Had to register for this.

I found a 3DFX Voodoo3 AGP card today in my closet. a few days ago a SB16PRO ISA. Also today I found a Gateway Solo 5300 laptop.

I'm reasonably excited about the laptop. Allegedly it has a nice GPU.

Tele-Viper wrote:

Had to register for this.

I found a 3DFX Voodoo3 AGP card today in my closet. a few days ago a SB16PRO ISA. Also today I found a Gateway Solo 5300 laptop.

I'm reasonably excited about the laptop. Allegedly it has a nice GPU.

That's funny. Keep looking, who knows what else yo're going to find 😀

Yea the V3 AGP is a nice GPU, works well for a lot of builds.

EDIT: Bought some cheap socket 478 with SIS chipsets and universal AGP slots off eBay. There are a lot of P4 boards on eBay now, most of them really cheap. Lots of OEM stuff too, but I avoid that as this point in time as there are still lots of alternatives.

Received these bits today.

VIA EPIA M10000 with 512 MB DDR. It has a C3 Nehemiah 1GHz CPU. Tiny little thing, Mini-itx.

PCCHIPS M590 motherboard will all the brackets and a AMD K6-III 400 CPU. Sold as a working set, seems a totally odd combination though as the M590 apparently is only good for 90MHz FSB at best, but we shall see. I expect I will drop down the CPU to a Cyrix MII & 83 or 75MHz FSB.
Here's the CPU, these are soooo hard to come by here in the UK, pretty much the only reason I bought the board. Never had a K6-III before so looking forward to testing.

Best,
Chris

Got a Sony CRX215E1 CD-RW drive for use in my PIII machine, which was using a rather noisy and low quality Liteon DVD which actually caused some FMVs to stutter (its either breaking down a bit , cheap , or both) , while I lose the DVD playing ability, considering none of the games I run on this use a DVD its not a great loss, and the higher quality of the drive is nice.

Got more stuff in today - I'll start with this:

1. Optical serial mouse by ARTEC - it's one of those weird mice that only works on a special metal pad. It was given to me by an older gentleman who used to work in hardware and retired back in 2001. He kept is as a memento since he payed a lot of $$$ for it back in the day. He then passed it on to me, and now I use it on my 386 rig. It's great for Dune 2 and Sierra games - way better then the old A4 tech ball mouse I used. When first tested the mouse it was working intermittently so I took it apart and cleaned it - It's a bit more complex then a modern optical mouse, and the sensors are HUGE (there's two of them). Turns out the cable was the culprit and I had to shorten it by two cm.

2. Radeon 9500 128MB - found this baby online on a local ad site and went to pick it up.

Apart from this 9500, I have an utterly destroyed 9700 I got from a recycling center - the reason for it being the 9700 is very rare over here. In fact, for all my years working in IT I have never seen one apart from this scrapped card. I got the 9500 because the PCB and components on both cards are identical, and there's a lot of stuff missing off the 9700. I plan to fix it as a project, but for that I need to know the value/type of SMD components the card originally had - something you can't do from pictures found online.

I know trying to fix the 9700 is insanity, and all the hard work might just turn it from a dead card with missing parts to a complete dead one, but the state I found it in saddened me so much that I want to try. It's also a great test of my soldering skills. If nothing, I'll get a decent looking dead 9700 I can put in my video card showcase (the car's heatsink and fan, not pictured, are in good shape). Just look at how many parts are missing:

3. ASUS Radeon 9600PRO - got this from the same guy I bought the 9500 from. Payed 10 euro for both.

4. Athlon XP 3000+ 2100MHz, 200MHz FSB:

5. Athlon XP 3200+ 2333MHz, 14x166Mhz - I didn't even know this model existed - I tought the 2.2GHz 11x200MHz model I have in my XP rig was the fastest - seems I was wrong. It also gets me wondering what version of the 3200+ @philscomputerlab used in his AMD vs Intel benchmark series.

