Minutemanqvs wrote on 2023-04-10, 19:41:

gerry wrote on 2023-04-10, 18:26:

I recently found a hercules 3d prophet 4000xt pci card - should i be excited? 😀

well i can sort of answer with a no given the performance and reviews - but it does enable me to add 3d to one of my pci only machines and see what it can do

and the card looks great in blue with the tiny fan!

That's a nice find I think, they are a bit exotic and as you say their PCB looks good! It's the first iteration of the Kyro chip as far as I remember.

yes that's it, very basic but winning on aesthetics 😀

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-10, 20:41:

I have this card in AGP and, while an interesting curiosity, was lackluster in compatibility and performance over a comparable NVIDIA and ATI alternative. It is interesting to have in a collection, though. I just couldn't find a good reason to want it in a build.

that's what i've been seeing by review too - whilst i can add it to a machine there isn't much point really as i have some agp machines, except out of interest

Still, i felt happy to find it 😀

There are definite tradeoffs for PCI cards from ATI and NVIDIA. So at the very least, you have a lot more potential with that version. The AGP one is very boring, in my opinion.

Mild excitement is permissible, I wouldn't crack the expensive champagne or book a weekend in Vegas though. I'd probably scrabble together something like a SiS 730 board and a Duron Morgan core to go with that board if I got one. Though actually I think that's the back burner plan for the SiS Xabre AGP in my stash, only with an AGP board.. K7SEM or something.

Salvaged a NEC EA244UHD monitor with intact screen.
Only thing wrong with it was no green color.
This is one of those monitors that uses Green Blue leds with red phospor coating to turn it into white.
The driver for the green leds wasn't delivering any power due to one broken component.
An SR5100 schottky barrier diode had gone short.
Replacing it fixed it.

The monitor might be 9 years old, just a guess, but it's a UHD monitor with the ability to display four 1920x1080 inputs simultaneously.

weedeewee wrote on 2023-04-13, 20:35:

Salvaged a NEC EA244UHD monitor with intact screen. Only thing wrong with it was no green color. This is one of those monitors t […]
Show full quote

Salvaged a NEC EA244UHD monitor with intact screen.
Only thing wrong with it was no green color.
This is one of those monitors that uses Green Blue leds with red phospor coating to turn it into white.
The driver for the green leds wasn't delivering any power due to one broken component.
An SR5100 schottky barrier diode had gone short.
Replacing it fixed it.

The monitor might be 9 years old, just a guess, but it's a UHD monitor with the ability to display four 1920x1080 inputs simultaneously.

Nice ! Good job fixing it too ! reminds me of the out of warranty BenQ UHD I got cheap at a thrift store a few years or so ago (about a 2016 model iirc). worked great for a year then PSU went out but it took out other parts with it so just scrapped it 🙁
I think some of the early UHD had better overall imagry and construction than the new ones (checked out a few 2022 last year and UGH)

I had a long-time PC repair guy from a neighboring town contact me to see if I wanted a whole bunch of stuff for free and I managed to get over there today. The vast majority of what he had was newer than what I'd normally take, but he still had some really cool stuff and a few nice older parts mixed into the rest.

Among the many modems and AudioPCI cards I found the following interesting cards:
Turtle Beach Montego 2 Aureal Vortex 2 (Probably dell OEM)
3dfx Velocity 100 (8MB 143Mhz Voodoo 3; Gateway OEM card with BIOS chip labeled V3 1000... but not actually a Voodoo 3 1000, which is a 16MB 125Mhz card)
ELSA Synergy II -32 CPQ (Compaq OEM TNT2 32MB)
Diamond Viper II Z200 32MB (S3 Savage 2000 32MB... only the second Savage 2000 I have ever come across! Quite pleased about this surprise... hopefully it works.)
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro (looks to be in decent shape... fan is probably shot though)

There was also a whole pile of 486-era processors just mixed into a big box of assorted junk and wires. All the pins are bent (all of 'em) but there should be a some good chips here. One Cyrix 6x86P*166GP, and a Cyrix CX486DX2-66GP with the green heatsink (not attached anymore, but present). There are a couple that have heatsinks permanently adhered to them that I will definitely need help identifying. One of them has me very intrigued because on the bottom it has the same style of markings as another one I have on hand which is an IBM 486DX-33 (the type with the very basic black lettering on the top and no logos), but it looks a little different and I can't find anything when I look up the number printed on the bottom (95G1445). When I look up the number on the IBM DX33 (77G2845) it comes up easily in Google searches, so it seems like this one should too unless it's a less common chip.

