If you sell off your old relic machines it is good to do it with low end RAM installed keeping the good stuff for machines you plan on keeping.

I also used low end RAM to test suspect motherboards or systems in case they blow up.

If you are done expanding the collection or are actively downsizing it, then go ahead and sell off the low-end RAM.

Go thru what you plan to throw away and post a bit of the better in this thread: Old hardware giveaway thread.
some member may want a little of what you have, and yes it is OK to ask them to cover postage but you cannot ask for any money other than postage cost....

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-11-04, 19:25:

Just look at how desired 1MB 30pin SIMMS or 4/8MB EDO are. It's always the big sticks people want.

It's not that I always want big sticks, but.. I really dislike 256KB SIMMs with a passion!
Those awful modules were responsible that PC/ATs (286 PCs) were limited to a sad 1MB of RAM.

- Because, some simpler designs have four SIMM slots only (286/386SX requires a pair of two, 386+ a pair of four SIMMs each).
And even with an eight slot motherboard, it's merely 2MB of RAM total.

Personally, I consider the 1MB modules to be normal/sane. They're quite compatible, too. Most 286 can handle 4MB.
It's the 4MB 30pin SIMMs modules that are higher end, I think. My father had them in his mighty am386DX-40 PC, to run Win95.

I dunno, I'm having trouble finding smaller sizes, and on ebay the prices are more expensive than the larger. For Instance right now I'm using a 512mb stick that is only detected as 256mb because an actual 256mb stick was more expensive than a 512mb stick of PC100, when in truth I just want at most 256mb, same goes for my EDO 72pin, I want 8mb sticks but all anyone seems to have anymore are 16mb sticks

I have around 5 kilograms of misc ram modules, from sdram to ddr2. Amassed them through 20 years of IT work. Gonna leave them to my children together with my other collection of psu adapters. 😁

The way the options are given is like 1. keep them until they become rare (and expensive) or 2. sell them to scrappers by the kilo. I see a 3rd one: sell them to people at scrappers prices.
I'm sure that many wouldn't mind a bag of assorted modules for a very low price, not all of us have boxes filled with hundreds of spare parts. Which leads to another observation of mine, sometimes people try to sell stuff for x money and when they can't they prefer to throw it away/give it to scrappers/burry it in some humid shed to rust than to, you know, sell it for cheap.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-06, 01:04:

Personally, I consider the 1MB modules to be normal/sane. They're quite compatible, too. Most 286 can handle 4MB.
It's the 4MB 30pin SIMMs modules that are higher end, I think. My father had them in his mighty am386DX-40 PC, to run Win95.

Yeah, 1MB sticks are super common. You can buy mountains of them. But I don't have much of them yet.
Cheap 4MB sticks are hard to find these days. Only have two, which came on an AWE.

candle_86 wrote on 2022-11-06, 07:16:

I dunno, I'm having trouble finding smaller sizes, and on ebay the prices are more expensive than the larger. For Instance right now I'm using a 512mb stick that is only detected as 256mb because an actual 256mb stick was more expensive than a 512mb stick of PC100, when in truth I just want at most 256mb, same goes for my EDO 72pin, I want 8mb sticks but all anyone seems to have anymore are 16mb sticks

Yeah, SDRAM is a bit different. The small ones are rare and needed for older systems.
I see more 128MB and 256MB than 512MB.

candle_86 wrote on 2022-11-06, 07:16:

same goes for my EDO 72pin, I want 8mb sticks but all anyone seems to have anymore are 16mb sticks

If you wouldn't be living on the other side of the great pond, I'd offer you to exchange your 16MB sticks for 8MB ones. 😜
I put 8MB and 16MB on the boards I want to get rid off. 16MB on the good ones, like P55T2P4. 8MB on the cheap ones. I currently have three 4x32 and one 2x32 kit.

Horun wrote on 2022-11-06, 00:53:

Go thru what you plan to throw away and post a bit of the better in this thread: Old hardware giveaway thread.
some member may want a little of what you have, and yes it is OK to ask them to cover postage but you cannot ask for any money other than postage cost....

