VOGONS


First post, by keenerb

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I pulled a GA-5AX motherboard out of my stash to turn into a high-end DOS machine when I googled it out of curiosity.

Why are they priced so high?

Reply 1 of 47, by RetroGamer4Ever

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Probably priced high because they are rare and because they were workhorse mobos. 768MB of ECC RAM in 3 slots, 5 PCI slots, 2 ISA slots, and 2 UDMA-capable IDE ports was not something intended for Joe Beerbelly.

Reply 2 of 47, by Repo Man11

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I see lots of ridiculous prices for old hardware on the bay (especially Super 7 motherboards, but many other things as well), but what does it actually mean? Are people actually paying this much, or is something else going on? There are a number of listings between two and three hundred dollars for this board, then there's this. Who would pay this much, and why would they do so?

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Reply 3 of 47, by jasa1063

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Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-05-13, 00:10:

I see lots of ridiculous prices for old hardware on the bay (especially Super 7 motherboards, but many other things as well), but what does it actually mean? Are people actually paying this much, or is something else going on? There are a number of listings between two and three hundred dollars for this board, then there's this. Who would pay this much, and why would they do so?

I asked an eBay seller once why he thought a Tandy 1000RL was worth almost a $2000 asking price. His response was that he always started way high and then started lowering the price from there. I guess there is always a chance you will find someone inexperienced enough that would fall for such a high price before you priced you lowered it. That is at least one scenario.

Reply 4 of 47, by Cuttoon

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I think S7 is the new S3 since late 486 boards are even harder to get and probably, a lot of people entering the hobby for whom anything pre-3D is really prehistoric.

Nerds being nerds, they do have the get the latest and fastest, which means super S7, K6-III+, etc...
Then, capitalism happens.

I like jumpers.

Reply 5 of 47, by rasz_pl

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A lot of poor people suffering SS7 25 years ago = lot of potential clients. Not to mention some genius sat on a money printer ON button for two years and shat $5 trillion into the economy. Ebay 'sold listings' shows there are people willing to pay >$200, and most listings are Chinese recyclers, they arent in a hurry.

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Reply 6 of 47, by Horun

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Even those sold from the USA like Giga boards and some others like FIC (503+), Asus, MSI and other quality boards and specific models have sold prices of $150 to $200 over the last few months.
The well known name and models have always commanded a higher price but lately it has near doubled. A little over a year ago (late 2020) got 2 Giga 478 socket for ~$50 each w/shipping and recent one sold $100 and other $140 w/shipping on exact same model...

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 7 of 47, by Unknown_K

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There must have been a ton of SS7 boards made since Cyrix, AMD, Winchip etc were making chips for them over a long period of time.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 8 of 47, by Horun

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Unknown_K wrote on 2022-05-13, 02:19:

There must have been a ton of SS7 boards made since Cyrix, AMD, Winchip etc were making chips for them over a long period of time.

True but the number of survivors of some of the better models is not that many so they end up being higher priced now. As a comparison something OT but similar is certain vintage audio makes and models and certain vintage coins types, year and mint also command a larger price due to rareity because of certain outside factors....

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 9 of 47, by Unknown_K

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Well SS7 were cheap bargain basement boards compared to Pentium 2 boards so I can see them being trashed once your use was over. I purchased a K6-2 and motherboard and pieced together a system so a friend and I could play head to head games at my house over ethernet because they were cheap as hell compared to another P2/P3 board.

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Reply 10 of 47, by maestro

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Yea, I'd say most of them were recycled long ago and for those that already own them, who would want to sell them when they're irreplaceable?

jasa1063 wrote on 2022-05-13, 00:18:

I asked an eBay seller once why he thought a Tandy 1000RL was worth almost a $2000 asking price. His response was that he always started way high and then started lowering the price from there.

Doesn't everyone do this to some degree, maybe not as inflated as the examples given but have some increase to start? Part of that behaviour for me comes from the platform itself, ebay sucks. At every angle they take a cut no matter how dubious, like take a cut from the postal charges when you use the post office's shipping calculator on your listing, no sneaking profit past your percentage there and yet... And I don't buy anything that uses the GSP, except Omnibooks. I was vocally opposed to its implementation, to which ebay told me it's just to collect taxes but there's always more than that to pay and I think it's to pay for both their service manifestation and to provide another opportunity for them to turn a profit. I talked to a few sellers about offering USPS instead and then a couple Omnibooks were severely vandalized when they passed through the GSP center, like knife gouges in the plastic, so I made a new account with a different name on the shipping label and so far it's been good. Anyway I digress, thanks for reading. 😀

Reply 11 of 47, by chiveicrook

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What's worse some of those inflated-price sellers are also mass buyers... there is one company in my area that seems to buy everything that's well-known among retro communities and relists it at way inflated prices. Fortunately, they are not interested in researching the topic too deeply and lots of interesting stuff passes by them. But yeah, I once saw GA-5AX for sale for around 20EUR which got sold in like 1 hour only to be relisted with the same photos at 250EUR the next day by that company.
They don't seem to sell a lot but just one sale at overinflated price from time to time justifies this for them I guess. And these prices while outrageous locally are often still lower than ebay prices and they are probably counting on foreign buyers who will still consider their offers "bargains".

