Good luck with the restoration of these beauties. I will be following this thread. I was very interested in both of those left towers, also expected the described damage due the other pictures in his other listings. I enjoy repairing such cases as long as possible. 😎

Socket 4 with both pci and vlb makes for a lot of opportunities, I wonder if this is a opti viper board.

The model is Octek (Ocean Technology?) Bison III. Dunno if that helps.

senrew wrote:

tl;dr...you can skip this opening section as it's all background info. The meat of this thread begins with the bolded title. […]
Show full quote

tl;dr...you can skip this opening section as it's all background info. The meat of this thread begins with the bolded title.

As some of you know, I recently picked up a lot of 4 older machines from eBay for the massive sum of $0.99.

Here is a link to the auction page.

The auction itself was listed as local pickup only, and cash on pickup. For these reasons, the listing ended with only my own bid at the opening price, which really hurt the sale for the seller. As it turns out, I live less than 10 minutes from the seller's pickup location. We arranged to meet up this past Sunday and we ended up having a pretty good conversation.

The seller normally deals in big industrial equipment lots, restaurant equipment, print house machinery, etc. He recently bought the inventory of a print house that closed down, and it happened to include these and a few other old computers. He doesn't really deal in these things, so he put them up with a tiny opening bid hoping to get some attention on them and encourage bidding.

Well, a few things screwed that idea for him. He explained that he used to do major business via ebay on his normal large items, but got burned by paypal and ebay shitting all over the sellers, so he closed down his old accounts and washed his hands of them. He decided to give it another try with a new account and start over, which is why he had zero feedback at the time of this listing. He REFUSES to ship anything smaller than freight items, and absolutely hates paypal, hence the local pickup and cash on delivery terms. I explained to him that he could have netted MUCH higher ending prices for the particular listings.

In fact, fellow vogons member Beegle contacted the seller directly and offered him a very reasonable amount if only the seller would ship, and he turned it down. The seller actually brought this up when I was talking to him. I explained that the offer came from another member of a "collector's forum" that I happen to visit and that he should have taken the damn offer. He just shrugged and said it wouldn't have been worth the headache and effort to ship internationally and he much prefers the in person thing.

The winning bidder on the other machines he had listed, a Zeos 386 and a lot of an IBM 5150 and 5160 showed up about 15 minutes later. It was a damn kid, no more than 16 or 17. We had been joking around that whoever won those items probably had the idea to flip them and do an evil villain cackle at this moron selling them for so cheap. When the kid handed him the money, we asked if he had intended to flip them and he said "well yeah, I guess". I felt kinda bad for him so I tried to give him some advice on finding the correct keyboard and monitors and how to test and what to look for before he tried turning them around and he pretty much brushed me off as these kids tend to do these days. Oh well, screw that little prick.

FYI, the pictures in the listings for the IBM machines only showed the front panels and drive fronts. The actual cases were 99% transmogrified into pure rust from all other angles. Good luck with that flip! 😎

Anyway...this is getting a bit long. The 4 machines I picked up are in various states of condition from "I can clean it up" to "fuck this, in the dumpster". Considering I paid exactly 25 cents for each machine, I'm not going to cry over it 😀

4 Machines for Less Than $1

Tonight we start with machine #1, all the way to the left in the picture.

(too many pictures, don't want to make this post 40 screens tall so here's a link to the gallery in dropbox)

When I finally got around to inspecting the machine, I could get life out of it when turned on, but no image on screen. Inspected the board and found the corrosion damage as seen in the pictures. I'm pretty sure someone could repair it if they had the time and skill, but I don't. I may pass the board on because it's so damn cool. Early pentium chipset, VLB+PCI, fully populated cache chips, etc. It's got a Pentium 60mhz in the socket.

Not sure how much cache that is, but there's a picture of the chip markings if someone can figure it out. Also, there's a small bank of three other chips that I don't know the purpose of.

As for the other parts, the hard drive was dead when I plugged it into another machine to test it out. The other drives seem to be ok.

It's got a VLB Cirrus Logic GD5424 card, but I can't identify the maker. A SB16 CT-2230 with matching Creative branded CD-ROM. Maybe from an upgrade kit? The I/O card is VLB and has UMC chipsets, but again, I can't identify a maker or model.

It had a modem in it that kinda confused me at first since it's got Cirrus Logic branded chips on it. I never knew they made DSPs or whatever they happen to be.

