AT style slot 1 boards were fairly common in the crossover period when ATX was starting to be pushed. I had a Asus board back in the day and it looked very much like this one. That little card might be some kind of rom card but it's quite the mystery.

Yes, it boots fine without it.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:13:

AT style slot 1 boards were fairly common in the crossover period when ATX was starting to be pushed. I had a Asus board back in the day and it looked very much like this one. That little card might be some kind of rom card but it's quite the mystery.

Looks like it might be a security card of some kind, being all blacked out with zero details on ICs or board.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:23:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:13:

AT style slot 1 boards were fairly common in the crossover period when ATX was starting to be pushed. I had a Asus board back in the day and it looked very much like this one. That little card might be some kind of rom card but it's quite the mystery.

Looks like it might be a security card of some kind, being all blacked out with zero details on ICs or board.

That's entirely possible I've seen security cards and dongles be completely devoid of all markings inside and out.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:44:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:23:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:13:

AT style slot 1 boards were fairly common in the crossover period when ATX was starting to be pushed. I had a Asus board back in the day and it looked very much like this one. That little card might be some kind of rom card but it's quite the mystery.

Looks like it might be a security card of some kind, being all blacked out with zero details on ICs or board.

That's entirely possible I've seen security cards and dongles be completely devoid of all markings inside and out.

Might be interesting to see if you can remove the blackout, possibly there might be details hidden by the blackout material, even a hint as to what it might be that you could follow up on with some google sleuthing. I do love a good mystery like an old safe that is locked or a hidden time capsule even a geo cache is fun.

Funny black card there. Good point about it likely being security-related. The specialist software of the world employs all kinds of nuts-paranoid CP methods. [glares at desk drawer holding a certain broken USB dongle, which - until I fix it - is keeping me locked out of some old engineering software]

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:50:

Funny black card there. Good point about it likely being security-related. The specialist software of the world employs all kinds of nuts-paranoid CP methods. [glares at desk drawer holding a certain broken USB dongle, which - until I fix it - is keeping me locked out of some old engineering software]

...Fuck stupid dongles like that . .they were the bane of IT support for a long time because Users always lost the damn things or threw them away not realising what they were for or worse the damn things would break in the stupidest of ways because the dongles were made by the lowest Chinese bidder.

Just the dumbest copy protection method ever.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:53:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:50:

Funny black card there. Good point about it likely being security-related. The specialist software of the world employs all kinds of nuts-paranoid CP methods. [glares at desk drawer holding a certain broken USB dongle, which - until I fix it - is keeping me locked out of some old engineering software]

...Fuck stupid dongles like that . .they were the bane of IT support for a long time because Users always lost the damn things or threw them away not realising what they were for or worse the damn things would break in the stupidest of ways because the dongles were made by the lowest Chinese bidder.

Just the dumbest copy protection method ever.

Yeah they suck bigtime. It's do-able while the developer still exists - they can be approached for replacement dongle if needed. But when it's 5+ years since the software vendor stopped existing, and your security dongle stops working, then suddenly the specialist toolkit you thought you were buying to use "for a lifetime" has become a worthless nothing.

Same way I feel about the modern era's reliance upon digital distribution and activation methods.

Baked-in redundancy.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-02-19, 22:12:

Yeah they suck bigtime. It's do-able while the developer still exists - they can be approached for replacement dongle if needed. […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:53:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-02-19, 21:50:

Funny black card there. Good point about it likely being security-related. The specialist software of the world employs all kinds of nuts-paranoid CP methods. [glares at desk drawer holding a certain broken USB dongle, which - until I fix it - is keeping me locked out of some old engineering software]

...Fuck stupid dongles like that . .they were the bane of IT support for a long time because Users always lost the damn things or threw them away not realising what they were for or worse the damn things would break in the stupidest of ways because the dongles were made by the lowest Chinese bidder.

Just the dumbest copy protection method ever.

Yeah they suck bigtime. It's do-able while the developer still exists - they can be approached for replacement dongle if needed. But when it's 5+ years since the software vendor stopped existing, and your security dongle stops working, then suddenly the specialist toolkit you thought you were buying to use "for a lifetime" has become a worthless nothing.

Same way I feel about the modern era's reliance upon digital distribution and activation methods.

Baked-in redundancy.

I have a whole rant about shit like Denuvo and limited activations like EA tried pulling with Spore back in the day and a dozen other publishers tried to copy them, people assume it went away .. nope they just got better at hiding it.

