I can't see it, unless he's not familiar with cards having all three media types on, or is looking at one of the USB cards or the one with two external SATA connectors.

Bitwrangler, yeah I too am guessing one of those two with the BNC, AUI and RJ45 connector.

Actually, I meant this one, but I just realised they were overlapping and I was being an idiot 😳

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-17, 19:03:

I can't see it, unless he's not familiar with cards having all three media types on, or is looking at one of the USB cards or the one with two external SATA connectors.

I know what those are. It just didn't occur to me that the cards in the pic are two that just happened to overlap. My bad

Finally got a chance to sit down and write down what I picked up at the large trash pickup point in my neighborhood last month.

Two desktops plus two PS/2 keyboards: one clearly bundled with that white eMachines (plus a Hello Kitty magnet 😉 ) still in its original plastic bag with green Acer logos.

The black ATX case was kinda messy: rusted and dusty grills, but dual fans on both side and back, along with removable HDD at front and eSATA in the back, plus S/PDIF fiber optic, hinted this might be a high-end build.

And...... turned out the video card is a low-end Gigabyte GV-R455HM-512I (Radeon HD 4550), on a GA-965P-DQ6 (rev. 1.0), with Transcend DDR2-667 1GB ×2, two identical Seagate Barracuda 160GB 7200rpm (as expected, their content were >90% identical, possibly configured as RAID 1). Cable management was nonexistent.

I was expecting a Core 2 Extreme or at least Core 2 Quad CPU, but turned out a low-end Core 2 Due E6300, and the removable HDD was a broken and extremely small 6.4GB Seagate Medalist:


Heck, 2.5" PATA HDD with at least 20GB capacity in USB external casing was already quite common in 2006 (GA-965P-DQ6 was revised to 2.0 at the end of 2006); dunno why the original owner decided to install a rather outdated technology.

I didn't expect that eMachines build with any high-value component, yet with the exception of yellowed plastic front bezel it was kept quite nice and clean (and it had a genuine Win7 product key sticker!), so I powered it up directly.



The bundled Radeon HD 4350 had no image output, so I replaced it with that HD 4550 from the other machine...... and it went straight into Win10 desktop without even asking for a password! The poor HDD, a Seagate ST3500418AS 500GB 7200rpm, kept running at >95% workload and simply couldn't stop. I terminated processes and uninstalled programs one by one, finally pinpointed the problem: Adobe AIR. Now I can tell why the original owner threw it away without removing personal data: the HDD was slow enough (by installing Adobe stuff) but with very limited knowledge on computers she couldn't replace it with SSD, then one day the video card died.

The RAM was a single stick of 2GB DDR2-800, but this bloody MB had nForce 620i northbridge: single channel at 667MHz max. I just don't understand why Nvidia kept producing those NB chips in 2010 when DDR3-1066 had already become mainstream. 🙄

While the result was a bit disappointing, hey, they were all FREE, and at least I got a Pentium E5700 (right now the fastest 2C2T LGA775 CPU I've got), three strips of DDR2, three SATA HDD, a SATA and a PATA DVD+RW Super Multi, an old but functioning Seasonic 430W PSU, and bunch of SATA cables. 😅

I'd guess the 6Gb was from his previous machine or something. It's all good for free. Stick some quad Xeons in those. E6300 is just annoying, higher FSB with lower multi, can't even get it over 3Ghz easily.

another week, another photo...
several ISA slots are damaged, varta still present, chip broken, spilled coffee with sugar on my keyboard, two 3.2GHz xeon 604s, one 2620v3

XT-ish board with a coin cell, that seems unusual. That Gigabyte GPU looks "still useful" what is it a GT560 or something?

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-02-24, 15:06:

XT-ish board with a coin cell, that seems unusual. That Gigabyte GPU looks "still useful" what is it a GT560 or something?

apparently mainboard for a philips nms9100 if the markings are correct. it's written underneath the labels.
gv-r575d5-1gd - Radeon 5750 1GB

Ah, that's not too bad either, as long as you don't really really need DX12 hardware support.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-02-24, 15:01:

another week, another photo...
several ISA slots are damaged, varta still present, chip broken, spilled coffee with sugar on my keyboard, two 3.2GHz xeon 604s, one 2620v3

ISA slots are easy to replace. If you like the board, it can be repaired.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-24, 21:39:

weedeewee wrote on 2022-02-24, 15:01:

another week, another photo...
several ISA slots are damaged, varta still present, chip broken, spilled coffee with sugar on my keyboard, two 3.2GHz xeon 604s, one 2620v3

ISA slots are easy to replace. If you like the board, it can be repaired.

Well, I had a closer look at the boards and ....
yeah well...

- the asus TXP4 has a nasty cut in the pcb right next to the chipset and in the chipset and the chipset is clearly missing a corner, so that's definitely a spare parts board.

- the asus VL/I-486SV2G rev 1.4 ( without VLB slots ?!) has two damaged ISA slots and the chipset has had a wack that scratched the top and made it so the sis 85c471 is slightly twisted on the footprint, though seems still to be attached with all the pins bent at a different angle than factory standard. no idea.

- The DTK PM1232C has 3 physically damaged ISA slots, one broken 74F244,a pcb cut right next to it and battery leak damage which caused two more ISA slots to be corroded. Still seems fixable.

