TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-08, 10:43:

Anyone ever seen a K6 with weird part numbering ? […]
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Anyone ever seen a K6 with weird part numbering ?

Old K6 numbering.jpg

Never seen a K6 CPU using the PR2 numbering and having a look on Google it seems to suggest this is one of the first variants of the K6, 2.9v also leads to me believe this is one of the 350nm models. I have one of the later 250nm versions I wonder how this older model compares, not sure I would use this one tho as it appears to be NOS and still unused/sealed. Still there is something special about being the first person to power up a new CPU and see it roar into life.

Wikipedia has a little info on this and its one of the 350nm versions, bet it runs hot as a furnace.

Yah they started off with PR numbering then killed it quick. I don't think that one will be too super hot, they only got real hot when pushed to 200 and above and needed more than the 2.9V, The 233 needed 3.2... you might find that one does 233 with 3.2 and a socket A heatsink on it. Though you probably want to keep it "nice" since it's unusual marking, and I have seen that kind of printing damaged by wet heatsink compounds and stuff required to remove it, so maybe wanna get one of those graphite pads or something. I've got a 3.2/233 and test run it on a couple of boards, but chickened out when the regs got ouchy hot, so until I find a board that it doesn't seem to want to kill, it sits in the spare CPUs box.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-08, 15:51:

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-08, 10:43:

Anyone ever seen a K6 with weird part numbering ? […]
Show full quote

Anyone ever seen a K6 with weird part numbering ?

Old K6 numbering.jpg

Never seen a K6 CPU using the PR2 numbering and having a look on Google it seems to suggest this is one of the first variants of the K6, 2.9v also leads to me believe this is one of the 350nm models. I have one of the later 250nm versions I wonder how this older model compares, not sure I would use this one tho as it appears to be NOS and still unused/sealed. Still there is something special about being the first person to power up a new CPU and see it roar into life.

Wikipedia has a little info on this and its one of the 350nm versions, bet it runs hot as a furnace.

Yah they started off with PR numbering then killed it quick. I don't think that one will be too super hot, they only got real hot when pushed to 200 and above and needed more than the 2.9V, The 233 needed 3.2... you might find that one does 233 with 3.2 and a socket A heatsink on it. Though you probably want to keep it "nice" since it's unusual marking, and I have seen that kind of printing damaged by wet heatsink compounds and stuff required to remove it, so maybe wanna get one of those graphite pads or something. I've got a 3.2/233 and test run it on a couple of boards, but chickened out when the regs got ouchy hot, so until I find a board that it doesn't seem to want to kill, it sits in the spare CPUs box.

I'm thinking this one might stay in its seal, I have a 233 K6 so this one likely wouldn't get overclocked.

vetz wrote on 2023-02-07, 23:20:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-07, 06:05:

So... uh.

I found something a couple days ago...

That's incredible. There haven't been any known cards for sale since I got mine back in 2014, then we get TWO Tasmanias at almost the same time!

From my knowledge, you are now own the fourth and fifth cards that are known to be in hands of collectors, and the only sealed one.

🤯

I knew it was very uncommon to find one of these, but I didn't realize the bare cards were that scarce, and I figured that some collector somewhere had another sealed one, though admittedly there are no pictures of a Tasmania 3D retail box online as far as I can tell. 😮

I find some neat stuff from time to time, but I think these two are the rarest items I own now.

I think what has made them so scarce is that the Tasmania3D was one of the very first 3D accelerators to market so people generally didn't even know what it was when it was new, and I doubt there were any good "reviews" in magazines or elsewhere that would have made them seem desirable. Then, once people knew what 3D accelerators were they associated them almost exclusively with 3dfx and nearly everything else was garbage (aside from Rendition Verite and PowerVR), and by that time these things were probably already on clearance and their perceived value would have been extremely low (2MB memory...). And never at any point during that period would they have been useful for anything other than playing the two games they came with. So, you have something that most buyers spent very little on, only to find that they had no practical use, and then shortly after that the market was flooded with products that actually did what this advertised. There was never any practical reason to keep one of these around, despite the fact that it was one of the very first PC 3D accelerators and was somewhat historically significant.