6. Top-of-the-line socket 939 kit: Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2400MHz dual core + Asus A8N-SLI-Premium + 2GB Kingston CL2 DDR400 - I got these babies (for free) from a friend who's PC I upgraded today. As you can tell his machine was cutting edge back in the day - I remember building it for him and just staring dumbfounded at how fast it was. He ran 2x6800GT cards on it witch sadly both died. Next week I'm hoping to upgrade another friend's LGA 1156 i5 760 rig, since I don't have any LGA1156 parts in my collection.

kanecvr wrote:

Got more stuff in today - I'll start with this:

Actually if you manage to get that 9700 repaired and working I would be greatly interested to know how you progress in that and if you have any success with it at all.

kithylin wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

Got more stuff in today - I'll start with this:

Actually if you manage to get that 9700 repaired and working I would be greatly interested to know how you progress in that and if you have any success with it at all.

Will do. I started making a parts list allready. I'll open a dedicated thread when I start working on it. The GPU looks intact and there don't seem to be any broken traces on the PCB so there's a chance it will work. I already moded and flashed the 9500 to 9700 using a guide I found on techpowerup forums, ATIFLASH 1.6 and a Powercolor 9700 bios. Had to move a resistor on the GPU to do it. Here are some benchmark results:

Radeon 9500 bios, stock clocks:

Radeon 9700 bios, stock clocks:

If I manage to fix the 9700 I'll flash the 9500's bios back to keep everything original.

kanecvr wrote:

Got more stuff in today - I'll start with this: […]
Show full quote

Got more stuff in today - I'll start with this:

1. Optical serial mouse by ARTEC - it's one of those weird mice that only works on a special metal pad. It was given to me by an older gentleman who used to work in hardware and retired back in 2001. He kept is as a memento since he payed a lot of $$$ for it back in the day. He then passed it on to me, and now I use it on my 386 rig. It's great for Dune 2 and Sierra games - way better then the old A4 tech ball mouse I used. When first tested the mouse it was working intermittently so I took it apart and cleaned it - It's a bit more complex then a modern optical mouse, and the sensors are HUGE (there's two of them). Turns out the cable was the culprit and I had to shorten it by two cm.

2. Radeon 9500 128MB - found this baby online on a local ad site and went to pick it up.

Apart from this 9500, I have an utterly destroyed 9700 I got from a recycling center - the reason for it being the 9700 is very rare over here. In fact, for all my years working in IT I have never seen one apart from this scrapped card. I got the 9500 because the PCB and components on both cards are identical, and there's a lot of stuff missing off the 9700. I plan to fix it as a project, but for that I need to know the value/type of SMD components the card originally had - something you can't do from pictures found online.

I know trying to fix the 9700 is insanity, and all the hard work might just turn it from a dead card with missing parts to a complete dead one, but the state I found it in saddened me so much that I want to try. It's also a great test of my soldering skills. If nothing, I'll get a decent looking dead 9700 I can put in my video card showcase (the car's heatsink and fan, not pictured, are in good shape). Just look at how many parts are missing:

3. ASUS Radeon 9600PRO - got this from the same guy I bought the 9500 from. Payed 10 euro for both.

4. Athlon XP 3000+ 2100MHz, 200MHz FSB:

5. Athlon XP 3200+ 2333MHz, 14x166Mhz - I didn't even know this model existed - I tought the 2.2GHz 11x200MHz model I have in my XP rig was the fastest - seems I was wrong. It also gets me wondering what version of the 3200+ @philscomputerlab used in his AMD vs Intel benchmark series. Unfortunatly I won't be showing a picture of this one since it came silghtly chipped, so I left it installed on the Asrock K7NF2-RAID and an Arctic Cooling Copper Lite it came with... Here's a HWinfo screenshot:

6. Top-of-the-line socket 939 kit: Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2400MHz dual core + Asus A8N-SLI-Premium + 2GB Kingston CL2 DDR400 - I got these babies (for free) from a friend who's PC I upgraded today. As you can tell his machine was cutting edge back in the day - I remember building it for him and just staring dumbfounded at how fast it was. He ran 2x6800GT cards on it witch sadly both died. Next week I'm hoping to upgrade another friend's LGA 1156 i5 760 rig, since I don't have any LGA1156 parts in my collection.

