My next Core 2 Quad from China finally arrived (after nearly 2 months).
It's one of the few items that are actually cheaper on Ebay than in Hungary. Sellers ask insane money for quad-core 775s here for some reason.

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-29, 17:41:

My next Core 2 Quad from China finally arrived (after nearly 2 months)

Feel lucky at two months. I sent three large boxes of vintage parts to Europe from the U.S. back in December. They vaporized. I heard there may have been sightings in the Bermuda Triangle, but unconfirmed. Either way, sad face. I did get my shipping costs reimbursed, but I would have preferred that the parts had made it to their destination.

liqmat wrote on 2021-04-29, 18:07:

Feel lucky at two months. I sent three large boxes of vintage parts to Europe from the U.S. back in December. They vaporized.

Pure luck. I ordered 2 Quads the same day, both from China. The Q9400 arrived after 13 days and this one after 2 months. Both were shipped from Shenzhen.
3 packages lost? Must be theft.

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-29, 18:31:

3 packages lost? Must be theft.

I was thinking the same thing. Three boxes. Three different addresses. Two different countries. They probably were hoping for some GPUs and a Playstation 5. They were sadly mistaken.

- GeForce 7800GS AGP
- GeForce 9500GS 512MB
- Diamond Viper V550 (Riva TNT)
- Radeon HD5450 PCI edition
- ASUS P5A-B w/ K6-2 450 and accessories
- Crucial BallistiX Tracer 800 4-4-4-12
- XFX GeForce GTX 260
- ASUS 8800 GTS
- DELL Latitude (Pentium4 'Northwood' 1.40GHz / GeForce4 440Go)

- POW GeForce GTX 590 (2x)

Wow nice haul!

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-04-29, 19:26:

Wow nice haul!

was an intense week 😁

I bet. Any plans for all this fun stuff?

liqmat wrote on 2021-04-29, 18:07:

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-29, 17:41:

My next Core 2 Quad from China finally arrived (after nearly 2 months)

Feel lucky at two months. I sent three large boxes of vintage parts to Europe from the U.S. back in December. They vaporized. I heard there may have been sightings in the Bermuda Triangle, but unconfirmed. Either way, sad face. I did get my shipping costs reimbursed, but I would have preferred that the parts had made it to their destination.

I rarely ship things internationally, but were they untracked? I'd expect that with tracked packages they don't go missing without a trace.

Even with a tracking number packages still get lost or go missing and never get seen again. It's happened to me in both directions in the past. The tracking information stops getting updates and that's the end of it. Calling the shipping company rarely get you anywhere.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-04-29, 19:41:

liqmat wrote on 2021-04-29, 18:07:

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-29, 17:41:

My next Core 2 Quad from China finally arrived (after nearly 2 months)

Feel lucky at two months. I sent three large boxes of vintage parts to Europe from the U.S. back in December. They vaporized. I heard there may have been sightings in the Bermuda Triangle, but unconfirmed. Either way, sad face. I did get my shipping costs reimbursed, but I would have preferred that the parts had made it to their destination.

I rarely ship things internationally, but were they untracked? I'd expect that with tracked packages they don't go missing without a trace.

I ship international all the time and this is the first time something like that has happened to me. Apparently I wasn't the only one. I never got a completely clear answer, but they blamed it on Brexit during a certain time period. I did read somewhere when France shut down its borders truck drivers were stuck for days waiting. Some sleeping in their trucks. I bet some got pissed and just walked away. Who knows. A warehouse had the tracking numbers, but could not locate the boxes from what I was told. Anyway, hasn't happened since so I just shrug my shoulders and move on at this point. One of the boxes had quite a few vintage graphics cards in it (nothing 3Dfx caliber, but still ... sigh.

framebuffer wrote on 2021-04-29, 19:26:

- POW GeForce GTX 590 (2x)

Nice pair!
Love the dual GPU's, wonder if we will ever see one again.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-04-29, 19:32:

I bet. Any plans for all this fun stuff?