I have to remember to contact the person I bought this from to figure out where they got it, just so I can get some tiny bit of back story. My bet is on it being a thrift store find, because it's the kind of thing that "Dad" bought back in 1997 for $30, put in the attic and never used, then it got taken to Goodwill 25 years later during an attic cleanout. 😁 I doubt too many\any enthusiasts that knew what they were buying would have bought and held on to a cheap\useless card like this at the time.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-08, 16:16:

:exploding_head: […]
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vetz wrote on 2023-02-07, 23:20:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-07, 06:05:

So... uh.

I found something a couple days ago...

That's incredible. There haven't been any known cards for sale since I got mine back in 2014, then we get TWO Tasmanias at almost the same time!

From my knowledge, you are now own the fourth and fifth cards that are known to be in hands of collectors, and the only sealed one.

🤯

I knew it was very uncommon to find one of these, but I didn't realize the bare cards were that scarce, and I figured that some collector somewhere had another sealed one, though admittedly there are no pictures of a Tasmania 3D retail box online as far as I can tell. 😮

I find some neat stuff from time to time, but I think these two are the rarest items I own now.

I think what has made them so scarce is that the Tasmania3D was one of the very first 3D accelerators to market so people generally didn't even know what it was when it was new, and I doubt there were any good "reviews" in magazines or elsewhere that would have made them seem desirable. Then, once people knew what 3D accelerators were they associated them almost exclusively with 3dfx and nearly everything else was garbage (aside from Rendition Verite and PowerVR), and by that time these things were probably already on clearance and their perceived value would have been extremely low (2MB memory...). And never at any point during that period would they have been useful for anything other than playing the two games they came with. So, you have something that most buyers spent very little on, only to find that they had no practical use, and then shortly after that the market was flooded with products that actually did what this advertised. There was never any practical reason to keep one of these around, despite the fact that it was one of the very first PC 3D accelerators and was somewhat historically significant.

I have to remember to contact the person I bought this from to figure out where they got it, just so I can get some tiny bit of back story. My bet is on it being a thrift store find, because it's the kind of thing that "Dad" bought back in 1997 for $30, put in the attic and never used, then it got taken to Goodwill 25 years later during an attic cleanout. 😁 I doubt too many\any enthusiasts that knew what they were buying would have bought and held on to a cheap\useless card like this at the time.

I did share pictures of my boxed card with all the contents (including the voucher for the 3 extra games that never came out) here on Vogons couple of years back. I've also scanned and uploaded the manual to Vogonsdrivers.

Your sealed card is definitely from when the cards were dumped to get rid of inventory. It has a price sticker for 69 usd. I found the Ebay auction.

This one:

It is really very small, slightly larger than a Libretto but much more usable. mmx266 80mb ram, very nice 8” active matrix display and vga,lpt,serial,usb,jack in-out pcmcia… sbpro compatibility and real opl3

vetz wrote on 2023-02-08, 16:51:

I did share pictures of my boxed card with all the contents (including the voucher for the 3 extra games that never came out) here on Vogons couple of years back. I've also scanned and uploaded the manual to Vogonsdrivers.

Is this the post?
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

It looks like all the links are down now. I'd love to see those pictures. 😀

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-02-08, 17:38:

This one:

It is really very small, slightly larger than a Libretto but much more usable. mmx266 80mb ram, very nice 8” active matrix display and vga,lpt,serial,usb,jack in-out pcmcia… sbpro compatibility and real opl3

Wow, had no idea TravelMates came in actual travel handy size, the later Centrino one I've got is as big as anything else of the time.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-08, 18:52:

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-02-08, 17:38:

This one:

It is really very small, slightly larger than a Libretto but much more usable. mmx266 80mb ram, very nice 8” active matrix display and vga,lpt,serial,usb,jack in-out pcmcia… sbpro compatibility and real opl3

Wow, had no idea TravelMates came in actual travel handy size, the later Centrino one I've got is as big as anything else of the time.

I didn't know this 313T model existed. It's very very nice because it has the same aspect as a 15” but 1/4 size laptop. The Libretto (which I had many years ago) had a slightly different shape, you know classic laptops.

