So I've been thinking of the best way to store motherboards other then just leaving the around the place in antistatic bags usually with cpus and heatsinks sometimes ram to.
Since I'd rather not pay for boxes I mean if I bought 10 boxes from ebay seems kinda wasteful could by an MT-32 instead.

So would it be ok to store motherboard on their side? Since I have at least one box that is long but not wide enough for a motherboard so I could store a few motherboard on their side but I worry that it doesnt sound nice, I do have an excess of bubble wrap I could use though. Any thoughts? Also for tall boxes do you think its best to have something in between the boards to separate the somehow in more then just the plastic?

Skyscraper wrote:

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At the moment i have the same situation.. But when iam already done with building / testing / repairing i will order a lot of anti-static bags.. And think on those plastic boxes as well.

Robin4 wrote:

At the moment i have the same situation.. But when iam already done with building / testing / repairing i will order a lot of anti-static bags.. And think on those plastic boxes as well.

Notice that the cards are not stacked directly on top of each other, there are anti-static bags in between 😉

Got my first batch of anti-static bags!

The cheaper ones come with stickers to seal them. But I much prefer the ones with the zip locks. So I ordered more (they come from the UK) of various sizes. My plan is to use many of my cards whenever I need them and with the zip locks cards can easily be pulled out.

The bag on the top left will be the main size for any card. I don't have any super long cards, so I will see how I go. I also have big bags for mainboards now. But still looking for a box solution to store each board + other bits such as a printed manual or jumper sheet, driver CD and other bits that might come in handy...

Going to get more of the same storage boxes I currently have and will sort cards by type, such as ISA Sound card, PCI Sound card, PCI cards, ISA cards, AGP cards...

Original size: http://i.imgur.com/pdxi5v2.jpg

You still using your GA-5AX for your time machine build?

carlostex wrote:

You still using your GA-5AX for your time machine build?

Yes but it will be dismantled. Got a few boards coming, including that DFI Super Socket 7 board you mentioned. But not sure if I will even built a PC as I much prefer working with a test bench setup instead as I'm always interested in testing something different like helping out other Vogons members testing some compatibility or whatever...

Because otherwise you just end up building 10 machines, and heaps of parts you need to get that many times...

I bagged pretty much all my cards up (used 50 of these zip lock bags, so got to order more) and around 18 fit into one of my storage boxes inserted vertically for easy browsing. Quite happy with that solution. I might check of a much larger box and store mainboards that way, but not 100% sure yet 😀

Decisions, decisions...

I have everything important in anti static bags, and then in boxes grouped by type, e.g ISA VGA, Sound cards, etc. When a box fills up I know I have too much of something and it's time to cull some.

I have all my mainboards in one large plastic tub and it's the only storage solution I'm not happy with, because the ones down the bottom have a lot of weight on them.

Can you tell us more aout your test bench setup? Is it just a dedicated workspace with a PSU and monitor, or something more fancy?

My test bench is a Monitor box (packaging) on my desk 😀

At the rear it has the PSU and then the optical drive, floppy emulator and SATA PCI / CF / Microdrive hanging off it.

Haven't found anything prettier at this moment. It does the job and I don't want something with screws, it would just slow things down.

Next to it is another desk with my 17" LCD, PS/2 keyboard and mouse and KVM as cable extension. The KVM also cleans up the VGA signal for some reason when going into the S-Video converter for capturing.

Slowly getting there. They sold out of boxes locally, so I will get some more in a week or two 😀

Still looking for a motherboard solution. Got static bags, but haven't got something to put them in. But otherwise it's looking good.

Roland / MIDI loot 😀

That looks really well organised, bigger pictures would be better but only because I want to have a good look at what is in each container.
So much Roland drooooooooooools.

Anyway still not sure about motherboards either. Mostly because I tend to leave the CPU and heatsink in the board for safe keeping so its a bit more awkward to pack them in boxes. I suppose motherboards can be stored on their side instead of flat if needs be but it seems like it would be worse? Really need a way to separate motherboards in a bigger box without putting them on top of each other.

awergh wrote:

That looks really well organised, bigger pictures would be better but only because I want to have a good look at what is in each container.
So much Roland drooooooooooools.

Anyway still not sure about motherboards either. Mostly because I tend to leave the CPU and heatsink in the board for safe keeping so its a bit more awkward to pack them in boxes. I suppose motherboards can be stored on their side instead of flat if needs be but it seems like it would be worse? Really need a way to separate motherboards in a bigger box without putting them on top of each other.

Thanks 😀

Found a reasonable solution for storing my boards. At the moment I only have a few but got quite a few coming 😀

I can store 3 boards in each container. Maybe 4. Easy to tuck a driver CD and manual / jumper printouts in there as well. Will group them by 386 / 486 / Socket 7 and Slot 1/ S370.

Very nice, where is all this stuff? That looks too clean to be a shed. Office? Bedroom? 🤣

This is how I store CPU's. I was organising and rationalising them today and found a POD 150Mhz in there. I have no idea where or when I picked that up!

Nice! Better than my method of just sticking them in bags...

RAM has not got its own box as I'm getting some 386 and 486 gear soon.

It's the larger bedroom that I have turned into my man cave / time portal. Should be finished soon. What's not in the picture are the desks with tons of stuff on it. Ran out of bags but they should arrive soon.

Hoping my 386 experience will be smooth and I can focus on doing some videos rather than trouble shooting 😀

ooo thats clever using the bubble wrap for cpus and I have stacks from when I buy new stuff from pccasegear (online australian hardware store thingo)
I think I'm happy to just leave the heatsinks in a shoebox or something though since theres no pins to worry about there.