Uhm, some

GeForce 7800GS AGP

- No specific plans atm but will end up in some late AGP build/compare at some point

GeForce 9500GS 512MB

- Was very cheap and a nice little card to have. Want to compare it (possibly overclocked) vs a 9700M GT (from an ASUS ROG G50V)

Diamond Viper V550 (Riva TNT)

- Need it for an upcoming 1998 VGA compare project (G200 vs Riva TNT vs S3 Savage 3D vs Voodoo Banshee vs Voodoo2 8MB-12MB vs Voodoo2 12MB SLI)

Radeon HD5450 PCI edition

- This one is for an IBM NetVista Desktop (w/ Pentium4 3GHz) which doesn't have AGP 😀

ASUS P5A-B w/ K6-2 450 and accessories

- Have few ideas but yet to be well defined

Crucial BallistiX Tracer 800 4-4-4-12

- Those are so cool that the plan is simply to use them in as many builds/projects as possible 😁

XFX GeForce GTX 260

- Good candidate for an XFX/nVidia build theme (w/ the XFX/EVGA nForce 780i SLI), also a very good card to play 2004-2006+ XP games in hi-res with full AA/AF

ASUS 8800 GTS

- - No specific plans atm

DELL Latitude (Pentium4 'Northwood' 1.40GHz / GeForce4 440Go)

- Compare the Mobile Northwood 1.40 vs Tualatin 1.40 vs Athlon / XP
- Understand why the 440Go w/ P4 1.40 is fast as a GeForce2 GTS and a P4 3.46GHz despite has half pp/tmu

POW GeForce GTX 590 (2x)

- X58 Quad SLI build!

@Framebuffer

All of those projects sound super fun! Especially the Gtx590 quad sli

PTherapist wrote on 2021-04-29, 15:30:

Added another Micro to my collection, which arrived today, the Atari 65XE computer, XC12, tape with games, manual & a PSU. - […]
Show full quote

Added another Micro to my collection, which arrived today, the Atari 65XE computer, XC12, tape with games, manual & a PSU. -

Keys are a little yellowed, but nothing that can't be easily solved. Otherwise it is in perfect working condition and only in need of some light case cleaning.

Another system I never owned back in the day, but wanted one for curiosity. I actually bought this on a whim, saw it on eBay and decided to grab it.

I know the XL models are a little more desirable among collectors, but my retro budget was a bit tight and the price for this XE was just right and it suits my needs.

I was a bit worried when I first turned it on and saw a brief flash of colour, before it turned black & white. Applied some contact cleaner to the R38 pot and then switched the machine on and tweaked it slightly until the colour reappeared. Nice easy fix.

Nice Powerplay Cruiser joystick 😀

Was always my favorite back in the day too.

Complete set of turned pin sockets for my C64-ATX build.

I didn't even know there was an HD5450 PCI card... that is one I don't have.

On another note, I now have a Roland SC-88 Pro on the way that the seller said everything works except it doesn't output sound.

Hope it is an easy fix.

Edit:
So there are two differrent PCI HD5450 cards. A 512MB on and a 1GB one.

Both were made by Jaton
512MB: Video-339PCI-HLX
1GB : Video-339PCI-HLP

Very interesting.

So I finally found something that can replace my Matrox millennium in my PMMX. This is a creative CT 6850, an S3 Savage 4 Pro. I love my matrox , but I won’t complain about having something that is just a bit better for DOS game compatibility, and actually has 3D acceleration that outclasses the permedia 2 based PCI card I had.

And following a BIOS update for the card, it's working like a charm.

liqmat wrote on 2021-04-29, 18:07:

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-29, 17:41:

My next Core 2 Quad from China finally arrived (after nearly 2 months)

Feel lucky at two months. I sent three large boxes of vintage parts to Europe from the U.S. back in December. They vaporized. I heard there may have been sightings in the Bermuda Triangle, but unconfirmed. Either way, sad face. I did get my shipping costs reimbursed, but I would have preferred that the parts had made it to their destination.

Just a few weeks before the Camp Fire, a friend who worked fora tech firm gave me a load of very expensive computer equipment that was up for grabs at his job. Included were three GA-X99-UD5 motherboards. To get them to accept fast DDR4, I had to buy some DDR4 2400 so they could boot up to flash the BIOS. So I ordered some from Newegg, and it was due to be delivered on the morning of, you guessed it, November eighth, 2018. "Driver has abandoned his truck and is running for his life" wasn't included in the tracking for some reason. After I had set up a forwarding address, I gave it a few weeks, then made a claim with Newegg.

I also had put up a couple of things for sale on Ebay just before the fire, and I had to email the buyers to let them know that either their purchase was burned and would never be coming, or they had survived, but I had no way of knowing when I would be able to get to them to ship them. Then I found out it had all burned and I had to cancel the transactions.