Kahenraz wrote on 2023-10-29, 18:56:

I have such nostalgia for these beautiful amber displays. What a wonderful find.

Thank you, they have a special place in my heart too. I've been trying to find one for ages. Back then the amber tube version was the cheapest option available for $70 and the white tube version cost $120, mostly for industrial use. Some people bought the amber type to save money and used them long after VGA appeared, skipping CGA and EGA entirely. When VGA prices dropped the old amber screens went in the trash and became rare while industrial white tube monitors stayed in use far longer. No point in replacing something that does the job and some manufacturers still use NOS white tube monochrome monitors to avoid replacing the entire computer system that controls the machinery. So now we have an abundance of white tubes and barely any amber ones.

Not really retro, sorry. But Quadro's are fun.
-At release they cost 1500 euro each, now 15. Making them more interesting when GeForce-equivalent prices are high.
-Quiet
-Aesthetics (personally)
-Not as power hungry as their gaming enthusiast counterparts (but therefore a bit slower)

And debatable: build quality and drivers.

midicollector wrote on 2023-10-30, 03:38:

Have you guys noticed the massive lots of mixed processors or memory or mother boards being sold for scrap on Ebay? I saw a couple where processors were being listed by the pound, bags of them, AMD, Intel, all going to be melted down for the miniscule amount of gold they contain. I saw a lot of motherboards by the pound, still had processors and ram and everything, being sold for the same purpose. Kinda sad and upsetting, but nothing I can do about it. I don't really need bags full of pounds of processors sitting around my place....... or do I?....

Anyway, aside from bent pins, they looked in good working order, and you can get giant bags of them for under $100. I mention it because I'm kinda vaguely hoping maybe some collectors will scoop some of them up to save them from getting melted.

That's been going on for over a decade, maybe two. Some of us snag a bag or box once in a while. The thing to beware of though is they don't always have pictures of the lot you are getting. Only buy the ones where the actual lot is pictured, or you'll probably get a bunch of modern celeron trash instead of anything real interesting.

Lutsoad wrote on 2023-10-29, 17:37:

Bought this untested beauty for $15, turned out okay with nice and bright picture and no burn-in. My first monitor was also an amber monochrome and I'm happy I finally get to experience it again!

A wonderful discovery, congratulations!

I shouldn't go to look stuff up on fleabay... because then what happens is I see something shiny... in this case a ULSI US83C87 FPU DX/DLC-40MHz .. while they're cheap before everyone notices that a youtube dude has been clocking them over 50mhz. Slow boat from China though... good thing I'm not in a hurry for it. Hoping it lets me run my BL3 system at 2x50.

Snatched this Radeon 8500 128MB for a reasonable 20€ today:

I also checked ebay sales of these out of curiosity and I was quite amazed that these cards (also 64MB versions) seem to be actually quite rare-ish nowadays. 8500 was quite a high profile release back in the day and although not quite the same success as R300 was, I think these still sold quite well. Do these cards also suffer the same issues with cooling and broken BGA joints as R300 cards?

Not so much, it's been known to happen, the capacitors seem to die on them though as a more common thing.

edit: it's been known to happen for BGA RAM which that one doesn't have, think the GPU stays attached pretty good.

Picked up this mint Packard Bell 386sx motherboard. Not even a hint of battery leakage! I have some PB desktop cases this will fit in. Now I'm off to remove this battery!

Heh, SIMM sockets much have cost $20 each that year tight buggers. Guess it's two 1s or two 4s, or mess around adding more.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-31, 19:45:

Heh, SIMM sockets much have cost $20 each that year tight buggers. Guess it's two 1s or two 4s, or mess around adding more.

It has 4 on the mobo itself to the left of the simms. IMO 12MB is more than enough for a low end 386sx like this. But you're totally right, I have added simm sockets to these Packard Bell mobos before and they work just fine.