Here is a picture:

There is also much much much more here that is newer. I have a fairly good idea of what is there and the rest isn't anything real crazy, but still some handy stuff.

I have no idea what to do with them, but there were also a pair of Eclipse Testpad Extreme industrial rugged tablets in their hard plastic cases with chargers. These tablets have dual batteries (removable!), BayTrail Celeron Quad Core CPUs, 8GB of RAM, 64GB of storage and lots of interesting features, like full size USB ports. They both have Windows 10 currently installed. I can't find anyone selling these online, so I have no idea if they're worth anything or useful for anything beyond a normal Windows 10 tablet. They seem to normally be used as diagnostic handhelds when combined with OBD2-type interfaces for cars, but sadly these ones have no interfaces or cables aside from the chargers.

... and there's just so much more. 😮

I was hoping it'd be wall-to-wall beige boxes and vintage cards\boards, but I'm happy to have met the guy and gotten to chat for a while, and he gave me some cool stuff which I'll find a home for eventually.

those blue pins look like CPU was cooked to death

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-04-15, 06:27:

those blue pins look like CPU was cooked to death

Very possible. I thought the same thing. 😂

Still curious to know what it is/was. It has a gray aluminum heatsink attached.

There was a local "free at the curb" event, and I wish I could tell you I made out like a bandit, but almost no tech around for this one, picked up a small box of cables with a lenovo and other laptop adapters and some random USB cords, some extra pieces of figure 8 and "mickey mouse" cables were welcome, I always seem to need to shift them around when I need one. Some random lumber may end up part of workshop at some point, shelf or something. Also got a swivel chair for the basement, basic, no arms to bang elbows on. So slender picking, but still, YAY!!! Free stuff!! 🤣

Ok am I allowed to ask how/where the best places to look are? Any tips or no-nos? If discussing these things is frowned upon that's okay, just curious.

It varies greatly by your location. See if there are any advertisements in your local paper. As we've become an increasingly digital society, it's harder to find these kinds of meetups.

Found this 286 16 mhz mb, looks beatiful and nice, no battery damage.
I tried placing a ISA 16 bit 512 kb VGA card, psu and keyboard.
Turning it on has the MB buzzer beep three times.
American Megatrends bios 1990.
The motherboard is unidentified.
I placed two sticks of RAM 30 pin 512 kb (2x256 branded Toshiba) in bank 0.
The board has no video output but I know for sure that the video card and keyboard are working fine.
The ISA slots were kind of stiff so I used contact cleaner so it should loosen a bit.

I've been going through lots of mixed old hardware lately and also pairing down a whole bunch of stuff I was given that was sorted as scrap.

Among the CPUs I mostly found lots of low end Core 2 Duo and Athlon\Turion laptop chips, but also found several Pentium M, Core Duo, desktop Pentium 4 (478) and others. Among the Socket 478 chips I was really really pleased to find not one but two 3.4Ghz Pentium 4 Prescotts AND a 3.4Ghz Northwood! The pins weren't very bent up. Wow... 😮

I will be moving most of the low end\common chips on as scrap because I simply will never ever use them and they are worth basically nothing. I'm keeping more than I need to as it is.

There was also a lot of RAM which I'm currently sorting through, and it has stirred up some questions in my mind...

Is there any reason to keep low capacity and low speed desktop and laptop DDR\DDR2? How about really low capacity SDRAM, like 32MB?

