wiretap wrote:

It arrived today.. the Sony Vaio PCV-MXS20. Exterior is in excellent shape, and the interior is just a little dusty. It has the full OEM factory load on it, untouched. All components are working, and it looks like the Minidisc drive was replaced in 2013 with a new one. The original owner told me he has had it in storage since around that time. This should be a great collector's item in the future. It has an upgraded 200GB hard drive, and upgraded to 1GB of RAM.

-removed pictures to reduce clutter-

That's a pretty cool looking computer you've got there. I'd imagine that must have been one of the earlier Media Center PCs to come out of the XP-era.

Also spotted an ASUS P4B266-LM motherboard in there.

I had this item dropped on my lap last night. Images:

So it appears to be a 16-port Harris 9116, and thanks to our Google overlords and an ad in computerworld (LINK ) it looks like some sort of multiplexing terminal interface for the IBM 3270 mainframe system. I will fully admit I'm completely outside of my wheelhouse on this hardware. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this chunk of awesome.

I have not applied power to it. It probably boots from a disk, but I don't have that. 😜

Side note, I really like saying 'multiplexing'.

wiretap wrote:

It arrived today.. the Sony Vaio PCV-MXS20. Exterior is in excellent shape, and the interior is just a little dusty. It has the […]
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It arrived today.. the Sony Vaio PCV-MXS20. Exterior is in excellent shape, and the interior is just a little dusty. It has the full OEM factory load on it, untouched. All components are working, and it looks like the Minidisc drive was replaced in 2013 with a new one. The original owner told me he has had it in storage since around that time. This should be a great collector's item in the future. It has an upgraded 200GB hard drive, and upgraded to 1GB of RAM.

Wow, looks really really cool! Another item on my "WANT" list.

I bought a little thing for my 8-bit collection - Euro Scart Chinch converter:

dropped on my lap

Ouch.

luckybob wrote:

So it appears to be a 16-port Harris 9116

Nice...have you seen this link?

http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/datapro/alphanum … _C25_Harris.pdf

which contains a number of references to it, including

Today, I went to the thrift store and bought a few items.

List of what's shown in the picture:
- Beige Altec Lansing stereo computer speakers (to go with my beige Pentium 1 DOS/WinNT rig)
- Dell USB optical mouse
- Memorex external USB/Firewire DVD-RW drive (missing the AC adapter, so may be parted out to be used as an internal drive)
- FC Twin-brand black SNES controller

There was also a Dell Dimension 4550 and a Dell Inspiron 518, but I didn't get them (don't have enough space for two more pointless towers 🤣 ).

^^ I have those same Altec Lansing speakers, my work threw out about 20 pairs of them so I grabbed a few of the best ones. They won't replace your living room hi-fi, but they're surprisingly good for what they are.

Been a while since I last bought anything, but after some guessing and contemplating about a €15 Medion PC containing a P4, I suspected it to contain a Radeon 9800XL or another one of those odd Radeon's, Delta PSU and 512MB DDR-400, perhaps even more and maybe containing a harddrive. When I got home it turned out it did in fact contain a Radeon 9800XL, but the PSU was a 350W FSP unit (though with good 5v amps). Also 2x1GB DDR-400 and a 200GB IDE HDD to top it all off 😀
The CPU was a 3GHz Northwood, not bad. At least not a prescott 😁. The motherboard is a 865 of some variant.
The case I will probably get rid off as I already have too many of them laying around and most likely will never use it.

Sorry I can't take pics due to poor lighting.

hmm. I got given an old Lenovo ThinkCentre M58 7359-AR7 desktop computer a couple of days ago by someone on Freecycle. Just been trying to download drivers for it. It seems it needs something called Lenovo Service Bridge to be installed first. Then that has to connect to the internet to get the drivers. Trouble is - without network drivers, it's likely that it won't be able to get online to get the network drivers, and I can't find the right drivers elsewhere (yet)!

Going to have to strip it down to clean (it's got half an inch of dust throughout), so hopefully I will be able to determine what network hardware it has, to download from somewhere else. Either that, or as it originally had Vista on it, maybe Win7-64 will detect everything for at least basic networking!

Bought myself a ABIT BX133 RAID, along with a tualatin adapter. When the package arrived I was a bit dismayed to see the motherboard wrapped inside standard bubblewrap, but so far the motherboard seems to be fine, just got to see if Windows 98 will install properly.

sketchus wrote:

Bought myself a ABIT BX133 RAID, along with a tualatin adapter. When the package arrived I was a bit dismayed to see the motherboard wrapped inside standard bubblewrap, but so far the motherboard seems to be fine, just got to see if Windows 98 will install properly.

I have gotten so many pieces of hardware wrapped in regular bubble wrap and plastic/cling wrap. It always makes me cringe, but I haven't had an issue with any of it not working so I guess it might be ok-ish to do so.

Finally got a Win95/DOS laptop, a Fujitsu Lifebook E330, and the first Win95 machine I've had in 14 years (I had a Compaq Presario 8700 series desktop w/ an MMX processor from 1997, but it got scrapped by my parents, I think it was really crappy anyways). Copped it for $40 on eBay.

Well technically I got it yesterday, does it still count?

