Yeah I saw that evergreen CPU I was outbid at $520 but didn't realistically expect to win it......

It came up on my search listings and when I saw the evergreen package with a cyrix CPU I thought "Could it be"? And it was on closer inspection.

Does anyone know much about the boxes of these evergreen CPUS?

That Cyrix one that sold had the black/purple box, theirs an AMD version for sale right now with the whitish and AMD logo on the front.

So does that mean, if you ever see a Evergreen box with the black/purple it has the cyrix 5x86-133?

I wonder if the buyer was a vogons member? I would love to see the back of the box and contents of the manuals.

I am hoping that a user here won that auction. If so, I may know who. I would really like a proper scan of the manual. I've never seen the manual contents for the case of a Cyrix 5x86-133/4x chip, or even a Cyrix 5x86 for that matter. Unfortunately, 99% of the population with a scanner don't know how to use it properly. People think scanning all pages in colour or even greyscale are the way to go, but they won't print well. Covers and photos should be scanned in grey or colour, depending on the original content, but the bulk of the manual, which is likely just black text or black line graphics should be scanned in 1-bit mode with an appropriate bitmap threshold set. This way the manual will print out beautifully with any printer.

Concerning the Evergreen box, user Anonymous Coward and I did some detailed analysis on this a few years back but I don't recall the outcome. His memory is better than mine, perhaps send him a PM. What I do recall is that there was a switch over when Evergreen could no longer acquire the Cyrix 5x86-133 samples and went with AMD units instead. I think we determined that some AMD chips may be in the same box as the Cyrix during this transition period. Even if the has the black/purple background with the green letters, it may contain a Cyrix 5x86-100 or an unmarked CPU.

$520, yeah, way too low. Even if I still had cash in the bank, I wouldn't have bothered bidding on this. It truely was a unique find. I've never seen a properly boxed Cyrix 5x86-133/4x like this.

Today I won a Bid for a working DFI G686 IPA socket 8 with P.Pro 200Mhz/256k and 32Mb ram. The seller is including a P.Pro 200Mhz/1Mb as it will not work proper on the board (boots with it but has issues properly detecting the cache as 1Mb) and has no other use for it. Cost: $67 plus $10 shipping. Same seller sold a Asus P3B-F r1.04 Motherboard, Pentium 3 -850MHz, 512MB Ram for $230 today.

I saw a Trio64 VLB sell for about $250 USD shipped. I figured in today's crazy COVID market it would have gone for more. Should be easy enough to find the 1 MB upgrade for this, so perhaps prices dropping! These cards are up there with the top two or three fastest and most compatible VLB graphic cards. I think these can even take a plug-in MPEG encoder upgrade, or maybe that was only for the Diamond S3 968 series?

I've got a 2meg visiontek(?) 868 that definitely accepts an mpeg module.

That buyer was an Australian he listed the buy on a local site I use.

I recently sold a 386 DX-40, 16meg ram, 340meg hard disk, CT1740 SB16, diamond Et4000AX tower for $370AUD delivered or about $250USD.

I'm starting to think I'll regret that sale as it's not really that expensive for a quality retro PC.

Especially when you see how much individual parts can go for

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/184422078463

Looks like you practically gave that system away, case and all. Items are always more valuable parted out, but it costs time.

dirkmirk wrote on 2020-11-07, 06:40:

I recently sold a 386 DX-40, 16meg ram, 340meg hard disk, CT1740 SB16, diamond Et4000AX tower for $370AUD delivered or about $25 […]
Show full quote

I recently sold a 386 DX-40, 16meg ram, 340meg hard disk, CT1740 SB16, diamond Et4000AX tower for $370AUD delivered or about $250USD.

I'm starting to think I'll regret that sale as it's not really that expensive for a quality retro PC.

Especially when you see how much individual parts can go for

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/184422078463

Arrange a visit to your local recycler and you'll find at least 3 such complete or parted systems there for pennies. I had arranged one such visit not too long and got myself some neat hardware for 48Eu including taxes (Acer ALTOS 1100E MB, 386 MB with 82C300 chipset, 486 Micronics JX30G MB, Tseng ET4000AX etc...), which, probably by Ebay standards would be evaluated for 400Eu minimum /rolleyes.

dirkmirk wrote on 2020-11-07, 06:40:

I'm starting to think I'll regret that sale as it's not really that expensive for a quality retro PC.

feipoa wrote on 2020-11-08, 00:32:

Looks like you practically gave that system away, case and all. Items are always more valuable parted out, but it costs time.

"Regret" and "practically gave that system away" when talking about $250 for a 386 which falls into the "popular" and not the "rare classic computer hardware" ? Wow, this hobby has reached new levels. It's borderline not a hobby anymore.

I agree about individual components prices though

A bare 386/486 case that isn't damaged , not hideous, and that isn't a giant tower - what are those going for? $75? Shipping, $50? 386 motherboard w/shipping $100? Diamond branded ET4000 $100 shipped? Plus all the others (sound, RAM, CPU, CD-ROM, floppy, HDD) $200 sold individually at a discount?

Unfortunately, it does seem like this hobby has transitioned more into a collection for profit endeavour, which makes the product less of a hobby toy, but more of a commodity. There are still a few sellers on CPU-World and AMIbay with acceptable prices, but I doubt this will last for long. I have ceased all purchases for myself in this hobby, unless the price is very reasonable.

As long as people continue to pay ridiculous amounts, the trend will continue. The community as a whole would need to collectively come to some agreement on pricing and cease purchasing, but this is unlikely to happen. Demand sets the price , with greed and desire setting the demand. I wouldn't want to be getting into this hobby in the modern climate.

