dirkmirk wrote:

IF I was to die I wouldn't know what would happen to my collection of stuff, if someone could be bothered it might be listed as a bulk lot but chances are most of it would be thrown out.

This comment disturbs me greatly. Not you personally, but the amount of times I have heard this from the vintage hardware community in general. If we aren't the gatekeepers of this vintage hardware who is? If we allow our collections to be just thrown out to the trash then why are we doing this? We become the problem in this hobby. I have told my wife if I drop dead to sell it off on Ebay and she knows very well it's not trash. This is why I struggle between selling it off on Ebay or donating to a museum. I have donated my rarer hardware to multiple museums, but some of my experiences with various museums has slightly turned me off to that cause. On the other side of the coin I have sold rare hardware to supposed collectors and then hear them say that when they die it will probably just get tossed. I know I can't control the fate of the hardware once it leaves my hands, but as a preservationist I REALLY would love to see this stuff get into the hands of someone who really does give a shit about it. It may not seem important now, but in a hundred years or so someone who sees systems from this era in working condition will be amazed and learn where their holographic smartphone 100GHz brain implant came from. I love computer museums for this reason and seeing this hardware from the past still operating and the different classic designs I find inspirational and, in my opinion, it's art. Appreciating history and being able to see, possibly touch and interact with it can bring new creativity for future designs. The smell and sound of bacon is truly wonderful, but the smell and sound of an old computer is pure magic.

P.S. - I urge every one of you to visit the Living Computer Museum in Seattle founded by the late Paul Allen. It will really knock it home how important it is to save this stuff for future generations.

Quite a bit of computer gear will end up recycled when collectors die. Many museums don't like duplicates and non rare items and even if they do take it it might never be restored or even shown just rusting in a storage facility or traded off to another museum for something else. Plenty of Museums end up closing and liquidated too.

I have some rare items but nothing one of a kind so my collection getting recycled is not the end of the world.

Madowax wrote:

ELSA WINNER 1000 TWINBUS BOXED (S3 928 ISA/EISA 2MB VRAM)

What is the card edge on top for? Why do the wires look all sloppy?

mothergoose729 wrote:

Madowax wrote:

ELSA WINNER 1000 TWINBUS BOXED (S3 928 ISA/EISA 2MB VRAM)

What is the card edge on top for? Why do the wires look all sloppy?

You can flip the card between EISA and ISA. Cool card, especially boxed like that.

IBM Motherboard and riser and original Mwave sound card.
Model # Aptiva 2176-C77

I actually only wanted the sound card but I can make use of this stuff.

liqmat wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

Madowax wrote:

ELSA WINNER 1000 TWINBUS BOXED (S3 928 ISA/EISA 2MB VRAM)

What is the card edge on top for? Why do the wires look all sloppy?

You can flip the card between EISA and ISA. Cool card, especially boxed like that.

Neat, I had never heard of EISA before 😀 . Retro server gear is really cool.

BloodyCactus wrote:

liqmat wrote:

mobilemail.jpg

pocketmail! I had one when I hiked the appalachian trail, nearly 20 years ago. hold it against the dialup phone and it would send your mail. Kinda like an off line bbs QWK mail packet.

they turned the service + servers off years ago 😜

Wow, my memory was fuzzy on this one. You are absolutely correct. My wife reminded me her dad used one of these on the Appalachian Trail as well. Makes sense. Find a payphone and connect.

Went to check out the fleamarket today, spotted a nice small Zida TX100 Socket7 board for 5$:

But oh no, what's this:

It appears that The Hulk was in charge of removing the board from the case and he forgot to unscrew the top left corner. There are a few vias and components on there so i don't think it's worth fixing as it would require a pretty ugly bodge. At least the board came equipped with a Cyrix MII so my 5$ was not spent for nothing. I thought the gold scrappers would've gotten to all of them by now.

