BetaC wrote on 2022-10-06, 06:56:

darry wrote on 2022-10-06, 04:50:

Scored a working early model XBox One (1540) for 20 CAN$ at a thrift store. It just needed a PSU and a compatible controller.

Not quite retro yet, I admit.

Well, you can argue that once you have Rare Replay and a bunch of old original xbox games installed, it sort of is a retro station.

Not a bad idea at all. Thank you for the suggestion.

SteveC wrote on 2022-10-03, 23:14:

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-10-03, 19:34:

I recently bought an Apple IIe via ebay. I'd hesitated buying online due to the prospect of shipping damage. In this case, the s […]
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I recently bought an Apple IIe via ebay. I'd hesitated buying online due to the prospect of shipping damage. In this case, the seller was only two hours away, so I offered to pick up instead of having it shipped. Frustratingly they responded that they don't do pick ups and that they had shipped out claiming it was "well packaged".

When the computer arrived my fears were confirmed: the outer case had been cracked and broken during shipment.

The monitor itself is still enroute and I have to wait to see if that survived or if it also suffered damage.

Very frustrating that a two hour drive would have prevented damage to this machine if the seller had only been willing to let me pick this thing up. 🙁

Ah that's real sad 🙁 What will you do? Get some sort of refund?

So to update on this, the seller did end up refunding half of the price paid.

That will hopefully cover sourcing a replacement case + lid for this machine.

At least I did get a fully working and intact monitor and disk drive from this.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-10-06, 17:51:

So to update on this, the seller did end up refunding half of the price paid. […]
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SteveC wrote on 2022-10-03, 23:14:

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-10-03, 19:34:

I recently bought an Apple IIe via ebay. I'd hesitated buying online due to the prospect of shipping damage. In this case, the s […]
Show full quote

I recently bought an Apple IIe via ebay. I'd hesitated buying online due to the prospect of shipping damage. In this case, the seller was only two hours away, so I offered to pick up instead of having it shipped. Frustratingly they responded that they don't do pick ups and that they had shipped out claiming it was "well packaged".

When the computer arrived my fears were confirmed: the outer case had been cracked and broken during shipment.

The monitor itself is still enroute and I have to wait to see if that survived or if it also suffered damage.

Very frustrating that a two hour drive would have prevented damage to this machine if the seller had only been willing to let me pick this thing up. 🙁

Ah that's real sad 🙁 What will you do? Get some sort of refund?

So to update on this, the seller did end up refunding half of the price paid.

That will hopefully cover sourcing a replacement case + lid for this machine.

At least I did get a fully working and intact monitor and disk drive from this.

I'd say half price is a pretty good result considering it works!

Got these stuff today, from a trade.

IBM VRM Module for IBM PC365 (in order to become true dual socket 8 system..)
Working active adaptor PS/2 to USB (it really makes the old keyboards working with USB)

Damn the fake PS/2 to USB adaptors, did try multiple of them, non did work, and ofc i was not going to spend 100$ for the blue cube that others in the keyboard forums (such as geekhack or deskthority)did state only that was converting the signal and protocol from PS/2 to USB.. Seems they were wrong..

The VRM will be nice addition to the machine and the mobo

BetaC wrote on 2022-10-06, 06:56:

darry wrote on 2022-10-06, 04:50:

Scored a working early model XBox One (1540) for 20 CAN$ at a thrift store. It just needed a PSU and a compatible controller.

Not quite retro yet, I admit.

Well, you can argue that once you have Rare Replay and a bunch of old original xbox games installed, it sort of is a retro station.

RetroStation the arch nemesis of the PlayStation >>>>
#bringSEGAback (since they were the platform for violence, and adults, not like the crappy Nintendo, that was mostly for kids, and every single game released for the SEGA was alot more fun, then the goofy kids version of Nintendo... But anyway these days SONY and M$ eated the whole market for Nintendo, and that is a good thing, since Nintendo was disgusting as a company back in the late 80s and early 90s...

darry wrote on 2022-10-06, 17:28:

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-10-04, 23:26:

Second box of my Apple IIe shipment arrived. This one contained the monitor and fortunately it arrived completely intact.

Also included was a box of random disks with some... interesting software choices. I was able to hook everything up and confirm at least the system is working electronically. It's just the external plastic case on the Apple IIe itself that suffered significant damage.

At any rate, I've reached back out to the seller and we'll see what sort of resolution they offer.

