cyclone3d wrote on 2022-04-22, 16:23:

Unknown_K wrote on 2022-04-21, 20:49:

Not sure how retro this is, but just got in an ASUS Sabertooth X58 with i7-980x and 12GB DDR3-1333.

Is the 870x better then equivalent 6 core XEONs?

The 870x is the consumer grade CPU and the boards and CPU only support dual channel RAM while the 980x supports triple channel RAM.

Get some nice high speed RAM... DDR3-2000 is a good speed and make that sucker sing.

I put in 6 sticks of2GB DDR3-1600 for now and it runs in 3 channel mode. If I bother to overclock it then I will try faster RAM. Thing is the CPU is 130W as is and I am only using a EVO 212 cooler on it so overclocking might make it overheat.

The Xeons on my other 2 machines use much less power so I overclocked a x5760 (95W stock) to 4Ghz. The other board has a X5650 (95W stock).

Big towers are not really my pair of shoes, but I got them in a fair price and I wanted them for the drives and cards...

HanJammer wrote on 2022-04-22, 20:52:

Big towers are not really my pair of shoes, but I got them in a fair price and I wanted them for the drives and cards...

The second one is gorgeous.

That CD drive on the last photo is pretty cool. The entire drive bay pops out to feed the disk instead of a motorized tray.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-04-22, 17:57:

But then when I pulled it out today, I saw one of the replacement capacitors was already failing! That will teach me to buy cheap capacitors from an Amazon vendor who apparently sells new old stock from 2002.

I have very little hands on experience with the issue, but afaik, capacitors don't just age with mileage but simply chronologically. I remember storing a quality, late Pentium MMX system some year ago in pristine condition. But when I looked at it some days ago, I had to acknowledge the annoying fact that most caps on that nice Gigabyte 586TX3 had sprinkled dust all around them... so, might still boot, but definitely will need a rework. Could have been the sub optimal climate in that room (pretty humid) but anyway, wasn't the usage. So, in general, NOS might not help you there.

I know the issue from replacement batteries for cellphones or laptops - they may be unused, but they've been stored for too long and there's no way of telling with the usual ebay stuff.

Edit: OK, just now I get it that you were expecting NNS but got NOS, that was the issue to begin with. Never mind then... 😁

HanJammer wrote on 2022-04-22, 20:52:

Big towers are not really my pair of shoes, but I got them in a fair price and I wanted them for the drives and cards...

Yep, the full towers are a logistical nightmare and tbh, I tend to fear for my back when moving them.

But... as you've proven once more: They are much more likely to contain the good stuff. Like, really rare drives that are rare because when they appeared, they were advanced and expensive, or, same story, pre-3D VGA cards with 4 MB like that S3 vision there. And it and the awe64 look almost new.

Both really nice boxes. The 2nd one surely is an advanced case of big tower, with that full size AT PSU. Like, 15 to 20 kg advanced...

Bought a SCSI scanner for 5€ 😀

Umax Vista-S6. Takes pretty good pictures, even by today's standards. It's slow as shit of course, but I'm usually not in a hurry.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:17:

Yep, the full towers are a logistical nightmare and tbh, I tend to fear for my back when moving them.

But... as you've proven once more: They are much more likely to contain the good stuff. Like, really rare drives that are rare because when they appeared, they were advanced and expensive, or, same story, pre-3D VGA cards with 4 MB like that S3 vision there. And it and the awe64 look almost new.

Both really nice boxes. The 2nd one surely is an advanced case of big tower, with that full size AT PSU. Like, 15 to 20 kg advanced...

You're fortunate. The trend I am seeing in recent months (probably longer) is nice looking front, but the rear view = prominently empty slots, empty slots which clearly held some cards until recently. Even the non-computer-savvy market has mostly realised it can double it's money by selling cards separately.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:08:

That CD drive on the last photo is pretty cool. The entire drive bay pops out to feed the disk instead of a motorized tray.

Yeah... they are pretty reliable too. Mitsumi 1x drive. One of these will be featured in my next video (hopefully ready in a few days).

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:17:

Yep, the full towers are a logistical nightmare and tbh, I tend to fear for my back when moving them.

Exactly! Recently I had some back ache and picking up these two machines and moving them to my storage certainly didn't helped it.

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:17:

But... as you've proven once more: They are much more likely to contain the good stuff. Like, really rare drives that are rare because when they appeared, they were advanced and expensive, or, same story, pre-3D VGA cards with 4 MB like that S3 vision there. And it and the awe64 look almost new.

Both really nice boxes. The 2nd one surely is an advanced case of big tower, with that full size AT PSU. Like, 15 to 20 kg advanced...

Haha, yeah. I will be parting out both of them. This case is already reserved by friend of mine, who is a big tower afficionado, and owns like 4 big tower builds already.

HanJammer wrote on 2022-04-22, 20:52:

Big towers are not really my pair of shoes, but I got them in a fair price and I wanted them for the drives and cards...

The lower one is similar to the AT tower I have, but you have the long cat version.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:44:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:17:

Yep, the full towers are a logistical nightmare and tbh, I tend to fear for my back when moving them.

But... as you've proven once more: They are much more likely to contain the good stuff. Like, really rare drives that are rare because when they appeared, they were advanced and expensive, or, same story, pre-3D VGA cards with 4 MB like that S3 vision there. And it and the awe64 look almost new.

Both really nice boxes. The 2nd one surely is an advanced case of big tower, with that full size AT PSU. Like, 15 to 20 kg advanced...

