douglar wrote on 2023-09-29, 23:03:

I found a big box of CPU's. A big sturdy box with MSI on the side, but it smelled like basement & death, so I emptied and discarded it as quickly as possible.

Do not discard the fans that are attached to the Overdrive CPUs, even if they are seized. The bearing is removable and can be completely replaced, as long as the shaft is undamaged.

You will have to sacrifice the sticker to get to it though, unless you can find a way to remove it carefully. I tried to apply a little heat with the aid of a hot air gun and mine melted almost immediately, so I do not recommend this method. I wish I had scanned mine first, so that I could have reserved making a new replacement as an option.

douglar wrote on 2023-09-29, 23:03:

I found a big box of CPU's. A big sturdy box with MSI on the side, but it smelled like basement & death, so I emptied and disca […]
Show full quote

I found a big box of CPU's. A big sturdy box with MSI on the side, but it smelled like basement & death, so I emptied and discarded it as quickly as possible.

Photo Sep 29 2023, 4 31 34 PM.jpg

Had at least 2 of each Slot 1 Pentium II from 233 up to 450 along with a number of what look like slot 1 cards with terminating resistors on them.

And there were a lot of socketed CPU's too, but usually the slower bus speed ones that I wouldn't have bought back in the day, like D2X-80,DX4-120, 60, 75, 120 and 150 Mhz Pentiums, & 66MHz bus socket 370 Celerons. Whoever this collector was, he had a type, that's for sure.

Photo Sep 29 2023, 5 06 56 PM.jpg

The overdrive is just a PODP3V166, so it fits the theme, as well as the Duron 700

There's also a K6-III 450 and an P3-866

The Athlons are an XP1700+ and an XP2000+ which were more respectable for a minute. When did the switch from the brown to the green packaging occur?

Nice score! However the DX2-80 and DX4-120 are definitely not low bus speed for 486 class, as they are 40 MHz bus, rather than the typical 33 ...

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-09-30, 02:52:

Holy crap what a score! Are all the socket 4 Pentiums 60 Mhz ones? You got a lot of pin unbending to do or were they stacked in […]
Show full quote

Holy crap what a score! Are all the socket 4 Pentiums 60 Mhz ones?
You got a lot of pin unbending to do or were they stacked in carefully?

There wasn't really a green/brown cutoff, you can get early palomino XP on brown, slightly later pally on green, then early Tbred A seemed mostly brown, then they had green, and then some faster ones were brown... I think it might have been what packaging plant they came from.

Edit: having a hard time making out the Pentium P5/socket 4 S Specs but if the one at bottom is SX835 that's an early production C1 stepping with the FDIV bug, and the one at the top is a later SX948 maybe that's D1 stepping with no FDIV bug

The Socket 3, Socket 4, socket 370 , & socket A chips per in pretty good shape. A couple minutes with a thin credit card and they will be good to go.

The socket 7 were a mixed bag and some are going to take some work with a magnifying glass and some fine plyers.

There is a pair of Pentium 60's and a pair of Pentium 66's.

So looks like SX835 & SX837 would be C1 stepping with FDIV, SX948 would be D1 stepping & has the glued heat sink & no FDIV.
The "E 411" [edit] is marked as an SX837 on the flip side, so it is also C1 stepping with the older logo and the tough spotty thermal paste.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-09-30, 06:45:

Nice score! However the DX2-80 and DX4-120 are definitely not low bus speed for 486 class, as they are 40 MHz bus, rather than the typical 33 ...

You are right. They are the faster bus speed. I completely spaced that. Thanks for pointing that out.

I'd guess that the difference between the 33mhz chips and the 40mhz chips was selective binning.

Did the 1996 "SV8B" chips have any advantages over the 1995 "NV8T" chips? Looks like they are both have the 8KB cache.

These look like place holders for dual processor motherboards, yes?

douglar wrote on 2023-09-30, 15:15:

These look like place holders for dual processor motherboards, yes?

Yes. These are jumper cpus, terminator cpus, or dummy cpus. Used in some dual cpu machines when you only used 1 cpu.

Kinda sad, kinda awesome. Belongs best in this thread I think.