The face on the Strip Poker splash screen looks like Michael Jackson in his later years to me .

After going back and looking at the picture after reading your post it kinda does look like him.

Bought for 2 usd @ the local flea market

This boxed SG BXII not that good of a card, but in a nice box ;]

I ordered this Gigabyte motherboard, it needs to be repaired, some capacitors need to be replaced, it should arrive in the next few days, along with the Athlon X2 CPU and the shield.
After replacing the capacitors I think about changing the CPU, and put a better one, I was thinking of a Phenom, but first I have to see if after the repair it starts up and works correctly.
In that case, I will have to see what to add, ram and hd video card, at the moment I use the ones I have to test the operation, but I would like to understand what would be fine with a phenom, i.e. what video card, how much RAM to use, etc ...

Wow, is it worth fixing AM2 boards yet? Thought there were still plenty of working ones for peanuts.

https://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Gigabyte ... _2.0).html looks like it's good to go for a lot of Phenoms, there's some red spots there, that commenters below say may be fixed with later BIOS.

How much RAM you want would be a little on the OS dependant side. Not a real lot of point putting in more than 2 or 3GB for XP or some of the other 32bit versions (Get into wackiness with upper adapter shadowing area just this side of 4GB.) otherwise max it out at 8 if you can find decent sticks. If you've got DDR voltage control, then the Kingston Value Ram 667 or 800 that is double sided with the square chips is meant to go to 1333 with 2.1V... airflow is advised though, don't let 'em cook.... or do, KVR isn't that hard to come by 🤣

Likewise, I think if you want it for XP you don't really wanna go past about GTX580 or HD5850 for gfx. Vista might have a top end as well, and 7 might have been cut off last year.

Edit: Oh, was dealing with a gigabyte board a few years older, remember now that on that one, they did +5 +7.5 +10% on the voltages, so if it only does that it might not push too far.

Got this Casio CT-460. I believe this completes my collection of all the esoteric audio devices supported by early Sierra games.

I am still baffled as to how this is an officially supported device in those games, as it's clearly one of the least practical audio devices to use with a classic computer. Thought there is a surreal novelty hearing Sierra music being played by a Casio keyboard.

There was a bit of an 80s fad for keyboards so a lot of people had them.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-08, 16:50:

There was a bit of an 80s fad for keyboards so a lot of people had them.

I still wonder though did anyone actually try using these with their games?

There is also the problem of the music in Sierra games for these devices wasn't that great. Colonel's Bequest sounds decent, Hero's Quest isn't terrible, and but a few other games I've tried sound horrible.

I suppose if one didn't have anything better... though even PC speaker sounds preferable to me for some of these games.

AH! I'm so excited! After looking for around a decade this point (granted, not very thoroughly, just when I remembered to check ebay) I have finally found and just bought the sound card of my first PC: an Avance Logic ALS100 (nonplus)! God it's been hard to find between all the ALS+ and Plus+ and ALS120s. MIDI just doesn't sound right to me from anything else.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-08, 16:44:

Wow, is it worth fixing AM2 boards yet? Thought there were still plenty of working ones for peanuts. […]
Show full quote

Wow, is it worth fixing AM2 boards yet? Thought there were still plenty of working ones for peanuts.

https://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-Gigabyte ... _2.0).html looks like it's good to go for a lot of Phenoms, there's some red spots there, that commenters below say may be fixed with later BIOS.

How much RAM you want would be a little on the OS dependant side. Not a real lot of point putting in more than 2 or 3GB for XP or some of the other 32bit versions (Get into wackiness with upper adapter shadowing area just this side of 4GB.) otherwise max it out at 8 if you can find decent sticks. If you've got DDR voltage control, then the Kingston Value Ram 667 or 800 that is double sided with the square chips is meant to go to 1333 with 2.1V... airflow is advised though, don't let 'em cook.... or do, KVR isn't that hard to come by 🤣

Likewise, I think if you want it for XP you don't really wanna go past about GTX580 or HD5850 for gfx. Vista might have a top end as well, and 7 might have been cut off last year.

Edit: Oh, was dealing with a gigabyte board a few years older, remember now that on that one, they did +5 +7.5 +10% on the voltages, so if it only does that it might not push too far.

