160GB IDE hard drive. It had a orange price tag on it. Found it bare hard drive with no static bag just sitting on the shelf with the rest of the junk in there. Orange tags were -75% off today. $0.85 after tax to walk out the door with it.

Working on testing it now.

EDIT: WORKS! Spins up, has a partition on it, read by windows.. performing slow error scan / surface scan with hdtune pro now. Only getting 37-38 MB/s over usb 2.0 but it's fine. Just leaving it going while I play games.

kithylin wrote:

160GB IDE hard drive. It had a orange price tag on it. Found it bare hard drive with no static bag just sitting on the shelf wit […]
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160GB IDE hard drive. It had a orange price tag on it. Found it bare hard drive with no static bag just sitting on the shelf with the rest of the junk in there. Orange tags were -75% off today. $0.85 after tax to walk out the door with it.

Working on testing it now.

EDIT: WORKS! Spins up, has a partition on it, read by windows.. performing slow error scan / surface scan with hdtune pro now. Only getting 37-38 MB/s over usb 2.0 but it's fine. Just leaving it going while I play games.

Good find. Too many HDs are destroyed "for privacy" these days.

xplus93 wrote:

kithylin wrote:

160GB IDE hard drive. It had a orange price tag on it. Found it bare hard drive with no static bag just sitting on the shelf with the rest of the junk in there. Orange tags were -75% off today. $0.85 after tax to walk out the door with it.

Working on testing it now.

EDIT: WORKS! Spins up, has a partition on it, read by windows.. performing slow error scan / surface scan with hdtune pro now. Only getting 37-38 MB/s over usb 2.0 but it's fine. Just leaving it going while I play games.

Good find. Too many HDs are destroyed "for privacy" these days.

Yes, I plan to do a boot`n`nuke on it later in another computer. But I need to make sure it's healthy first. Surface scan should take about an hour.. better to find out if it's bad before leaving a computer on for 4-7 hours to do a boot`n`nuke, only to find out at 90% it hits a bad sector.

xplus93 wrote:

kithylin wrote:

160GB IDE hard drive. It had a orange price tag on it. Found it bare hard drive with no static bag just sitting on the shelf wit […]
Show full quote

160GB IDE hard drive. It had a orange price tag on it. Found it bare hard drive with no static bag just sitting on the shelf with the rest of the junk in there. Orange tags were -75% off today. $0.85 after tax to walk out the door with it.

Working on testing it now.

EDIT: WORKS! Spins up, has a partition on it, read by windows.. performing slow error scan / surface scan with hdtune pro now. Only getting 37-38 MB/s over usb 2.0 but it's fine. Just leaving it going while I play games.

Good find. Too many HDs are destroyed "for privacy" these days.

IMO that's a pretty valid reason. I sure wouldn't want random Joe having access to my entire financial record and the average person wouldn't know how to properly wipe a hard drive. It's really too time consuming to be done in mass on old slow hard drives by the hundreds. Plus hard drives tend to have pretty long service life's and like all magnetic media they do decrease in reliability after a while.

kithylin wrote:

160GB IDE hard drive. It had a orange price tag on it. Found it bare hard drive with no static bag just sitting on the shelf wit […]
Show full quote

160GB IDE hard drive. It had a orange price tag on it. Found it bare hard drive with no static bag just sitting on the shelf with the rest of the junk in there. Orange tags were -75% off today. $0.85 after tax to walk out the door with it.

Working on testing it now.

EDIT: WORKS! Spins up, has a partition on it, read by windows.. performing slow error scan / surface scan with hdtune pro now. Only getting 37-38 MB/s over usb 2.0 but it's fine. Just leaving it going while I play games.

A very good deal since it is a larger IDE drive and IDE drives are getting harder to find.

Left it scanning while I was watching "Angry Birds: The Movie" ... mmmm my first ever native 4K movie. Made my 3770K + R9 290X work hard for it, almost stressed gpu + cpu constantly.

160GB IDE Drive passed hdtune while I was watching.. and set it up on spare computer in the other room with boot`n`nuke and let it go for a few hours. Yay cheap IDE drive, decent capacity for an old system.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

Typical Samsung UCCC DDR400 can run 2-2-2-5 DDR333 mode on stock voltage just as easily. In fact, even more older Samsung DDR333 256mb sticks were able to do it.

Yes, I've also had good results with RAM OC's troughout all my computers from SDR to DDR3. In fact my memory modules always able to run at step+1 frequency and those were no special modules. I picked these, not only for the price, but I like their heatsink. Bought similar hyperX DDR3 modules with blue heatsink for my main rig last year, kingston did not really change the design a lot 😎

brostenen wrote:

Bought a Commodore64 PLA chip and a socket for the chip. Hope I do not screw the soldering job up.
My machine begun to make some strange stuff. Poke 1,63 did not freeze it, and the diagnostic
program said that there are some timer issue and bad U5. Hope my reading is correct that it is the PLA.

I just chopped my old one off at the legs and de-soldered each leg - easier!

Kind of started collecting ISA audio cards; now I finally have a more classic SB16 in the form of a CT2290. Hope I didn't end up getting one of the worse versions out there.

I didn't notice that the bracket was warped on either end before posting; I have since fixed the bracket. more concerning however is that one of the capacitors near the amp chip appears to have imploded somehow. This needs to be replaced, right?

Anyway, next up is an impulse purchase, a GeForce 256 SDR. I replaced its fan with a cheap 3rd party cooler, and the original fan on this thing has now lives on cooling my GeForce 256 DDR.

