DundyTheCroc wrote on 2021-05-28, 17:37:

Some nice finds today:
1. Two calculators ELKA 101 made in Bulgaria by ISOT, the model is from 1973. Both are working and have external AC/DC adapters to save batteries.

that display is in excellent condition, very clear and bright in the picture. A very nice find indeed

PC@LIVE wrote on 2021-05-30, 19:04:

I have selected various ISA cards for the motherboard with 386DX-40 (see photo), a 128MB SanDisk IDE-CF and CompactFlash adapter, a 16bit ISA controller with Acer M5105 chip and parallel and game serial ports, as sound card I have to choose one between AZTECH and Creativa SB16 Value (CT2770), as video card I will use an Octek with WD90C30-LR chip (Paradise), LAN card I would use a 3Com Etherlink III but I don't know if it works with old operating systems like windows3.X.

Nice. Replace this 70ns DRAM chips on the WD90C30 card with 45ns and you have pretty much the fastest ISA SVGA - those cards have amaizing performance (way better than ET4000 for example).

HanJammer wrote on 2021-06-02, 12:46:

PC@LIVE wrote on 2021-05-30, 19:04:

I have selected various ISA cards for the motherboard with 386DX-40 (see photo), a 128MB SanDisk IDE-CF and CompactFlash adapter, a 16bit ISA controller with Acer M5105 chip and parallel and game serial ports, as sound card I have to choose one between AZTECH and Creativa SB16 Value (CT2770), as video card I will use an Octek with WD90C30-LR chip (Paradise), LAN card I would use a 3Com Etherlink III but I don't know if it works with old operating systems like windows3.X.

Nice. Replace this 70ns DRAM chips on the WD90C30 card with 45ns and you have pretty much the fastest ISA SVGA - those cards have amaizing performance (way better than ET4000 for example).

What, the WD90C30 and what about the WD90C31 can overclock that far if using tighter timing using 45ns through 60ns dram? How to push these farther?

Cheers,

HanJammer wrote on 2021-06-02, 12:46:

PC@LIVE wrote on 2021-05-30, 19:04:

I have selected various ISA cards for the motherboard with 386DX-40 (see photo), a 128MB SanDisk IDE-CF and CompactFlash adapter, a 16bit ISA controller with Acer M5105 chip and parallel and game serial ports, as sound card I have to choose one between AZTECH and Creativa SB16 Value (CT2770), as video card I will use an Octek with WD90C30-LR chip (Paradise), LAN card I would use a 3Com Etherlink III but I don't know if it works with old operating systems like windows3.X.

Nice. Replace this 70ns DRAM chips on the WD90C30 card with 45ns and you have pretty much the fastest ISA SVGA - those cards have amaizing performance (way better than ET4000 for example).

Ok thanks a lot for the info.
I did not know anything about this RAM upgrade, and it is very interesting because until some time ago I was looking for an ET4000, as a top ISA card, the only thing is to find those 45ns chips, maybe you can find them in other VGAs, I hope they don't cost. quite a lot, I'll take a look if I find them at a good price.
Tomorrow I think of replacing the keyboard connector in the 386DX motherboard, repairing the two interrupted tracks, and testing it on the bench with a VGA ISA Hualon (256KB), if all goes well and it works I start configuring it by choosing among the cards the ones I think are more suitable.

Got a free S3 Virge/DX 4MB and GeForce 8600 from my old boss today. Hope they both work, I don't currently have suitable rigs on hand for testing them.

A friend of mine rescued this BD-RW from the local e-waste collection depo.
It didn't turn on because of a tiny blown diode but after replacing it the drive works just fine. A little rusty but nothing serious.
My first blu-ray drive.

Nice find with the Blu Ray drive they still aren't cheap.

Had to prepare some old Cisco PIX firewalls for recycling and saved a lot of SDRAMs and Celeron 300A CPUs.
One of them was with Pentium 200MMX, interesting board with FDD and IDE connectors, have to check it.

Those Cisco firewalls we're nice. A busy of mine turned a bunch of them into nice little Linux based file/printer servers.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-06-07, 13:23:

Nice find with the Blu Ray drive they still aren't cheap.

The previous owner must've dumped the drive instead of getting it fixed. I doubt many people turn to a repair technician when a PC hardware fails.

We live in a fully disposable society. We're the outliers who try to fix our broken stuff instead of just tossing it in the trash can.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-06-07, 14:48:

We live in a fully disposable society. We're the outliers who try to fix our broken stuff instead of just tossing it in the trash can.

i like to look through this thread for that reason, to see what has been rescued of late !

Found an IBM 4869 floppy drive. The box has been opened but the drive is completely new and still sealed in its plastic wrap.

This is the craziest find I have ever made. I'm basically living in a slum so it's very unusual to find something like this.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-06-07, 14:48:

We live in a fully disposable society. We're the outliers who try to fix our broken stuff instead of just tossing it in the trash can.

I'm wondering: will our collection end up in the trash can after we die? I'd like to think it won't.

schmatzler wrote on 2021-06-07, 15:41:

16230804526592287253414255380856.jpg

Jealous!

Miphee wrote on 2021-06-07, 15:49:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-06-07, 14:48:

We live in a fully disposable society. We're the outliers who try to fix our broken stuff instead of just tossing it in the trash can.

I'm wondering: will our collection end up in the trash can after we die? I'd like to think it won't.

I'd like to think the same as well. Hell my son loves to help me work on our PC's and build them so he might try to take my stuff before I'm dead.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-06-07, 17:29:

Miphee wrote on 2021-06-07, 15:49:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-06-07, 14:48:

We live in a fully disposable society. We're the outliers who try to fix our broken stuff instead of just tossing it in the trash can.

I'm wondering: will our collection end up in the trash can after we die? I'd like to think it won't.

I'd like to think the same as well. Hell my son loves to help me work on our PC's and build them so he might try to take my stuff before I'm dead.

I have strict orders to my family to sell all the retro stuff I have when I go, that way it stays alive with other collectors. I've given some general guidelines about which items should be sold singly and which can be sold together to maximize profits for their sakes, but as long as they sell them to collectors the amount they get back is secondary and entirely up to them.

gerry wrote on 2021-03-18, 08:58:

this would make one of those great restoration journeys - starts with the street find and ends with you launching Duke3d on a gleaming fully restored PC 😀

Sup 😁

It was quite a little journey, and I might give it a thread at some point. There is one on OCAU: https://forums.overclockers.com.au/threads/th … treets.1299937/

More saves today before all old hardware at work goes for recycling:
1. CPUs from Socket 370 to 775 and AM3, also some Xeons and a lot of SDRAM

2. Some 200W HP PSUs and VXA320 tape drives

3. Two Asus boards with Phenom II x2 CPUs, that unlock to x4.

4. When the truck came to load old HW I grab from it nice looking Dell GX1

Love the CPU pack. Anything special in there? The ones I find always have office Celerons and low-level Pentium/Core CPUs.