I'm gonna have to be a bit blunt here:
We're living in tough times. I'm currently bleeding 50€ a month. Luckily I have savings. But I'm not in the mood to give away stuff for free, while my wealth shrinks from day to day.

konc wrote on 2022-11-06, 09:40:

I see a 3rd one: sell them to people at scrappers prices.
I'm sure that many wouldn't mind a bag of assorted modules for a very low price, not all of us have boxes filled with hundreds of spare parts. Which leads to another observation of mine, sometimes people try to sell stuff for x money and when they can't they prefer to throw it away/give it to scrappers/burry it in some humid shed to rust than to, you know, sell it for cheap.

This is an option.
But why would anyone do this? You can find piles of RAM on Ebay for the same price, which actually contain valuable sticks.

An example from today:

Do you see what's special about this lot? There are two sticks, who actually aren't RAM, but cache.
Most of the sticks seems to be 8MB FPM with parity, from what I have seen. But I also have spotted at least one 2x32MB kit. Maybe a second one, but it doesn't have a shadow, so it's probably single sided 2x16MB.
Most of the sticks have gold contacts, so I estimated that the scrappers will pay around 25€ (incl. shipping) for the lot. They always pay around a buck for golden sticks. What did I pay for the lot? 25,50€.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-06, 01:04:

I really dislike 256KB SIMMs with a passion!
Those awful modules were responsible that PC/ATs (286 PCs) were limited to a sad 1MB of RAM.

I was also in that same camp but when I restored a Schneider 386 SX last year I wanted to actually have *only* 2MB of RAM, since I never had a PC with that exact amount of RAM, and I wanted to keep the original RAM so I had to hunt down 256KB SIMMs to match the ones the PC already came with. For some reason 256KB SIMMs are not that common around here.

It's only 256MB DDR that I'm super confident I've got more than enough of. Probably 3x too much. The rest it's hard to tell. In general ppl seem to want to put "silly" to me amounts of RAM in their retro boxes. Now back in the day, the only reason you wanted 64MB in your 486 was because you got left behind in 1994, and you're struggling to run stuff in 1998 or 1999. With the sea of hardware from every year to pick from, why the hell would you want to recreate a 1998-1999 "struggle box" with an excessive RAM load when you could be running at least Pentium class with same amount. If you keep it to things it ran nicely in 1994, 8MB is plenty, 16MB is getting toward pointless, and 32MB double pointless. Ergo, 8x 1MB 30 pin isn't useless, it's authentic, or 4x4MB 72 is nice. Given that approach, were I in financial difficulties, I'd reduce systems down to era appropriate prosumer levels of RAM and sell the excess of larger spendy modules that were actually well sought after by ppl who don't give a crap who also pay quite high for them.

Then there's necessity of keeping stuff for hardware that might not like larger modules, Late XT, early 286 might only like 256KB, mid 286 and some 386 only take 1MB. 4MB either 30 or 72 are useful in FPM and EDO through the late 486 into early socket 4&5 Pentium, which can have issues with double banks and larger modules. Then while 430FX and HX can be useful with a relative lot of RAM, some implementations cap off their usuable SIMM sizes so the 8MBs might come into play. Then we get to SDRAM, and I can tell you there are VX and 440LX boards early to those chipsets that will not like much but 16 or 32MB, or "special" 64s. The BXes get persnickety at the high end too, so sneer ye not at 128MBs, because you might not find 256es that work right with them.

Oddly I think DDR on the desktop dodged these issues, with that it's more instability with using more than 2 sockets, and buffered RAM being needed for high loadout, oh and DDR200 nobody wants that. DDR2 started it again with 4GB modules intel platforms can't use, DDR3 same with some 8GBs and some boards.

Also think it's wise to reserve base amounts of RAM for any motherboards you sell, so you can sell it working with that RAM and whatever else they're trying to stick in it isn't your problem.

Anyhoo, you own it, do what you want, ask St Isadore of Seville for absolution or something.

It ain't going up in price sonny jim. If someone is willing to buy it for the cost of a good meal, I would say go for it.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-11-06, 22:25:

Then while 430FX and HX can be useful with a relative lot of RAM, some implementations cap off their usuable SIMM sizes so the 8MBs might come into play.

