The postman knocked more than twice today 😉

- Mediamagic ISP-32 OPTi 930 + QDSP QS700 sound card
- Compaq SW400 motherboard - dual Slot 1 i840 dual-channel RAMBUS chipset
- Matching 375W non-ATX PSU

Surprise: all seem NOS. The motherboard and PSU look like never used FRU stock, the sound card box is badly battered but the contents looks unused too 😀

No huge fan of OPTi sound cards, but this has a 1:1 OPL3 clone ("DSP24S") and half-decent QDSP wave table. i840 was the unobtainium back in the day, and even today Intel's OR840 is hard to find and pricey. Was very happy to find these. Hope I have more luck than with all the i820 boards I ever found. Literally tens of them, all dead, apart from the one with MTH and SDRAM - it was even rock-stable.

dionb wrote on 2020-05-01, 18:26:

- Compaq SW400 motherboard - dual Slot 1 i840 dual-channel RAMBUS chipset

nice :3

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-01, 16:45:

imi, where do you store so many boards if I may ask? I have around 20 and they take up so much space I find myself having to sell inferior options whenever I come across something more premium.. It's the one thing I can't really 'hoard' many of, they take up so much space!

took a picture for easier explanation ^^
the eurobox method is probably the most dense way to store them, if you fit them tightly like this they fit like 40 even, but I eventually want to store all unused boards in boxes like on the right with easily visible labels in shelves (still unlabeled on pic, and I haven't finished my shelving yet)
there's also always a mess at the moment.

also that's what all the cards that are waiting to be sorted, cleaned or repaired look like ^^
these PCB racks are also really handy for this.

the PCB racks cost like €5 each, cardboard boxes can be had for around €20 for 100 boxes...
the euroboxes are a bit pricey since they're ESD safe, the bigger ones cost like ~€20 each
shielding bags cost ~€10-30 for 100 bags depending on size

so I pay about 50 cents per board for storage.

edit:
...also for the sake of completeness, here is part 3 of the big scrap lot...

RAM RAM RAM!
and some COAST modules

I really need to print some SIMM storage boxes.

CoffeeOne wrote on 2020-05-01, 18:09:

That 486 board with the symphony chipset (isa only) is a beauty, hope it works.

I do hope so too :3

Picked up an XFX GTX 295 for $30 shipped, which I feel like is an excellent deal for these given they will only go up in price. I now have both a 9800GX2 and a GTX 295, so I just need the 7950GX2, GTX 590, and GTX 690 now. (I know that one Titan dual GPU exists but thats still a viable gaming card so it will be a few years before I seriously start looking for one). Really I could argue I need two of each but really I have no interest in building 1200W Quad SLI monsters maybe with the exception of the 7950GX2.

I also picked up a X850XT PE for $39 shipped. More than I would have liked to have payed but I consider the X800 series an important step in GPU history and the prices do seem to be going up quite a bit on them. Also recently in is an X1900XTX which was bundled with a X1900XT untested. I thought the X1900 was an XT as well until I googled its part number. The x1800XT doesn't seem to work, but the price of $20 shipped was cheaper than I could have gotten the X1900XTX alone. Then there is the HD2900GT for $25 because finding a HD2900XT seems to be a pipe-dream. I think I have the flagship or sub-flagship of every generation of ATI video cards up to the HD 5000 series now.

I also ordered an ASUS 7800GT after getting refunded for the DOA EVGA 7800GT. Every EVGA GeForce 78/7900 card I've had has failed, so I'm avoiding them for that generation now. I've never ran across a dead ASUS video board, and I've only ever seen one dead ASUS motherboard (not counting obvious physical damage). They seem to have always been ahead of the curve in terms of quality, as I've noticed alot of their designs are the first among their kind to use solid state caps like my P5N-D SLI.

EDIT: Fun fact, XFX Silent 7950GTs dont have ANY thermal material between their cooler and the RAM ICs. The 7950GT I won in an auction actually released the magic smoke and then never posted again. It wouldn't post at all in one motherboard before that and I took the cooler off to test it because I've found those wrap around coolers are prone to causing shorts. 10 seconds cooler-less still shouldn't cause smoke, the GPU core wasn't even that hot afterwards so that tells me it was something hidden BGA related that gave up the ghost since I can't find any external damage. Haven't had a smoke show in a minute. Anybody got a magic smoke refill? On a side note XFX's silent cooler seems to be 100 percent compatible with NVIDIAs reference design so I'm going to stick it on the EVGA 7950GT with the dead fan and then probably strap a fan onto it anyways because a silent 7950GT is just a fucking stupid concept in my opinion. Also adding thermal pads for the RAM....... Who thought going padless for the RAM was smart?