I do find watching the price shift really entertaining.

feipoa wrote on 2020-11-09, 01:49:

A bare 386/486 case that isn't damaged , not hideous, and that isn't a giant tower - what are those going for? $75? Shipping, $5 […]
Show full quote

A bare 386/486 case that isn't damaged , not hideous, and that isn't a giant tower - what are those going for? $75? Shipping, $50? 386 motherboard w/shipping $100? Diamond branded ET4000 $100 shipped? Plus all the others (sound, RAM, CPU, CD-ROM, floppy, HDD) $200 sold individually at a discount?

Unfortunately, it does seem like this hobby has transitioned more into a collection for profit endeavour, which makes the product less of a hobby toy, but more of a commodity. There are still a few sellers on CPU-World and AMIbay with acceptable prices, but I doubt this will last for long. I have ceased all purchases for myself in this hobby, unless the price is very reasonable.

As long as people continue to pay ridiculous amounts, the trend will continue. The community as a whole would need to collectively come to some agreement on pricing and cease purchasing, but this is unlikely to happen. Demand sets the price , with greed and desire setting the demand. I wouldn't want to be getting into this hobby in the modern climate.

I do find watching the price shift really entertaining.

Every single bit of this is worded excellently, I couldn't have said it better

To be fair I am happy with the selling price as I set the starting bid at $300 aud(approx $200USD).

SSTV2 mentioned that you can find these systems for pennies at recyclers?

In my experience it'll be 512kb trident, 2/4meg of ram, 120meg hard disk, no soundcard or 8x creative cd-rom....

That was a solid retro PC nothing to spend......

The reality is I needed to clear out space so not just about the money.

I literally saw a a Geforce FX5950 sell for nearly double, that makes me scratch my head......

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Nvidia-geforce-FX … =p2047675.l2557

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/XFX-GeForce-FX-59 … &frcectupt=true

Is their a difference between the 2 cards?

Other than the Gigabyte branded one most likely being less common I don't think there should be any difference. Me sits here laughing at these prices when I picked up my FX 5950 Ultra for around $50 because the fans were dead. 1 Zalman cooler later and it works like new and card cools way better than stock.

Here's a listing I was watching. It is an IODATA branded IBM BL3 75 MHz upgrade adapter for Japanese PC-98 systems. I have two of these and one will run at 110 MHz, but on the boards tested, needs to have the L1 flush the cache with every I/O. This one sold for $461 USD. They are not worth that kind of money in my opinion.

I've seen a few this year on eBay already. I suspect buyers are discovering these don't work on their motherboards, and reselling them knowing very well that they likely won't work as the next buyer hopes. Thus listing's often come with vagueries like "untested", "as-is", "for PC098, may work on others", etc in order not to loose resale value. The seller of this listing says he was told that these are compatible with most IBM compatible systems, however I do not believe that to be true.

Finding a board which does not need to have this module flush the L1 cache on every I/O has proven problematic for me. Even at 110 MHz, if you are needing to flush the L1 cache every I/O, you are better off with an SXL2-50 that doesn't need to flush the cache every I/O.

An untested NexGen Nx586 P110-E/D sold for $500 on eBay last week (13 March 2021). No motherboard, just the chip.

A Cyrix 5x86-120 in OK condition sold for $150 USD on 24 Dec 2020.

The amounts of both of these sales surprised me, perhaps more so the Cyrix. That Cyrix wasn't even S1R3.

I've seen ridiculous prices for untested hardware on my local classifieds as well. People are getting pretty brazen nowadays.

On principle, I refuse to pay more than 10 EUR for anything listed as such.

The high prices on some items leads other sellers to try and charge the same for less valuable parts driving up everything.

Its also a bit funny how prideful these sellers are, they dont really know what they are selling, but they rather let it be unsold than accept a reasonable offer.

from a buyers point of view, as some of these are actually sold, I'd like to know why buy it

just as one example; what does a Cyrix 5x86-120 do for $150 that any number of pentium 1's, 2's and early celerons dont do more of, for less?

i cannot imagine it keeping its value, it has no other feature that makes it special and that goes with so many vintage parts that seem to become 'collectable'

i can understand it with cars, for instance, because the argument 'what does a 1982 camaro z28 do that a [insert cheaper slightly later and more powerful car] doesnt'? is easy to answer - you experience the car directly, looking at it and sitting in it. Not something PC components give you!

and indeed, many components and PCs go unsold round and round on ebay or whatever for months and months never dropping price remaining unsold!

Back when I used to sell items on eBay (2003-2006), it was the cost of re-listing an item which made the seller motivated to sell quick. If I recall, you'd get your 1st relisting free or at a discount if you dropped the price, but after the 2nd listing, it was cost defeating to keep the item up for sale for month after month because of the unsold listing cost. Is this not the case these days? It seems as if sellers can keep relisting indefinitely without cost unless it sells.

Well, on one side there are people out there willing to pay absurd amounts of money for random items: not long ago some dude posted on this forum and said he would pay up to $500 (!!!) for an ASUS 486 motherboard (VL/I-486SV2GX4) that is quite fast but not uncommon or particularly collectible. So those people definitely exist, and I think some sellers expect to strike gold with them rather than selling quickly for less money.

I've also noticed what vetz mentioned about the "pride" of certain sellers that refuse to lower their prices despite the items rotting for months or years, being constantly relisted. I find it somewhat amusing, in particular when they add "Vintage!!", "Rare!!1!" or "Retro gaming" to bottom of the barrel stuff like OAK/Trident video cards and PCChips motherboards.