yeah, getting parts for laptops is a chore, especially the prices that people who tore them apart ask for... that's why I usually try to buy multiples of machines like that, so I have spares if I ever need them.

obviously not always possible, especially on laptops than rarely pop up or tend to get expensive ^^

I need either a factory replacement screen or a compatible XGA upgrade for my iMac G3 (466MHz Graphite) and with the only documentation on the upgrade being some over 10 year old blog posts and no documentation of the factory screen part number, that's no fun at all. I've found a bunch of different Samsung (my broken LCD is a Samsung) 12.1 inch XGA panels but I dunno if any of them work work as far as mounting and functionality goes.

EvieSigma wrote on 2020-07-27, 02:47:

I need either a factory replacement screen or a compatible XGA upgrade for my iMac G3 (466MHz Graphite) and with the only documentation on the upgrade being some over 10 year old blog posts and no documentation of the factory screen part number, that's no fun at all. I've found a bunch of different Samsung (my broken LCD is a Samsung) 12.1 inch XGA panels but I dunno if any of them work work as far as mounting and functionality goes.

Well, you do have the original broken screen's part number/model number, I imagine, so that's a starting point .

darry wrote on 2020-07-27, 03:46:

EvieSigma wrote on 2020-07-27, 02:47:

I need either a factory replacement screen or a compatible XGA upgrade for my iMac G3 (466MHz Graphite) and with the only documentation on the upgrade being some over 10 year old blog posts and no documentation of the factory screen part number, that's no fun at all. I've found a bunch of different Samsung (my broken LCD is a Samsung) 12.1 inch XGA panels but I dunno if any of them work work as far as mounting and functionality goes.

Well, you do have the original broken screen's part number/model number, I imagine, so that's a starting point .

Well, if I can figure out how to remove the thing. Apple didn't make it easy...

Marentis wrote on 2020-07-26, 14:11:

I can see this happening with Core 2 Duo/Quad hardware when people who loved gaming on XP are getting older and older.

There is no world in any parallel universe where these chips will ever become uncommon let alone rare.

775 hardware in general will be ubiquitous for quite a while, but certain CPUs like extreme editions and certain motherboards are already quite expensive.... but I think that's more due to the fact that people who have those simply haven't let go of them yet ^^ and maybe never will.

Marentis wrote on 2020-07-26, 14:11:

I find it kinda interesting that five years ago a seller in Germany was selling K6-3 CPUs like crazy (8 Euros a piece or so?) w […]
Show full quote

I find it kinda interesting that five years ago a seller in Germany was selling K6-3 CPUs like crazy (8 Euros a piece or so?) with several hundred available
in the offering. Now it's very hard to find one. Same goes for K6-2+ CPUs.
I've got a K6-2+ but I had to pay € 45 with shipping and the only K6-3 I've found is listed for roughly € 80 with shipping.
Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with that, I just find it interesting how things move on and what was worth next to nothing
can be quite expensive some time later.

Something similar happened with Asus P5a-B mainboards: I bought a rev 1.04 several years ago for roughly 40 Euros, shipping included.
Now I've seen a P5A-B actually auctioned (so no fantasy prices there) with a K6-2 (not plus!) on a well known auction site go for over € 120,00 + shipping.
And that was a Rev 1.05 which can't properly deal with K6-2/3+ CPUs.

I can see this happening with Core 2 Duo/Quad hardware when people who loved gaming on XP are getting older and older.

Yes I remember that seller. I talked him into selling me multiple K6-III+ CPUs to me because I figured there would be no reason for these to remain as readily available as they still were and because these chips were basically awesome. Also bought a small amount of K6-2+ chips, mostly because why not they weren't that expensive anyway and interesting imo. And these chips will also run out sooner or later, though k6III+ is a bit the better choice in most situations I reckon.

I can definitely see this happen with LGA775 hardware, especially the Core compatible stuff.
XP was (for a while at least) arguably as much used as DOS used to be and many people grew up with the OS, I can certainly see people wanting to go retro at some point in their lives just as people went retro with their very common and produced in the millions 486 and Pentium 1 hardware. People who were into collecting like Commodores and Tandy and all kinds of pre-IBM-compatible-dominance era hardware were of the opinion that stuff like 486/586/686 were just common junk and would never ever become rare or wanted as supply of these parts would supposedly never run out because millions of attics were filled with this common junk blah blah.
People called me nuts for hoarding all this ... "useless obsolete junk" back then and look at them now (I got a nice collection of those parts, should be enough to last my lifetime provided it is in working condition of course).

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-27, 10:24:

Marentis wrote on 2020-07-26, 14:11:

I can see this happening with Core 2 Duo/Quad hardware when people who loved gaming on XP are getting older and older.