Oh that's not so bad, yeah you barely ever need more than 4MB on an sx ... a lot of stuff that's reputed to need 8MB is actually good on 6MB I found.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-31, 20:04:

Oh that's not so bad, yeah you barely ever need more than 4MB on an sx ... a lot of stuff that's reputed to need 8MB is actually good on 6MB I found.

Correction it's 2MB after looking up the chip part numbers.

cde wrote on 2023-10-30, 20:49:

A wonderful discovery, congratulations!

Thank you!

I attempted another stab at owning a working Ti4400 or Ti4600. This is the 4th broken card (0 for 4). Are there any of these things working left out in the wild? I see people buying these cards as 'parts or not working' and paying $150 or more, and I'm wondering who are these buyers? I only took a risk on this one because it had 30-day return, and it was priced near a Ti4200.

Meatball wrote on 2023-10-31, 20:39:

I attempted another stab at owning a working Ti4400 or Ti4600. This is the 4th broken card (0 for 4). Are there any of these things working left out in the wild? I see people buying these things as 'parts or not working' and paying $150 or more, and I'm wondering who are these buyers? I only took a risk on this one because it had 30-day return, and it was priced near a Ti4200.

I tend to think that it really depends on where you live.
I still see several 980XGL not selling for 30€ locally.
Of course Quadro are less sought after than GeForce but if you really intend to use it then it makes no difference

Meatball wrote on 2023-10-31, 20:39:

I attempted another stab at owning a working Ti4400 or Ti4600. This is the 4th broken card (0 for 4). Are there any of these things working left out in the wild? I see people buying these cards as 'parts or not working' and paying $150 or more, and I'm wondering who are these buyers? I only took a risk on this one because it had 30-day return, and it was priced near a Ti4200.

I have one somewhere that works absolutely perfectly as long as you tighten down a C clamp over the RAM chips and jimmy it just right in the slot, so I will not have these harsh words about them being trash 🤣 🤣 🤣

Paid $27 and got this, Octek VL-COMBO 3.2 and I'll test it later on an MSI MS-4131G motherboard.

Got this nice KG7 RAID with 1400MHz thunderbird and couple of Kingston ValueRam DDR266 sticks for 18€. I've never had AMD 760 motherboard before. It sure isn't the fastest chipset, but pretty cool nonethless.

It is in great condition, should be working and caps look just fine. VRM is both Rubycon and Nichicon while the various filter caps seem to be Teapo.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-11-01, 16:56:

It sure isn't the fastest chipset,

You are sure you are sure? There is a set of CMOS optimisations and WCPRedit files that can make these things scream, and when I say scream, I mean top out somewhere north of 170FSB leaving KT333 in the dust and giving nforce a run for it's money. OPPainter was the main guy behind these tweaks. It was hard to dig out info before, might be even harder since in the past year google AI enhanced it's search to make it stupider.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-01, 17:04:

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2023-11-01, 16:56:

It sure isn't the fastest chipset,

You are sure you are sure? There is a set of CMOS optimisations and WCPRedit files that can make these things scream, and when I say scream, I mean top out somewhere north of 170FSB leaving KT333 in the dust and giving nforce a run for it's money. OPPainter was the main guy behind these tweaks. It was hard to dig out info before, might be even harder since in the past year google AI enhanced it's search to make it stupider.

Yeah, I’m sure. Clock for clock kt266a did beat 760 and sometimes in significant margin. KT266a had especially much better memory performance.

I wouldn’t even bother comparing it to newer chipsets that came for socket A, there is just no contest. It is not a surprise that 760 faded away quite quickly late 2001 / early 2002.

It wasn’t particularly good overclocker either. Many kt266a OC boards could reach the same numbers and best ones like EpoX 8kha+ got 1/5 and 1/6 PCI dividers and could reach 200+MHz, best results were around 220. Many KT333 boards went just fine to the 215-220 mark.

KG7 was probably the best 760 board released, but it got obsolete quite fast after the release mainly due better kt266a chipset boards.