- The philips NMS9100 board I thought to have the least damage, slight physical damage on 2 ISA slots, almost ignorable. But on further inspection, ...
The EPROM somehow has several pins out of the socket, RN3 is broken, whatever is in DS1 has a broken pin (an led?) , U45 74LS244 broken, U46 74LS670N, and I think crystal Y6 is broken since it makes a sound as if it had a loose ferrite bead on a wire inside when tilting the board. There's also a scratch on top of the package of an 8237 and the corner of an 8255 has been scraped though those two seem like superficial damage. Aside from that, seems fixable.

some damage was expected considering these came straight out of the dumpster.

This late XT board. It's Tidalwave XT All-In-One and has serial/parallel/gameport/floppy controller and video on-board. NOS in the box. Battery leaked a little, but corrosion damage is minimal. I will likely throw-in V30 and FPU on it. Or 286 accelerator I got recently.

Wow that's a really nice find with that xt board. Did it have all the breakout cables?

HanJammer wrote on 2022-03-14, 11:00:

This late XT board. It's Tidalwave XT All-In-One and has serial/parallel/gameport/floppy controller and video on-board. NOS in the box. Battery leaked a little, but corrosion damage is minimal. I will likely throw-in V30 and FPU on it. Or 286 accelerator I got recently.

Nice board, hugely integrated for XT 😀

But how are you going to fit a V30? Unless my eyes and the pic are failing me, that's an 8088, not an 8086, so a V20 would surely be the relevant upgrade?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-03-14, 11:35:

Wow that's a really nice find with that xt board. Did it have all the breakout cables?

Nope, those were missing. I'm pretty sure I/O is exactly the same as on the Multi I/O cards of this era and I have loads of spare brackets/cables, but I will need to figure out the video-out pinout in case I want to use it.

dionb wrote on 2022-03-14, 12:41:

HanJammer wrote on 2022-03-14, 11:00:

This late XT board. It's Tidalwave XT All-In-One and has serial/parallel/gameport/floppy controller and video on-board. NOS in the box. Battery leaked a little, but corrosion damage is minimal. I will likely throw-in V30 and FPU on it. Or 286 accelerator I got recently.

Nice board, hugely integrated for XT 😀

But how are you going to fit a V30? Unless my eyes and the pic are failing me, that's an 8088, not an 8086, so a V20 would surely be the relevant upgrade?

Yes, V20... I have way too much Juko motherboards in this format and I took for a granted it's 8086 ;D
But I think I will go with an accelerator anyway.

I just came into possession of my very first 8086 and V30 chips recently and hope I come across an 8086 motherboard sometime, if only to mess with it for a bit.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-02-24, 22:17:

Well, I had a closer look at the boards and .... yeah well... […]
Show full quote

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-02-24, 21:39:

weedeewee wrote on 2022-02-24, 15:01:

another week, another photo...
several ISA slots are damaged, varta still present, chip broken, spilled coffee with sugar on my keyboard, two 3.2GHz xeon 604s, one 2620v3

ISA slots are easy to replace. If you like the board, it can be repaired.

Well, I had a closer look at the boards and ....
yeah well...

- the asus TXP4 has a nasty cut in the pcb right next to the chipset and in the chipset and the chipset is clearly missing a corner, so that's definitely a spare parts board.

- the asus VL/I-486SV2G rev 1.4 ( without VLB slots ?!) has two damaged ISA slots and the chipset has had a wack that scratched the top and made it so the sis 85c471 is slightly twisted on the footprint, though seems still to be attached with all the pins bent at a different angle than factory standard. no idea.

- The DTK PM1232C has 3 physically damaged ISA slots, one broken 74F244,a pcb cut right next to it and battery leak damage which caused two more ISA slots to be corroded. Still seems fixable.

- The philips NMS9100 board I thought to have the least damage, slight physical damage on 2 ISA slots, almost ignorable. But on further inspection, ...
The EPROM somehow has several pins out of the socket, RN3 is broken, whatever is in DS1 has a broken pin (an led?) , U45 74LS244 broken, U46 74LS670N, and I think crystal Y6 is broken since it makes a sound as if it had a loose ferrite bead on a wire inside when tilting the board. There's also a scratch on top of the package of an 8237 and the corner of an 8255 has been scraped though those two seem like superficial damage. Aside from that, seems fixable.

some damage was expected considering these came straight out of the dumpster.

If spare parts are required, it may be more expensive to repair than to buy a new one. Even with the cost of parts, the boards may not even work.

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-14, 13:31:

If spare parts are required, it may be more expensive to repair than to buy a new one. Even with the cost of parts, the boards may not even work.

But the boards are filled with spare parts 😁 if I don't bother with having them working.

HanJammer wrote on 2022-03-14, 11:00:

This late XT board. It's Tidalwave XT All-In-One and has serial/parallel/gameport/floppy controller and video on-board. NOS in the box. Battery leaked a little, but corrosion damage is minimal. I will likely throw-in V30 and FPU on it. Or 286 accelerator I got recently.

Oh, that's really nice. Looks like an 8088 at 10Mhz? All connectors look pretty standard, what that connector next to the game port?

HanJammer wrote on 2022-03-14, 11:00:

This late XT board. It's Tidalwave XT All-In-One and has serial/parallel/gameport/floppy controller and video on-board. NOS in the box. Battery leaked a little, but corrosion damage is minimal. I will likely throw-in V30 and FPU on it. Or 286 accelerator I got recently.

That's a beautiful motherboard.