Jade Falcon wrote:

Nope, well short of. Old stuff failed in it's days too, but all of it's been ether fixed, RMA'd or trashed or lost to time leavi […]
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nforce4max wrote:

Lead free solder is a real problem with modern hardware and even with amazingly good cooling it is still a lottery if the card is going to hold up these days, just look on eBay and everyone can see all the modern cards that are almost new in box that stopped working. The cheap pull apart fall apart fans on a lot of modern cards doesn't help either, there are heaps of cards with one or missing fans on eBay atm. I agree about Quadro cards to an extent but some of them have been real stinkers when it came to cooling and build quality over the years.

Nope, well short of. Old stuff failed in it's days too, but all of it's been ether fixed, RMA'd or trashed or lost to time leaving mostly the good stuff behind.
It will be the same case 10 years from now with the tech we have today. Everything we have today will be fixed for trashed and folks will complain about this new gen of stuff failing at a higher rate then older stuff.
This is not to say that what was around 10-15 years ago failed at the same rate of hardware today.

The big difference between then and now is that back then things were simply allowed to roast and used the worst possible Chinese caps. Now days it is the lead free crap solder that is causing problems and poor design especially with modern laptops going sour just after the warranty expires.

Just look up "louis rossmann apple" on youtube

Jade Falcon wrote:

Stop over paying for stuff, problem solved. If we all put our foot down, then the sellers will either stop selling stuff or lowe […]
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Stop over paying for stuff, problem solved. If we all put our foot down, then the sellers will either stop selling stuff or lower the prices.

I bought 20 odd some video card off ebay for about 35$. Then you have real life deals.
I gotten hole PC for free to 5-10$ from folks around town. Put a want add out or something.
You just have go out and look. Ask around, put a want add out or something. Don't give into over priced eBay listing.

The bolded part is where the problem lies.

It may be a nice thought, but it's never gonna happen.

Better is to invest in thinking about what might become wanted and harder to find in the future and (most importantly) get items you think you'll REALLY need when they are cheapest, even if you totally don't need them right now.

Part of the hobby is about the hunt. The hunt for good parts and knowing when a deal is really good enough for you. If you have the money and you just want stuff that isn't broken half the time, then just go ahead and purchase it.

It's even different when crossing borders of different countries, laws are different and keep changing and people keep bending the rules, it also comes down to knowing how to connect to people. It's quite fun actually 😀.

I've always been on a low budget and the latter years have been even more so, but theres always some way to find what you "need", but being patient and being at least keen are also important here.

Tetrium wrote:

Part of the hobby is about the hunt. The hunt for good parts and knowing when a deal is really good enough for you. If you have the money and you just want stuff that isn't broken half the time, then just go ahead and purchase it.

It's even different when crossing borders of different countries, laws are different and keep changing and people keep bending the rules, it also comes down to knowing how to connect to people. It's quite fun actually 😀.

I must not have gotten that memo, if anything the hunt for parts is a pain in the rear, I rather be able to buy any given part for a good price then wait a year to find one thing that's over priced.

nforce4max wrote:

The big difference between then and now is that back then things were simply allowed to roast and used the worst possible Chinese caps. Now days it is the lead free crap solder that is causing problems and poor design especially with modern laptops going sour just after the warranty expires.

That's no different then 10-20 years ago, Things failed just the same. I seen countless older parts with bad solder joints and design. Maybe the details have changed, but stuff still fail back then juts like it does today.

Older stuff fail mostly do to poor cooling, bad fans and caps. Often out of warranty too.

Munx wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Munx wrote:

Insistance on using blower style coolers is also a factor. They dont provide the cooling needed and have no place on hot, high end cards - yet they were the standard for years and when it comes to refrence models, still are.

Mind if I ask what a blower style cooler is? 😊

You mean those large heatsinks covering the entire length of the graphics card with the very small tiny jet engine-like fan embedded into them? Because I always found that quite a terrible design and always try to avoid those, they have poor redundancy I think.

Yup, those. Other than lowering the temps inside the case by around 2C, they are worse than tradicional open-heatsink style coolers in every way - ineffective, hard to clean, noisy, etc.

Thanks for confirming 😀.

When I saw this type of HSF appearing on the market, I immediately started to avoid any graphics card had had one of these mounted and one of the main reasons is that this type of cooler appeared to me as more noisy and more difficult to home-mod with a case fan in case the original fan would start to need to be replaced.

The type of HSF I prefer nowadays is one that looks kinda like this one

Can someone clue me into where people are finding all these cards for the prices mentioned? I can't even find another GeForce256 on eBay so i know its not there.