Yes, thank you very much for the suggestions.
In fact the cost of this motherboard is low, because it has those swollen capacitors, to find a working one I would have to spend probably more than triple, lately I have free time, and I can devote myself to repairing motherboards, most of the jobs are the replacement of capacitors, but lately I have been dedicating myself to repairing broken tracks, obviously without having professional equipment, otherwise I could do it as a second job.
The RAM suggestion is very useful to me, I didn't know much about those modules that even reach 1333GHz, I think I have several that I could use safely, but perhaps as you suggest to take care of the cooling you need to use a nice heatsink.
The quantity depends on the modules I can find, to go to 8GB I would have to find 2GB each.
Very useful your suggestion on the VGA, I don't have those models, but I will search for them online, see if I find something cheap to buy.

This weekends random thrift stores haul..

"2 Shocks Joystick" IDK if I bought this lemony looking thing because I thought it was funny or what. By the famous hardware giant "Dilong" of course. It's put away in original pack rather than NOS, top of left analog stick looks a little nasty, not sure if it's oxidation or what at the moment. Sorta has a purpose in that I've got a Saito USB gamepad with analog I like a lot, but on half the systems I plug it in, I get a complaint about it pulling too much USB power. This claims Win98 compatibility, so might not blow up Win98 boxes, but I'll clean it up sometime and see.

Radioshack 15pin gameport switchbox. Oh this looks like being very useful. 3 inputs, and can select 1 of 3, or Y mode for 1 and 2 together. Not quite sure at the moment whether the left switches enable and disable buttons (useful for Y mode to lockout 3 and 4) or turn the autofire on and off, the rate sliders are on the other side. Will be nice not to have to dig behind the system to swap between flight sticks and game pads, and Ys often aren't the answer because the "nice" ones have too many extra axes and buttons each and argue with each other.

Those two were Saturdays prizes, then Sunday I went to a thrift in another town while I was over there, and yay, LS-120 External for $5CDN... no cables (parallel) or PSU with it.. but I am not really caring, as it offers me a solution to my mATX case dilemma, wherein it has a custom spot for a floppy but AM2+ motherboard doesn't have floppy. I can skin this and use the guts on IDE. The really weird thing is it is the store I don't visit very often where the very last time I went there I got a P4 system unit with a Superdisk in it 🤣 Holding up the joystick is a boring SATA optical, haven't got enough SATA opticals, I actually misread it, but might have bought it anyway, Hitachi H30N, DVD-multiread CDRW writer... yeah, not a DVD multi writer, DVDROM only, derp.

KeyTronic Lifetime wireless keyboard beige bnib

Picked up a couple systems at the VCF swap meet held in NJ this Saturday. There's still plenty of work to be done with these, and finding the hard drive caddy for the Unisys laptop is probably impossible, but I got some great stuff for not a ton of money!

https://imgur.com/gallery/h5NNwLe

EvieSigma wrote on 2022-10-10, 22:36:

Picked up a couple systems at the VCF swap meet held in NJ this Saturday. There's still plenty of work to be done with these, and finding the hard drive caddy for the Unisys laptop is probably impossible, but I got some great stuff for not a ton of money!

https://imgur.com/gallery/h5NNwLe

I really wanted to go to that but sadly I work on the weekends. What's worse I work about near that area but I got out to late.

EvieSigma wrote on 2022-10-10, 22:36:

Picked up a couple systems at the VCF swap meet held in NJ this Saturday. There's still plenty of work to be done with these, and finding the hard drive caddy for the Unisys laptop is probably impossible, but I got some great stuff for not a ton of money!

https://imgur.com/gallery/h5NNwLe

Cool stuff. That Unisys reminds me a lot of the 486 AST Powerexec 4/25 SL... I wonder if it's made by same ppl. If you shoot some closeups of the drivebay, we might find something that connects a hard drive at least, even if it doesn't quite match the plastics.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-11, 00:38:

EvieSigma wrote on 2022-10-10, 22:36:

Picked up a couple systems at the VCF swap meet held in NJ this Saturday. There's still plenty of work to be done with these, and finding the hard drive caddy for the Unisys laptop is probably impossible, but I got some great stuff for not a ton of money!

https://imgur.com/gallery/h5NNwLe

Cool stuff. That Unisys reminds me a lot of the 486 AST Powerexec 4/25 SL... I wonder if it's made by same ppl. If you shoot some closeups of the drivebay, we might find something that connects a hard drive at least, even if it doesn't quite match the plastics.

There's a connector in there but it's definitely not anything I immediately recognize. I don't know what that particular model of AST looks like but it's possible it's the same hardware? NEC made laptops for AT&T/NCR, for example.