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PeterLI wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

Not all is lost there are twenty somethings like myself who are into the dos era...

It is all a matter of supply and demand. When demand drops because the generation who used it most moves on the prices will go down a lot. Once prices go down a lot supply will also go down a lot. This is simply the law of supply & demand.

This is why Socket 754 and 939 are good platforms to hoard.
Lots of people are AMD nostalgic and want the good days to return. These platforms are fun to tinker with so its less likely people loose interest.
Supply is low even now and demand should only go up for at least the next 5 - 10 years.

Skyscraper wrote:

This is why Socket 754 and 939 are good platforms to hoard. Lots of people are AMD nostalgic and want the good days to return. T […]
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PeterLI wrote:

nforce4max wrote:

Not all is lost there are twenty somethings like myself who are into the dos era...

It is all a matter of supply and demand. When demand drops because the generation who used it most moves on the prices will go down a lot. Once prices go down a lot supply will also go down a lot. This is simply the law of supply & demand.

This is why Socket 754 and 939 are good platforms to hoard.
Lots of people are AMD nostalgic and want the good days to return. These platforms are fun to tinker with so its less likely people loose interest.
Supply is low even now and demand should only go up for at least the next 5 - 10 years.

Good point. I loved my socket 754 and 939. The only other socket I've had more fun tinkering is my current 1366. Oh Athlon, how you kicked ass back in the day. DFI LanParty NF4 SLI DR was insane. Wished I kept that motherboard!

nforce4max wrote:

Not all is lost there are twenty somethings like myself who are into the dos era, I am not really in it for the games but the hardware.

Oh, a fellow twenty something retro-guy! All power to us! Though I've had the desire to start collecting retro-hardware quite some time ago, only recently I started having the cash to do so... So I guess I'm late to the party. Thankfully (?) I'm in a third world country, so the P3s here are still dirt cheap and you can buy some of the more common chips in bulk at US$2 each... Pentium MMX chips can also be had at that price... I'm thinking of buying a few just in case.

BTW, I'm currently on a trip to the US, and thanks to that I was FINALLY able to get myself a nice Yamaha daughterboard. Can't wait to get back home, test it (plus my new ISA sound card) and take pictures of everything and make a nifty post in this topic =) I also managed to acquire a pair of Voodoo2s.... I'm just waiting for them to arrive from Korea or something. My PCs in my childhood were usually nothing to write home about, so I'll finally be able to run all the Glide stuff I couldn't back when I was younger!

I'm bang-on 20 myself, although I'm much more a Win9x guy than DOS. I know a fair few people whom are interested in older games (recently got a good friend of mine into Jazz Jackrabbit 2), but most people don't have the time or spare money to have a second system for older games.

I'm 23 and I've been in to this since being 19. You don't have to have a lot of money for this hobby. In fact, the more money you have, the more you buy, the less time you spend with most parts/builds/games. I assume anything that consumes less then $300 a month a very inexpensive hobby, and it's fairly easy to spend less.

dogchainx wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:

This is why Socket 754 and 939 are good platforms to hoard.
Lots of people are AMD nostalgic and want the good days to return. These platforms are fun to tinker with so its less likely people loose interest.
Supply is low even now and demand should only go up for at least the next 5 - 10 years.

Good point. I loved my socket 754 and 939. The only other socket I've had more fun tinkering is my current 1366. Oh Athlon, how you kicked ass back in the day. DFI LanParty NF4 SLI DR was insane. Wished I kept that motherboard!

I owned a nforce4 SLI DR at one point for socket 939. Was fantastic with a dual core 2MB (dual-1MB) amd opteron chip and I had a big custom heatsink on it. I spent months tweaking every tiny last little ounce of performance out of that thing and getting it perfectly stable at 3.6 ghz and dual-channel ddr-585 had it for like almost 2 years at those speeds and settings. I ended up trading it to someone for a big quad-P3 dell power edge that I don't use anymore. Kinda makes me sad thinking back on it. Because of missing that board, I just recently bought my amd 939 runner up, the Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe.

Part of supply and demand, we could buy high-clocked aftermarket DDR ram all the way up to 600 mhz at one point, lots of stores had it in stock. Now today, we can't find any of it anywhere not even the used markets. And the DFI Lanparty Nforce4 SLI-DR isn't for sale anywhere either, even used. Occasionally they show up on ebay but not very often. By far and wide the best 939 board ever made.

I've managed to rummage in my notes and find some spec #'s on some DDR that's good up to 550 mhz and got one stick of it last month on ebay and have another stick coming today. It's not the ddr-600 we used to could buy years back, but at least it's something nice. Sometimes we can find people selling what they think is normal ram, but we that know, know it's something special that far exceeds it's listed specs. And because normal DDR ram is in surplus and cheap right now, they sell it cheap, unknowing and just thinking it's common.

RacoonRider wrote:

I'm 23 and I've been in to this since being 19. You don't have to have a lot of money for this hobby. In fact, the more money you have, the more you buy, the less time you spend with most parts/builds/games. I assume anything that consumes less then $300 a month a very inexpensive hobby, and it's fairly easy to spend less.

Oh yes, now that I started I realized retro-computing is only as expensive as you want it to be, and how patient you are instead of jumping at the first ebay listing for the hardware you're looking for. And somethimes you can even find stuff laying arround ready to be taken for free! It looked more intimidating from the outside, though. Luckly I'm spending a fair amount on my "modern computing" needs, so I can't hoard old stuff that quickly.

Lukeno94 wrote:

I'm bang-on 20 myself, although I'm much more a Win9x guy than DOS. I know a fair few people whom are interested in older games (recently got a good friend of mine into Jazz Jackrabbit 2), but most people don't have the time or spare money to have a second system for older games.