The story... about two hundred and thirtyish moons ago I moved into my current place, and my helpers were ignoring the tags on things and putting crap everywhere. These apparently got shoved to the very back of my shed, and about 2 weeks after moving day, some in laws "dumped" some furniture on me, "Hey you've got a big shed, this is too good to get rid of, store it or use it or something..." as they're bringing it into the back yard... aaargh.. Anyway, that crap was what was hiding these fellas from me. Fast forward to recent times. The shed deteriorated rapidly and covid restrictions and market craziness precluded me from getting it seen to sooner rather than later. I also was not aware that no roofing paper/tarpaper was put on under the shingles, as would be standard practice so earlier this year the whole back of the thing flopped in as the roof decking gave way. Several cycles of too frigging hot, too frigging smoky, too frigging wet and hot, too frigging polleny and too frigging sick has meant that I am just getting to salvage operations prior to demo and dumping in a week or so.

So these poor buggers, which I wasn't even looking for, have been orphaned at the back of the shed for more than a decade. I would definitely have had them out 5 years ago or so had I known/remembered them. Then the roof fell on them and the crappy chipboard furniture sagged over and rotted on them too, so they're real nasty. Initially I am going to leave them out in the rain a couple of days to get the rough off. It's practically a retro computer Halloween display though ain't it 🤣 Then I might hose them off some more before letting them dry out more on the porch. Nothing really gonna happen for a couple of weeks, too much homestead business to attend to . Don't look for full restores real quick.

I dunno what is in them, two look empty, one might have a Pentium class motherboard and graphics, another seems to have a 486 dx VLB rattling around. Not sure on the 5th.

Holy sh*t that's some of the most damaged cases I've seen!

A certain type of car dude: "It's patina." ... doesn't seem anything is actually perforated yet, they'll still hold parts.

edit: though might have to take a look at that one on the right, Azura badged, netware, win 3.1, red intel inside pentium... could be a P5 or even early enough P54 that it's "interesting"

EditII: Took another look on the way past it again. VGA looks like a 1MB Trio... can't tell for sure the motherboard/CPU, has 4x72 SIMM and there's one of those low profile ~5mm or so heatsinks on whatever CPU. Still maybe a P5 .. screws a bit rusted (go figure 🤣 ) so it wasn't gonna be a 2 min peek.

Edit the threeth: With being out of daylight for my chores, I thought I'd check it this evening... very stuck screws, much rust, so bathed it in penetrant, will try again tomorrow. Extra slot gazing with flashlight was giving me the impression it IS a socket 4. The layout appears to match https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/dfi-586op where there's very few choices for the thick side of the socket being at that side of the board. Though the suggestion of having an Opti board makes sense, I had some vague notion of having played around with an Opti board at one point.

douglar wrote on 2023-09-30, 15:15:

Did the 1996 "SV8B" chips have any advantages over the 1995 "NV8T" chips? Looks like they are both have the 8KB cache.

AMD 486
SV8B need to be jumpered like write back DX4
(N)V8T need to be jumpered like DX2
But both may need 3.3 Volt setting

Azura mystery solved... it's not socket 4... it's a socket 7... think it was that whackass heatsink/fan giving me false clues, though notably, it looks like you can adjust it for whatever nubs are (still) on your socket, so might get repurposed. Not that it looks any good for anything very fast. Board seems to be some variety of HOT-541 .. just your basic 430FX snorefest, or is it? Note the frequency table 40 mhz??? This make for a low gear crawler? Mayyyyybe, it might be better than that even, second table in this post Re: Clock generators on Socket 7 and older motherboards heh, wanna run 16x1.5 for a whole 24Mhz Pentium? heh. When I find where my Winchip got to I might consider this board for it though.

I've never seen a motherboard bent/bend like that

My post? Pic is askew and the camera might do a bit of fisheye for closer pics but didn't look bent.

Still busy as hell with yard and stuff... Looked at the "5th unknown" on the way past, that too has a socket 7 board inside, I'm hoping it's my SM5A which I have not been able to locate for years. Well, I'd rather find it somewhere where it's been dry and warm, but finding it at all is better than not and stops the "am I going crazy, I HAD ONE!!!" stuff. Also pondering pulling out a "fishbowl" old VGA, probably pure VGA low res, monitor to clean up. Why? Because I think they look better and are more period with low86 VGA machines, and the blurriness is free AA. Also not sure if it was the one that came with the Packard Bell 286-12 and might be original equipment.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-07, 21:43:

My post? Pic is askew and the camera might do a bit of fisheye for closer pics but didn't look bent.

