I was strolling through the local flea market today when I spotted a cardboard box full of all motherboards and some other components among a bunch of tools, pots and other non-computer items, just laid out on a blanket on the ground. On top of the pile, recognisable from far away, was the unmistakable shape of a K6 family CPU sitting in a Baby AT shaped board. I've been wanting a super socket 7 board and CPU for a long time now, so I zero in on it immediately. When I get my hands on it, to my surprise it's not any mere K6 CPU, it's a K6-3! 400 MHz, but I don't even care about the frequency at this point, I'm just super stoked that it's an actual K6-3. These are extremely hard to find here in Europe and especially in a small country like mine. I've been hunting for one on European ebays and locally for months and they don't even show up.
I'm already excited about the find, so next I check the motherboard. Ali Aladdin V chipset is easily recognisable, cool. Looking over the board for any signs of damage, nothing stands out other than a couple slightly bent pins; no corrosion, nothing broken, no missing elements. Looking really good. Last thing I check for are brand and model markings... turns out it's an Asus P5A-B. At this point I can't even believe my luck, I figure no way is this thing gonna boot up once I get it home, I can't be THAT lucky.
Around then this small kid, 10-ish years or so, asks me if I'm interested, I say I'm just looking through for anything interesting worth my time. He says if I want anything, it's 2€ per board. 🤣. I can't give him just 2€ for a super socket 7 board with a K6-3, that's bloody daylight robbery 😀. So I take a quick look at the rest of the boards, it's an array of wildly different platforms, all total 10 boards from slot 1 to socket 775. All with CPUs, some with a stick or two of memory and/or a cooler. Also a few old video cards (couple Ati Rage, one Radeon 9000 and one Geforce FX 5200), an ISA sound card and a couple of what look like industrial or embedded motherboards that I can't even remotely recognise. Most stuff looks in decent condition, some components needing a thorough washing and cleaning though. I don't really have any immediate use for most of the motherboards, but I figure at 2€ a pop, why not.
So I tell the kid I'll give him 20€ for the whole lot. The look on his face when he heard me, he was so excited. He looked to feel as happy about the deal as I did 😀. I could have likely gotten away with offering him half that, but I'd honestly feel like crap for basically robbing him.
Anyway, I get the haul home, excited to try the Asus board out. And the result of the first attempt to boot it, including the CPU it came with, after I double-checked that all the jumpers were configured properly:
Fanspin, beep and video signal. Everything seems to be working just fine. I finally have the foundations for my super socket 7 system 😎
The hardware monitor error is just about the missing -5V rail and no fans connected to some of the headers, once I've set those to ignored, the boot process continues normally.
Couldn't be happier 😀
