn't have to get it to the junkyard.