PTherapist wrote:

I note you were playing an MP3 on this, how are the speakers holding up?

I have a couple of similar model iMacs and when I pulled one out of storage a few months back I discovered a nasty problem - the speakers in these have a tendency to rot. I was playing music back on mine at normal volume levels for a while, when suddenly the speakers started blowing out dust & debris through the front, followed by what can only be described as farting sounds as the speakers' foam litterally crumbled away and the cones started rattling loose.

Quite a common issue with these old iMacs, so something to watch out for.

They seem fine, I didn't crank it but they played nicely. This one probably spent most of its life in a climate controlled lab; it was kind of dusty but otherwise well kept. I'll keep an eye on them though.

@CJ_Reha - that 5x86 desktop case is awesome, love the design detail. Great job saving that lot!

xjas wrote:

Ahahahaha. […]
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Ahahahaha.

It was a pretty spartan install on a 250MB HDD image, and looked like it had never been used. All the files & directories were dated August 1999 except for a SCANDISK.LOG (WTF) from 2002. There was also a Windows 95 install but I didn't try to boot it yet.

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Surpringly it wasn't horrible to use, it booted up in a reasonable amount of time despite the fact that I still had an mp3 playing in the background. Nobody would call this snappy, but you could get some stuff done on this.

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Yes, that says 14 MB RAM. I have no idea why.

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There's something you don't see very often.
Well, actually, more often than you'd think if you're me, but I digress.

That's running in Virtual PC (which probably explains the amount of RAM), not on the actual hardware, as PPC Macs can't run Windows natively...

Thanks, I'm aware of that. :p I was more wondering why someone would configure VPC to only give 14MB to 98SE (come on, you couldn't at least make it an even 16?) on a machine with 384MB available. Maybe it's doing some kind of dynamic allocation that Windows didn't know about. I didn't poke around in it too much.

Was impressed with how seamlessly it ran though. None of the clunkiness I usually associate with VM hosts.

King_Corduroy wrote:

https://img00.deviantart.net/7def/i/2018/079/f/d/untitled_by_mad_king_corduroy-dc6h0is.jpg […]
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I still can't wrap my brain around how massive this thing is... 🤣

🤣 How much does it weigh?

I had a 22 inch Sony CRT a long time ago, and it was so heavy it broke my desk at one point.

A LOT 🤣 More than I would like but it's supported by an old wood desk from the 60's.

Also just traded a guy local to me a Commodore 1702 monitor I pulled from the trash for these three pristine Packard Bell machines! 😁

Personally I think I got the better deal 🤣

xjas wrote:

Score! Nabbed this mint iMac G3 400DV SE from one of my usual haunts. 384MB RAM, 12GB drive, 8MB ATI Rage 128 VR, dual firewire, […]
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Score! Nabbed this mint iMac G3 400DV SE from one of my usual haunts. 384MB RAM, 12GB drive, 8MB ATI Rage 128 VR, dual firewire, C R I S P Y CRT. It's great!

In this case, 'SE' or "Special Edition" literally means it's a more boring color than the others in the lineup at the time. But it's still cool.
...
But wait, there's more! Poking around on it a bit further, I found some interesting software installed. Photoshop 3.0 and 6.0, Premier 4, what looked like an AOL trial CD, and:
8.jpg
Ahahahaha.

It was a pretty spartan install on a 250MB HDD image, and looked like it had never been used. All the files & directories were dated August 1999 except for a SCANDISK.LOG (WTF) from 2002. There was also a Windows 95 install but I didn't try to boot it yet.

Cool, I have that exact model in my collection (except it has a 30GB hard drive, 768MB of RAM, and a cheetah pattern paintjob from its original owners). Watch out for the optical drive, the one in mine doesn't inject/eject discs properly anymore, so don't be surprised if you encounter issues with it someday. Also, the speaker failure that was mentioned a few posts ago happened to one of the stereo speakers inside mine. Still a pretty neat machine despite being subject to Apple's typical hardware failures from that era.

Neat to see it running Windows 98 through the means of Virtual PC, the Macintosh version has always been an interesting gadget for me to play with, I've heard it can be used to play DOS games on those older Macs thanks to its use of SB16 emulation.

King_Corduroy wrote:

Also just traded a guy local to me a Commodore 1702 monitor I pulled from the trash for these three pristine Packard Bell machin […]
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Also just traded a guy local to me a Commodore 1702 monitor I pulled from the trash for these three pristine Packard Bell machines! 😁

Personally I think I got the better deal 🤣

He definitely got the better deal, the C1702 is a god among monitors, it has the sharpest Component and S-Video output of anything I've seen.