Nice haul!
Is there a chance to get another one of those 3200+ / FSB166 cpus?
Would you to trade it?

The VRAM on your 9500 has an L-Layout.
I would try to unlock it with the tools from back then. If it works then flash it with the 9700 BIOS. Vóila!

BSA Starfire wrote:

Received these bits today. […]
Show full quote

Received these bits today.

via epia 10000.JPG

VIA EPIA M10000 with 512 MB DDR. It has a C3 Nehemiah 1GHz CPU. Tiny little thing, Mini-itx.

m590.JPG

PCCHIPS M590 motherboard will all the brackets and a AMD K6-III 400 CPU. Sold as a working set, seems a totally odd combination though as the M590 apparently is only good for 90MHz FSB at best, but we shall see. I expect I will drop down the CPU to a Cyrix MII & 83 or 75MHz FSB.
Here's the CPU, these are soooo hard to come by here in the UK, pretty much the only reason I bought the board. Never had a K6-III before so looking forward to testing.

k63.JPG

Best,
Chris

So... that is the model number for that PC Chips board. I've been trying to find that for years.

I don't want one, I just remembered working on them and it has bothered me ever since. I actually have the manual somewhere but all it says is "Socket 7 3D Motherboard" on it with a picture of some generic AT board - I think it was a Chaintech, despite being a PC Chips manual.

They weren't actually bad boards, all things considered. Not in the league of some of the more upmarket boards but you can't expect miracles from an low-cost board with so many features packed in - they get the job done.

Darkman wrote:

Got a Sony CRX215E1 CD-RW drive for use in my PIII machine, which was using a rather noisy and low quality Liteon DVD which actually caused some FMVs to stutter (its either breaking down a bit , cheap , or both) , while I lose the DVD playing ability, considering none of the games I run on this use a DVD its not a great loss, and the higher quality of the drive is nice.

I actually broke down and put a DVD-RW into my DOS PC just to play the GOG.com version of WC3. Part of me hates it because the drive is black while the rest of the PC is beige. It's hard to find a DVD reader with beige faceplate! As soon as I finish the game, the beige CD-RW goes back in. 😀

Arctic wrote:

Nice haul!
Is there a chance to get another one of those 3200+ / FSB166 cpus?

I came by the 2333MHz 3200+ completly by accident. It came in a computer I got for 10 euro, witch I bought for the hard drives (2x40GB maxtor IDE + 1x80GB IDE), PSU (350w FSP) and sound card (Audigy 2 ZS). The seller did not specify what CPU it had, but he did send me pictures of the machine's insides so I knew it was a socket A rig. Imagine my surprise when I turned it on and it displayed "Athlon XP 2333MHz" 😁

The cpu has a chipped corner and two of the spongy pads were missing - probably from transport. I super-glued two pads from a dead 1700+ and put a little resin on the chipped area so it won't chip any further.

Arctic wrote:

Would you to trade it?

If I come across another one I'll let you know.

Arctic wrote:

The VRAM on your 9500 has an L-Layout.
I would try to unlock it with the tools from back then. If it works then flash it with the 9700 BIOS. Vóila!

Already flashed it - couldn't help myself 😜

Acquired bundle:

(non pictured)DFI LANPARTY UT nF4-D(on recapping atm),Zalman CNPS7700-Cu and 3gb ddr1(2x1gb 2x512mb)

Scalped Athlon 64x2 4200+

Sapphire Radeon X1950XT 256mb with Zalman heatsink

Zalman do it job quite well tbh,after hour of Oblivion max temp on core was just 55'C,while idle its usually 40-45'C
Bought it just because it had X1950XT,hunted for it alive pretty long.
Cost me 14$ total

I just bought these three 1MB SIPPS.

It would have been nice with four but two with one spare is also ok as there is no guarantee all work. The memory was sold as working though, the price was $3.99.

The sellers pic, he looks well organized. 😀

Got new FX5600 - nothing special but its on Ultra PCB with basic cooler and power connector. I allready owned FX5600U with original flame cooler and all is same.
What can think about this? Its not stable Ultra downgrade by Gainward and sold as basic or any other idea?