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-05-01, 21:29:

EDIT: Fun fact, XFX Silent 7950GTs dont have ANY thermal material between their cooler and the RAM ICs.

yeah I noticed that when I was bending back the fins on one I bought as "untested"... I will replace the TIM and place pads on the ram before testing, but I honestly don't have high hopes on this card actually working x3... hold expectations low so I won't be disappointed.

hey guys I haven't posted in a while, where are you hosting the images now? I mean a hosting that is not cancer like photobucket or tinypic

vmunix wrote on 2020-05-02, 01:05:

hey guys I haven't posted in a while, where are you hosting the images now? I mean a hosting that is not cancer like photobucket or tinypic

Just host them on this site.

imi wrote on 2020-05-02, 00:10:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-05-01, 21:29:

EDIT: Fun fact, XFX Silent 7950GTs dont have ANY thermal material between their cooler and the RAM ICs.

yeah I noticed that when I was bending back the fins on one I bought as "untested"... I will replace the TIM and place pads on the ram before testing, but I honestly don't have high hopes on this card actually working x3... hold expectations low so I won't be disappointed.

Those fold around coolers are a serious design flaw in that they bend super easy and if they are bent onto the board they are basically a massive short circuit. I've seen 2 or 3 cards that once the fins were bent back off the card they work fine. When buying untested cards I usually just look at what the seller has for sale. For example if they have a bunch of similar PCIe Video cards that are "Tested and working" and they are selling an 8800GTX "Untested" that usually means it doesn't work and they just aren't telling you. But if I'm say looking at an AGP video card or something specialized and its "Untested" and I look on their page and all they have listed is PCIe video cards that probably just means they don't have an appropriate test bed setup or they just flat out don't test hardware that old (which is kind of common among eRecyclers, thats time and time is money. No sense wasting 15 minutes of employee time on a card your selling for $10 profit so I'm sure alot just list stuff over a certain age untested). Heres a real life example: The two X1000 series card I bought for $20 shipped, the only tested stuff he had on his store was either Mac Pro or low-profile/low-power PC GPUs. He probably didn't have a PC setup to test high power PC cards, and the X1000 series Mac Cards are visually identical to the Mac version for the most part so he probably bought them hoping they were for Mac. Therefore they are most likely genuinely untested and I believe that was the case as one worked and the other didn't which is fair enough for an untested lot, the one that didn't work also didn't look like it had been handled that well.

Found this box I had completely forgoten and you know like everybody else recently with time to kill at home.
So apart for a few items the rest is crap but I would like to hear your opinios what worth keeping , which one to use for DOS gaming with ISA sound cards etc..

Not sure about this one looks like a PC-chips but 0 experience with it , supports 83Mhz FSB but other than that seems like it's thrash

This one was in the computer I built for my parents in 1998, apparently they are good for Cyrix chips.

Needs recapping, those capacitors next to the CPU are bad, I remember retiring this mobo because it was unstable, now I see why.

I built this in 1999 when the Ppro was already obsolete and never had a proper AT PSU that could handle the load so, when it melted the power connectors for the 3rtd time wrapped it and used something else, the coolers are missing tho that's a bummer because you can't use something else.

This one is NIB, came with a Ppro 180 I have with my CPU collection also NIB but I was thinking of using a Ppro 200 1M, I'm not sure again if the motherboard or the pityful AT PSU can handle the load.

more to come

One of these in the single socket board

What do you think of this pair ? they work, but one drains the lithium battery flat in 3 weeks and after that it does not retain the cmos settings, utter crp..

LGR's favourite VGA monitor, I'm thinking of restoring it if I had a place to put it to use.

13 Volumes 1993 Software of the Month Club 5.25" DOS IBM Disks.
To keep me amused.

vmunix wrote on 2020-05-02, 02:19:

What do you think of this pair ? they work, but one drains the lithium battery flat in 3 weeks and after that it does not retain the cmos settings, utter crp..
IMG_1307.JPEG

Ah, the cheapest upgrade package at the computer swap meet (if anyone remembers those). Sold back in the day for around AU$300 including whatever was the cheapest available processor and ram was that day for people upgrading their old AT minitowers. Probably among the last baby-AT boards made. I've never seen one here in use with a Slot 1 processor. Every one that I have found has had a Socket 370 Celeron in it.

vmunix wrote on 2020-05-02, 02:19:

[...]