There is no world in any parallel universe where these chips will ever become uncommon let alone rare.

That's what I said about Pentium III back in 2000s. Yet here we are. Sure, sk 775 was made in larger quantities, but people sent those to recycling, migrating to laptops.
And there's one more problem - motherboards. 775 cpus will most likely be available, especially low end ones. But motherboards might be a big problems, those that didn't fail and escaped recycling will most likely have damaged sockets...

yep, that's a thing... modern hardware, especially LGA sockets aren't nearly as resilient as old ISA era hardware... old ISA cards and motherboards can survive being thrown around in a scrap lot most of the times... even if scratched to hell they most probably will still work or require minimum repair... broken trace? whatever, lets fix it.

on modern multilayer boards repairing is so much harder, especially with the amount of teeny tiny SMD components, and if a LGA socket gets bumped around in scrap without protection the motherboard will probably be beyond any economical repair.

I can see even these few months 775 mobos going higher in price. 🙁
3-4 years ago everybody was upgrading and even the best ones were being sold for 15-20 euros if you knew where to search. But now, no way, you want a Deluxe series from ASUS you need to pay a lot more if you need one that is guaranteed working, otherwise you could take a bet with unknown sellers who "cannot test it for the moment"...

Also 775 mobos in my experience were very poorly made and would break for no apparent reason. I went through 3x 775 systems (different psu, case cpu ecc) and after the last one broke I didn't want to mess with them anymore... maybe after a few years when nostalgia hits back.
Hoarding some C2D and C2Q just in case xD

my first ever LGA experience when I got my 775 board upgrading from Athlon 64 was a broken socket right from the dealer on a brand new board ^^

Tetrium wrote on 2020-07-27, 11:38:

486/586/686 were just common junk and would never ever become rare or wanted as supply of these parts would supposedly never run out because millions of attics were filled with this common junk blah blah.

They are very common&cheap though aside from the few rare exceptions. "Hard to get" and expensive doesn't start with $20 in my book (the price of a 486 board with CPU and RAM), more like >$500. Prices only go up when you want something really special.

imi wrote on 2020-07-27, 12:09:

yep, that's a thing... modern hardware, especially LGA sockets aren't nearly as resilient as old ISA era hardware... old ISA cards and motherboards can survive being thrown around in a scrap lot most of the times... even if scratched to hell they most probably will still work or require minimum repair... broken trace? whatever, lets fix it.

on modern multilayer boards repairing is so much harder, especially with the amount of teeny tiny SMD components, and if a LGA socket gets bumped around in scrap without protection the motherboard will probably be beyond any economical repair.

Yes, motherboards are definitely easier to get killed then CPUs are, especially CPUs that don't even have any pins to damage like the LGA CPUs.

Most CPUs will probably take a long time before stocks start to dry out. Same thing happened to K6+ and Tualatin 1400 CPUs. Stocks seemed to last indefinitely.

I wonder if there is a good (and practical) way to protect the pins in the socket without a dummy CPU installed?

aaronkatrini wrote on 2020-07-27, 13:09:

Also 775 mobos in my experience were very poorly made and would break for no apparent reason. I went through 3x 775 systems (different psu, case cpu ecc) and after the last one broke I didn't want to mess with them anymore... maybe after a few years when nostalgia hits back.
Hoarding some C2D and C2Q just in case xD

Also my experience, I went through a 965, P35 and P45 board with the same Q6600, and although I haven't had the P45 in main use for years, last time I tried it it was also acting up. Same thing on all boards: no video and the fans spinning.

Miphee wrote on 2020-07-27, 13:21:

Tetrium wrote on 2020-07-27, 11:38:

486/586/686 were just common junk and would never ever become rare or wanted as supply of these parts would supposedly never run out because millions of attics were filled with this common junk blah blah.

They are very common&cheap though aside from the few rare exceptions. "Hard to get" and expensive doesn't start with $20 in my book (the price of a 486 board with CPU and RAM), more like >$500. Prices only go up when you want something really special.

People would literally want to donate more 396/486/586 hardware then I could carry and keep. And I mean literally! They didn't want ANY money for it!
This is what I would call very common.

These days this hardware is way less common then it used to be, but it's still relatively easy to find but mostly due to a significant amount of this hardware being in the hands of collectors and traders who know how to find each other so it is relatively easy to find despite any eventual actual rarity.

Having to pay €20 for something that was literally for free earlier is a big difference. Well unless €20 means nothing to you that is but most people won't throw away €20 as easily as for example wanting to flush a turd.
I can't even afford to spend €500 on just a 486 board or even on an entire retro system.