Today i found a ps/2 model 30 at a thriftshop. I had seen it a few months ago, when somebody brought it in. I wanted to get the model m keyboard, but the owner of the thriftshop wanted to keep it as a set. When i asked how much the set would cost he said it wasn't for sale, because he was going to sell it on ebay.
Fast forward to this afternoon. I had do do some grocery shopping and went to the thriftshop. There was the same set as a few months ago, for 35 euro. So i picked it up. Now i'm a proud owner of a model m keyboard. The ps/2 model 30 has 640kb memory, a broken 1.44 mb diskdrive and a working 20mb half height esdi harddisk.
I already replace 2 capacitors on the diskdrive and got the heads moving again. Habe to get a few new capacitors to replace the remain 3, hoping that the spindle motor starts moving again.

kanecvr wrote:

http://i.imgur.com/q5KTBvzl.jpg […]
Show full quote

I know trying to fix the 9700 is insanity, and all the hard work might just turn it from a dead card with missing parts to a complete dead one, but the state I found it in saddened me so much that I want to try. It's also a great test of my soldering skills. If nothing, I'll get a decent looking dead 9700 I can put in my video card showcase (the car's heatsink and fan, not pictured, are in good shape). Just look at how many parts are missing:

Fear not, i did the exact same thing to a 9800pro. LOTS os missing capacitors and a bad BGA solder joints. So..after getting all the missing smd parts in place and doing a simple reflow i got the card to work more or less. Still quite a few artifacts on the screen..but at least it works! I guess the perfect fix would be a total reball of the GPU, which i'm really not inclined to do right now. Shame, it's a good oldschool video card and i even have it's original box..

what good is an MT32 without proper cables?

(no software, Its just the two cables that connect to the sb joystick port with the midi in/out connectors)

That's a nice catch! Most of those are gone unfortunately 🙁 I haven't seen one for years in the thrift shops around here...

seob wrote:

Today i found a ps/2 model 30 at a thriftshop. I had seen it a few months ago, when somebody brought it in. I wanted to get the model m keyboard, but the owner of the thriftshop wanted to keep it as a set. When i asked how much the set would cost he said it wasn't for sale, because he was going to sell it on ebay.
Fast forward to this afternoon. I had do do some grossery shopping and went to the thriftshop. There was the same set as a few months ago, for 35 euro. So i picked it up. Now i'm a proud owner of a model m keyboard. The ps/2 model 30 has 640kb memory, a broken 1.44 mb diskdrive and a working 20mb half height esdi harddisk.
I already replace 2 capacitors on the diskdrive and got the heads moving again. Habe to get a few new capacitors to replace the remain 3, hoping that the spindle motor starts moving again.

BloodyCactus wrote:

what good is an MT32 without proper cables? […]
Show full quote

what good is an MT32 without proper cables?

(no software, Its just the two cables that connect to the sb joystick port with the midi in/out connectors)

Nice! A while ago I accidentally amassed an unintentional collection of Sound Blasters while trying to get an AWE64. The remains of that kit were part of it:

[edit: photob*ck^t hotlink removed]

All I had from it was the SB Pro 2.0 (3rd from right) and the two above manuals, no disks / boxes / MIDI cables / other stuff. I gave the Pro away along with its manual, but I kept the Voyetra SPP book for myself. 😎 I *use* Voyetra Sequencer and the paper doc is handy to have around.

This Saturday I went to my local Goodwill for the first time in a few months. Didn't expect much, but just when I was about to leave, look what came rolling in on a cart! A Tandy Color Computer 2 set for around $25, mostly complete in box too! Came with the cassette recorder, Multi-Pak, dual disk drive, joystick and mouse. The computer itself is in fantastic shape, not sure if it was even used. There was also an original silver CoCo 1 which appeared to be modded (Coco-2 type keyboard and composite plugs sticking out of it) but I left that one for someone else to find.

I am super stoked to start playing around with this thing.

Never thought I'd ever find something like this at a Goodwill- I just assumed they either "recycled" the computers that got donated or they put them straight up on Shopgoodwill.com. Needless to say I'm going there more often.