I've never had 430HX which can't use 16MB or 32MB EDO sticks.
With 8MB sticks you can only reach 32MB RAM, which was mediocre during the late Pentium era. Even my dads cheap-ass P166 MMX from Aldi had 32MB. Highend systems used to have 64MB. 430HX, P233 MMX, 64MB RAM, Voodoo Graphics. That's what the people want. The PC you wished for Christmas 1997, but never got.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-11-06, 22:25:

Also think it's wise to reserve base amounts of RAM for any motherboards you sell, so you can sell it working with that RAM and whatever else they're trying to stick in it isn't your problem.

Yeah. 10 years ago I sold a HDD on Ebay. Buyer did complain, that it's not working. After some back and forth it turns out, that the system doesn't even post or beep. It didn't even post before he changed the HDD. He assumed the PC doesn't turn on, because the HDD is broken, so he bought a new one on Ebay. When that didn't work either, he assumed the new one must be broken too. *facepalm*
At that point I stopped replying to his messages. But that was before buyer protection was necessary on Ebay. Now you gotta assume that the buyer will be a DAU (dumbest assumable user) and need to prepare for it. Boards posts with the CPU+RAM you send, but won't post with the stuff the buyer got somewhere else? Not your f***ing problem.

But I don't need 512MB DDR2 sticks for that. I got around 20 kits of 2x2GB, plus around the same for 2x1GB. Not counting all the kits with heatspreaders! Just naked sticks. 1GB sticks without heatspreader are just as worthless as 512MB.
People either want the highclocking sticks with heatspreader for their retro rigs or cheap naked 2GB sticks to keep their aging office PC alive for a few more years. 4x2GB DDR2 easily sells for 10€ and more, which is more than double the gold value. I assume demand for those will eventually cease to exist, so only modules with heatspreaders keep value.

I'm trying to avoid DDR2 these days, but they keep coming and coming.
Example: Few weeks ago I picked up a collection which I found on a local marketplace. The offer kinda was: "Buy the two AWEs plus the two Voodoos for the asking price (which was already below Ebay) and you get three PCs and three boxes with mixed hardware for free." And so I did. Didn't further inspect the box with RAM until a few days ago. 17x2GB DDR2, 15x1GB DDR2, 6x DDR3 SO, 8x DDR2 SO, 3x DDR1 SO. Yeez, I didn't expect to find so many 2GB sticks.
Then there are those RAMs lots on Ebay which I frequently buy. I'm mostly competing against scrappers, judging by their bidding history. These days I'm primarily looking for COAST modules, big 30pin SIMMs, big 72pin FPM/EDO and fast SDRAM (especially Micron) in all sizes. Often I'm forced to also buy low end DDR1 + DDR2 and have to pay 1€ a piece to save the good stuff from the greedy scrappers who mindlessly meld down everything.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-11-06, 22:25:

Given that approach, were I in financial difficulties, I'd reduce systems down to era appropriate prosumer levels of RAM and sell the excess of larger spendy modules that were actually well sought after by ppl who don't give a crap who also pay quite high for them.

That's what I have done. The Socket7 machines/boards which I want to sell, all have 4x16MB or 2x16+4x8MB RAM as freebies added. If people also want to buy my 32MB sticks to go for 128MB RAM: Sure, go ahead. The boards are maxed out CPU wise. MMX233 or MMX200 with open Jumper for those who support split voltage. Pentium 200 for those who don't. Saved the CPUs from scrappers as well. They all had bend pins and I spent hours fixing them. One CPU had pretty much all the pins bend but none was missing. xD Spend 4€ per piece.
I don't have that many DDR1/SDRAM boards which I want to get rid off. But I have way too many DDR2 boards. Gonna populate them with worthless CPUs and 2x1GB. That's enough for some initial testing. The naked 2x2GB Kits and the ones with heatspreader will be sold individually. I have two and a half ESD trays (a 25 sticks) filled with heatspreadered DDR2 and want to downsize as well, to make space for new purchases.

I had an idea about those crappy sticks:
They are already seperated into 2 piles. I have one box with sticks who are defintely dead or at least damaged. The small DDR2 sticks do all post, but haven't been checked with Memtest because it's a waste of electricity. I'm going to try to sell them "as is" on Ebay for slightly above gold value. Scrappers won't pay 40€ + 5€ for 40 sticks. They will pay 35€+5€ max, so they can still make a small profit.
I'll bounce the auction a few times. If nobody is interested, I'll add them to the broken sticks and sell them to the scrappers.
Does the council of retro fanatics approve this method?

