Drove an hour to pick up a nice little compaq desktop for free, has a dead PSU though. I did find the pinout and was able to power the mobo with another psu to verify it was just the PSU.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-09-21, 19:10:

This is a retro-ish purchase.

Took delivery of a TL866II programmer and a bunch of NOS EPROM chips. Going to be replacing the BIOS chips in some 286 machines.

I did several replacements and EEPROMs were always working where UV EPROM required. They also require that lamp and quite a long procedure of erasing. Though, if you want to be authentic...

Just received a Fujitsu Siemens socket 754 K8T800 chipset motherboard. Very beautiful quality board, thick too.

Does an iPad A1337 count? 🤣 It was free, had no accounts on it. The home button works a bit hard, but otherwise works fine, and it's the WiFi+3G model, from what I could gather (for the record, I'm totally illiterate on anything Apple.)

I didn't buy this retro hardware today - I wanted to, but I resisted the urge (but I might give in sometime in the future). I went to the only local computer store in town that does repairs and sells both new and used parts, and they have about a dozen NOS Asus A8V-X socket 939 motherboards that they are selling for $59.99 each. I have a couple of 939 CPUS, and I have a 939 system, but it's PCIe not AGP. They also have boxes of round IDE cables, round floppy drive cables, many other goodies, and even an old pizza box style AT case on a shelf. I did buy a PS/2 cable dongle for an AT motherboard since they have a bunch of NOS ones for $4.99 each.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-16, 08:19:

7000 and 8000 series all had horrible solder and were prone to just dying, even if never used and still in a sealed box they can still just up and die after a few months due to the shit solder used.

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-16, 07:37:

This is nasty.. I have luck with most nVIDIA cards, and they work, no artifacts or BS. Still u can try heatgunning that shit and see, if it will work, or send it to hell...

Good news gents, the seller has excepted a return and even paid the return shipping. He was grumbly at first and surprised I had problems, but I think what helped is that I engaged him politely and messaged him first instead of just starting a return. Instead of acting angry or demanding I asked if he'd be willing to make an exception in this case, and despite having the advantage I think things went well. I definitely dodged a bullet on that return shipping, as far as I understand ebay can't force him to pay it.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-09-22, 00:11:

Does an iPad A1337 count? 🤣 It was free, had no accounts on it. The home button works a bit hard, but otherwise works fine, and it's the WiFi+3G model, from what I could gather (for the record, I'm totally illiterate on anything Apple.)

This is first ever ipad gen 1. Hopelessly outmoded now as this is 12 years old now and very few apps supported on this plus ram is very small, 256MB. And processor is not that powerful now so you will notice less performance too. Connect to PC, you need 30 pin to USB cable adapter, and launch the 3utools to read back the battery's health, you will see is below par by now.

Ipad Air gen 1, Ipad gen 5 can be had for little now and is still usable.

How I know? This is my real job repairing personal devices (phones and tablets, computers) including apple devices.

PS: Avoid ipad 7 and any ipad Pros up to the current gen. CPU solder issues, which I see several every year, causing different issues including losing touch (broken solder connection from CPU to touch IC). Not many places can reball CPU for a living and is costly and must be really skilled as this is very fickle process especially when forming new solder balls in a stencil on a giant sized CPU, unless one is absolutely must need data. Just today, I had a ipad 7 in for no touch, diagnosed to broken solder on CPU so we're sending it out to outside repair shop for this.

Cheers,

Went to one of the local recycling centres (which doesn't usually have any retro gear at all) and to my surprise found a box of assorted ISA/PCI/AGP cards for $1 each! Grabbed the best five and left the remainder for the weekend warriors to rummage through.... can't be too greedy heh heh

I'm genuinely excited about that last card, it's the Deluxe Option Board for Central Point's groundbreaking Copy II PC software -- it can duplicate virtually all of the copy protected IBM PC software from the late 80s! Plus includes a track editor that allows editing all the address marks and sector metadata.... Really hoping that the card is in working condition, hopefully will get a chance to test it this weekend. It will be a great upgrade for my turbo XT system!

The price for these cards was so cheap I feel like this almost deserves a post in the "recently found this hardware" thread....

kdr wrote on 2022-09-22, 03:24:

Went to one of the local recycling centres (which doesn't usually have any retro gear at all) and to my surprise found a box of […]
Show full quote

Went to one of the local recycling centres (which doesn't usually have any retro gear at all) and to my surprise found a box of assorted ISA/PCI/AGP cards for $1 each! Grabbed the best five and left the remainder for the weekend warriors to rummage through.... can't be too greedy heh heh

IMG_20220922_145717.jpg
IMG_20220922_145750.jpg
IMG_20220922_145653.jpg

I'm genuinely excited about that last card, it's the Deluxe Option Board for Central Point's groundbreaking Copy II PC software -- it can duplicate virtually all of the copy protected IBM PC software from the late 80s! Plus includes a track editor that allows editing all the address marks and sector metadata.... Really hoping that the card is in working condition, hopefully will get a chance to test it this weekend. It will be a great upgrade for my turbo XT system!