Reply 12 of 47, by Imperious

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I've seen some prices like this actually sell. I do wonder if some Billionaire occasionanally pays these prices for stuff. To them $1000 is like $1 to most of us.
Then again any self-made rich person wouldn't do this, but some that inherit a lot may do so.

Atari 2600, TI994a, Vic20, c64, ZX Spectrum 128, Amstrad CPC464, Atari 65XE, Commodore Plus/4, Amiga 500
PC's from XT 8088, 486, Pentium MMX, K6, Athlon, P3, P4, 775, to current Ryzen 5600x.

Reply 14 of 47, by bloodem

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keenerb wrote on 2022-05-12, 23:27:

Why are they priced so high?

It depends on which prices we're talking about. GA-5AX rev 4.1 boards typically sell for 50 - 100 euros.
If on the other hand you look at listings instead of actual sold items, it's not uncommon to see some listed for 400 euros or more. Of course, most of those will never sell for that extreme amount, but I guess it's the seller's right to ask for whatever price they want.

Now, it's also true that some collectors do tend to pay 200 - 300 euros for some very specific GA-5AX rev 5.2 boards (NOT ALL rev 5.2 boards, though). I will not mention the actual reason for this, though, I don't want to further increase the hype. 😁

IMO, unless you are an avid collector, it's not worth paying more than 80 - 90 euros for any of these boards, no matter how special they are (or you think they are). In my neck of the woods, on local websites, they usually sell for ~ 40 - 50 euros, which I think is fair.

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 15 of 47, by Baoran

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Also I am sure lots of them have stopped working over the years. I also have one GA-5AX motherboard that does not work and I am probably going to have to throw away because of that.

Reply 16 of 47, by flupke11

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Is there really a reason, other than nostalgia, to choose SS7 over a Slot 1 (BX)-based board? I would not recommend newcomers in this hobby to hunt SS7-boards, given the current prices. Depending on what games they want to play, I'd go for a cheap LX-based board (good for DOS) or a P4-based AGP system (win98/early XP).

Anything older than '99 seems to have been inflated by the already mentioned cash injections and the accellerated Matthew effect it generated.

Reply 17 of 47, by bloodem

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flupke11 wrote on 2022-05-13, 10:38:

Is there really a reason, other than nostalgia, to choose SS7 over a Slot 1 (BX)-based board?

No logical reason, that's for sure. I mean, I love SS7 because of its quirks (I actually like debugging and solving stability and performance issues), and because of nostalgia.

Some people like it because they saw some PhilsComputerLab videos and they think that SS7 is the only flexible platform in the world which can be used for both DOS and Win98 gaming.
And this is true, a good SS7 platform with a K6-2/3+ CPU can be pretty flexible. However, a 440BX motherboard paired with a VIA C3 Ezra-T is MUCH more flexible and (as it stands) quite a bit cheaper too. And as for compatibility and stability... well, there's no comparison, really.

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 18 of 47, by Cuttoon

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Horun wrote on 2022-05-13, 02:14:

Even those sold from the USA like Giga boards and some others like FIC (503+), Asus, MSI and other quality boards and specific models have sold prices of $150 to $200 over the last few months.
The well known name and models have always commanded a higher price but lately it has near doubled. A little over a year ago (late 2020) got 2 Giga 478 socket for ~$50 each w/shipping and recent one sold $100 and other $140 w/shipping on exact same model...

If you're not in it for the riddle, there's a certain point to getting major brand, mainstream retail motherboards: Documentation.
The one S7 board I own since my brother discarded his 1999 budget solution is an Emnic/NMC 5VMMX. Solid board, but good luck finding a manual for that thing...

OT, but... Socket 478, some older P4 boards? People pay money for those?
It appears I just paid a beer for a well listed ASUS P4PE, where's the catch?

I like jumpers.

Reply 19 of 47, by the3dfxdude

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Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-05-13, 00:10:

I see lots of ridiculous prices for old hardware on the bay (especially Super 7 motherboards, but many other things as well), but what does it actually mean? Are people actually paying this much, or is something else going on? There are a number of listings between two and three hundred dollars for this board, then there's this. Who would pay this much, and why would they do so?

I have one of these boards. I got it for free around 2000-2001. That listing is unbelievable -- it kind of makes me wonder if the seller is even legitimate. That is not a collectors item, and I don't see why it would ever be. Even if SS7 is considered somewhat rare (?) there are still so many options out there, some are better, the cost is not justifiable.