oh crap i necro'd post

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-06, 18:33:

So these poor buggers, which I wasn't even looking for, have been orphaned at the back of the shed for more than a decade. I would definitely have had them out 5 years ago or so had I known/remembered them. Then the roof fell on them and the crappy chipboard furniture sagged over and rotted on them too, so they're real nasty. Initially I am going to leave them out in the rain a couple of days to get the rough off. It's practically a retro computer Halloween display though ain't it 🤣 Then I might hose them off some more before letting them dry out more on the porch. Nothing really gonna happen for a couple of weeks, too much homestead business to attend to . Don't look for full restores real quick.

get them all ready for lan party this weekend?

ok maybe not - but i'd bet there are a few surprise 'survivors' in there, things that will still work just fine and even better after a clean up

great pic though, very post apocalyptic somehow

Concur with gerry - that's really a post apocalyptic scene unfolding there.

I'm optimistic that most work though. I've had to work on ATX units more rotten than that. (PGA370 and Slot 1, surprisingly)

It was kind of an apocalypse, but a very local one, limited to 100sqft or so. They do have that kind of look which some people have taken hours to achieve for fallout and half-life case mods 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-06, 18:33:

Kinda sad, kinda awesome. Belongs best in this thread I think. […]
Show full quote

Kinda sad, kinda awesome. Belongs best in this thread I think.

The story... about two hundred and thirtyish moons ago I moved into my current place, and my helpers were ignoring the tags on things and putting crap everywhere. These apparently got shoved to the very back of my shed, and about 2 weeks after moving day, some in laws "dumped" some furniture on me, "Hey you've got a big shed, this is too good to get rid of, store it or use it or something..." as they're bringing it into the back yard... aaargh.. Anyway, that crap was what was hiding these fellas from me. Fast forward to recent times. The shed deteriorated rapidly and covid restrictions and market craziness precluded me from getting it seen to sooner rather than later. I also was not aware that no roofing paper/tarpaper was put on under the shingles, as would be standard practice so earlier this year the whole back of the thing flopped in as the roof decking gave way. Several cycles of too frigging hot, too frigging smoky, too frigging wet and hot, too frigging polleny and too frigging sick has meant that I am just getting to salvage operations prior to demo and dumping in a week or so.

So these poor buggers, which I wasn't even looking for, have been orphaned at the back of the shed for more than a decade. I would definitely have had them out 5 years ago or so had I known/remembered them. Then the roof fell on them and the crappy chipboard furniture sagged over and rotted on them too, so they're real nasty. Initially I am going to leave them out in the rain a couple of days to get the rough off. It's practically a retro computer Halloween display though ain't it 🤣 Then I might hose them off some more before letting them dry out more on the porch. Nothing really gonna happen for a couple of weeks, too much homestead business to attend to . Don't look for full restores real quick.

I dunno what is in them, two look empty, one might have a Pentium class motherboard and graphics, another seems to have a 486 dx VLB rattling around. Not sure on the 5th.

Oh that's depressing. One of them looks a lot like I remember my 486 case.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-10-11, 12:35:

It was kind of an apocalypse, but a very local one, limited to 100sqft or so. They do have that kind of look which some people have taken hours to achieve for fallout and half-life case mods 🤣

Hey, if any of them have a high level of restorability, then it's a definite win. A bigger win if all work. (PSUs not included 🤣)

I think there's only 3 PSUs total, not too fussed if those don't work, as I have 3 or 4 AT boards with ATX power connectors, so by the time I swap everything around, I can be using ATX with those. I am kinda more excited to have "any metal vaguely resembling the shape of an AT case" because I had more AT board projects planned than cases available. They might not get restored to original color though. I have half a dozen rattle cans of silver paint, same of bright white, so odds are they're gonna get the covers painted with that at least. That fourth in line may get attention first. Because I have two more similar pattern minis, one midi and one full tower kinda matching. So I might do a 286, 386, 486, Pentium and PIII matched set. I may swap the cover to another mini though so I don't have a bright white one standing out.

The middle one might in fact have it's cover preserved indoors, I keep thinking I seem to have one more cover than machines. I think it's the one that is like a quarter inch shorter than common, which the 4th one represents, there's a number of almost identical chassis in shape and size with different facias in mini-towers. Not sure number 2 is part of that group, but might be similar to number 5, which was a later, fast 486, slow pentium era kind of common one.