Anyway. I'll be salvaging the cards, drives, and the PSU since they seem to be ok so far. The case itself is the nicest of the bunch. Very little actual rust, more just dirt from being in storage for 20 years or so.

Next post, the Vectra and Compudyne.

Can you please not insult us "damn kids" by refering to us this way. I'm 17 and I don't go around doing stuff like that. The only time I sell stuff is to other retro computer enthusiasts and even then i prefer trade over sell as then the cycle of life continues for parts that would have otherwise sat in a drawer unused. If someone who knows more than I do about something and is willing to spend there valuable time talking to me gives me advice my brain becomes a tape recorder for knowledge. I don't just "Brush off" advice from people. Please never think the entirety of my generation is like that. If i had won those auctions i'd have locked myself in a closet with the 5150, my CRT, and a copy of Zork. Age doesn't = level of appreciation for old tech. That kid however is most likely screwed as I highly doubt he has the skills to work with pre-ATX machines of any kind much less a 5150. It took me a good 6 months (which is an insane amount of time for me since I have semi-photographic memory and learn extremely quickly) to get handy with early 90s systems alone (killing one DEC workstation in the process). In my case ive found learning machines and technology in reverse chronological order has helped me immensely because I find you tend to learn the later, more stable revisions of most types of technology you encounter before having to deal with the older buggy types. Without testing, cleaning, and very likely repairing them this kid will have a hard time selling them for high dollar and by the time he goes through the trouble of it with shipping and all it won't have been worth the time invested. What I'm guessing he doesn't understand (the most basic of the things he doesn't understand anyways) is that usually you don't just throw the switch on a 20+ year old machine and get a DOS prompt. Usually you replace several components and then HOPE nothing is destroyed that can't easily be repaired or replaced.

What does concern me however is that another person my age knew these things were valuable. I had assumed the extremely (extremely) sharp learning curve and general unreliability of retro computing would keep it from seeing the same price war BS that's essentially destroyed console collecting to me. I've seen the same store that was trying to sell Nintendo64 carts for 40 dollar's sell an 386 for 5. I honestly want this to stay the relatively affordable niche hobby it is now where the same people who would sell old SNES carts on ePay basically just throw old hardware at me and say "Take it, this garbage is just taking up room" because there blissfully unaware they have any value whatsoever. A 486 is alot more difficult to work with than a NES. I just didn't see this being a hobby the average joe population would ever have the patience, desire, and time to take interest in and thus would never see the same sharp price increase.

Maybe I'm wrong. 0.0

Anywho based on a couple of other references I know of off the the top of my head and my own Soundblaster16/CDROM combo, I believe the 2xxx models ending in 30 (In my case 2830) are all MPC upgrade kit models. Probably explains why so few references exist to them. Its also worth noting most of these can have or not have a CSP chip on them. I recommend checking total hardware for information on that particular subject.

There is 512KB cache onboard. Not sure about the UM61256AK-15 chip.... It's SRAM but its function is not mentioned on th99 nor the manual.
The three GAL chips are .... well, gal chips.

Deactivating the acid with vinegar is easy and fast.
Like a doctor, I would use my utmost forces to save her. Wonderful and rare (CPU).
My board with a 386SX/33 has worse trails than yours and works to some extent, I must say -
(bad contact in BIOS chip)

But yes, bridging/soldering trail is time consuming for sure.

Dude, I would have to pay 80 bucks for the left case (probably with something ripped out) and Cirrus VLB
===Make it worth===

I wanna see all the colors, display and no dust ! 😀
I have fond memories about this case - my friend and his 486 running Windows 3.1.
This always comes on my mind whatever I see this case ! Don't ask me why cause I just don't know answers!

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Can you please not insult us "damn kids" by refering to us this way. I'm 17 and I don't go around doing stuff like that. The only time I sell stuff is to other retro computer enthusiasts and even then i prefer trade over sell as then the cycle of life continues for parts that would have otherwise sat in a drawer unused. If someone who knows more than I do about something and is willing to spend there valuable time talking to me gives me advice my brain becomes a tape recorder for knowledge. I don't just "Brush off" advice from people. Please never think the entirety of my generation is like that. If i had won those auctions i'd have locked myself in a closet with the 5150, my CRT, and a copy of Zork. Age doesn't = level of appreciation for old tech. That kid however is most likely screwed as I highly doubt he has the skills to work with pre-ATX machines of any kind much less a 5150. It took me a good 6 months (which is an insane amount of time for me since I have semi-photographic memory and learn extremely quickly) to get handy with early 90s systems alone (killing one DEC workstation in the process). In my case ive found learning machines and technology in reverse chronological order has helped me immensely because I find you tend to learn the later, more stable revisions of most types of technology you encounter before having to deal with the older buggy types. Without testing, cleaning, and very likely repairing them this kid will have a hard time selling them for high dollar and by the time he goes through the trouble of it with shipping and all it won't have been worth the time invested. What I'm guessing he doesn't understand (the most basic of the things he doesn't understand anyways) is that usually you don't just throw the switch on a 20+ year old machine and get a DOS prompt. Usually you replace several components and then HOPE nothing is destroyed that can't easily be repaired or replaced.