You're fortunate. The trend I am seeing in recent months (probably longer) is nice looking front, but the rear view = prominently empty slots, empty slots which clearly held some cards until recently. Even the non-computer-savvy market has mostly realised it can double it's money by selling cards separately.

Really? In my experience, I'm still amazed how non-savvy people can get. Like, not googleing the obvious nameplate of the PCI Voodoo3 they're about to put up as "some old vga card".
But, with whole cases, well, there always should be a shot from the back if not the inside. And, many sellers will send one upon request but not add it to the offer...

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-22, 22:37:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:44:

Cuttoon wrote on 2022-04-22, 21:17:

Yep, the full towers are a logistical nightmare and tbh, I tend to fear for my back when moving them.

But... as you've proven once more: They are much more likely to contain the good stuff. Like, really rare drives that are rare because when they appeared, they were advanced and expensive, or, same story, pre-3D VGA cards with 4 MB like that S3 vision there. And it and the awe64 look almost new.

Both really nice boxes. The 2nd one surely is an advanced case of big tower, with that full size AT PSU. Like, 15 to 20 kg advanced...

You're fortunate. The trend I am seeing in recent months (probably longer) is nice looking front, but the rear view = prominently empty slots, empty slots which clearly held some cards until recently. Even the non-computer-savvy market has mostly realised it can double it's money by selling cards separately.

Really? In my experience, I'm still amazed how non-savvy people can get. Like, not googleing the obvious nameplate of the PCI Voodoo3 they're about to put up as "some old vga card".
But, with whole cases, well, there always should be a shot from the back if not the inside. And, many sellers will send one upon request but not add it to the offer...

Well, you'd not expect desirable 90's systems containing multiple rare cards to become MORE common over time, would you?? 😉

I'm just seeing a lot of obviously-emptied-out retro systems on the market lately, is all.

You obviously still find a lot, but that is partly due to the fortune of your location.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-04-22, 22:17:

HanJammer wrote on 2022-04-22, 20:52:

Big towers are not really my pair of shoes, but I got them in a fair price and I wanted them for the drives and cards...

The lower one is similar to the AT tower I have, but you have the long cat version.

I love this comparison.

Unknown_K wrote on 2022-04-22, 20:50:

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-04-22, 16:23:

Unknown_K wrote on 2022-04-21, 20:49:

Not sure how retro this is, but just got in an ASUS Sabertooth X58 with i7-980x and 12GB DDR3-1333.

Is the 870x better then equivalent 6 core XEONs?

The 870x is the consumer grade CPU and the boards and CPU only support dual channel RAM while the 980x supports triple channel RAM.

Get some nice high speed RAM... DDR3-2000 is a good speed and make that sucker sing.

I put in 6 sticks of2GB DDR3-1600 for now and it runs in 3 channel mode. If I bother to overclock it then I will try faster RAM. Thing is the CPU is 130W as is and I am only using a EVO 212 cooler on it so overclocking might make it overheat.

The Xeons on my other 2 machines use much less power so I overclocked a x5760 (95W stock) to 4Ghz. The other board has a X5650 (95W stock).

Some x58 boards wont take Xeon chips, so 6c/12t i7 equivalents are still worth x8 times their Xeon cousins.

A couple months back my 17" CRT monitor died, and I had replaced it with a decent 4:3 LCD monitor. It didn't scale low res (320x200) content very well, but pairing it with an OSSC helped a lot. Still, I wasn't 100% happy with it, so I decided it was time to go back to a CRT.

I decided this time to go with a 15" monitor, partly due to nostalgia (my very first PC had a 15" monitor), partly due to coming to the realization that 17" is just too big for 320x200 for me. My first attempt was bidding on a NOS Fujitsu monitor, but I got outbid at the last second. All the other 15" monitors were listed as untested/junk, so I then checked mercari... and someone was selling a (very) used 15" Fujitsu in good working order for around $20 shipped. Bought!

I got it hooked up and was initially very disappointed at the REALLY dark picture, but adjusting the settings fixed that up. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this little monitor. It fits PERFECTLY on my little DOS PC stand. The image is not as sharp as the 17" CRT I was using previously, but it suits 320x200 DOS gaming pretty well imo.

I almost bought a 14" inch 800x600 Compaq CRT for $20. Resisted urge. Bought a $20 Thermaltake ATX case instead to house and get rid of some more "modern" parts and cut down on my extra PC parts. The purge is slow, but burning bright.

I happen to really like CRTs. It's unfortunate that the correction from my glasses has caused them to become painful to look at now.

Is a 15 year old NAS retro? I guess it is! Picked up a Netgear ReadyNAS from eBay with 4x2TB drives in and it's taken me days to get it working properly (2TB drives are its absolute limit for the 32 bit SPARC architecture used) but it works fine! The seller assumed one drive had failed, but it just took days to synchronise the RAID!
Not the fastest thing in the world at around 10MB/s (around 100mpbs on a 1gbps connection) writes, 35MB/s reads but it works fine! Only cost me £30 too. Biggest problem is it doesn't do SMB2 so I need to use NFS to mount the shares from Windows 10/11.

Got this!

External SCSI SyQuest 230MB 3.5" drive. Full set, will archive the floppies unless they are already archived.

For whatever reason, it also seems to include coincidentally 230MB MO disk. I have an internal 650MB MO drive - i wonder, if it would work with that?

HanJammer wrote on 2022-04-22, 20:52:

Big towers are not really my pair of shoes, but I got them in a fair price and I wanted them for the drives and cards...

SCSI drives and CDROM towers were popular in 1990’s