Love old Windows laptops. They look so nice in their own retro way.

cyclone3d wrote:

sketchus wrote:

Bought myself a ABIT BX133 RAID, along with a tualatin adapter. When the package arrived I was a bit dismayed to see the motherboard wrapped inside standard bubblewrap, but so far the motherboard seems to be fine, just got to see if Windows 98 will install properly.

I have gotten so many pieces of hardware wrapped in regular bubble wrap and plastic/cling wrap. It always makes me cringe, but I haven't had an issue with any of it not working so I guess it might be ok-ish to do so.

I've had a few things too, and I think they've always worked. Motherboard seems fine. I was always led to believe bubblewrap was a near guarenteed death for computer parts, but perhaps it's not as certain for that. I'd never really send anything that way anyway though.

Wow, bad ass! that's definitely a collector's item. Would love to see more pics of it in action.

OldCat wrote:

Wow, looks really really cool! Another item on my "WANT" list. […]
Show full quote

wiretap wrote:

It arrived today.. the Sony Vaio PCV-MXS20. Exterior is in excellent shape, and the interior is just a little dusty. It has the […]
Show full quote

It arrived today.. the Sony Vaio PCV-MXS20. Exterior is in excellent shape, and the interior is just a little dusty. It has the full OEM factory load on it, untouched. All components are working, and it looks like the Minidisc drive was replaced in 2013 with a new one. The original owner told me he has had it in storage since around that time. This should be a great collector's item in the future. It has an upgraded 200GB hard drive, and upgraded to 1GB of RAM.

Wow, looks really really cool! Another item on my "WANT" list.

I bought a little thing for my 8-bit collection - Euro Scart Chinch converter:

conv1.jpg

That thing is nuts! Needs...moar...stickers!

Bought a brand new Amiga floppy drive, to replace the one in my external (DF1) drive case. Next I need to buy an internal one for my Amiga500. Though money is short this month, and the Amiga has been running well with the one, ever since my 500/500+ hybrid-board machine was produced. It is one of those reduced 500+, sold as an 500. (512k Ram, ECS, no battery and Kickstart 1.3)

sketchus wrote:

Bought myself a ABIT BX133 RAID, along with a tualatin adapter. When the package arrived I was a bit dismayed to see the motherboard wrapped inside standard bubblewrap, but so far the motherboard seems to be fine, just got to see if Windows 98 will install properly.

How are the caps on yours? I recently picked up the same board, but caps were shot. Still powered up and booted with a Tualatin 1400 S. I'm in the process of re-capping with Panasonic caps.

Factor in a recap with this board. The stock caps are shiiiiit junk!

Picked up a couple of DOS/Win9x laptops the other day from the recycler's. Both with some minor issues, but mostly cosmetic not functional. Paid 20$ for these and also one of those older Realistic mini-amps with matching tuner, which also works.

Toshiba Tecra 500 CDT

Pentium 120
32 MB RAM
2MB C&T 65550
Crystal CS4232 with a genuine YMF262
800x600 Active Matrix screen

This one is pretty beat up physically, and the audio jacks are in need of a cleaning. Also haven't had any luck with the PCMCIA card slot. But the core functionality is all there, CDROM works, sound works, screen looks as good as a mid-90's TFT generally does. It's actually got a 6 GB hard drive which must have been an upgrade at some point in it's life.

Thinkpad A20m

Pentium III 500
128 MB RAM
ATI Rage Mobility (Haven't checked if it's a 4 or 8 MB unit)
Crystal 4624 Audio (Which has SB compatibility)
800x600 Active Matrix screen

This one is in pretty good shape physically, just a bit scuffed up on top and missing the hard drive caddy. That said, again, everything works great. Doom sounded a bit buzzy, but not too bad. Still need to do more testing though.

Also picked up out of pure nostalgia an NEC MultiSync 3D monitor. No idea if it works yet so I'll post a picture later if it does - and this was free so no real issue if it doesn't. This is pure nostalgia for me, I had a very similar NEC MultiSync 3DS attached to my very first proper PC, an old PS/2 w/386.

DaveJustDave wrote:

Wow, bad ass! that's definitely a collector's item. Would love to see more pics of it in action.

OldCat wrote:

Wow, looks really really cool! Another item on my "WANT" list. […]
Show full quote

wiretap wrote:

It arrived today.. the Sony Vaio PCV-MXS20. Exterior is in excellent shape, and the interior is just a little dusty. It has the […]
Show full quote

It arrived today.. the Sony Vaio PCV-MXS20. Exterior is in excellent shape, and the interior is just a little dusty. It has the full OEM factory load on it, untouched. All components are working, and it looks like the Minidisc drive was replaced in 2013 with a new one. The original owner told me he has had it in storage since around that time. This should be a great collector's item in the future. It has an upgraded 200GB hard drive, and upgraded to 1GB of RAM.

Wow, looks really really cool! Another item on my "WANT" list.

I bought a little thing for my 8-bit collection - Euro Scart Chinch converter:

conv1.jpg

Thanks. I'll get some more pictures, screenshots and videos soon.

In the meanwhile, I snapped an Acronis image of the system in its OEM state. https://archive.org/details/PCVMXS20DiskImage.7z

Avert your eyes if you don't want to witness the horror ...

If you thought bubble-wrapped motherboards were bad, how about a laptop shipped in a box with two scrunched up pieces of paper (one on top, one underneath)? Let's see how that one turned out ...

RIP rather nice Acer 486 laptop 🙁