VOGONS


Bought these (retro) hardware today

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Reply 40640 of 52680, by BitWrangler

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Brawndo wrote on 2021-10-01, 05:02:

More goodies arrived today. A brand new shrink wrapped Maxtor 120 GB external hard drive, which of course I'm going to open up and remove the drive itself for installation in a Windows 98 desktop. It seems like these external drives often get overlooked by people looking for a 3.5" IDE hard drive. Inside it's your typical ATA 133 DiamondMax hard drive.

Yup, though tread careful in capacities above about 250GB.. They started making custom USB controller boards to replace the IDE controller. Happened sooner on 2.5" externals than 3.5s . So if going that route with larger drives, attempt to confirm that particular external unit does actually have a standard drive in it. Possibly it will be acceptable in some instances to shuck the case off a USB drive and hook it up by internal USB 2.0 but not ideal.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 40641 of 52680, by Phoe

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Hey all! New to the forum and new to being an active participant in the hobby, I've enjoyed it from afar for a long time, but decided it was finally time to get into it myself. I lucked out and managed to grab a Toshiba Tecra 740CDT with accessories off Craigslist for free! Took the RTC and sleep batteries out and I've been enjoying trying to give it some TLC and getting it set up the way I want. Have some floppies on the way so I can give it a fresh Windows 98 install as well.
I'm definitely still feeling my way around and learning how to do things and this server has been an invaluable resource in that process.

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Reply 40642 of 52680, by Thermalwrong

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Nice find and great price:)
I bought one of those a couple of months ago, paid about £15 for it with shipping. The top end Tecras from that era are tanks - the Tecra 740CDT was shipped to me just wrapped up in a plastic bag, no padding. It got here in all in one piece with a working screen, just some slightly cracked plastic and maybe it already had some of those already. I think it's probably one of the thickest, biggest and heaviest laptops in my whole collection.

Good job taking the nimh batteries out before they can do too much damage, I do the same with every Toshiba I get hold of.

Reply 40643 of 52680, by Phoe

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-10-02, 02:09:

Good job taking the nimh batteries out before they can do too much damage, I do the same with every Toshiba I get hold of.

Thank you
I was lucky enough to stumble upon a thread here about the nicad/nimh batteries in these old Toshiba laptops before I received mine.
Double lucky the batteries hadn't leaked at all!
And yeah these things are sturdy. 10 or so pounds, very little creak, just a good little machine.

I'm a little worried about recapping, not sure if I'm gonna have to go back in soon and check on that.
I don't relish the idea of opening this thing up again. What a process that was.

Reply 40644 of 52680, by retardware

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Phoe wrote on 2021-10-02, 02:37:

I'm a little worried about recapping, not sure if I'm gonna have to go back in soon and check on that.
I don't relish the idea of opening this thing up again. What a process that was.

Welcome on the forum, too!
Maybe it is not at all necessary to recap, maybe it's sufficient just to replace the NiMH cells?
This "process" is why I hate laptops, btw.

I recently burned my Quadro NVS280, and posted some photos of the analysis in @yifis wonderful thread about Nvidia history.

The replacement, a GeForce PCX 5750 that arrived well-packaged, and works well.
The image is very sharp even at FHD truecolor resolution. I am very pleased 😀 (Photos in the last link above)

Reply 40645 of 52680, by BetaC

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Well I couldn’t pass up something that’s basically NIB for $5. Don’t find serial mice like that too often.

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Reply 40646 of 52680, by Phoe

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retardware wrote on 2021-10-02, 03:34:

Welcome on the forum, too!
Maybe it is not at all necessary to recap, maybe it's sufficient just to replace the NiMH cells?
This "process" is why I hate laptops, btw.

Thank you!
And yeah, I'd always been wary of grabbing a laptop because I know they're invariably a pain to work on, but it's hard to pass up free. I see it as my trial by fire upon entering the hobby 🤣

Reply 40647 of 52680, by Thermalwrong

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You should not need to recap the Tecra 7xxCDT models, at least not for a few years yet anyway. The reason it's mentioned in relation to Toshibas, is that many of their 486 laptops had a bad PSU design that caused one cap to fail prematurely. Those were breaking even in the early 2000s.

Also the early 90s SMD electrolytic capacitors, which you'll see referenced in both early 90s Toshibas and lots of Macs, were less resilient than later ones. I haven't seen leaked capacitors on any of my pentium Toshiba laptops, and I've seen quite a few of them at this point.

Reply 40648 of 52680, by BitWrangler

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Bit of a drive by teaser because I'm flying out of the house again in a few mins...