I feel old now... I'm 25 xD

In fact, the more money you have, the more you buy, the less time you spend with most parts/builds/games.

And the faster you run out of space

RacoonRider wrote:

I'm 23 and I've been in to this since being 19. You don't have to have a lot of money for this hobby. In fact, the more money you have, the more you buy, the less time you spend with most parts/builds/games. I assume anything that consumes less then $300 a month a very inexpensive hobby, and it's fairly easy to spend less.

Thing is, I'm talking from the perspective of a University student where that $300 is way more than I spend in a month altogether (excluding rent, which is paid termly), and where most of us have very little cash spare, let alone time.

Today I received a ROM card and a 1MB RAM card from Lo-tech.

And... I found another P3B-F at the scrap yard! YEAH! 😀

Lukeno94 wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

I'm 23 and I've been in to this since being 19. You don't have to have a lot of money for this hobby. In fact, the more money you have, the more you buy, the less time you spend with most parts/builds/games. I assume anything that consumes less then $300 a month a very inexpensive hobby, and it's fairly easy to spend less.

Thing is, I'm talking from the perspective of a University student where that $300 is way more than I spend in a month altogether (excluding rent, which is paid termly), and where most of us have very little cash spare, let alone time.

I get your point. What I mean is for us playing with top of the line equipment is fairly cheap if you compare it to other hobbies like cycling, where top-gear bikes can easily cost $3000, not including the uniform and other stuff.

We are from entirely different parts of the world, in Russia students recieve money from the government monthly based on how well they study. When I entered University in 2008 I got only the basic part of it - $30. After having excellent marks for two years and getting to know people, I started getting around $400 monthly, which is very good given that I lived with my mother back then and didn't have to pay for much. I worked 10 hours a week to put a $100 on top of it and was pretty happy. Now that I am an engineer I don't get much more, but with way more effort, which makes me sad.

All that said, I use exchange rate to USD as it was back then - around 30RUR per 1 USD, not the current rate.

Finally found a SB MCV Pro 2 ('enhanced' version of the microchannel soundblaster with OPL3 instead of OPL2) for $100:

Going to do some recordings once it arrives (and obligatory recapping since Creative used the lowest possible quality capacitors they could find-- *sigh*). They don't pop up very often but they're not impossible to find-- despite what self-proclaimed vintage enthusiasts would like you to believe.

raymangold, I don't get it, is it a PCI version of one of the old sound blasters? Looks very weird. What can it do?

Bought an OmniView F1D108-OSD 8-port KVM switch new in box and got a Virge DX (still wet after cleaning) for free. Can you believe that up until now I haven't seen a Virge live? I've got more S3s Trios than I care to remember and up until now not a single Virge. Btw, this one has a "TV" connector. S-Video out?

RacoonRider wrote:

raymangold, I don't get it, is it a PCI version of one of the old sound blasters? Looks very weird.

Not PCI, but Micro Channel (MCA) bus:

Info here:
http://museum.ttrk.ee/th99/i/C-D/53588.htm

And Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Channel_architecture

That's a serious KVM 😀 What are you planning with it?

I've had my eye on a Belkin Omniview Pro KVM for a while now, just haven't found one cheap enough. Only a 4-port one though... that one you have is a beast!

Artex wrote:

Not PCI, but Micro Channel (MCA) bus: […]
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RacoonRider wrote:

raymangold, I don't get it, is it a PCI version of one of the old sound blasters? Looks very weird.

Not PCI, but Micro Channel (MCA) bus:

Info here:
http://museum.ttrk.ee/th99/i/C-D/53588.htm

And Here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Channel_architecture

Thanks for the info, mate! Now I get why it's barely possible to find one.

dexter311 wrote:

I've had my eye on a Belkin Omniview Pro KVM for a while now, just haven't found one cheap enough. Only a 4-port one though... that one you have is a beast!

I thought I would buy an 8-port one so that I would not need to get another one later when I add more computers 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

That's a serious KVM 😀 What are you planning with it?

Figured out it would be perfect for a KVM system for dayly use. It handles resolutions up to 1600x1200 and has a high-quality COM to PS/2 converter.

It's going to output to an IBM P76 17" CRT monitor.
The inputs are going to be:
Port 1 - Main PC secondary monitor
Port 2 - Athlon XP
Port 3 - PII
Port 4 - 486

I might add a couple more machines later, maybe a hot Pentium-60 girl or a 386 with 256Kb cache I have all parts for.

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Got another mystery box full of stuff. Today's haul includes:

- Two socket 3 boards, one with Am486 DX4-100, the other with Evergreen Am5x86-P75
- A socket 7 board, Atrend AT-1020+ 512k, with Pentium MMX 223MHz.
- Soltek SL-75KV, socket A, with Duron 700.
- Soltek SL-77KV, slot A, with Athlon 750.
- Yet another Jetway 993AN. These freak me out every time I see one.

- Microsoft InPort Device Interface Adapter, 8-bit ISA bus mouse card.
- No-name ISA sound card with Crystal CS4231A and Opti 82C929A, and an unidentified chip which may be an OPL3 clone I haven't seen before.
- Terratec SoundSystem Base-1, sounds cool but it's only an AD1816-based card.
- Trident TGUI9420DGi VLB. Meh.
- Packard Bell DONOTREMOVETHISLABELVOIDIFTAMPERED sound card. ISA with OPL3. Made in Singapore...?

- One hand full of SIMMs and DIMMs, including one SDRAM module with sixteen chips... on each side!