I live in the center of Rural Southern Illinios, aka Farmland so i never see PC parts used (and when i do its on craigslist and there asking 50 dollars for a 5 year old mid-end Radeon) so i pretty much get everything online. I have won a few auctions for decent prices before (I think i got my HTPC's GTX260 Core216SC for 15 shipped) but I never see auctions for the older stuff. Mostly just BINs from computer recyclers at unreasonable prices (i guess they think there rare, even when there common OEM models?).

I don't know. All i know is i bought my 9800GX2 for 25 (which was about average) back in January and now there going for 50+. I don't understand that trend.

You either have to check Ebay every nite before bed or hustle around your area of town to see what is available.

EISA/VLB cards used to be plentiful and dirt cheap a few years back but now are not. I think Ebay pricing is killing the cheap item market because of fees on shipping. No point in listing a card for $1 + 10 shipping if it is just going to sell for that $1 and cost you money in Paypal and Ebay fees to ship it. So people start off with $20 listings and if it doesn't sell recycle it. Scrappers have also scoured the country for old machines so not much left outside of collectors and hoarders these days.

High end gaming cards were not that plentiful to begin with. Quite a few died from heat (clogged up cheap fans plus hot rooms), bad solder joints, power supplies blowing up, or bad capacitors. So if you are looking for specific models you will have to pay something for a working tested unit. Doesn't help that even working cards get shipped in bubble mailers and arrive broken.

Goldscrapper's have taken a big bite of that pie, no doubt about that. Resulting in prices going up, wich again makes it non interesting for them. They are only in the game, for profit, nothing more. That have been said a lot of times here.

Then we have those who are sucking the market dry, and stuff are only sitting in order to generate massive profit's years down the road.

Finally, we have the hipster's, that are only in this to brag about how much they can affort. Plus I suspect those that want to game on NES and SNES, simply finding out that an old pc is a kind of substitude (money wise). This might as well drive the prices up.

Who is loosing... We are the ones. We who are in this not only for the games. We who are in this for the hardware as well.
Yeah... Games are nice. Hardware equally cool. Perhaps even cooler than the games.
When people hear about collections like mine or other's, they tend to say that it's a fine pension savings.
Personally I disagree. I am in this for historical reasons. And when I am done with this hobby, my children are going to have it.
Or I might rearrange the system's and give a perfectly working collection of era correct system's to a technical museum.

^Agree

Gold scrappers have really fucked us over and people wonder why it is such a struggle to collect let alone restore machines from the 50s to the early 90s, without spare parts it becomes infinitely harder. People like myself should have to go to the extremes of digging through dumpsters and garbage dumps on private property to find parts (when nothing is to be found even on eBay). Yes I have salvaged machines that were left out in the weather with all the usual critters inside, impressive to find working hard drives that survived despite all the rain and summer heat.

nforce4max wrote:

with all the usual critters inside

NOW you've done it sir.... 😁
You made me think of "Ashens" from youtube, opening a can with a freezedried schorpion (to eat). 🤣 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI9-CgA5Rlg

Theres also the Military who stockpile parts for there systems due to the length of time there in service (the Navy still has a few DOS applications in service...) and when those are no longer needed due to the systems they were for being phased out those parts end up in military surplus stores.

On a side note: Goldscrappers make decent contacts for stuff. My local scrapper usual lets me buy stuff off him before he scraps it. In 50 years technology should allow us to 3D print these kinds of parts anyways though. or maybe replicator technology? idk

brostenen wrote:

Goldscrapper's have taken a big bite of that pie, no doubt about that. Resulting in prices going up, wich again makes it non int […]
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Goldscrapper's have taken a big bite of that pie, no doubt about that. Resulting in prices going up, wich again makes it non interesting for them. They are only in the game, for profit, nothing more. That have been said a lot of times here.

Then we have those who are sucking the market dry, and stuff are only sitting in order to generate massive profit's years down the road.

Finally, we have the hipster's, that are only in this to brag about how much they can affort. Plus I suspect those that want to game on NES and SNES, simply finding out that an old pc is a kind of substitude (money wise). This might as well drive the prices up.

Who is loosing... We are the ones. We who are in this not only for the games. We who are in this for the hardware as well.
Yeah... Games are nice. Hardware equally cool. Perhaps even cooler than the games.
When people hear about collections like mine or other's, they tend to say that it's a fine pension savings.
Personally I disagree. I am in this for historical reasons. And when I am done with this hobby, my children are going to have it.
Or I might rearrange the system's and give a perfectly working collection of era correct system's to a technical museum.

How do hipsters fit into this?

I can see how they help inflate prices for console stuff, but for PC parts?

There are actually a few gold scrappers who go through great lengths to prevent the destruction of retro hardware, even when it barely rewards them economically and while they barely know what we know, even asking for help in what should be scrapped and what is worth selling.

But of course theres tons of people in it just for the money. Many might be in it for both. It's just the way the world is right now, don't bet on this to change, you'll just have to make the best out of it for yourself and the people that are important to you.