I am bad at sticking to resolutions I guess, was not supposed to be buying more retro machines, but when crap like this falls in my lap for pocket change it's hard to say no...

An IBM system dx2 66, riser motherboard with i/o vga etc on it, there's some sort of soundcard in, no time to dig. Came with keyboard and mouse.

Then some speakers for a buck, IDK if they're any good, shoulda taken a pic of the other one, it's got knobs on.

edit: this might be right, we'll find out... https://mastodonpc.tripod.com/personal/6571-l3b.html

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Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 40649 of 52680, by NyLan

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Received 2 Motherboards today 😀

Socket 370 Asus CUV4X sold with its Pentium3 733.... which is actually a 933Mhz after I removed the old crappy Intel fan.

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Super Socket 7 DFI K6XV3+/66 sold with its K6-2 500

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Setup in progress ( with my custom Startech / Noctua cooler )

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My Intel SE440BX-2 Intel's website Mirror : Modified to include docs, refs and BIOSes.
Proud owner of a TL866 II
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Reply 40650 of 52680, by BitWrangler

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So the IBM PC 330 is a bit of a weird config. No internal shots yet, it's dustier than a dust farm in a dust bowl in harvest season. It contains a CT2740 and a CR-562-B, two non-identical IBM 4MB SIMMs, one IBM HDD mounted under everything, couldn't tell capacity, one mounted beside CDROM that is a 540MB. The place where the part number sticker on the front of the case is empty (should be directly under floppy button, you can just see where it ain't if you zoom pic in last post) But on the front metal chassis is the number 6571-L00 which according to https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssiali … ch_a&subtype=CA is a VLB DX2-66 with no drive and no RAM I think, which is not a stock config. So maybe the L00 was just the chassis they had sitting waiting for custom configs. Wonder if it's a dealer ordered on spec unit when MPC2 multimedia demand exploded, because there wasn't a DX2-66 model with multimedia, just the 50 and 100. Seems like they're the IBM parts, not super sure. Other points of note, 4 cache sockets empty, guess it's got 128KB writeback, CPU might be SL enhanced writeback DX2 it supports power saving. There is one chip of video RAM soldered one socketed, so that would seem to suggest it was the 2MB model, rather than the 1MB model, but chip looks like 16x256 to me, so they did that weird if lowest model had 1MB.

So what else I got with it for my 10 canadian dollars, was the keyboard and mouse, both PS/2, keyboard also has part label missing, dunno what it is, rubber dome type, maybe 8273 or something???

Current thinking on the 330 is to clean it up, get it running, keep it virtually "as is". Meant to be picky for RAM with these, but I have a number of IBM SIMMs to try, including some 8MB ones I've had for ages that nothing much else likes, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed I can get all four of those in it. So just the RAM upgrade if possible and a NIC maybe. It's got the VLB slot, but IDK if it's really worth upgrading the CL5430 if it's well implemented, other VLB I've got would tend to being a "side-grade" unless I come across anything super special. I'd expect the onboard I/O not to be too much of a slouch either to need a VLB I/O. The buzz I'm getting about these systems is that they perform well. This is actually my first "brand name" 486 I've got prebuilt XT, 286, 386, Pentium, MMX, PII, (and generic 486es) Anyway, I think it might fit well in my "compact stack" plan of smaller form factor machines, with an AST advantage 386, turbo XT, Compaq MMX, Compaq PIII, Core 2 ITX and Dustin the DOStin under build.

The "Nicole" speakers claim 200W PMPO with under 0.1% THD at 1khz... Model "Sound Digit SD880"... yeah, prolly just yer generic noise pushers really.

Then the rest of todays haul in the pic, a joystick I saw later, thought would go nice with the PC 330, lifetime supply of mouse adapters, unfortunately hidden by the shine is the actual unique one, a serial into PS/2. Couple of 1.5TB external drives to plug in the 25 cent router I grabbed the other week. PATA DVD writer, a buck wasted maybe.

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Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 40651 of 52680, by Phoe

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-10-02, 15:00:

You should not need to recap the Tecra 7xxCDT models, at least not for a few years yet anyway. The reason it's mentioned in relation to Toshibas, is that many of their 486 laptops had a bad PSU design that caused one cap to fail prematurely. Those were breaking even in the early 2000s.

Also the early 90s SMD electrolytic capacitors, which you'll see referenced in both early 90s Toshibas and lots of Macs, were less resilient than later ones. I haven't seen leaked capacitors on any of my pentium Toshiba laptops, and I've seen quite a few of them at this point.

This is reassuring thank you!

