Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-19, 04:52:

Recent Craigslist free section scores: A Hiper Type M 730 watt power supply that I haven't yet tested, though it powers on with a paper clip. https://www.newegg.com/hiper-type-m-hpu-4m730 … N82E16817128008

But my score this evening was a good one: an Asus Z87-K motherboard with 8 gigs of HyperX DDR3, an i5 4670K, an R9 280X, and a Thermaltake case. With a test install of Windows 10, so far everything is working well.
Edit: sadly, the video card locked up just barely into a run of 3D Mark. I pulled it out and cleaned it, lubed the fans, and reapplied thermal paste, but now I get no display unless I use the onboard video. Ah well, easy come, easy go. I didn't expect it (the video card) to work at all as the Thermaltake case has a handle on the top, and the video card was stuck in the gap between the handle and the case when I picked this stuff up.

I gave up on the video card last night, but made a few more tries today. It would work, then when I'd try to reboot, I'd have no display. I discovered that when it was working, though it is a PCIe 3.0 x16, it was in x4 mode? I took it out and very thoroughly cleaned the slot contacts; since doing that it hasn't failed to boot up properly, it's in x16 mode, and I've been able to run 3D Mark repeatedly with no issues.

It's possible that there is a fault on the card. Check for bulging electrolytic capacitors and inspect the board using a magnifying glass or with youthful eyeballs for damaged or missing surface mount components.

Maybe I'm just unlucky but it feels like on average 33% or more of video cards I've ordered used have had some kind of damage or piece missing from it.

After a two hour cleaning, the case was presentable, so I went ahead and assembled a system out of the parts. The only part in this I paid for was the power supply, everything else was scored for free. To look the gift horse in the mouth, an I/O plate wasn't included, but I have no complaint considering the price. The 3D Mark Time Spy score is 2,463.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-23, 19:58:

After a two hour cleaning, the case was presentable, so I went ahead and assembled a system out of the parts. The only part in this I paid for was the power supply, everything else was scored for free. To look the gift horse in the mouth, an I/O plate wasn't included, but I have no complaint considering the price. The 3D Mark Time Spy score is 2,463.

That is an absolutely fantastic pickup!

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-23, 19:58:

After a two hour cleaning, the case was presentable, so I went ahead and assembled a system out of the parts. The only part in this I paid for was the power supply, everything else was scored for free. To look the gift horse in the mouth, an I/O plate wasn't included, but I have no complaint considering the price. The 3D Mark Time Spy score is 2,463.

more than presentable, i think that's an excellent job, everything is looking great

Picked up this Compaq Contura Aero 4/33C in the temporary dump for large size garbage (mostly furniture) of the neighborhood; probably due to moving or preparing for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

Its 250 MB HDD and LCD display are dead (with right hinge snapped, a common problem of this model), but the system can boot and report error with beeps. Problem is, I have neither a spare compatible LCD panel nor a Compaq "Base Unit" i.e. docking station with a proprietary 60-pin connector. 🙁

The keyboard had no phonetic symbols for Chinese input, indicating it was probably purchased in US and brought to Taiwan. It was very expensive back then (US$2,850 in 1995).

Bumped into this page written by The 8-Bit Guy more than 24 years ago.

Cool to find an older laptop, but it looks like one of those projects where you can restore it to a machine worth $200, with only $500 worth of new parts. 🤣

Though I guess you might be able to score a cosmetically good machine cheap with fried internals.

gerry wrote on 2022-01-24, 10:34:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-01-23, 19:58:

After a two hour cleaning, the case was presentable, so I went ahead and assembled a system out of the parts. The only part in this I paid for was the power supply, everything else was scored for free. To look the gift horse in the mouth, an I/O plate wasn't included, but I have no complaint considering the price. The 3D Mark Time Spy score is 2,463.

more than presentable, i think that's an excellent job, everything is looking great

I'm not going to be living here much longer, this place is too crowded and too expensive for me; but the number of high income people in this area means some pretty amazing things are given away on Craigslist. You do have to be quick to respond though, and in this case I was lucky enough to spot it when it had only been up for a very short time.

I should have taken a before photo of the case; it was very, very dirty, the rear fan was seized but worked once I oiled it, and the top fan looked as though someone had spilled coffee on it while it was running. As I mentioned before, the R9 280X video card was just jammed under the case's handle, and was choked with dust (and had something spilled on it that prevented some of the traces making contact with the motherboard's slot), and the motherboard was in an old Amazon box, all left out on a walkway for me to pick up. The motherboard was mounted to an aluminum backplate from some sort of ATX case, and that had additional holes drilled through it that had wood screws going into small blocks of wood in what I'd guess was some sort of low effort coin mining setup. It wasn't worth their time to do anything with it, but I quite enjoyed cleaning it up and putting it back together.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-01-24, 14:09:

Cool to find an older laptop, but it looks like one of those projects where you can restore it to a machine worth $200, with only $500 worth of new parts. 🤣

I'm now certain that "proprietary" connector is a modified low-force helix (LFH-60) with different pinout.

Even the circled "I" or "1" and four smaller circles are identical to that Wikipedia photo.

Let's see...... an LFH-60 cable costs US$5-10, and I've got several spare VGA cables. Theoretically I just have to connect

117 Vertical Sync
218 Horizontal Sync
346 Blue Analog
447 Green Analog
548 Red Analog

to pins 14, 13, 3, 2, 1 of a VGA cable, respectively, to make a DIY converter cable. The original output connector has to be functional in the first place though.

