Brawndo wrote on 2021-08-10, 21:53:

This Chieftec (Antec Clone) tower arrived today, and I'm really impressed by how clean it is! Looks like it was just taken out of the box for the first time.

Well it's gonna be a lot of work but you can fix that and make it look more lived in 🤣 https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/aged-perfec … ievable-patina/

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-10, 22:07:

Brawndo wrote on 2021-08-10, 21:53:

This Chieftec (Antec Clone) tower arrived today, and I'm really impressed by how clean it is! Looks like it was just taken out of the box for the first time.

Well it's gonna be a lot of work but you can fix that and make it look more lived in 🤣 https://www.motortrend.com/how-to/aged-perfec … ievable-patina/

Believe it or not I needed a tutorial just like that one, much appreciated!

Little bit of a buying spree going on here lately...

1. Yamaha YMF719E-S

2. ESS ES1869F

3. Opti 82c931

4. Mitsumi CD-R 4x-8x(burn/read)

Another complete tower I picked up not long ago. I couldn't resist this one because it's almost identical to the very first PC I had back in 1997 (it would be hilarious if it was the same one!) so I had to jump on it. Sporting an AMD K6 233 MHz and I think 16 MB RAM, and I think a Rage Pro video card. Perfect Win 95/DOS platform.

My PATA/SATA converter arrived today so I finally managed to test everything. After testing I installed Windows Xp and booted up some games and everything works perfect. Now I wait for the case to arrive.

It's too soon to call, so I'm hedging my bets on the HD video format war

Good thinking, you don't want to be like those poor suckers who are stuck without having a working Betamax.

... wait that might include me, I haven't had it out in a decade plus, the belts probably rotted off. ... wait again... it's two moves since I saw it, that's not promising.

Big Pink wrote on 2021-08-11, 21:41:

It's too soon to call, so I'm hedging my bets on the HD video format war

Nice. I actually have one of those which I bought new years ago, just before they stopped being made. You can use an older version of Cyberlink PowerDVD to watch HD-DVDs if you have any.

Been on a bit of a tear recently, must be the continued social restrictions and lack of travel.

Picked up, in no particular order, the following:

• Compaq LTE 5200
  IBM Thinkpad 755CD
  InWin A500 (it came bundled with a PIII-800Mhz (Celeron?), an Asus P3B-F, 384MB RAM, a 13GB Maxtor HDD and an LG spinner - none of which I’m too fussed about, really)
  DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra-D with 3700+ and 2GB OCZ Platinum (really about the MB and backup sticks of Platinum to match mine)

Today I managed to salvage a bunch of parts from an otherwise cap-blown Pentium 2 Machine that cost me $5.

In there is an adaptec SCSI card that has magically transformed in to a Macintosh version using nothing more than an official firmware update utility in OS9, an S3 decelerator, a Something-Happens-Here ISA card, and two 3com PCI ethernet cards.

For the non-card parts, I also got a 4.55GB Wide-SCSI IBM drive, a pathetic for 1999 350MHz PII, a 32x SCSI CD-ROM drive, and a floppy. Of course, in the back is something oddly interesting.

Yeah, a 2/4GB DAT Tape drive. I don't know what I will do with it at all.

Your ISA card appears to be a terminal adapter, not sure if it's 4 into 1 or those are dual uarts and it's 8 into 1. Buy the breakout, connect all your sub 486 systems into a serial octopus of pwnage. 🤣

9.1GB Seagate Cheetah 10k SCSI drive for my ultimate late ‘97-early ‘98 build.

InWin A500 with assorted innards to go into the spares box. All about that case!

This for 3 EUR. All-out 1999.

• Case is missing two front panels.
• Monitor has blown a backlight fuse (?). Slight yellowing on one side.
• Slight yellowing on one of the speakers.

All fixable I think.

A couple of arrivals today. First, a NIB Zalman 300 watt power supply which will be great for any of my late 90s - early 00s systems.

Also received a NIB TDK VeloCD 52x CD drive. This is one of the few items I actually walked into Best Buy and paid retail for back in the day when I was still rocking my AMD 1.2 GHz Thunderbird PC, because it's a phenomenal CD drive and produced perfect quality dumps of PSX games and audio CDs. Brings back memories. This is the 2nd of these NIB I've bought, but the other one I think is a 48x or 40x read.

Some finds from the last week or so.
Things

Got this machine primarily for the case since it has threads for both AT and ATX. And the Fluke for fun. It was actually a rather nice machine. Aopen AX6BC motherboard with P2 350, 128MB, 850MB HDD and S3 virge.

SS7 MSI 5169, in need of a recap, with K6/2 450. S3 Gigabyte GA-486VT with a nice UMC Super33 CPU. And a random 286 board with a 10MHz AMD CPU.

OEM 9600 "pro", 9600 pro, TNT2 M64 PCI. PAS 16, AWE 64, what looks to be a 286 to 386 upgrade board, 3com nic, socket 3 cooler and Cirrus vga.

Pentium 60 with the FDIV bug. IBM 5x86C, AMD 386DX-40, Athlon 750.

Also got a Great Planes Real Flight G3 simulator for RC planes/helis.

Pretty happy with this. 😀

Vegge wrote on 2021-08-13, 00:05:

Also got a Great Planes Real Flight G3 simulator for RC planes/helis.

Is that the one like an RC transmitter, apart from it's got a USB cable instead of an antenna? I picked up something like that a couple of years back to learn myself some stick wiggling skillz, but didn't have a lot of time to play and the one trainer I found to run wasn't very good... res wasn't very high and the plane turned into a blue blob at a very shallow depth away from you. So let me know if you find any good freebies, and I'll have another crack sometime.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-13, 03:17:

Vegge wrote on 2021-08-13, 00:05:

Also got a Great Planes Real Flight G3 simulator for RC planes/helis.

Is that the one like an RC transmitter, apart from it's got a USB cable instead of an antenna?

Yeah, just a controller, sometimes with built-in hardware protection to run the RC trainer simulator.

Acquired this somewhat less boring VLB card:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-13, 03:17:

Vegge wrote on 2021-08-13, 00:05:

Also got a Great Planes Real Flight G3 simulator for RC planes/helis.

Is that the one like an RC transmitter, apart from it's got a USB cable instead of an antenna? I picked up something like that a couple of years back to learn myself some stick wiggling skillz, but didn't have a lot of time to play and the one trainer I found to run wasn't very good... res wasn't very high and the plane turned into a blue blob at a very shallow depth away from you. So let me know if you find any good freebies, and I'll have another crack sometime.

Yes, exactly, got this in box with the software. I "played" the G2 version when I was a kid. So when I saw this at a fleamarket I grabbed it.

I also have this. Haven't tried it yet as it requires a "Pentsum 600" CPU which I don't have 😉.

Fortunately, you can use any CPU "above" the Pentsum 600, so maybe 1 GHz Pentium will be ok, I think it's "above", heh:)