There will always be opportunities and in many ways, things are better now then they were back then.

It's all fine and dandy if you can get tons of stuff from the streets (it was like this 10+ years ago), but if there are barely any others who don't think you're being a nutcase for hoarding all this presumed worthless junk... now theres forums like this one and a couple others which help keeping things alive. Or at least for now.

This was bound to happen, so don't grieve over that or get angry about it, cuz that won't help anything (though I do agree with your sentiment, if only perhaps partially).

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Theres also the Military who stockpile parts for there systems due to the length of time there in service (the Navy still has a few DOS applications in service...) and when those are no longer needed due to the systems they were for being phased out those parts end up in military surplus stores.

On a side note: Goldscrappers make decent contacts for stuff. My local scrapper usual lets me buy stuff off him before he scraps it. In 50 years technology should allow us to 3D print these kinds of parts anyways though. or maybe replicator technology? idk

Chances are good that many knowledge will be lost by the time we'll be able to pull such a feat.

Think we can reproduce Rampage? Or 486 SiS chipsets?

Tetrium wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Theres also the Military who stockpile parts for there systems due to the length of time there in service (the Navy still has a few DOS applications in service...) and when those are no longer needed due to the systems they were for being phased out those parts end up in military surplus stores.

On a side note: Goldscrappers make decent contacts for stuff. My local scrapper usual lets me buy stuff off him before he scraps it. In 50 years technology should allow us to 3D print these kinds of parts anyways though. or maybe replicator technology? idk

Chances are good that many knowledge will be lost by the time we'll be able to pull such a feat.

Think we can reproduce Rampage? Or 486 SiS chipsets?

Assuming one or two of them survive into that era for us to reverse-engineer in order to replicate, yes.

Jade Falcon wrote:

Stop over paying for stuff, problem solved. If we all our foot down, then the sellers will either stop selling stuff or lower the prices.

"People shouldn't steal", "people shouldn't overpay and inflate prices" - the human race must disappoint you on a regular basis 🤣

And this "it's the collectors / gold scrappers / hipsters fault" nonsense is just juvenile.

badmojo wrote:

Jade Falcon wrote:

Stop over paying for stuff, problem solved. If we all our foot down, then the sellers will either stop selling stuff or lower the prices.

"People shouldn't steal", "people shouldn't overpay and inflate prices" - the human race must disappoint you on a regular basis 🤣

And this "it's the collectors / gold scrappers / hipsters fault" nonsense is just juvenile.

The goldscrappers thing isn't Juvenile at all...

Most gold scrappers really aren't, they are resellers. How many times have you seen a pile of card edges for sale on ebay? Those guys are just praying on the uneducated and destroying cards in the process. Modern computer hardware has so little gold and requires a ton of recovery that unless you are a fairly large recycling operation its economically unfeasible to do yourself. You also don't want to mess with the chemicals, sodium cyanide (commonly used for gold extraction) is seriously nasty stuff.

The pros aren't going to pay for small lots either, they want a huge amount of stuff in one lot. Most of the money made in recycling is for the steel, aluminum, and copper.

Yeah i have seen 40 lb boxes of card listed for gold recovery before. Similiar things for CPU's. Potentially i could buy one of those lots and find a V5500 in it. Or it could be all networking cards. You never know.

EDIT: This is what i meant. Alot of this is still usable.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-lb-5-oz-CPU-Process … OAAAOSwxj5XP5sc

or absolutely terrifying shit like this. I think that a fucking amiga accelerator in there which would have been worth several times its scrap value...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/25-lbs-Trimmed-Finger … YgAAOSwBw5XRSKU

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

The goldscrappers thing isn't Juvenile at all...

How's that? When presented with an opportunity to make a buck by scrapping what most people consider to be ewaste, you're expecting the guy who needs a buck to say "actually no, I won't do the scrapping thing because there might be a collector out there who wants maybe 1 out of a thousand of these cards"

Scrappers come in all varieties. The owner at one place that used to be around here that stripped machines by the truckload. He let me climb over the stuff to pick whatever I wanted for a couple times scrap value (dirt cheap). Other scrappers won't let you touch anything even if you offer them much more then scrap (they think you are trying to rip them off). It really shocked me how much old 286-Pentium 1 gear was still around 5 years ago. Scrappers these days make money off of reselling more then bulk scrapping and plenty of people (and companies) are leaving the industry because of low prices. One nice scrapper shipped me a low serial IBM 5150 with all original parts and cards a few years back instead of scrapping it.

I can't fault people recycling 386/486 chips when they can get over $100 a pound for them, the collectors just can't snag that many machines. Speaking of which there are lots of people (me included) that have hoarded more items then they couple possible use that will end up back in the marketplace sooner or later.

Just like in any hobby you have the people who have a nose for finding rare items in a pile of trash and you have those who just flip out the credit card and buy something just to brag.