Meh to each his own, it was taking up space on the floor not being used. Besides just last year I pulled two out of the trash so it was a good trade for me. Personally I'm working on selling all my 80's machines so I wouldn't have needed it anyhow. 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Also just traded a guy local to me a Commodore 1702 monitor I pulled from the trash for these three pristine Packard Bell machin […]
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Also just traded a guy local to me a Commodore 1702 monitor I pulled from the trash for these three pristine Packard Bell machines! 😁

Personally I think I got the better deal 🤣

If Billy Coore saw those He would Pee in his pants right now.

He did actually see it. 🤣 I regularly show off my computer finds in a group he's in on Facebook. 🤣 I've got quite the collection already and hoping to get more! 😁

This mess was outside of a thrift shop in the rain( had just started ). The case was off and I'm not sure how long it had been there. I don't see any rust on it, it's just filthy. I pulled out the motherboard and cleaned it with alchohol. It's a Slot 1 mobo from what I gathered. This one.

It has a complete case, PSU, 24x CD,WD Caviar 34300, and Quantum Bigfoot. Sadly the CPU( PII Celeron ), had been gutted. I only have its plastic shell and the heatsync.

Anyways, hopefully the board still works. I have a P2 266 in my digital workstation that might work?

Thats an InWin case the same as the one originally housed my P2 and P3 PCs; Ive been trying to source one locally for quite some time now, with no luck..

I own a small PC repair/sales shop, and so far this year I've had two computers donated to me - both Dell - a Dell Optiplex GX110 and a Dell Dimension 4300S. The GX110 has a riser card with both PCI and ISA slots, and the 4300S has an AGP slot and 2 PCI slots. Both are great candidates for a retro Windows 98SE gaming build.

MCGA wrote:

Sadly the CPU( PII Celeron ), had been gutted. I only have its plastic shell and the heatsync.

Looks like that "Pentium II" decal is on the contact side of the heatsink (e.g. where the heatsink attaches). The things people could get away with in those days...

appiah4 wrote:

Thats an InWin case the same as the one originally housed my P2 and P3 PCs; Ive been trying to source one locally for quite some time now, with no luck..

I know that feeling. I've been looking for an old mini-tower with a turbo button and MHz LCD that matches the full tower I had when I was younger, and haven't had any luck. I'll settle for any mini-tower that's from the pre-Pentium days now. There are some nice ones I've seen here on Vogons. if only I were local to someone that had an abundance. 😀

SW-SSG wrote:

Looks like that "Pentium II" decal is on the contact side of the heatsink (e.g. where the heatsink attaches). The things people could get away with in those days...

Here's a closer image. I only have one other slot CPU, so have never really looked at them, let alone taken them apart. I thought it was P2 at first and didn't know it was a Celeron until I got back.

MCGA wrote:

Here's a closer image. I only have one other slot CPU, so have never really looked at them, let alone taken them apart. I thought it was P2 at first and didn't know it was a Celeron until I got back.

Hmm... on second thought, it looks like some kind of third-party plastic case that fits over the Celeron PCB (which are normally just bare PCBs from the factory, unlike with P-IIs and P-IIIs) and turns it into a SECC1 cartridge. The side with the decal likely goes on the backside of the Celeron PCB.

Can't say I've seen this before; most slot 1 Celeron coolers just attach a heatsink+fan to the chip, without any extra plastic stuff.

It's pretty cheap and missing the screws, and probably some other important piece. If it were complete, I'd remove the sticker. 😀

I was looking on eBay for a new slot CPU and cooler and didn't see anything like it. Anyways, back to cleaning this system up. Luckily I had some compatible memory laying around, so now I just need a CPU. I find it odd that Celeron CPUs seem to cost more than the P2s and P3s.

bmwsvsu wrote:

I own a small PC repair/sales shop, and so far this year I've had two computers donated to me - both Dell - a Dell Optiplex GX110 and a Dell Dimension 4300S. The GX110 has a riser card with both PCI and ISA slots, and the 4300S has an AGP slot and 2 PCI slots. Both are great candidates for a retro Windows 98SE gaming build.

Is it a dual PCI dual ISA riser, for a total of 3 expansion slots? Because I'm desperately looking for one, for my GX110. Quad slot riser is easy to find, but that one is not.. 🙁

you should sort them in order of yellowness to make a nice gradient.

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