Two laptops arrived today:

A Compaq 6910P (C2D T7300, 4GB RAM, 3 20GB HDD, GMA X3100, 14.1" 1440x900)
A Dell XPS M1730 (C2D T7300, 4GB RAM, Quadro FX3500M, 17" 1920x1200)

The Dell has had its screen replaced but I don't believe it's the correct model (does anyone know if a 1710 came with a glossy display? Everything I can find says it should have an Intel TrueLife display), is missing the wireless cover door, the hard drive caddy, the system complains the battery is too weak to boot the system, and it won't boot with the included PA-13 power adapter because the adapter is bad and the computer can't identify it's wattage (I check and my E1505 couldn't identity it either so it's not the DC jack). My XPS Gen1's PA-15 wouldn't work as it would then complain no power adapter was connected. It was also pretty loose in the jack so I think the PA15 is using a slightly different plug. Also included were a spare motherboard and a GeForce 7900GS video card as spares. I think I'm going to spend around 50 getting this machine 100 percent working.

Some CPUs today:

The 386s on a PGA adapter are new to me. Unfortunately not in a perfect condition, but will test later. Difficult today to get 386s for a reasonable price...

Then the Philips Interwave clone for my GUS collection 😀

Saw this locally for cheap and had to get it, it's pretty interesting motherboard - AsRock ALiveDual-eSata2

It has fully functioning PCI-E 16x and AGP 8x slots, ULi M1695 chipset has drivers available for anything from Win95 and NT4 up to Vista, socket is AM2 but it has bios support up to Phenom II X4. Building a multiboot system with this should be interesting. I'm guessing the PCI-E card should be single slot so it doesn't get choked by the AGP card below it, so that would be 9800GT, HD4850 or that rare single slot GTX 260 variant, though I guess the last one would get cpu bottlenecked.

CelGen wrote:

Called up my dealer saying I needed a fix badly.

Have you considered rehab?

Anonymous Coward wrote:

CelGen wrote:

Called up my dealer saying I needed a fix badly.
He sold me a Compaq Deskpro 66m in reasonable shape with the optional 5.25" floppy drive.

So this is a Pentium 66 with only EISA bus? That's pretty unique.

No it's the 486 CPU board model.

blurks wrote:

A 3DLabs Wildcat VP760 and an Oxygen VX1 (both sealed).

blurks wrote:

A 3DLabs Wildcat VP760 and an Oxygen VX1 (both sealed).

Nice duo! I've always wondered how these 3DLabs cards perform in games or are they purely for desktop use?

rikukos wrote:

blurks wrote:

A 3DLabs Wildcat VP760 and an Oxygen VX1 (both sealed).

Nice duo! I've always wondered how these 3DLabs cards perform in games or are they purely for desktop use?

Neither. They are for CAD modellling. Also 3D but different demands to gaming.

Wildcat series can used for games, but performance is very lacking. VP760 can be compared to GeForce 256 SDR. Heck, you can even lauch Morrowind with shaders, allbeit quite slow.

i have actually 10 vlb cards, but just 3 is perfect - so i try to collect some backup.

Genoa Phantom 64 2M VLB S3 Vision864
Spea V7 Mirage P64 1M VLB S3 Vision864
Spea V7 Mercury P64 2M VLB S3 Vision964
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5429 2M VLB

i am very happy with the genoa, finally a perfect vision864 (i have 3 another) - this my primary card in my dx4vlb.

blurks wrote:

A 3DLabs Wildcat VP760 and an Oxygen VX1 (both sealed).

Nice duo. Oxygen VX1 can be used to learn Display/DirectDraw/DirectX9 D3D driver programming, as the source code for the display driver is available in the WinXP/2003 DDK, so it can be compiled with debug information, do traces paired together with checked versions of windows display components, follow step by step execution up to Oxygen VX1 chip registers, etc... Very useful for projects like VirGL or ReactOS.

Too many photos, so I will need to split this between two posts. Probably the more interesting bit will be in the second. First up is the entire haul from a Craigslist deal.

The seller claimed everything was working when it was pulled from the systems. I am burying the lead here because I have not got a photo of it at the moment, but I am really curious about the 9 VLB card. Seems to be really powerful? I have the card, driver disks, copies, and manual.

A free modem! Might be something for the Raspberry Pi project...

IO card, great for the first motherboard I purchased on eBay. It will be in the next post.

AT Keyboard, does not seem like anything special. The seller had an entire box. Maybe 11 left? I might go back and buy them. He said he had an IBM Model M or two buried. I will definitely keep an eye out for them.

The 486 board I got from the seller with a dx4-100 on it. I have yet to post it. Who knows if any of this works. I probably paid too much for this. Such is the hobby I suppose. Time to update my signature...

twilliamc wrote:

The 486 board I got from the seller with a dx4-100 on it. I have yet to post it. Who knows if any of this works. I probably paid too much for this. Such is the hobby I suppose. Time to update my signature...

A working VIP board is WELL worth the effort to save.

I would also cherish that #9 vlb video card.

#9 has most probably S3 868 chipset. Very good in my book 😁

Had an hour to kill while I waited for someone, and a nearby charity shop. This place NEVER gets any PC stuff or even any decent games. They occasionally get good records though, so I decided to pop in.

Well, to my great surprise, I spot a bunch of expansion cards on a shelf along with some DVD drives, an ATX power supply, and a NIB wired network switch. Here are my picks of the bunch:

An ATI Rage LT Pro PCI, with some kind of mini-D-sub flat panel connector on the front (anyone know what this is for?) and a Sound Blaster 16 for five bucks each. Not bad!

To be honest, I've been after a 'faster' Rage card with CIF support for a project, so this was a great score. Left behind a mint-looking Radeon 7000-ish All in Wonder AGP, an SB Live of some sort, two ATI(!) PCI modems, and a TV tuner card. Just don’t need them.

So with my prize in hand I walk up to the counter - and that was when I made the fatal mistake.

“How much is that Wii back there?”

God damnit...

Apparently it was out on the shelf for weeks with a $50 tag and didn’t sell. The tag also said “tested - works great!” The guy manning the counter offered it to me for $30 without any prompting, so yeah, I wasn’t gonna leave that behind. It even came in this neat Intec Wii briefcase.

It was a bit dirty but cleaned up really nicely and looks near mint now, the sticky pads on the sensor bar hadn’t even been used.

I also bought a game ... chillout ... exploration thing. For a buck. Hey, I like those.

Honestly, I'm gonna have to stop thrifting if this keeps up. 😜 I went from finding virtually nothing and thinking all the supply had dried up, to seemingly spotting something interesting every time I go anywhere. At least the Wii is tiny and fit neatly into my 15kHz gaming cabinet, next to the four other consoles with a stack of games I haven't played yet. Can't really complain though.

Loot on a fleamarket.

kixs wrote:

#9 has most probably S3 868 chipset. Very good in my book 😁

I'm pretty sure it's a Trio64, because there's no RAMDAC IC.

Yes, there is - look at that AT&T chip.

xjas wrote:

An ATI Rage LT Pro PCI, with some kind of mini-D-sub flat panel connector on the front (anyone know what this is for?) and a Sound Blaster 16 for five bucks each. Not bad!

I've seen early Compaq branded LCD monitors with this connector. I've also seen cables with this one one end and a DVI on the other. It could also be a pre-DVI digital output (panellink?). Can't read the numbers on the transceiver chip near the connector, but there may be datasheet for it somewhere.

hard1k wrote:

Yes, there is - look at that AT&T chip.

Ah, now I see it.

They did make a Trio64 Version though, and it looks very similar.