Re: Adventures In $0.99 Computer Lot Buying

Posted on 2017-03-01, 13:26

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not to derail "too much" but even for me, local is expensive. I went to a salvation army once and they had two windows 98 Era gateway towers in the store, both booted up for about 100 each :dead: Long story short I got them both for 90 dollars after a bout of intense haggling and they are still …

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Re: Adventures In $0.99 Computer Lot Buying

Posted on 2017-03-01, 05:41

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Anyway...back to the topic. No, I don't specifically call out you younger folk. The way he brushed me off and looked at me like a crazy old man (I'm not even that old...I turn 35 on Friday!) spoke mountains of his intentions and outlook on the hobby. He literally sniped me for a $5 max bid I put in …

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Re: Adventures In $0.99 Computer Lot Buying

Posted on 2017-03-01, 03:56

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

tl;dr...you can skip this opening section as it's all background info. The meat of this thread begins with the bolded title. As some of you know, I recently picked up a lot of 4 older machines from eBay for the massive sum of $0.99. Here is a link to the auction page. The auction itself was listed …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-02-27, 07:10

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Model M is godly. I pray night and day for a bargain find. It was my first keyboard. Amazing typing.. I'm probably going to get killed by another vogoner for saying this but my all time favorite is some (presumably cheaply made) Acer Multimedia keyboard i found at a yard sale like 7 years ago for 2 …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-02-26, 19:22

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Picked up a Dell AT101W (Black) mechanical keyboard at a local thrift store yesterday. Originally I was a bit worried, because most of the keys didn't register properly at first. Then after I mashed them a bunch and used the keyboard, they started behaving again. I guess there was dust to be worked …

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Re: Hardware trading

Posted on 2017-02-23, 07:09

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Again, I think having it on a different server than the main forum would avoid a lot of problems. If policing it becomes a problem, you could shut it down and the main Vogons server wouldn't be bothered. Call it something other than Vogons so there's no splash back or confusion as it would only be …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2017-02-23, 06:41

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Managed to find an MS-DOS MP3 player optimized specifically for 486 processors and listened to some music on my 486DX4-100 system...mostly 80s music. :lol: I'd say a DX4-100 is right on the very edge of "just powerful enough" to be able to decode and play MP3s with no issues, as quick Google …

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Re: Are ATI RAGE PRO or Intel 740 rare AGP Cards?

Posted on 2017-02-23, 05:29

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Rage II series. My iMac G3 233 for example has a Rage IIc with 2MB of VRAM.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2017-02-23, 00:09

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

oeuvre wrote: dat AT101W, new in box. Same keyboard I have. What's your opinion of it? Personally I like mine.

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2017-02-23, 00:02

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Last weekend, i found an old PC in the trash with a white PCB Soltek board (Soltek SL-85MR3-R), the CPU is a Pentium 4 Northwood 1.8A Ghz, 512 MB DDR, RTL8139 ethernet and a 400 watt PSU, the board POSTs, but it has the caps in really bad condition Planning on recapping that board? That's a fairly …

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Re: Hardware trading

Posted on 2017-02-22, 23:55

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd be interested. Maybe make a post count minimum on the mainforum to have access to it? say 50 or 100 quality posts? That should weed out most of the trash. Amibay and VCF are going down hill quick plus there both almost exclusively european (which makes no sense as i assume there to be just as …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-02-21, 02:59

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Picked up a free Dell Inspiron 530. I have officially owned or worked on 5 of these now. Worked on a C2Q version, owned the 530s, the amd varient of the 530s, a c2d 530 and now a another one. I like these machines :) I had a 531, which was the AMD version, and it was garbage. PSU couldn't actually …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-02-21, 00:42

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Picked up a free Dell Inspiron 530. I have officially owned or worked on 5 of these now. Worked on a C2Q version, owned the 530s, the amd varient of the 530s, a c2d 530 and now a another one. I like these machines :) I had a 531, which was the AMD version, and it was garbage. PSU couldn't actually …

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So what makes a CRT a "Good" CRT?

Posted on 2017-02-17, 23:33

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I recently acquired some new CRT monitors after a little bit of walking around town and checking some small-town thrift stores. Anywho after testing these monitors, and thinking of my previous experiences with CRTs. I got to thinking: What makes a CRT good? Anywho, I'm going to describe 5 CRTs and …

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Re: Free HD4870

Posted on 2017-02-17, 19:48

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Those should actually pair well. The HD4000's were towards the end of the dual-core gaming era if I remember correctly.

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Re: help me getting an old IBM P275 CRT to work for Win 98SE rig

Posted on 2017-02-17, 12:57

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

This might sound stupid but you DID install your graphics card driver's right? As for the brightness I would think there would be a hardware brightness control built into the monitor itself.

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Documentation for a MicroStar International MS-5156 socket 7 board?

Posted on 2017-02-17, 01:43

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Does anybody have the manual for this model motherboard? I couldn't find anything beyond its entry in TH99 (http://arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/m/M-O/34039.htm) Found several old forum posts that lead to a now dead page on the old MSI Germany website but that's it. EDIT: Just realized I posted in sound. …

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Re: I blame Phil..

Posted on 2017-02-16, 20:35

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And this is how it all began lol, reading all of Vogons from start to end before actually joining is pure madness!! Err I mean it's pure determination ! lol Welcome aboard again Phil! :D But lets not forget all those other retro enthusiasts that were already here. Things have gotten busier the last …

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Re: Can anyone recommend a PS2 to AT style keyboard adapter?

Posted on 2017-02-15, 20:06

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Never, ever, EVER use hard adapters like that. Doubling the length of the plug on the connector means that there will be MUCH more force on the connector if you tug even slightly on the wire, or if you (or someone else) pushes the machine too close to the wall. If you so much as look at the thing …

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Re: Can anyone recommend a PS2 to AT style keyboard adapter?

Posted on 2017-02-15, 03:24

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by TheAbandonwareGuy

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No signal conversion as long as the keyboard isn't pulling a significant amount of current (as Model M keyboards sometimes do). I wouldn't think my relatively run-of-the-mill Dell AT101 would draw an obscene amount of power (nor would I have the slightest idea how to check if it did or not) Anyways …

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