The price for these cards was so cheap I feel like this almost deserves a post in the "recently found this hardware" thread....

USB 2.0 cards are always nice to have, I recently found a 5 port USB2.0 PCI card in a dusty box, cant exactly remember where it may have come from but its got a NEC USB2 controller on it so im thinking its out of an old Compaq server I stripped years back.

No idea if the NEC controllers are better than the VIA ones but it sure as hell cant be worse.

That last card is a nice little gold nugget, Im hoping it works too would be a damn shame if its dead.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-09-22, 00:48:

This is first ever ipad gen 1. Hopelessly outmoded now as this is 12 years old now and very few apps supported on this plus r […]
Show full quote

PcBytes wrote on 2022-09-22, 00:11:

Does an iPad A1337 count? 🤣 It was free, had no accounts on it. The home button works a bit hard, but otherwise works fine, and it's the WiFi+3G model, from what I could gather (for the record, I'm totally illiterate on anything Apple.)

This is first ever ipad gen 1. Hopelessly outmoded now as this is 12 years old now and very few apps supported on this plus ram is very small, 256MB. And processor is not that powerful now so you will notice less performance too. Connect to PC, you need 30 pin to USB cable adapter, and launch the 3utools to read back the battery's health, you will see is below par by now.

Ipad Air gen 1, Ipad gen 5 can be had for little now and is still usable.

How I know? This is my real job repairing personal devices (phones and tablets, computers) including apple devices.

PS: Avoid ipad 7 and any ipad Pros up to the current gen. CPU solder issues, which I see several every year, causing different issues including losing touch (broken solder connection from CPU to touch IC). Not many places can reball CPU for a living and is costly and must be really skilled as this is very fickle process especially when forming new solder balls in a stencil on a giant sized CPU, unless one is absolutely must need data. Just today, I had a ipad 7 in for no touch, diagnosed to broken solder on CPU so we're sending it out to outside repair shop for this.

Cheers,

Honestly, it was free, so no big loss. The only cable I have only supports charging - data pins are completely unused.

Picked up yesterday: Abit BH6 rev 1.02 in surprisingly good condition, for Abit anyways ... very clean and no bulged caps:

I had to dust it off and use some contact cleaner on ram slots, no issues other than that. Posts with 768MB.

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-22, 10:39:

Picked up yesterday: Abit BH6 rev 1.02 in surprisingly good condition, for Abit anyways ... very clean and no bulged caps:
20220922_122939.jpg

I had to dust it off and use some contact cleaner on ram slots, no issues other than that. Posts with 768MB.

Nice! How much did you pay for it? The BH6 is my favorite board in terms of 'emotions' 😀 Back in the days all my friends and me had this one together with a Celeron 300A@450

~12€, local market auction
Starting CPU voltage is 1.35V ... would be nice for Tualatins.

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-22, 11:07:

~12€, local market auction
Starting CPU voltage is 1.35V ... would be nice for Tualatins.

The garage found on ebay -kleinanzeigen? 😀

Croatian auction site. Though I also order a lot from kleinanzeigen via Mailboxde 😁.
You win some, you loose some. I got 2 busted Voodoo1s recently which I payed a lot more.

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-22, 11:16:

Croatian auction site. Though I also order a lot from kleinanzeigen via Mailboxde 😁.
You win some, you loose some. I got 2 busted Voodoo1s recently which I payed a lot more.

I found one in the photos among other stuff but unfortunately it was already sold.
My experiences with Tualatin on BX-chipset were not really good. We later wanted to use a T-Celeron on a modded Abit BX133. It worked but not stable.

Yes, buying from such sources is always a gamble but most of the time I 'won' 😀

Edit: Woohoo! My 100th post. I'm not a Newbie anymore 😁

Got another shelf so one's dedicated to NEC, one's dedicated to NanTan, and then I added another laptop to my collection. Another, this time generic, NanTan 9200D, this time the DSTN Model with the 10.3" color screen. Got it yesterday and went through it with a fine tooth comb.

kdr wrote on 2022-09-22, 03:24:

Went to one of the local recycling centres (which doesn't usually have any retro gear at all) and to my surprise found a box of assorted ISA/PCI/AGP cards for $1 each!

Speaking of Audigy, also got one recently together with a few other cards and a CPU from a manufacturer I didn't have any examples before:

kdr wrote on 2022-09-22, 03:24:

I'm genuinely excited about that last card, it's the Deluxe Option Board for Central Point's groundbreaking Copy II PC software -- it can duplicate virtually all of the copy protected IBM PC software from the late 80s! Plus includes a track editor that allows editing all the address marks and sector metadata.... Really hoping that the card is in working condition, hopefully will get a chance to test it this weekend. It will be a great upgrade for my turbo XT system!

Wow thats a really cool find I have never seen this card! I have also been using COPY II PC and it was able to copy all my copy protected disks even without that card. Please let us know if/how it works!

timsdf wrote on 2022-09-18, 19:50:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-18, 08:29:

too bad is ASUS it may die for no reason (the usual BS with that garbage brand). But if u want reliable x58 board get anything that is not shitty ASUS, no wonder urs did die.. My Gigabyte x58 UD7 meanwhile is not dead, cuz is not shitty ASUS...

