Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-03-15, 22:42

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Scored another beige beauty at the thrift again today for $15, complete tower. Haven't had the chance to see if it powers on yet but it has an ASUS A7V motherboard with unknown CPU, two 128 MB PC133 RAM sticks, a GeForce 2 MX video card, Creative CT4810 (I think?) sound card, D-link PCI wireless …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-03-15, 19:32

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Scored another beige beauty at the thrift again today for $15, complete tower. Haven't had the chance to see if it powers on yet but it has an ASUS A7V motherboard with unknown CPU, two 128 MB PC133 RAM sticks, a GeForce 2 MX video card, Creative CT4810 (I think?) sound card, D-link PCI wireless …

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Re: Fan restoration on early 2000's graphics cards

Posted on 2023-03-12, 16:33

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

- I assume that despite most of these fans being "inside" the heatsinks, mounting a superior modern fan on top instead of inside wouldn't harm the cooling aspect that much? Those fans inside the heatsink are rather small and don't move a lot of air, so any modern fan you mount on top will move …

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It's always good to disassemble and clean old towers...

Posted on 2023-03-12, 05:52

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Because you never know what you're going to find. As I began looking inside this old tower I recently acquired, I noticed the mouse poops and thought ok, weird, but I guess it's been sitting for awhile. Then after removing the rest of the internals, the last being the removable 5.25" drive cage, I …

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GeForce 2 MX or GeForce 4 MX 440 for Win98/DOS PC

Posted on 2023-03-11, 16:53

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

So I'm going to put together a "4-in-1" AMD K6-2+ PC as Phil did in his video using SetMul and cache settings to emulate 386/486/Pentium and all out speeds. I have everything I need except the CPU, but the K6-2+ is cheap enough on ebay so I'll be ordering a couple this weekend, and I'm not about to …

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Re: Where can I find older AT Cases?

Posted on 2023-03-07, 03:49

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have three AT cases, two which I just had to pay for and one I got basically for free. It's a shame they're so hard to find now. I have thought about trying to get some injection molds and sheet metal stamping going to see how much it would cost to manufacture new ones in the old style, but I …

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

Posted on 2023-03-05, 20:05

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finished cleaning and reassembling the case and internals of the HP Vectra, still works after putting it back together, so that's great! I'm always nervous to fire up an old system after giving everything a good cleaning. I brushed all the PCBs with electronics cleaner, opened up the PSU and blew …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-03-03, 22:58

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Dropped in to the local thrift store on my lunch break today, and it's always exciting to see a beige box sitting on the shelf. Picked this up for $15, complete sans hard drive. Has what appears to be a Jetway 630CF mobo which is socket 370, not sure if it's a P3 or Celeron. I verified it powers up …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-03-03, 20:56

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Dropped in to the local thrift store on my lunch break today, and it's always exciting to see a beige box sitting on the shelf. Picked this up for $15, complete sans hard drive. Has what appears to be a Jetway 630CF mobo which is socket 370, not sure if it's a P3 or Celeron. I verified it powers up …

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

Posted on 2023-03-02, 23:42

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I always do a visual inspection of old power supply capacitors. They tend to be old, abused, and stuck in hot about environments. It's usually a good idea to open them up anyways, just to get some compressed air into them for cleaning. Yes, a thorough disassembly and cleaning of all components is …

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

Posted on 2023-03-02, 15:26

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still …

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

Posted on 2023-03-02, 05:43

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still …

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

Posted on 2023-01-29, 22:13

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Fully disassembled, thoroughly cleaned and reassembled the AT keyboard I recently found at the thrift store for I think $3. It's rare enough to find PS2 keyboards at the thrift, but when I saw this AT one I was super stoked. Hopefully it works!

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

Posted on 2023-01-21, 15:48

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I finally got around to testing the five Voodoo 2 cards I've had sitting in a box for a few years, three STB Black Magic 3D and two Diamond Monster 3D II, all 12 MB variants. One of the STB cards has a crushed capacitor and is not working, and one of the Diamond cards seems like it may have …

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Re: Help with STB Black Magic 3D Voodoo 2 repair

Posted on 2023-01-20, 05:50

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm going to order some caps and see if replacing it works. Need to order other caps for a couple motherboards anyway.

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Re: Help with STB Black Magic 3D Voodoo 2 repair

Posted on 2023-01-20, 05:01

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I did a quick visual inspection and noticed one of the capacitors looks like it got pinched by something, and looks like it might even have been soldered previously. Can a pinched capacitor cause issues? It doesn't appear to be leaking.

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Help with STB Black Magic 3D Voodoo 2 repair

Posted on 2023-01-19, 23:11

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I've had three STB Black Magic 3D Voodoo 2 cards for quite awhile now and finally got around to testing them. Two seem to be working just fine, but one will not display any 3D content. When installed the system recognizes it normally as a 3D multimedia device according to Device Manager (Windows 98 …

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Re: Creative founder Sim Wong Hoo, the man behind Sound Blaster, has died

Posted on 2023-01-08, 00:30

by

by Brawndo

in Milliways

in Milliways

I just read that myself. Totally worth posting here. Well he can certainly be proud of his legacy. Easily one of the most successful companies and product lines of the technology era. I've certainly owned my share of Soundblaster products over the years. God speed Mr. Hoo. Thank you for your most …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-01-05, 05:49

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One of the later WRT54G's, hence the speedmark and rangemark marketing terms. Still a nice find and usable with a custom firmware. No Gbit of course, but why would you need that with old computers. ;) It will literally only be used on the rare occasion I want to use wifi on my older computers to …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-01-04, 23:05

by

by Brawndo

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Found this at the thrift store today for $5, brand new in the shrink wrap. It'll be perfect for wireless networking my older rigs. Now I have a use for those D Link wireless G PCI adapters I didn't know what I'd do with.

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