Also grabbed a Pentium 233 MMX CPU to replace the 166 in my Socket 7 Voodoo 2 system. I think I've done all my retro spending on the first day of the month unless I come across any awesome bargains (currently hunting down a CHEAP Vibra 16S ISA card..)

Who am I kidding 🤣

appiah4 wrote:

(currently hunting down a CHEAP Vibra 16S ISA card..)

Who am I kidding 🤣

Here is one on eBay for $19 + shipping. Depending on where you are, it could be a pretty good deal.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Vibra-16S-Mo … G-/282487131168

and another:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Sound-Blaste … 62/182569271512

and somebody has a bunch of new ones for cheap

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Labs-16-bit- … d-/391670743374

badmojo wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Bought a Commodore64 PLA chip and a socket for the chip. Hope I do not screw the soldering job up.
My machine begun to make some strange stuff. Poke 1,63 did not freeze it, and the diagnostic
program said that there are some timer issue and bad U5. Hope my reading is correct that it is the PLA.

I just chopped my old one off at the legs and de-soldered each leg - easier!

I think that is my plan as well. Does the C64 have brittle solderpads like SMD or is it a bit more roggid?
My plan is to solder in the socket, in order for easy access in the future. (and not to destroy the pads)

brostenen wrote:

I think that is my plan as well. Does the C64 have brittle solderpads like SMD or is it a bit more roggid?
My plan is to solder in the socket, in order for easy access in the future. (and not to destroy the pads)

No I've found the solder on mine to be quite workable and easy to remove with braid, I just don't have the patience / skill to remove whole chips without cooking the board. Given there's a lot of room to move on the board I think chopping them is a good option (I used a dremel) and then you can simply heat one leg at a time and yank them out with pliers

cyclone3d wrote:

Here is one on eBay for $19 + shipping. Depending on where you are, it could be a pretty good deal. […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote:

(currently hunting down a CHEAP Vibra 16S ISA card..)

Who am I kidding 🤣

Here is one on eBay for $19 + shipping. Depending on where you are, it could be a pretty good deal.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Vibra-16S-Mo … G-/282487131168

and another:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Sound-Blaste … 62/182569271512

and somebody has a bunch of new ones for cheap

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Creative-Labs-16-bit- … d-/391670743374

I snatched a used 16S with IDE and OPL on ebay for 1 GBP plus shipping yay me!

I got these nice parts:

Asus P2B-LS

Powerleap PL-iP3/T with Tualeron 1.2GHz

Pioneer DVD-105SZ (Slot loading DVD player - hope it still works!)

Predator99 wrote:

Just received this lot. […]
Show full quote

Just received this lot.

The attachment IMG_0031r.jpg is no longer available

Reason to buy it was that I spotted a 80286 Suntac Board for my collection in the pile.

The attachment IMG_0036r.jpg is no longer available

Most luckily it seems to be in almost perfect condition with battery removed before causing any damage 😀

Then there is a nice Socket 7 AT board

The attachment IMG_0034r.jpg is no longer available

And 2 even more nice 80386 CHIPS boards. However the 82A306 Socket is destroyed in both 🙁 One chip is still in its socket, so I hope I will be able to repair it.

The attachment IMG_0037r.jpg is no longer available

The attachment IMG_0039r.jpg is no longer available

First I will test the Suntac 😀

EDIT: Arrrghh no the 2nd 386 Board isnt a CHIP but an INTEL...some idiot removed the 82A306 from the CHIPS board and put it in a socket of the INTEL board.... 😵 😵 😵

I just like to share that I managed to repair this board 😀

Soldered a new socket and took the 82A306 from the other board where it was "installed" as 80387...
The cap right beside the socket is als destroyed and only the half left, but it seems to be working so I will not replace it.

8 MB of RAM in such an old board...wow!!

Cyrix200+ wrote:

I got these nice parts: […]
Show full quote

I got these nice parts:

Asus P2B-LS

Powerleap PL-iP3/T with Tualeron 1.2GHz

Pioneer DVD-105SZ (Slot loading DVD player - hope it still works!)

That is a nice DVD player. It has that uncommon late 90s Retrofuturstic look. Beiege and slot loading. I also suspect it's harder on disks though.

I found another 486!

I have an ad on kijiji looking for older PCs, and yesterday someone messaged me that he has one if I'm interested and sent me pics. It came complete and is very clean (no dust, all the fans are excellent, the 5.25 drive still has the cardboard dummy diskette!). Apparently this was his first computer, so I want to keep it fairly original.

ECS UM4890 1.1 Motherboard (with external battery)
486 DX4-100 (heatsink is glued on, so not sure if Intel or AMD)
64MB 72-pin RAM (4x16MB)
Winbond ISA I/O Card (not VLB)
SoundBlaster 16 ISA CT1470
Diamond Viper VLB Video card
SMC 10mbit NIC
Fujitsu M2684TAU 528MB HDDs (two of them!)
Unknown CD-ROM (connected thru SB16, looks like a Creative?)
5.25 Floppy Drive
3.5 Floppy Drive

Fujistu FKB4700 AT Keyboard
Microsft Intellimouse 1.1A Serial
AST 14" Monitor (not shown)
Panasonic dot matrix printer (not shown, will probably be recycled)

I really like this case. It looks a lot like LGR's wood grain 486 case. I was also able to use this AT PSU to verify that my other 486 still posts fine, so it was only the PSU that died 😀

Man, that is a gorgeous system! Enjoy it!

Nice! wow!

Wow indeed. In the US, is it just craigslist and recycling centers? What other options are there?