Today coming to the office for the first time this week, I found a pile of trash on my desk. About a dozen of CDs, mostly CDRWs and various driver CDs, a Cisco WRT160NL router, thinking about using it for my retro network. 3 modems, probably good for various parts. An MP3 player, a discman, a bucket full of power bricks, a beaten up Sony TR-1823 radio.

Cool, you've got 'em trained. 🤣

Router, supports 802.11b so win98 can talk to it with prism2 sticks and cards, has storage support so through the wires or over the wifi you might be able to get it in SMB mode to file serve off a big USB drive on internal network.

Modems, inspect any real old ones carefully, (Probably slower than 28k) might have an x86 embedded CPU, but yeah, parts, maybe headphone jacks, brackets are useful to mod for other bracketless cards. Sometimes you get a flash chip you can use elsewhere.

MP3 player might come in handy if you've got 8 bits and wanna play them tape noises.

Sony radio is a collector piece.

okay haul.

edit: it's rumoured that a USR V everything business model modem had an FPGA on it, so look out for those.

edit2: for a single retro machine closer to the router you might be able to give it net access through the internal serial port https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Serial … inksys_WRT160NL but you'll need a max232 or something to make it speak real RS232.

Co Worker gave me 2 Pentium II CPUs. Not sure if I'll just use em' as display pieces or build something with them yet. We'll see. I've never owned a full PII system before (I sort of skipped over that right to the III).

creepingnet wrote on 2022-02-02, 23:04:

Co Worker gave me 2 Pentium II CPUs. Not sure if I'll just use em' as display pieces or build something with them yet. We'll see. I've never owned a full PII system before (I sort of skipped over that right to the III).

If you get enough of them you could use them as a dominoes game? 😜

Pentium IIs are fun to hide in your N64 games so kids ask what system they play on.

If you like to play games which were designed for early Pentiums, like Quake, then the Pentium 2 is easily a "better Pentium" by all accounts. Slot 1 motherboards are also more ubiquitous on the used market.

I find their cartridge shape to be very charming and keep a small collection.

Well unless they're 350s or something, then you gotta "waste" a BX on them 🤣

A other reason I like the Pentium 2 is for convenience while testing. It's much easier to apply a cooler to them than a Slot 1 Pentium 3 which can risk damaging the die during insertion and removal.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-03, 03:43:

If you like to play games which were designed for early Pentiums, like Quake, then the Pentium 2 is easily a "better Pentium" by all accounts. Slot 1 motherboards are also more ubiquitous on the used market.

I find their cartridge shape to be very charming and keep a small collection.

Oh, I know that feeling ... Just more like a collection of 50+ 🤣

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-03, 03:58:

A other reason I like the Pentium 2 is for convenience while testing. It's much easier to apply a cooler to them than a Slot 1 Pentium 3 which can risk damaging the die during insertion and removal.

I've never had a die on a slot 1 SECC2 (I presume you're referring to the SECC2 packaging of the Pentium 3 Slot 1 CPUs) break due to handling, but I do see how this might be possible.
I've always made it a habit to handle these CPUs by the cartridge and push down onto the cartridge itself (mostly the top edge where also the model number etc are printed) while trying to ignore touching the heatsink assembly too much (and definitely not applying any force on there if I don't have to).
Pentium 2 is a bit different as the (btw not that large) heatsink is basically firmly attached to the metal cartridge, so it can take more stress.
It does make replacing the fan more difficult though, I've experimented with snipping out the old fan and adding a small CPU HSF fan on top of it using that strong black tape which you can tape basically anything down with 😜
Really just a ghetto mod. It kinda worked but wasn't too satisfactory for me.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-03, 02:44:

Pentium IIs are fun to hide in your N64 games so kids ask what system they play on.

In my case it'd be hide them in the Atari 2600 carts and make people wonder if it's some super-advanced release nobody heard of, 🤣. "Yeah, it turns your Atari 2600 into a full blown 16bit PC with 256 color graphics and stereo sound!".

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-03, 03:44:

Well unless they're 350s or something, then you gotta "waste" a BX on them 🤣

Too bad I don't have a BX mothreboard for them, at least, not yet. Would probably do something like DaveJustDave did and put it in some uber-cool XT or AT clone style chassis because that's my favorite style, plus that's probably what a PII would have looked like had I built one for myself around that time being a cheap guy and all (ah, I have this 286, let's upgrade it to a PII).

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-03, 03:43:

If you like to play games which were designed for early Pentiums, like Quake, then the Pentium 2 is easily a "better Pentium" by all accounts. Slot 1 motherboards are also more ubiquitous on the used market.

I find their cartridge shape to be very charming and keep a small collection.

I do. Currently though I'm running things like that on my 486 DX4-100 and my NEC Pentium systems (versa P/75 and Ready 9522). Have been toying with experimenting with a K6 from the PC-Chips board in the Ready 9522. That said the appearance also makes them a good candidate as a work office decoration.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2022-02-03, 12:49:

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-03, 03:43:

If you like to play games which were designed for early Pentiums, like Quake, then the Pentium 2 is easily a "better Pentium" by all accounts. Slot 1 motherboards are also more ubiquitous on the used market.

I find their cartridge shape to be very charming and keep a small collection.

Oh, I know that feeling ... Just more like a collection of 50+ 🤣

You sound like me with 486-era hardware. I have (technically) seven of those - not just CPU, but full systems, 8 if you count the PC Chips m919 motherboard in my closet that I need to fix.