For DDR2 I was thinking of keeping one 512MB each of PC2-3200, 4200, 5300 and 6400 in both SIMMs and DIMMs, just in case I come across a system that is picky about memory speeds that needs tested, plus the 512mb capacity would also allow me to install Windows 9x before patching OS to support more memory if the need should ever arise. Beyond that, I will only be keeping some 1GB DDR2 5300 and 6400 modules and all 2GB+ modules... nothing else.

For DDR1 I am planning to keep 512MB+ modules, but I can't think of any reason to keep anything less than that. I can't remember if DDR systems were ever picky about speeds the way some DDR2 systems could be. I think high vs low density was the bigger issue at that time.

In general, I have always just hoarded ALL SDRAM (PC 66, 100, 133), because it seems like it's very common to find boards that simply won't work with a certain type. I am tempted to get rid of the 32MB modules just to cut down on the sheer volume of RAM I have to store, but I am afraid of getting rid of all of the sticks that the earliest SDRAM boards may prefer. Anyone have any input on this?

Finally... laptop wifi cards and bluetooth cards. The guy I got parts from kept basically all of these he'd ever come across. There are so many, and they're so hard to identify. I have looked many of them up and there are generally hundreds of results and they can be bought for less than $10 shipped most of the time. Are there any old wifi cards that are worth hanging on to? I know that for specific systems you may need specific white-listed cards, but to be frank, I hate working with laptops and I don't see myself suddenly taking on lots of retro-laptop wifi-card replacement jobs. When I can buy the latest and best card that works with a given system for $5-$20, it makes hoarding a couple pounds of cards for eternity seem not worth it. If these ever end up collectible, I'll be surprised, because they are usually among the last things to be harvested from a laptop before the system is junked entirely, and they don't go bad that often.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-04-19, 13:48:

Is there any reason to keep low capacity and low speed desktop and laptop DDR\DDR2? How about really low capacity SDRAM, like 32MB?
In general, I have always just hoarded ALL SDRAM (PC 66, 100, 133), because it seems like it's very common to find boards that simply won't work with a certain type. I am tempted to get rid of the 32MB modules just to cut down on the sheer volume of RAM I have to store, but I am afraid of getting rid of all of the sticks that the earliest SDRAM boards may prefer. Anyone have any input on this?

32MB dimms are optimal for 430TX? 64 and 128 imo worthless, dual rank (? the ones working in 440BX) 256MB are the only ones worth something, 512MB again no point.

It's possible to get 512MB in a 440BX with two 256MB DIMM sticks, but this can be unstable. It will boot fine, but cause the system to lock up when stressed. So a quick memory test from the BIOS and a boot to desktop are not sufficient for testing.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-19, 14:05:

It's possible to get 512MB in a 440BX with two 256MB DIMM sticks, but this can be unstable. It will boot fine, but cause the system to lock up when stressed. So a quick memory test from the BIOS and a boot to desktop are not sufficient for testing.

This is why I hang on to 128MB and 64MB sticks. Unless I'm building some kind of maxed out build, there is very little practical use for more than 256MB of SDRAM in Windows 98SE. Using some kind of solid state storage makes the RAM amount even less noticeable.

I just found an odd one. It is labeled PC-133, with 128MB hand written on it and 8 M/H brand chips on the front, but on the back of the stick it has two large-ish chips that look more like WRAM or SGRAM. They are simply labeled k23140.1 0330. What is this for?

I agree. 256MB is plenty with Windows 98. It's not until Windows 2000 where it makes a difference.

Even though I've vetted pairs of sticks, I generally will only use 256MB "just in case", for stability.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-19, 14:05:

It's possible to get 512MB in a 440BX with two 256MB DIMM sticks, but this can be unstable. It will boot fine, but cause the system to lock up when stressed. So a quick memory test from the BIOS and a boot to desktop are not sufficient for testing.

ran 1GB using 4x256MB on ASUS P2B-F/P3B-F for years

It depends on the sticks. There are some that just don't work well like that.

How about 16MB PC66 DIMMs? Yeesh, I'd forgotten that they even made them that small... 😮