What's the problem with asus? Disregarding lowend boards on mainstream sockets (which are with all manufacturers questionable) I don't see any reason to call asus x58 boards bad like that. Specially with x58 gigabyte boards can be very unstable.

What maybe the fact that from all brands i ever owned, used, buyed ASUS has the most dead fucking boards... Sure i saw dead boards from other brands too, but ASUS the most, How to consider them any good. Also couple of ASUS boards did die on me. And the worst with ASUS as a brand is they die and most of them die for NO obvious reason, and all of them do the same BS they wont spin even fans wtf, only ASUS do this ALOT of times.. Then tell me what is wrong with that BS of a brand.. My GIGAbyte x58 UD7 is solid AF, and even carry 6/12 core Xeon on 4.5GHz OC, never saw any INstability, tho i did test at least 120 GPUs (Radeon HD7950, R9 280x, R9 380, R9 290) and the damn board works very well. I dont call x58 Asus boards bad, i call the whole ASUS bad.. They seems to be NO 1 brand for motherboards, yet aside from their stable and well writen BIOSes i dont find them any good, in terms of reliability..

chris2021 wrote on 2022-09-18, 20:06:

Omg Asus so rocks.

Sure they are dead like a rocks, no spark, no fan spin, not even magic smoke, dead AF rocks...

debs3759 wrote on 2022-09-18, 21:08:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-18, 08:29:

Nothing too special in here, and depend on the price too, the dual 462 mobo is nice, too bad is ASUS it may die for no reason (the usual BS with that garbage brand). But if u want reliable x58 board get anything that is not shitty ASUS, no wonder urs did die.. My Gigabyte x58 UD7 meanwhile is not dead, cuz is not shitty ASUS...

I've never had an Asus board on any socket that has been anything other than great. But then, I never buy low end boards.

Good for u, i replaced ASUS with GIGAbyte they are alot better. And DUAL BIOS as a feature is WAY better then what asus offers..

libby wrote on 2022-09-20, 06:54:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-20, 03:19:

Its not a big deal to you or me who have the experience and tools to replace caps but to your average joe such boards are just e-waste or listed on eBay at unrealistic prices as used but untested. The original discussion wasn't really about the cap plague but rather Radical Visions hate boner for ASUS and any retro part he considers "peasant" quality and that curious posters should really just ignore his hate filled posts as nothing of value comes from them.

ASUS was never "peasant quality" anyway. they always made good boards with plenty of features, good BIOS support, few significant flaws or issues. OEMs used them a lot for good reasons. most of their boards one could call "duds" were OEM boards like the A7V8X-X or P4S533-VM with budget chipsets and stripped out features.

this is not a hobby where there is room for elitism, it is best kept accessible and friendly for all and the more people are into it, the better.

Pleanty of features u say HA HA... Wanna compare some stuff maybe ? Lets take for example the mobo u did mention A7V8X-X (HELL i will even mention the Delux of that shit) so what they had on their boards for 462 socket was maybe SATA ports and that useless crap WI-FI special ASUS BS.. Wanna see real features i will tell u look at GA-7NNXP, or even the PRO variant, that thing have 4 slots for memory, not only 3, it has SATA + IDE RAID, it has DUAL BIOS, and even that crappy useless DPS VRM module, but at least looks cool, and yes the board also is blue, not shitty yellow color like ASUS.. Or the AOpen AK79G Tube, sexy stealth black color, AOpen build quality, it has as well DUAL BIOS, and there is the useless but great looking tube audiophile for the audio.. Or the SOYO - SY-KT600 DRAGON Ultra Platinum, or the SOLTEK-SL 75FRN2-RL - Golden Flame, and there are more, but u got the idea..

maestro wrote on 2022-09-22, 00:35:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-16, 08:19:

7000 and 8000 series all had horrible solder and were prone to just dying, even if never used and still in a sealed box they can still just up and die after a few months due to the shit solder used.

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-16, 07:37:

This is nasty.. I have luck with most nVIDIA cards, and they work, no artifacts or BS. Still u can try heatgunning that shit and see, if it will work, or send it to hell...

Good news gents, the seller has excepted a return and even paid the return shipping. He was grumbly at first and surprised I had problems, but I think what helped is that I engaged him politely and messaged him first instead of just starting a return. Instead of acting angry or demanding I asked if he'd be willing to make an exception in this case, and despite having the advantage I think things went well. I definitely dodged a bullet on that return shipping, as far as I understand ebay can't force him to pay it.

Well good for u, u happened to deal with good seller. When i sell stuff i give 20 days warranty on my retro parts. Some stuff even have more warranty, that if the thing fail in that period of time i will refund back the money to the buyier.. And i dont even sell on ebay (at least yet).. Sure some times when we are mad need, not to go and rage on someone that did some shit, but talk firts instead..