What does concern me however is that another person my age knew these things were valuable. I had assumed the extremely (extremely) sharp learning curve and general unreliability of retro computing would keep it from seeing the same price war BS that's essentially destroyed console collecting to me. I've seen the same store that was trying to sell Nintendo64 carts for 40 dollar's sell an 386 for 5. I honestly want this to stay the relatively affordable niche hobby it is now where the same people who would sell old SNES carts on ePay basically just throw old hardware at me and say "Take it, this garbage is just taking up room" because there blissfully unaware they have any value whatsoever. A 486 is alot more difficult to work with than a NES. I just didn't see this being a hobby the average joe population would ever have the patience, desire, and time to take interest in and thus would never see the same sharp price increase.

Maybe I'm wrong. 0.0

Heh, I was wondering when the younger crew would pipe up 😀

No, this doesn't apply to anyone under 18, just the ones who look at our hobby with vulture eyes.

I've gotten into physical fights with people at thrifts and other such stores when I see them scanning everything in site on their phones just to find shit that's worth money.

Just last week there was this guy who stopped the employee at a thrift with a cart full of books before she even reached the shelves and started scanning every hardcover she had with her. He stopped her right in the aisle and wouldn't let her continue until he went through every book. I don't care if you do that shit discreetly once it's on the shelf, but he outright pounced the lady while she was trying to do her job.

I called him out on it and basically told him he needs to die painfully in public to be made an example of. This douche is the reason South Florida blows for collecting in any reasonable way. He was literally cherry picking the items before any other customers would have had a chance to grab them for themselves. The dude may as well have just stormed the back room and rooted through the pending piles.

On a visit to that same store a couple of years ago, there was this guy bragging to some other guy at the media shelves how he finds old video games and other random computer software and makes all this money off of "dumbass collector nerds". He was explaining his whole business scheme of trolling thrifts and consignment shops and what have you buying the stuff dirt cheap and getting there super early SO HE DOESN'T LOSE OUT ON INVENTORY TO THOSE NERDS BEFORE HE CAN MAKE A PROFIT OFF OF THEM. His exact words. I told him off right there. He didn't like it and got physical with me so I laid him out in front of his buddy. Not my proudest moment, but it did feel real damn good.

Anyway...back to the topic. No, I don't specifically call out you younger folk. The way he brushed me off and looked at me like a crazy old man (I'm not even that old...I turn 35 on Friday!) spoke mountains of his intentions and outlook on the hobby. He literally sniped me for a $5 max bid I put in on those IBM machines. When I asked him if he had a way to pick up a Model F for the machines, he mumbled something about looking into arduino kits to adapt a USB keyboard....don't those basic kits cost more than a model F?

Frasco wrote:

Deactivating the acid with vinegar is easy and fast. Like a doctor, I would use my utmost forces to save her. Wonderful and rare […]
Show full quote

Deactivating the acid with vinegar is easy and fast.
Like a doctor, I would use my utmost forces to save her. Wonderful and rare (CPU).
My board with a 386SX/33 has worse trails than yours and works to some extent, I must say -
(bad contact in BIOS chip)

But yes, bridging/soldering trail is time consuming for sure.

Dude, I would have to pay 80 bucks for the left case (probably with something ripped out) and Cirrus VLB
===Make it worth===

I wanna see all the colors, display and no dust ! 😀
I have fond memories about this case - my friend and his 486 running Windows 3.1.
This always comes on my mind whatever I see this case ! Don't ask me why cause I just don't know answers!

I was thinking of doing the vinegar thing maybe tomorrow when I have the energy and patience to triage a board. Honestly, I would MUCH prefer getting this thing working and making it my primary DOS machine over the second machine (details on that one to come).