Nprod wrote:

Went to check out the fleamarket today, spotted a nice small Zida TX100 Socket7

That brings me back, Zida made solid hardware at pcchips prices. BX/ZX ones pretty much never came back for RMA.
Nothing important in that missing corner, mounting hole and manufacturing pick&place fiducial, check for shorts on power rails just to be sure no layers got squished and you can try powering it up.

rasz_pl wrote:

Nprod wrote:

Went to check out the fleamarket today, spotted a nice small Zida TX100 Socket7

That brings me back, Zida made solid hardware at pcchips prices. BX/ZX ones pretty much never came back for RMA.
Nothing important in that missing corner, mounting hole and manufacturing pick&place fiducial, check for shorts on power rails just to be sure no layers got squished and you can try powering it up.

You can tell the quality is good, the substrate is about as thick as what you'd see on modern ASUS boards. The problem isn't just the missing corner, the PCB is bent and cracked under the few SMD components. What worries me is that it's likely a 4-layer board. If i attempt to start it i'm definitely going to have to take everything out and see if it gives out any POST beeps.

Two more AMD K6-3+-450's.
I have decided I am only going to build fast gaming computers.
So NO more 486 computers.
Only 500mhz. and up to 1ghz. AMD and Pentium-3's for Retro computers.
Windows98 and 2000.

I can slow down these computers with the Turbo switch, bios, and software.
So NO need for 486 computers.

So right now I have to stop me from pinching myself. I got some stuff today, totally unexpected. My friend called and told me to drive to a place about 30km from me. A museum of sorts was selling out some of their inventory. I'm glad i did. 😲

IBM 5150 with monitor and keyboard, IBM PS/2 model 30 (8086), IBM PC Convertible (8088)
The 5150 has some upgrades aswell, added memory and co-pro. With this a whole box with IBM floppys, (the box is IBM too)

I had to try, and lo and behold; It boots! (did not use the original screen, it made a wierd noise)

I also got in this in the same deal
VIC-20, Breadbin c64, 1541 diskdrive, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Spectravideo 328, more floppys and an oscilliscope.

All this for the horrible price of 90 bucks. 😎

(I also got some old tools, dental-tools and a extending brass telescope)

So damn random, from having some fika (look it up on youtube) with my father in law to this, just like that.

^^ Holy hell! Congrats on that haul!

Vegge wrote:

All this for the horrible price of 90 bucks.

Vegge wrote:

So right now I have to stop me from pinching myself. I got some stuff today, totally unexpected. My friend called and told me to drive to a place about 30km from me. A museum of sorts was selling out some of their inventory. I'm glad i did. 😲

Couldn't have gone to a better collector. Congrats! Now YOU are the museum.

Artex wrote:

^^ Holy hell! Congrats on that haul!

Thanks!

blurks wrote:

Vegge wrote:

All this for the horrible price of 90 bucks.

[.img]https://startlife.be/uploads/image/3_Zo%20gew … 70809102131.gif[/img]

Yeah, thats me, like all the time 😮

liqmat wrote:

Vegge wrote:

So right now I have to stop me from pinching myself. I got some stuff today, totally unexpected. My friend called and told me to drive to a place about 30km from me. A museum of sorts was selling out some of their inventory. I'm glad i did. 😲

Couldn't have gone to a better collector. Congrats! Now YOU are the museum.

Thank you for the kind words. I feel like I need some more space to have more set up though.

Wow what kind of ZX spectrum clone is that? I have never seen anything like it, and looking up "Beckman" gives no results

Nprod wrote:

Wow what kind of ZX spectrum clone is that? I have never seen anything like it, and looking up "Beckman" gives no results

By the label on the back they were based in Stockholm Sweden. And clone, well.....

Haha, this is awesome.

And open sesame 😁

This is hilarious 🤣

Vegge wrote:

And open sesame 😁

I genuinely laughed out loud, what a marvellous troll... Perhaps Beckman just made cases for people looking to replace the spongy keyboard on their original units?