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-08, 07:08:

Saw some DDR 500 PC4000 sticks pop up on evilbay and grabbed them, they were priced reasonably well actually expected them to be […]
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Saw some DDR 500 PC4000 sticks pop up on evilbay and grabbed them, they were priced reasonably well actually expected them to be much higher considering rarity.

OCZ DDR 500.jpg
OCZ 1GB stick, yup I know how some feel about OCZ but I have not had any issues with their memory.

Corsair DDR 500.png
....

Wow.
Really DAUL channel? Is this really original? That is a bit ridiculous.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-02-08, 19:32:

Wow.
Really DAUL channel? Is this really original? That is a bit ridiculous.

I wonder if knock-off OCZ memory is better than the real stuff. 🤣

I kid.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-02-08, 19:32:

TrashPanda wrote on 2023-02-08, 07:08:

Saw some DDR 500 PC4000 sticks pop up on evilbay and grabbed them, they were priced reasonably well actually expected them to be […]
Show full quote

Saw some DDR 500 PC4000 sticks pop up on evilbay and grabbed them, they were priced reasonably well actually expected them to be much higher considering rarity.

OCZ DDR 500.jpg
OCZ 1GB stick, yup I know how some feel about OCZ but I have not had any issues with their memory.

Corsair DDR 500.png
....

Wow.
Really DAUL channel? Is this really original? That is a bit ridiculous.

Was likely one half of a 2gb kit, didn't see the second stick listed. I also didnt notice the spelling mistake on the sticker, either its a fake sticker or its a fake module. I guess ill find out and I can always get a refund if its not what its supposed to be.

pete8475 wrote on 2023-02-08, 21:15:

CoffeeOne wrote on 2023-02-08, 19:32:

Wow.
Really DAUL channel? Is this really original? That is a bit ridiculous.

I wonder if knock-off OCZ memory is better than the real stuff. 🤣

I kid.

🤣, I think itll be just fine ..spelling aside, even if its a fake sticker so long as the module hits the PC4000 speed without errors itll be worth keeping . .if not to the box it goes.

Uhg... well, can't win'em all, right?

So I bought this lot of three OEM (Visiontek) Geforce 2 GTS 32MB cards for what seemed like a good price a while back.

I finally got around to testing them and I'm sad to say that none of the fans spin, and NONE of them are even replaceable. I have seen several coolers that look like this, but I've never seen one with this exact configuration. The fans have screws in the corners that go up through the bottom of the heatsink, which is irritating but not the end of the world. What IS completely unforgivable is that the heatsinks are permanently epoxied to the GPUs. 😠

There are holes on the back of the card close to where the screws are so I can SEE the screws, but the holes are too small to do anything with and aren't aligned perfectly anyway.

No amount of prying\heating is going to pull the heatsink off of one of these things without also breaking the BGA connections, so these are effectively a total loss unless I just take a dremel to the fans to grind the plastic bits out of the heatsink (while they're screwed tightly together) and then figure out some way to attach another fan. This isn't worth the time and it ruins the idea of using these as a good reliable card to put in a basic Windows 9x gaming PC.

Anyway, it isn't a huge loss, but be warned about these cards. I have used at least a couple dozen cards of this design and never seen the combination of bad fan + bottom screws + epoxy before. If you want to buy a card like this make sure it has clips on the heatsink. 🙁

Bummer... just to use them though I'd stick 50mm (guessing size) fans on top... ... if the blades of the dead ones seem in the way snap them off... With a different, hard to replace fan, I had some success with just drenching the thing with oil until some finally got to the right place.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-09, 15:17:

Bummer... just to use them though I'd stick 50mm (guessing size) fans on top... ... if the blades of the dead ones seem in the way snap them off... With a different, hard to replace fan, I had some success with just drenching the thing with oil until some finally got to the right place.

Yeah, there's always a way to cobble a fan but I was hoping to use these in builds I could resell or give away. I try to only cobble things that I'm planning to keep. 😁

Got shipping notices for some 771 Xeons and "HP/ Nvidia GeForce MX440 64MB AGP VGA Video Card 322891-001 Low Profile" which seemed to be going cheap on evilbay, thought that would do for a geforce alternate in a win9x PIII rig, slightly worried that it won't due to unspecified 8x implementation, in theory it should be okay. Also grabbed an Intel DX4 100, I thought I should have had one, but it's not in any of the CPU boxes, so with particularly wanting to try one in my PC300/330 6571 I decided to rush things by grabbing a cheaper one instead of waiting for one to turn up. S variety C2Quads don't seem to be getting much cheaper so I got an L Xeon to stick in the "flying shoebox" DG45FC/Apex ITX thing.