I had a friend whose dad always had like 4 or 5 machines in the house (he was the owner of a specialized marine scientific equipment manufacturer for US navy subs and other ships). That case and variations on it were everywhere growing up.

senrew wrote:

Anyway...back to the topic. No, I don't specifically call out you younger folk. The way he brushed me off and looked at me like a crazy old man (I'm not even that old...I turn 35 on Friday!) spoke mountains of his intentions and outlook on the hobby. He literally sniped me for a $5 max bid I put in on those IBM machines. When I asked him if he had a way to pick up a Model F for the machines, he mumbled something about looking into arduino kits to adapt a USB keyboard....don't those basic kits cost more than a model F?

Yeah, the equipment to convert USB to XT with an Arduino controller would be more expensive. I really hope one of those old ass IBM capacitors explodes right in his face.... what an ass. He's the kind of Idiot that causes my generation to be looked upon poorly.

I hate these people that tries to rise prices ... This is why I left the retro consoles, because the amount of these people is too damn high ... In comparison, retro computers are still kind of easy to find for cheap (at least for me). I don't want to make money on olf hardware. I just sold two pentiums system the price I bought them. The guy who bought them seemed so happy to have finaly gotten his hands on pentium based PCs, and just that makes me happy. I talked a bit with him, and I doubt he would sell those for higher prices

I like the look of the two pcs you found on the left. These cases seem to be quite common although I never found one myself

Not to derail "too much" but even for me, local is expensive. I went to a salvation army once and they had two windows 98 Era gateway towers in the store, both booted up for about 100 each 😵

Long story short I got them both for 90 dollars after a bout of intense haggling and they are still proudly on my shelf and still working 😀

But seriously the thrift stores around me think that some Pentium III machine that works but is beat up and has a broken operating system on it (Explorer crashes when you close a tab) is worth 100 bucks worries me.

Oh, by the way I think I am the youngest one here at 14. It's just annoying when you're looked down upon because you collect those "old useless computers." 😐

cj_reha wrote:

Not to derail "too much" but even for me, local is expensive. I went to a salvation army once and they had two windows 98 Era ga […]
Show full quote

Not to derail "too much" but even for me, local is expensive. I went to a salvation army once and they had two windows 98 Era gateway towers in the store, both booted up for about 100 each 😵

Long story short I got them both for 90 dollars after a bout of intense haggling and they are still proudly on my shelf and still working 😀

But seriously the thrift stores around me think that some Pentium III machine that works but is beat up and has a broken operating system on it (Explorer crashes when you close a tab) is worth 100 bucks worries me.

Oh, by the way I think I am the youngest one here at 14. It's just annoying when you're looked down upon because you collect those "old useless computers." 😐

My local salvation army used to be retro heaven when I was younger. Gameport based controllers, brand new PC parts from the 90s, and I also remember seeing what looking back was an AT keyboard (wayyyy before I got into retro PCs) and being like "what the hell is this plug?". Never found a single useful piece of software there though. Haven't been there in 5 years or so now, might be time for a return trip 😀

That case on the left has a galvanized chassis if I am not mistaken, should not be too much trouble to save/clean up. They still sell these NOS btw:

http://www.movesurplus.com/product/rare-class … r-case-new-210b

senrew wrote:

The winning bidder on the other machines he had listed, a Zeos 386 and a lot of an IBM 5150 and 5160 showed up about 15 minutes later. It was a damn kid, no more than 16 or 17. We had been joking around that whoever won those items probably had the idea to flip them and do an evil villain cackle at this moron selling them for so cheap. When the kid handed him the money, we asked if he had intended to flip them and he said "well yeah, I guess". I felt kinda bad for him so I tried to give him some advice on finding the correct keyboard and monitors and how to test and what to look for before he tried turning them around and he pretty much brushed me off as these kids tend to do these days. Oh well, screw that little prick.

🤣 the kid's the "prick"? Look in the mirror dude. He's got every right to buy the items and frankly you were wrong for trying to tell him what to do. Did you think that was okay because he's a kid or do you act like that around everyone? If I were the seller you would have been immediately kicked off my property - maybe literally if necessary. And not only did you judge this kid for literally no reason but you came on the internet and told a bunch of people about it - why?

