Been handed more old hardware today a couple of old Compaq servers, so now I have a boat load of PC133/PC100 ECC dimms about 6 256mb ones and 12 128mb ones, no idea if they will work in my 370 board that supports ECC dimms but only one way to find out.

Also have 5 70gb SCSI Ultrawide320 drives, 3 18gb SCSI Ultrawide3 drives and two 9GB Ultrawide3 drives, not sure if finding a SCSI Ultrawide PCI card and repurposing them in my Tualatin system would be worth it, not even sure if you can get a card that supports both at the same time. Guess its time to do a little research since throwing out 15k RPM drives would be such a waste, the servers dont work and trying to restore them would be impossible, they were raided systems and each is missing drives from the array. The servers are also missing PSUs and any of their management software, they do still have their SCSI raid cards in them but no way to reuse them in a PC.

Also have 4 700Mhz Pentium III slot based Xeons too, pretty sure they are useless without a server board for them, might crack them open clean them up and cast them into blocks of resin to use as drink coasters!

If anyone has pointers for SCSI drives and cards or links to good online resource that would help in trying to reuse the drives I would be grateful.

Edit - Is Ultra320 backward compatible as in itll work on earlier Ultrawide cards but at a slower speed ?

The scrap lot with the Compaq ESS wavetable board came in. Nothing else really to talk about but there were a few pieces that aren't going right back to scrap.

The ES689F / ES982 daughterboard:

Anybody have any idea what this is for?

Also got a few things worth saving that aren't pictured:
K6-2 300
S370 PIII-933
Itanium 2 900Mhz - ton of bent pins
10/100PCI NIC

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-15, 02:05:

The scrap lot with the Compaq ESS wavetable board came in. Nothing else really to talk about but there were a few pieces that ar […]
Show full quote

The scrap lot with the Compaq ESS wavetable board came in. Nothing else really to talk about but there were a few pieces that aren't going right back to scrap.

The ES689F / ES982 daughterboard:
Compaq_ES689F_ES982_front.jpg
Compaq_ES689F_ES982_back.jpg

Anybody have any idea what this is for?
Formats_Unlimited_v.2.1.jpg

Also got a few things worth saving that aren't pictured:
K6-2 300
S370 PIII-933
Itanium 2 900Mhz - ton of bent pins
10/100PCI NIC

The Itanium cleaned up and opened showing the core would make for a great wall piece, not really much else you could do with it.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-15, 02:05:

Anybody have any idea what this is for?
Formats_Unlimited_v.2.1.jpg

The chip on the left is for remembering, the chip on the right is for logicing and the thin one is for resisting. As a whole.... I've got no clue.

edit: after a bit of pondering... you could plug a 26 Pin JVC hard drive into that header and see if it blows up, then at least that's one less of the stupid things 🤣

I guess I could always pull the atmel chip and hook it up to my ROM reader to see if I could get a clue...

I bought a bunch of PCI-E cards.. A Radeon HD4870X2, a GTX480 and a GTX780. Untested, and belonged to seller's son, and were placed in a cupboard after upgrading. They are supposed to work. I paid only $35 for the lot, so even if only one of them work, I'll be good I guess..

Might be picking up a beige Antec case, a Z68 gigabyte board, 16gb of ddr3, 600watt PCP&C psu, 128gb ssd, 500gb HDD and a Xeon e3-1270 tomorrow.

$45 and I was after the case. But along with the R9 Fury I loaned out to a buddy last year I guess iv got a full "modern" PC again.

won a few auctions on ePay the last week. A saved search finally erupted that i've long forgot about. Hard drives! for the IBM PS/2 system. 7 pictured, another 4 are on the shelf, and I couldn't be bothered to get them. They all look the same anyway.

And one oddball ST-225 for a total of 12.

Hard drives is one thing I do not collected. I am very happy with the absolute silence and zero latency that solid state provides.

I remember being fond of it as a kid because it sounded very techy. As I've gotten older the sound has become more of nuisance for me.

I'm glad to see them being put into collections regardless. Just not mine.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-15, 07:26:

Hard drives is one thing I do not collected. I am very happy with the absolute silence and zero latency that solid state provides.

I remember being fond of it as a kid because it sounded very techy. As I've gotten older the sound has become more of nuisance for me.

I'm glad to see them being put into collections regardless. Just not mine.

Eh.. Solid state drives are fine for OS that does not utilize swap space much such as DOS, OS/2, Linux or OS that knows how to handle them such as Windows Vista and onwards.

However, for Windows 95 through and including XP they are a very shitty option IMO.

Vynix wrote on 2021-12-15, 00:49:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-12-14, 23:26:

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-12-14, 22:01:

Just like the HP Omnibook XE3-GC I used to have (but the Omnibook's screen was shit).