What do you think of this pair ? they work, but one drains the lithium battery flat in 3 weeks and after that it does not retain the cmos settings, utter crp..
IMG_1307.JPEG

Oh no, PC Chips M748LMRT 😒

I had to run on its ATX twin in 1999, M741LMRT, after incorrectly diagnosing dead CPU when it was my AOpen AX6BC that had died. Spent all my available cash on a new Celeron, then discovered that that wasn't it so I needed the single cheapest motherboard I could find. I deeply, deeply regretted that mistake. Slow, incompatible and unstable.

That utterly crap BIOS might be the reason your CMOS battery runs down. Don't recall that from the M741LMRT, but another bottom-feeder board with the same SiS southbridge, GVC FR520, had the same issue. It was fixed with a BIOS update. So if you want to put in the effort, another BIOS for the M748LMRT might solve the battery issue. It would still remain utter crap in all other ways though.

vmunix wrote on 2020-05-02, 02:12:

Found this box I had completely forgoten and you know like everybody else recently with time to kill at home. So apart for a few […]
Show full quote

Found this box I had completely forgoten and you know like everybody else recently with time to kill at home.
So apart for a few items the rest is crap but I would like to hear your opinios what worth keeping , which one to use for DOS gaming with ISA sound cards etc..

Not sure about this one looks like a PC-chips but 0 experience with it , supports 83Mhz FSB but other than that seems like it's thrash
IMG_1297.JPEG

This one was in the computer I built for my parents in 1998, apparently they are good for Cyrix chips.

IMG_1298.JPEG

That's a PC Chips M571 (non-LMR).
https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/PcChip … M571/index.html

IBM Thinkpad 5gb hard drives.
Pentium 133mhz.

Hopefully it works, but I won’t know for sure until my MS-6905 Master arrives from Germany.

evasive wrote on 2020-05-02, 11:46:

vmunix wrote on 2020-05-02, 02:12:

Found this box I had completely forgoten and you know like everybody else recently with time to kill at home. So apart for a few […]
Show full quote

Found this box I had completely forgoten and you know like everybody else recently with time to kill at home.
So apart for a few items the rest is crap but I would like to hear your opinios what worth keeping , which one to use for DOS gaming with ISA sound cards etc..

Not sure about this one looks like a PC-chips but 0 experience with it , supports 83Mhz FSB but other than that seems like it's thrash
IMG_1297.JPEG

This one was in the computer I built for my parents in 1998, apparently they are good for Cyrix chips.

IMG_1298.JPEG

That's a PC Chips M571 (non-LMR).
https://www.elhvb.com/mobokive/Archive/PcChip … M571/index.html

Thanks, doing a little bit of research apparently is not that bad, any experience with it ?

dionb wrote on 2020-05-02, 10:50:

Oh no, PC Chips M748LMRT :/ […]
Show full quote

vmunix wrote on 2020-05-02, 02:19:

[...]

What do you think of this pair ? they work, but one drains the lithium battery flat in 3 weeks and after that it does not retain the cmos settings, utter crp..
IMG_1307.JPEG

Oh no, PC Chips M748LMRT 😒

I had to run on its ATX twin in 1999, M741LMRT, after incorrectly diagnosing dead CPU when it was my AOpen AX6BC that had died. Spent all my available cash on a new Celeron, then discovered that that wasn't it so I needed the single cheapest motherboard I could find. I deeply, deeply regretted that mistake. Slow, incompatible and unstable.

That utterly crap BIOS might be the reason your CMOS battery runs down. Don't recall that from the M741LMRT, but another bottom-feeder board with the same SiS southbridge, GVC FR520, had the same issue. It was fixed with a BIOS update. So if you want to put in the effort, another BIOS for the M748LMRT might solve the battery issue. It would still remain utter crap in all other ways though.

Thanks, then I might sell them starting at 1 buck at my local auctions site as "rare vintage retrogaming nostalgia" like everybody else does nowadays 🤣

Sony Clie PEG-UX50, like new condition with all original accessories and leather case, in the original box - $40. Bought a new battery for it for $9 as well.

A couple of nice additions to the collection at the end of the week.

The first is a CT1320A with CMS chips. Works well in the 386SX-33. This is my only Sound Blaster with the CMS chips except for the Creative Music System card itself.

The next one is a Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 with PowerVR Kyro II. It was listed as an ATI X700 Pro because it was inside a retail box for that card. The original owner must have upgraded and put the Kyro II into the box of the new ATI card. I feel like I upgraded from the X700.

(After a bit of an issue with the courier) my Compaq QVision 1280/E finally showed up - from the box labelling, seems to have been an unused spare.