Edit: In the interest of not replying on this subject multiple times, and yes I saw your reply, you're the one who decided to call the kid a name without providing reasoning for doing so. Maybe he really was a jerk to you but you went out of your way to tell us about that, without actually justifying your opinion. Your own text makes it sound like you tried to tell the kid what to do and he, being an independent human being, didn't really want to hear someone else tell him what to do with the gear he bought fair and square. Maybe there's another piece to the puzzle, but you chose both to not share that other piece, and you also chose to call the kid names online. Whether you feel you were right or wrong, based on what you actually wrote, you are wrong, period. You can tell me I didn't understand you, but I understood what you wrote perfectly. Honestly you shouldn't call people that sort of thing and frankly you only make yourself look bad.

4 vintage machines for $1? Damn nice find.

That is a damn shame about the board but a restoration project like that ain't for everyone. Nice case though, and you gotta be happy with 2x VLB cards and an SB16.

kenrouholo wrote:

senrew wrote:

The winning bidder on the other machines he had listed, a Zeos 386 and a lot of an IBM 5150 and 5160 showed up about 15 minutes later. It was a damn kid, no more than 16 or 17. We had been joking around that whoever won those items probably had the idea to flip them and do an evil villain cackle at this moron selling them for so cheap. When the kid handed him the money, we asked if he had intended to flip them and he said "well yeah, I guess". I felt kinda bad for him so I tried to give him some advice on finding the correct keyboard and monitors and how to test and what to look for before he tried turning them around and he pretty much brushed me off as these kids tend to do these days. Oh well, screw that little prick.

🤣 the kid's the "prick"? Look in the mirror dude. He's got every right to buy the items and frankly you were wrong for trying to tell him what to do. Did you think that was okay because he's a kid or do you act like that around everyone? If I were the seller you would have been immediately kicked off my property - maybe literally if necessary. And not only did you judge this kid for literally no reason but you came on the internet and told a bunch of people about it - why?

He's a prick for how he acted, not for buying the machine. The advice I was trying to give him was to make it easier to sell them off.

Using thriftstores here for scavenging old parts has been in decline for several years where I live and these days it's next to impossible to even find anything worthwhile. I actually seem to have more luck bumping into a PC left on the sidewalk then to find something for sale that is worth buying.

The best thing has been local second hand websites for the last few years, but apparently stuff is really turning dry lately (except maybe for Meljor 🤣).

Deksor wrote:

I hate these people that tries to rise prices ... This is why I left the retro consoles, because the amount of these people is too damn high ... In comparison, retro computers are still kind of easy to find for cheap (at least for me). I don't want to make money on olf hardware. I just sold two pentiums system the price I bought them. The guy who bought them seemed so happy to have finaly gotten his hands on pentium based PCs, and just that makes me happy. I talked a bit with him, and I doubt he would sell those for higher prices

I like the look of the two pcs you found on the left. These cases seem to be quite common although I never found one myself

We could consider ourselves "lucky" in that the console stuff (and the really old non-IBM stuff that was made "vintage" years ago) got popular years earlier. I even knew someone who was very into retro consoles and last time I spoke with her she had decided to sell everything and at least part of the reason was that it was becoming too expensive and too commercial.

But the last 2 years or so I keep getting my mind blown out when I see how quickly stuff is becoming more expensive. It's not even that these parts are hard to find (because that hasn't actually changed that much for stuff that was never rare (like Voodoo)) but that the prices have gone up insanely on much of the more useful stuff.

One thing that I do like though is that this does give the "lesser" stuff that used to be considered to kinda be "a best offer" is getting more attention now.
At one time nobody really cared much for Voodoo 3 AGP and these were hard to sell even for like €5 as everyone wanted Voodoo 5 and Voodoo 2.

At s7 boards? The ATX s7 boards were always kinda hard to find because not very many were made and ss7 was more interesting, but prices are going insane. I just can't really fantom it, but I guess we had this coming to us for a very long while now.

Trading between collectors may be a good thing as it deprives these ahem...traders of their source of salesmaterial and of potential customers. But I don't expect things to ever change back to the way they were.

But at least there's an advantage that as long as desktop PCs keep getting made and sold, there will be new retro stuff continuously. It's not much but at least it's something...

Good times Tetrium 😁

I remember the "old days" when most here built high powered 486 133 MHz machines. And there was me, with my Super Socket 7 gear and going on about cache tricks 🤣

These days you can sometimes get 486 gear for less than a decent SS7 board, how times have changed.

So yes, lots of parts are going for higher prices, but there is SO MUCH, that just flies under the radar and you don't see used often. Maybe I should do a shoestring build video or something like that.

PS: Stock up on RIVA 128 cards. 1997 retro gaming bliss with lovely film grain 😊