I scored a pair of Macintosh machines tonight. They somehow eluded my Craigslist email notifications, but someone here found them and gave me the info. (I'll let them chime in, if they want acknowledgement. )

I'm not much of a MAC person, but when someone is giving them away, I can't say no. I drove 40 minutes in 1 direction to get everything, and I will admit, I might have exceeded the highway speed limit slightly. A very nice older gentleman just gave them to me for free. We had a quick discussion about what I was going to do with them. The custom power brick (on top of the silver machine) was worth the trip by itself.

I haven't looked inside yet, I plan to do that tomorrow. For very expensive reasons, my garage doesn't have heat at the moment.

The silver G5 looks like it is the last model dual G5 machine made @ 2.7ghz. and the previous owner had an aftermarket sound & usb/firewire cards installed. This thing is HEAVY. It makes perfect sense to turn a pair of these into a parch bench. (i'm kidding)

The 500mhz G4 looks mostly untouched, but again has additional usb/firewire. The 24" LCD is a prize, I sure hope that works, but I've already made out like a bandit. I have plans for the G4 and monitor, but not so much the dual G5. I love dual cpu machines, but my Macintosh experience is very limited. Anyone care to chime in on projects?

*edit*
Forgot the damn images: https://imgur.com/gallery/hOxbob2

wooo sexy dual G5 Power Mac thats a nice machine, the G4 also sound nice.

Yup that G5 is one sexy machine, worth gutting and repurposing the case with a sleeper PC build ..just kidding 🤣 tho I have seen it done.

One day Ill get my hands on one of them, they are kinda rare here in Australia these days, most got sent to the scrappers for the Aluminium cost.

Seriously tho that G5 case was one of the sleekest cases Apple ever designed, just oozes pure class.

HanJammer wrote on 2022-02-08, 22:09:

Oh, nice, those are pretty much the fastest ISA SVGA cards. Certainly faster than ET4000AX for example, especially when equipped […]
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mpe wrote on 2022-02-08, 20:23:

(...) And a nice looking ISA VGA card: […]
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(...)
And a nice looking ISA VGA card:

Oh, nice, those are pretty much the fastest ISA SVGA cards. Certainly faster than ET4000AX for example, especially when equipped with sam fast DRAMs.

I got:

• MediaVision IX650 (aka Thunderboard)
  
  • Commodore Colt in very nice condition (just very dirty)
    
    • Micron MT486SX, has ECS UM486V-AIO motherboard, cards were remove - kind of unusually looking charcoal-gray color case for this era. I'm not sure what to think about it. Perhaps I won't hold on to it, but on the other hand it would be perfectly suited for some NeXTSTEP machine 😁 It's the same colour as the NeXT Cube after all.

Make sure the Colt doesn't have the battery in it since corrosion will destroy the board.

Have my Colt in storage until I get the board working or until I find a way to fix it.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2022-02-09, 05:01:

Make sure the Colt doesn't have the battery in it since corrosion will destroy the board.

Have my Colt in storage until I get the board working or until I find a way to fix it.

It does have battery. I will desolder it later. It doesn't really matter now because if there was a damage to be done - it already have been done. But all of around 10 PC10-III/PC20-III machines I had/have none had any severe corrosion anyway.

Can anyone recognize this board?
I put an order on it.
Looks like dual Socket 370 / Slot 1, it's what caught my attention.

"Dual" can lead to misconceptions, it's either/or. Seems like one of the PC Chips M766 variants https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/6334

edit: Oh the version is there to the right of the keyboard connector, but I can't make it out on that photo.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-09, 21:23:

"Dual" can lead to misconceptions, it's either/or. Seems like one of the PC Chips M766 variants https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/6334

edit: Oh the version is there to the right of the keyboard connector, but I can't make it out on that photo.

Thank you BitWrangler,
this search engine is really cool
I think the version is 1.2 or 1.3
The board is strange. It doesn't have ISA, but no AGP either. Some chips are not installed (one of them is integrated network controller).
What do you think, is it worth buying / having? Especially as I have already a Slot 1 PC.
The price is ~15 USD, but I could spend it on something more useful.