Reply 40652 of 52680, by MMaximus

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BitWrangler wrote on 2021-10-03, 02:11:

...
So what else I got with it for my 10 canadian dollars, was the keyboard and mouse, both PS/2, keyboard also has part label missing, dunno what it is, rubber dome type, maybe 8273 or something???

...

I wonder if Cherry ever manufactured keyboards for IBM as this model looks a lot like the G80 series (might be some sort of G81 if as you say it is rubber dome)

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 40653 of 52680, by RandomStranger

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On the monthly flea market I picked up a Diamond Viper V330 PCI for 3$.
It's dirty, but I see no missing parts or damaged traces. The seller claimed it works, so there is a 10-20% chance that it actually does so I took the gamble.

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Reply 40654 of 52680, by Ydee

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BitWrangler wrote on 2021-10-02, 15:43:

Then some speakers for a buck, IDK if they're any good, shoulda taken a pic of the other one, it's got knobs on.

Looks like one of the clones of the immortal plastic "Encore" PC speakers, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVET_1Tb6HU&t=643s
How does that sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmkQk4Cu78k

Reply 40655 of 52680, by Munx

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Saw a beat up beige box that looked like it was a boring office machine with some boring socket A or S478 board in it. Was going to pass , but then I spotted the outputs on the back:

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Besides a S370 that's needs a recapping, Radeon 7000VE, SB Live SB0220, and a Tualatin 1266, it was filled with MIDI goodness!

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Yamaha SW1000XG PCI, Turtle beach Pinnacle and a Roland SCB-7

My builds!
The FireStarter 2.0 - The wooden K5
The Underdog - The budget K6
The Voodoo powerhouse - The power-hungry K7
The troll PC - The Socket 423 Pentium 4

Reply 40656 of 52680, by Doornkaat

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Munx wrote on 2021-10-03, 15:15:
Saw a beat up beige box that looked like it was a boring office machine with some boring socket A or S478 board in it. Was goi […]
Show full quote

Saw a beat up beige box that looked like it was a boring office machine with some boring socket A or S478 board in it. Was going to pass , but then I spotted the outputs on the back:
P_20211002_124527.jpg
P_20211002_125907.jpg
Besides a S370 that's needs a recapping, Radeon 7000VE, SB Live SB0220, and a Tualatin 1266, it was filled with MIDI goodness!
P_20211002_121544.jpgP_20211002_121623.jpgP_20211002_121638.jpg
Yamaha SW1000XG PCI, Turtle beach Pinnacle and a Roland SCB-7

I'd say you did good but actually you did great!😃👍

Reply 40657 of 52680, by BitWrangler

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Doornkaat wrote on 2021-10-03, 15:25:
Munx wrote on 2021-10-03, 15:15:
Saw a beat up beige box that looked like it was a boring office machine with some boring socket A or S478 board in it. Was goi […]
Show full quote

Saw a beat up beige box that looked like it was a boring office machine with some boring socket A or S478 board in it. Was going to pass , but then I spotted the outputs on the back:
P_20211002_124527.jpg
P_20211002_125907.jpg
Besides a S370 that's needs a recapping, Radeon 7000VE, SB Live SB0220, and a Tualatin 1266, it was filled with MIDI goodness!
P_20211002_121544.jpgP_20211002_121623.jpgP_20211002_121638.jpg
Yamaha SW1000XG PCI, Turtle beach Pinnacle and a Roland SCB-7

I'd say you did good but actually you did great!😃👍

Yah that's a pretty awesome load out for a beige box. Musta come from a small studio or something.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 40658 of 52680, by BitWrangler

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Ydee wrote on 2021-10-03, 12:05:
Looks like one of the clones of the immortal plastic "Encore" PC speakers, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVET_1Tb6HU&t= […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2021-10-02, 15:43:

Then some speakers for a buck, IDK if they're any good, shoulda taken a pic of the other one, it's got knobs on.

Looks like one of the clones of the immortal plastic "Encore" PC speakers, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVET_1Tb6HU&t=643s
How does that sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmkQk4Cu78k

Indeed, thanks, that's why they looked familiar. Though I just realised I might own another set, buried somewhere in a box as "speakers of last resort" because that set had gone to a mottled 50 shades of yellow*, and had also developed rattle and buzz from something loose. They look easy to get into and fix up though.

* I'm not all that picky about yellowing if it's even, but when you pull a load of stickers off something and it's got white spots, and each part has gone a different shade etc it looks nasty fugly.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 40659 of 52680, by bjwil1991

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Bought a PC Interlink by SoftWorx for $2.99 + tax at a local thrift store (sealed, never opened).

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