Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-04-24, 17:43

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

devius wrote on 2021-04-24, 17:38: There's also a 10BASE-FL card there, which is a first for me, and I'm pretty sure I'll never get to use the fibre part, but it's still nice to have: That card looks like it was never used by anyone else either. Nice collection!

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

Posted on 2021-04-24, 06:48

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A friend's employer decided to get rid of the junk and old spare parts stored in the attic and let me splurge a little. The place hasn't been cleaned in 50 years and everything was covered in dust. There is also a big box of generic S3 Trios and interface cards, a few typewriters and empty PC cases …

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Re: Best way to store & save old hardware?

Posted on 2021-04-22, 13:25

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

$13.99 + $19.04 shipping. You can get 10 boards for that price here and it's just packaging material. Cardboard boxes are free in convenience stores and you can take as many as you want in every size imaginable. Just like pizza boxes for motherboards.

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Re: Best way to store & save old hardware?

Posted on 2021-04-22, 12:36

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to take photos and write long lists of my hardware but I quickly stopped after my inventory started changing too much. I'll only make a list of items I'm collecting like CPU-series.

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Re: Life expectancy of an "old" HDD

Posted on 2021-04-22, 12:01

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

starhubble wrote on 2021-04-22, 10:05: Yeah, it's annoying, but will it prolong or shorten the life of the drive? It wasn't designed to increase the lifespan of a drive. It was designed to consume less power.

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Re: Determining how much to spend on this hobby

Posted on 2021-04-22, 09:24

by

by Miphee

in Milliways

in Milliways

that's another thing about spending, there is a kind of upper limit on much older (25+ years) tech partly because it is often so well emulated People also don't want them because they are quite limited. Why spend a lot on an 80's PC when you can do the same on a cheapo 90's PC and a lot more? …

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Re: Life expectancy of an "old" HDD

Posted on 2021-04-22, 09:14

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Okay, so the spindowns: Good or bad? Is it better to have the drive spin constantly or spin down when idle? Someone mentioned that unnecessary spinups might put extra strain on the drive. It's the work of the Devil IMO. When you want to access a file it takes 10 seconds to spin up. The drive wakes …

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Re: Life expectancy of an "old" HDD

Posted on 2021-04-22, 06:41

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Drives that automatically and arbitrarily park their heads every 8 seconds (without command from the OS) are suspect IMO. Agreed. I've had the misfortune of dealing with numerous WD Caviar green and Samsung Spinpoint drives and the constant slow spin-down spin-up cycles were maddening. I've had 3 …

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Re: Determining how much to spend on this hobby

Posted on 2021-04-21, 14:16

by

by Miphee

in Milliways

in Milliways

Seems like a huge number, but how many millions broke and got thrown away to date, how many of that 49m are still functional spread about in all the one time places the console was sold, it suddenly seems quite sparse or at least a diminishing number I checked locally and sure, not that many are …

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Re: Life expectancy of an "old" HDD

Posted on 2021-04-21, 09:46

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Somewhere between 1 minute and 50 years. That's why it's a lot less hassle to use a CF adapter and not these unreliable and often overpriced drives.

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Re: Determining how much to spend on this hobby

Posted on 2021-04-21, 09:08

by

by Miphee

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have a monthly budget and I stick to it. I also avoid big reseller sites like Ebay and buy 50% of my items from dumpster-divers and e-waste dealers. I rarely buy from collectors because they simply know their stuff and price the items accordingly. I buy the rest from local auction sites/Facebook …

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Re: Identifying bad caps on motherboards

Posted on 2021-04-21, 06:11

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The bottom line is that visual inspection is only a reliable way of finding caps which have definitely failed. Caps that look good won't necessarily function properly. You also can't reliably test caps in circuit, except for those that have failed short which happens more often with ceramic caps …

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Re: Identifying bad caps on motherboards

Posted on 2021-04-20, 19:00

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My contention is you can't necessarily buy two copies of board X with the expectation that one will work if the other doesn't. I contend that it'll be more profitable to avoid boards known to use problematic cap series including NCC/UCC KZE, KZJ, KZJ, Nichicon HM and HN, and Rubycon MBZ or assume …

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Re: Identifying bad caps on motherboards

Posted on 2021-04-20, 16:48

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some entire classes of board are prone to failure. KZG caps like you've shown will, inevitably, fail, as will Nichicon ultra low ESR lytics, even if they're not part of the defective batches which were sold. These were used heavily during the Pentium IV era for motherboard VRMs. Finding a clean …

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Re: Identifying bad caps on motherboards

Posted on 2021-04-20, 12:25

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Small ones like that are cheap to replace but the really problematic ones are quite expensive if you have to replace them all. Filename 20101213-194659-01.jpg File size 228.38 KiB Views 1446 views It's often cheaper and easier to just get a flawless board. If the board is rare then you are better …

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Re: Am I missing something or yet another bad product?

Posted on 2021-04-20, 07:09

by

by Miphee

in Milliways

in Milliways

Thanks guys, will try to buy the correct adapter next time.

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Re: Am I missing something or yet another bad product?

Posted on 2021-04-20, 06:48

by

by Miphee

in Milliways

in Milliways

So I messed up. I've tried it with a Sapphire HD6850 HDMI-out and an LG L1918S VGA-in. No signal.

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Am I missing something or yet another bad product?

Posted on 2021-04-20, 06:23

by

by Miphee

in Milliways

in Milliways

I've got a Gembird Cablexpert HDMI-VGA signal converter to use with my notebook that only has VGA-out. When I connect it to the TV and switch it to the VGA output nothing happens. The TV is set to a working HDMI input port and the notebook's VGA-out works with a different display that has VGA-in. …

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Re: Old 40MB tape drive

Posted on 2021-04-15, 11:06

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another pdf that may help: https://ia803208.us.archive.org/7/items/bitsa … _Guide_1985.pdf

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Re: Old 40MB tape drive

Posted on 2021-04-15, 10:58

by

by Miphee

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

https://www.thecomputerarchive.com/Storage/Ta … pe%20Drives.PDF

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