Anything to fuck the consumer out of their money and rights to actually own what they buy.

But this is neither the place or time for that rant.

So guess why I dragged this junker home ??? ...

Ls-120 ? Or is there something better in it?

Could it be the super drive I spy?

Yah, I've always wanted a LS120, I walked past this twice in the thrift, and then *tinkle* penny dropped, "Why does that machine have two floppy drives?.......Ohhhh!!"

Rest is nothing special, mATX i845 board 100/400, SDRAM 2x256Mb PC133, 32Mb TNT2, winmodem.... not sure what P4 yet, crossing my fingers for a 2.8A... got enough dog slow ones... think the soundcard was pulled... no HDD, just all the drives you see in front, I'd quite like to have another working LG supermulti though, opticals have been dying like they can catch covid or something lately. PSU is hmmmm, case in not too bad shape and I maybe have it's twin, so be nice to put keepers in a matching pair. Anyway, whole ~$10 USD, 12.99CDN and a sore arm from carrying it was the bill.

edit: Lose.. CPU is 1.5Ghz Willamette... Some bloaty caps by the CPU too, IDK if they're 1000 or 1500s at the moment, too dirty... Oh it has some kinda onboard sound.. there's one slot uncovered, which is what made me think a soundcard used to live there.

editII: Took some while to ID the vid card, think I'm there now, it's an Asus V3800M Magic Pure 32MB ... the larger, fairly well printed sticker on it, seeming to come from a computer store, said it was a V7800 TNT M64.. and had $89.99 below that.... 90 fricking bucks for an apparently USED TNT2!!! Poor sucker got boned, checked 2001 pricing, first old computer paper I pulled up had a new Geforce2 for $69 ... might have been an MX but still... Computer store dude must have seen him coming. Anyhoo for a brief, sweet, but brief, moment, I thought it was something in the high end of GF2s, due to the V7x00 numbering, but nope, human error, deliberate or otherwise, tryna make it sound more current than it was maybe.

Not PC-related, but it'll be a fun project to get this Walkman going (tape deck has no belt).

Seller's photo:

bjwil1991 wrote on 2022-02-20, 05:41:

Not PC-related, but it'll be a fun project to get this Walkman going (tape deck has no belt).

Seller's photo:

s-l1600.jpg

You probably already know of them, but I had the same (missing belt) problem recently with my old walkman/clone, and fixyouraudio dotcom proved to be a useful and reliable source of replacement belts. Shipped from Europe.

Snagged this keyboard tray at Savers for $6. They also had a CPU "tower" stand with a PS/2 model 30 on the front of the box I passed up for $4.99. Also got a 387SX coming in from France for the Compaq.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-02-20, 08:32:

Snagged this keyboard tray at Savers for $6. They also had a CPU "tower" stand with a PS/2 model 30 on the front of the box I passed up for $4.99. Also got a 387SX coming in from France for the Compaq.

Keyboard tray looks nice but seems like it might be rather uncomfortable to actually use the keyboard with it there.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-20, 09:24:

Keyboard tray looks nice but seems like it might be rather uncomfortable to actually use the keyboard with it there.

Yeah, the parents of a friend used to have something like that.
Really uncomfortable.

Hercules Stingray 128/3D

Did they make this card in two different memory sizes? I see all the cards in ebay have only half of the mem spots populated on the right side of the 3dfx chips.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-02-20, 08:32:

Snagged this keyboard tray at Savers for $6. They also had a CPU "tower" stand with a PS/2 model 30 on the front of the box I passed up for $4.99. Also got a 387SX coming in from France for the Compaq.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-02-20, 09:24:

Keyboard tray looks nice but seems like it might be rather uncomfortable to actually use the keyboard with it there.

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-02-20, 12:28:

Yeah, the parents of a friend used to have something like that.
Really uncomfortable.

They are situation-ally useful... my Fellowes unit is sitting boxed up because I don't have such a situation at the moment. Two moves ago I had another one, which is unaccounted for... but was useful when I had a narrow table beside the bed with a machine on, and keyboard could "reach out" toward me on/in it. You don't have to have them too high, maybe this isn't creepingnet's first rodeo because we see the desk surface beside this machine is a little higher.

Possibly mine might get deployed for a "just a pile of machines" workstation, sitting on like 4 desktops, or 2 midis with a desktop on top, or two full towers, plonk keeb tray on it, monitor on keeb tray, KVM and monitor on it.