19" CRT, iiyama Vision Master 1451:

Flat Square CRT. Up to 1600x1200 @ 60 Hz.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-09, 14:07:

Uhg... well, can't win'em all, right? […]
Show full quote

Uhg... well, can't win'em all, right?

So I bought this lot of three OEM (Visiontek) Geforce 2 GTS 32MB cards for what seemed like a good price a while back.

gf2_gts_32mb.jpg

I finally got around to testing them and I'm sad to say that none of the fans spin, and NONE of them are even replaceable. I have seen several coolers that look like this, but I've never seen one with this exact configuration. The fans have screws in the corners that go up through the bottom of the heatsink, which is irritating but not the end of the world. What IS completely unforgivable is that the heatsinks are permanently epoxied to the GPUs. 😠

There are holes on the back of the card close to where the screws are so I can SEE the screws, but the holes are too small to do anything with and aren't aligned perfectly anyway.

No amount of prying\heating is going to pull the heatsink off of one of these things without also breaking the BGA connections, so these are effectively a total loss unless I just take a dremel to the fans to grind the plastic bits out of the heatsink (while they're screwed tightly together) and then figure out some way to attach another fan. This isn't worth the time and it ruins the idea of using these as a good reliable card to put in a basic Windows 9x gaming PC.

Anyway, it isn't a huge loss, but be warned about these cards. I have used at least a couple dozen cards of this design and never seen the combination of bad fan + bottom screws + epoxy before. If you want to buy a card like this make sure it has clips on the heatsink. 🙁

You have three of them, try the freezer trick on one and see how it goes.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-01-29, 03:43:

pete8475 wrote on 2023-01-29, 01:38:

Radeon 9200 128MB AGP

Hope you got one of the gooderer ones, I just had them all pegged as level with the 8500, but they and theire 9xx0 kin are all over the place... https://www.anandtech.com/show/1463/6

The Radeon came in today, seems to work fine in one of my 98SE machines.

Everest home edition says it has 128bit ddr memory clocked at 200mhz, which seems to be the normal spec for that model.

pete8475 wrote on 2023-02-10, 02:21:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-01-29, 03:43:

pete8475 wrote on 2023-01-29, 01:38:

Radeon 9200 128MB AGP

Hope you got one of the gooderer ones, I just had them all pegged as level with the 8500, but they and theire 9xx0 kin are all over the place... https://www.anandtech.com/show/1463/6

The Radeon came in today, seems to work fine in one of my 98SE machines.

Everest home edition says it has 128bit ddr memory clocked at 200mhz, which seems to be the normal spec for that model.

Yeah the DX 8.1 Radeons are fairly predictable once you pick out the "most likely to be decent" models and realize that all the rest are likely to be bottom of the barrel cards that all perform similarly.

As this chart shows, the best models are the R200 based 8500, 8500LE and 9100. All the rest of the 9000 and 92xx DX8.1 cards have half the vertex shaders and TMUs, and most of those cut down models also have 64bit memory, though there are some 128bit variants out there. The 9200, as you have found, generally has 128bit memory. So, you've got the best configuration of the cut down cards. The 9100 is a nice one to keep an eye out for because it tends to blend in with the others while having much better performance. Very rarely, you may even find PCI models. The existence of a full R200 PCI variant is interesting because it would be comparable to nvidia releasing a renamed Geforce 3 Ti 200\500 PCI in 2003 as a budget card, which seems really weird.

This cool SCSI 4-device enclosure with SCSI ZIP100 and Fujitsu MO drive. Inside as a bonus I found Acard AEC-7720U SCSI to IDE bridge (http://www.acard.com/index.files/Page737.htm) which will surely come in handy (for now I have a good stash of SCSI HDDs and Optical Drives, but these are getting harder and harder to find in reasonable price so one day I may need such converter)!