Aye.

devius wrote on 2022-11-06, 22:18:

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-06, 01:04:

I really dislike 256KB SIMMs with a passion!
Those awful modules were responsible that PC/ATs (286 PCs) were limited to a sad 1MB of RAM.

I was also in that same camp but when I restored a Schneider 386 SX last year I wanted to actually have *only* 2MB of RAM, since I never had a PC with that exact amount of RAM, and I wanted to keep the original RAM so I had to hunt down 256KB SIMMs to match the ones the PC already came with. For some reason 256KB SIMMs are not that common around here.

Hi there! 😀 I've got a Tower AT 286 and the 1Mb on-board are a joke. Almost all programs that I use are short on memory. 🙁
Hower, I promised someone not to alter the rare CPU card (early model) - and I do keep that promise. I won't install SIMM sockets.
But.. I'll install an ISA memory board as soon as possible. Even if it's just an EMS board. 1 MB aren't enough to do anything meaningful.
Even PC GEOS is limited by 1 MB, not to say Windows 3.1. Or Arachne.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-07, 21:38:

Even PC GEOS is limited by 1 MB, not to say Windows 3.1. Or Arachne.

Ahh PC Geos or aka Geoworks ! Great for 8086 or 80286 but yes better with more than 1Mb ram. I am a big fan and so is member maxtherabbit.

Horun wrote on 2022-11-08, 02:35:

Jo22 wrote on 2022-11-07, 21:38:

Even PC GEOS is limited by 1 MB, not to say Windows 3.1. Or Arachne.

Ahh PC Geos or aka Geoworks ! Great for 8086 or 80286 but yes better with more than 1Mb ram. I am a big fan and so is member maxtherabbit.

That's cool! 😎 I fondly remember talking with Caluser2000 about GEOS, too..
At the moment, I'm experimenting with a Canon Star Writer Pro 5000, GeoCosmos and R-Basic here.
I hope that I will be able to convert some of my QuickBasic or Visual Basic programs to R-Basic..
Otherwise, I will likely start from scratch, anyway. 😅
http://rbettsteller.de/BASIC/BASICDLE.HTM

Also got a copy of that AOL software (GEOS 1.x) to play around with.
- Did you know that some fans try to emulate AOL dial-up connection?
They got their version of the P3 protocol working, so AOL 2.5/3 client software can already connect. It's still at an early stage, however. Once that works correctly, support for AOL 1.x clients could maybe be possible.
I mean, that would be the next logical step.
Re: Q-Link memories..

Thanks. Oh yes, forgot about Caluser2000. In my collection have the original DOS5+Geos 1.2 floppies and manuals from a Vtech/Leading Technology 5500AT.

http://www.vacomputermuseum.org/collections/h … hnology-5500at/

That's a fine little 286 machine! Has 2 MB, a feature-rich Setup and a red 7 segment display! 😎👍

By the way, I'm currently reading an 1988 book about Aldus Page Maker 3.0.
The book says that PM 3 ships with a runtime version of Windows 2.03.

But what's interesting, it also says something about minimum requirements :

- that an 8086/8088 PC is simply too slow for Page Maker. An AT or compatible is needed.
It mentions ATs between 8-12 MHz, 80386 PCs between 12-20 Mhz.
- that a 20 MB HDD is required as a minimum (5 MB models were out of production already)
- that DOS is limited to 32 MB HDDs at the time of writing and that the user must
take care that he/she gets an utility with the HDD to break the 32 MB barrier
- that the user must have 640 KB of base memory, at least
- that a memory board with an extra 1 or 2 MB of RAM is highly recommended (LIM4/EMS) - that makes 1,6 or 2,6 MB total.

I've attached the parts as a proof/source. Low quality.

Weird that anyone in Germany would be interested in Aldus when they had excellent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamus_(DTP)
Atari ST + 640x400 monitor + Calamus + $1300 Atari SLM605 laser printer was cheaper than just Apple LaserWriter ($4,599 in 1988), probably same deal when comparing to Aldus + PC + HP Laserjet II ($2,495 in 1988).