It won't build a very flexible system for sure, if you wanted something that's strictly only a Win98 or WinME machine, it might do. The letters in the model name say what a particular version has installed, an LMRT should have everything, L is for Lan, M for modem, annnd, I'm blanking on what R and T stand for exactly. However, with these boards, if you haven't got the headers with it, you may as well forget about whether it's got the chips or not. The LAN headers need to have specific components on, and maybe the modem headers too. Usually serial, parallel, VGA and sound connections can be found that work, or can be wired up, being completely just wiring adapters and having no extra components required.

The Matsonic MS7-112C is another combo Socket 370 / Slot 1 (you can only use on at a time of course). I picked one up as a novelty but I don't think it supports Coppermine, if I recall, so it's not as useful as some other dedicated Slot 1 boards. It does have 2 ISA slots and AGP though which is nice.

I bought it initially to use for testing processors but since it didn't support many processors its usefulness is limited for this purpose.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-09, 21:23:

"Dual" can lead to misconceptions, it's either/or.

I'd say "Combo" is more accurate

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-09, 23:30:

The Matsonic MS7-112C is another combo Socket 370 / Slot 1 (you can only use on at a time of course). I picked one up as a novelty but I don't think it supports Coppermine, if I recall, so it's not as useful as some other dedicated Slot 1 boards. It does have 2 ISA slots and AGP though which is nice.

I bought it initially to use for testing processors but since it didn't support many processors its usefulness is limited for this purpose.

even if a processor isnt "supported" its still a good tool for pass/fail testing. most P3 processors that "aren't supported" will usually still post at slower speeds.

This thing arrived this week, brand new Asus / Elan Vital T-5AB. A great seller offered these for a few bucks and I am very happy to have found it. It was made in 2000. I'm still not sure about the system it will house.

Nice, I had these on my watch list for weeks and was very tempted to pull the trigger, but I just bought two other NOS cases the other day so I don't have any real use for even more. Glad someone here on Vogons got one 😀

I have my 440BX/3dfx system in a T10. It's a lovably terrible case, I love to hate it, and I would never part with it.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-02-10, 08:23:

I have my 440BX/3dfx system in a T10. It's a lovably terrible case, I love to hate it, and I would never part with it.

We all have a few items like that, love hate relationships with hardware are the best !

I envy you the opportunity to live that indescribable feeling when your Asus T5/10 case's assbackwards designed twist&press power button becomes stuck for the first time @chrismes 🤣

appiah4 wrote on 2022-02-10, 08:32:

I envy you the opportunity to live that indescribable feeling when your Asus T5/10 case's assbackwards designed twist&press power button becomes stuck for the first time @chrismes 🤣

Even worse .. the feeling when the big red power flip switch on your AT case snaps off in the off position, you know the type where the power switch is part of the PSU.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-02-10, 08:32:

I envy you the opportunity to live that indescribable feeling when your Asus T5/10 case's assbackwards designed twist&press power button becomes stuck for the first time @chrismes 🤣

That was my first worry when I tried it. What a weird design choice. The overall quality seems to be rather good and other features are pretty neat. I never had one back in the day, the CS-601 was my case of choice during that period.

luckybob wrote on 2022-02-10, 01:24:

even if a processor isnt "supported" its still a good tool for pass/fail testing. most P3 processors that "aren't supported" will usually still post at slower speeds.

I have often had the opposite experience. This is why I keep a collection of CPUs so that if a slow one posts but a faster one doesn't, I can swap in the speeds in between to find the maximum that is supported. For these motherboards I print a label and attach it to the side of the Slot 1 connector or elsewhere to save myself the trouble in the future. I can confirm that some of my Coppermine Slot 1 boards top out and won't POST past a certain multiplier.

I think it really depends on the motherboard whether it will accept faster CPUs. Often you can't put a Coppermine in an older board because of the voltage regulator, even if a BIOS update would otherwise support it. I bought some drop-in replacements to swap into an older board to see if this can be used to work around this issue but haven't tried it yet.

HanSolo wrote on 2022-02-07, 12:11:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-07, 11:59:

HanSolo wrote on 2022-02-07, 11:48:

Bought two Pentium II: one with 266Mhz, the other with 333Mhz
PentiumII.jpg
Does anybody know the difference between a P2-266 'EC' and 'non EC'?

EC supports ECC memory, non EC the opposite

Thank you! Sounds totally obvious - now 😀 I just could find this information anywhere.

Not totally correct, AFAIK. It's whether or not the cache is ECC or not ...