Not everybody is as rich as you are, certainly you must have had ample opportunities to realize this.
And prices only going up if someone wants something really special is BS. There's a lot more to it then just that.

Oetker wrote on 2020-07-27, 16:17:

aaronkatrini wrote on 2020-07-27, 13:09:

Also 775 mobos in my experience were very poorly made and would break for no apparent reason. I went through 3x 775 systems (different psu, case cpu ecc) and after the last one broke I didn't want to mess with them anymore... maybe after a few years when nostalgia hits back.
Hoarding some C2D and C2Q just in case xD

Also my experience, I went through a 965, P35 and P45 board with the same Q6600, and although I haven't had the P45 in main use for years, last time I tried it it was also acting up. Same thing on all boards: no video and the fans spinning.

This is odd. I wonder what the cause of these seemingly spontaneous deaths could be?

I had a friend who has used a Q6600 as a main rig for years and the first motherboard had also died and I know he did nothing "funny" with his rig. It just died. He had the board replaced and this board seems to still work as I have it in my house as a spare LAN rig now.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-07-27, 10:24:

Marentis wrote on 2020-07-26, 14:11:

I can see this happening with Core 2 Duo/Quad hardware when people who loved gaming on XP are getting older and older.

There is no world in any parallel universe where these chips will ever become uncommon let alone rare.

Most of the LGA775 CPUs (the more low end or much sold ones especially) will probably remain easy to find for a loooong time, especially since certain Xeons turned out to be relatively easy to mod for LGA775 and server CPUs seem to be many. And of course there are no pins that can get damaged on them, so they seem very durable when looking at them from a mechanical standpoint.

But I'd say never say never, because there's always some unexpected thing that can happen in the future which changes things again 😜

Well, on CPUs I can agree with you but that's true for most CPUs. You can easily buy 486s, Pentiums, K6s, Pentium IIs, IIIs, Durons, Athlons, etc...
Usually only the top of the line chips of a certain generation (K6-III+) or with strange quirks (looking at you, FDIV bug) will be quite expensive.
But mainboards, well, that's a totally different story and I think we're already seeing how LGA 775 mainboards are becoming less and less available.
Don't get me wrong, that alone certainly would not justify a price increase because a shrinking supply means nothing if demand still doesn't outmatch it
but all in all I think we will see a price increase.

I mean one needs to stay realistic, even very good super socket 7 boards can - with some patience - be bought for roughly 40-70 Euros and today I bought a
socket 3 motherboard with PCI, Aladin chipset, CR2032 battery (no Varta, yeah!) and onboard IDE and FDD for ~50 Euros.
And they will very likely stay way more expensive than LGA775 boards but I do think that in the future people who grew up with them do want to have that
"feeling" again. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about "investing" in hardware or anything, just that I'm expecting an increase in demand.

All in all this is just a hobby in my eyes and yes, some people see this as investment and maybe some make their livings from it but I can much easier just invest
in stocks and funds so to me it is all about the hoarding, ahem "collecting". I never sold anything until now and it is very likely that it will stay this way.

There's also one other caveat: prices in this hobby can also decrease. I remember that I had to pay more one year ago for a not nearly as good 486 mainboard
and more for 2 super socket 7 boards. I was successful within the last weeks in acquiring much better boards (486 and Socket 7) for much less.
I also got 2 Socket 370 boards for next to nothing.

So this is also often just about trends. I remember when Phil did some videos and nearly immediately prices increased on hardware he used. Later on they decreased again.
I even know a listing on a well known auction site where the seller specifically mentions Phil and links to one of his YouTube videos.

On this subject, I really believe a time will come were 60 years old folks won't hunt for XT-286-386-486s any more, our modern equivalent won't give a damn about them and collections will be liquefied for peanuts. I mean I don't see ISA sound of VGA cards going for that much in 10-20 years, once the generation that grew up with DOS is no more active in this hobby/business or has acquired everything desired for the rest of their life. Yes, there will be that rare item going for the price of a small used car, but I honestly don't think some basic ISA will still get sold for 50-100e/$. Don't get me wrong, I hope they will 😀 I just don't think so.

Tetrium wrote on 2020-07-27, 16:25:

Not everybody is as rich as you are, certainly you must have had ample opportunities to realize this.
And prices only going up if someone wants something really special is BS. There's a lot more to it then just that.

Wow, I'm a rich guy in Hungary. That's.. rich. But no.
But I agree to disagree, the 35 years old 386 CPU for $5 proves my point. Dirt cheap and as a mass-produced item it won't ever be expensive, unless it has something special attributed to it (first ever, only 1000 made, recalled after 2 months etc). The same goes for the rest of these mass-produced products.
Peace.