I have 2 and the screens aren't that bad.
S3 + Polka audio! 😀

I've got one as well, with the XGA screen, unfortunately mine isn't in the best of condition and needs a new HDD connector (previous one crumbled in my hands grrrrr), but otherwise it's a pretty solid performing laptop

One pin fell off and I replaced it with a copper staple. Works wonders.
It wasn't made with the best materials.
There's the issue of bios not recognizing speedstep correctly, but works with model with dock station connector. Replacing the cpu is really tedious.
Enough ranting, I used it a lot and never got disappointed.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-15, 07:26:

I am very happy with the absolute silence and zero latency that solid state provides.

Oh, you haven't had the pleasure of dealing with IBM PS/2 computers! These drives are TOTALLY INCOMPATABLE with ANY other system other than the 1 or 2 they were designed for. Case in point, the Ibm model 25/30. There are exactly TWO options for hard drives on those systems. The original PROPRITARTY 20/30 mb hard drive, or a special card that takes one of your TWO slots. (well three in the 30, but still) To say nothing of how these drives are RELIABLY un-reliable.

There are NO options for SSD drives in PS/2 machines. Nobody has made an adapter afaik, there are about 4 kinds of these drives and they share connectors. Meaning, you can have a 30mb drive that FITS into the model 30, but it doesnt work because its for the 55.

its MADDENING.

All real computers have mechanical hard drives.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-12-15, 08:30:

All real computers have mechanical hard drives.

More like "all real vintage PCs". I use CFs mostly for ease of moving files between vintage hardware and modern PC. But I still usually add mechanical HDD because of all the sweet noises it makes 😁

HanJammer wrote on 2021-12-15, 08:38:

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-12-15, 08:30:

All real computers have mechanical hard drives.

More like "all real vintage PCs". I use CFs mostly for ease of moving files between vintage hardware and modern PC. But I still usually add mechanical HDD because of all the sweet noises it makes 😁

Same here, i use mainly CF cards - my heart just doesn't allow me to use mechanical stuff just for my own fun... They'll die eventually, and my joy doesn't need to help speeding it up. 😀

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-15, 02:05:

Anybody have any idea what this is for?
Formats_Unlimited_v.2.1.jpg

"CD2CD" suggests some Compact Disc duplicator...
and "Formats Unlimited, Inc." can be found on this list - http://discdupe.org/i/memberslist-by-country.html

luckybob wrote on 2021-12-15, 08:09:

Oh, you haven't had the pleasure of dealing with IBM PS/2 computers! These drives are TOTALLY INCOMPATABLE with ANY other syste […]
Show full quote

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-15, 07:26:

I am very happy with the absolute silence and zero latency that solid state provides.

Oh, you haven't had the pleasure of dealing with IBM PS/2 computers! These drives are TOTALLY INCOMPATABLE with ANY other system other than the 1 or 2 they were designed for. Case in point, the Ibm model 25/30. There are exactly TWO options for hard drives on those systems. The original PROPRITARTY 20/30 mb hard drive, or a special card that takes one of your TWO slots. (well three in the 30, but still) To say nothing of how these drives are RELIABLY un-reliable.

There are NO options for SSD drives in PS/2 machines. Nobody has made an adapter afaik, there are about 4 kinds of these drives and they share connectors. Meaning, you can have a 30mb drive that FITS into the model 30, but it doesnt work because its for the 55.

its MADDENING.

You gotta hand it to IBM, they for sure loved their proprietary hardware back in the day, it does surprise me no one has attempted to get an adaptor working there must be plenty of documentation around for the PS/2 HDD format.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-15, 06:43:

I bought a bunch of PCI-E cards.. A Radeon HD4870X2, a GTX480 and a GTX780. Untested, and belonged to seller's son, and were placed in a cupboard after upgrading. They are supposed to work. I paid only $35 for the lot, so even if only one of them work, I'll be good I guess..

Right.. So the man just messaged me and let me know, for the sake of being honest, that his son informed him that the 4870X2 'overheats'.. Whatever that means. I'd guess that one is defective, which isn't surprising. I think a lot of those cards failed over the years.

Not exactly collector's wet dream but hey. Unfortunately most of them require some severe cleaning and pin correction work. Guess I'll have to dip them in some IPA over night to get rid of this...smell.

ChrisK wrote on 2021-12-15, 10:33:

Not exactly collector's wet dream but hey. Unfortunately most of them require some severe cleaning and pin correction work. Guess I'll have to dip them in some IPA over night to get rid of this...smell.

Gold caps and K6 + K5.
Nice bunch!