Mandrew wrote on 2024-06-07, 17:08:

Finally found the first decent 775 board that came out of an e-waste rig (with a Q9450). Could be a great overclocker.

Good find... we've heard from some other posters before that Gigabyte boards of this era seem to have slots that wear out faster than other boards. Thus you probably don't want to be swapping too many cards in and out to try them out in it.

Thanks guys, it's a refreshing find after a sea of G33 and G41 boards so I'll take good care of it. What GPUs would you recommend for a crossfire setup? It doesn't have to be A++, just decent for a 2008 gaming build.

4850s might be the stout yet economical option. 4870s aren't that expensive or failly, but mo heat, mo problems.

I'd go for 4870. 4850s seem a bit more prone to failure, for whatever reason.

I stopped by my local computer store today and they had a couple of NOS Titan copper VGA cooler kits that include RAM heat sinks. For $10.00 each I couldn't say no. (Ebay photo)

PcBytes wrote on 2024-06-07, 22:42:

I'd go for 4870. 4850s seem a bit more prone to failure, for whatever reason.

I would go with a pair of 6870 cards.
They run way cooler than 4870 or 5870 and a single one is just as fast or faster than a 4870x2.

Or you could even go with a single 7970 which is faster than CFX 6870s.

Alright, these are all good options. I'll go with a pair of 4870 since there are some pretty affordable models here. The 6870 was tempting because I already have one but it's a late 2010 card so I'll pass. Thanks.

Mandrew wrote on 2024-06-08, 04:13:

Alright, these are all good options. I'll go with a pair of 4870 since there are some pretty affordable models here. The 6870 was tempting because I already have one but it's a late 2010 card so I'll pass. Thanks.

4890s are also cheap, I personally would go with them over the 4870s, the 4890s also come in 2Gb models.

myne wrote on 2024-06-07, 03:35:

Ah... Memories. I don't think it's the exact same, but I remember playing dune2 on the school libraries Toshiba 486 during deten […]
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my03 wrote on 2024-06-06, 17:40:

Got delivery of this little guy today, Toshiba Protege 3110CT. Very neat little machine that came with floppy, CD, dock, etc.

Will replace the mechanical HDD with a CF solution (as usual).

Ah... Memories.
I don't think it's the exact same, but I remember playing dune2 on the school libraries Toshiba 486 during detention.
They thought I was doing work, or just didn't want to risk annoying me while I was quiet.

😁 Fun times 😀

nfraser01 wrote on 2024-06-06, 19:40:

my03 wrote on 2024-06-06, 17:40:

Got delivery of this little guy today, Toshiba Protege 3110CT. Very neat little machine that came with floppy, CD, dock, etc.

Nice. Love Protege /Libretto's...

Great machines and good quality. But while the Portege is actually "enough sized" the Libretto is on the (too) small side imho. Mouse to the right is a mini travel mouse for scale.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-06-07, 22:42:

I'd go for 4870. 4850s seem a bit more prone to failure, for whatever reason.

4870's tend to have bigger dual slot coolers. The single slot 4850's I have tended to run hot and get flaky over time.

The HD 4890 is a great card.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-06-08, 04:18:

4890s are also cheap, I personally would go with them over the 4870s, the 4890s also come in 2Gb models.

Those are good cards but I haven't found any of these here under (2x) $50 and that extra 10% boost in performance is just not worth it for me. I'd overclock the 4870s anyway.

Photos later, but these have found their way to me from the car boot sale. All prices listed in RON for now as I have to leave for a bit:

- Radeon 9600 Pro - 10RON - FAKE RUBYCONS!
- Shuttle MK40V - free - ECS rebrand from what I can tell. Came bundled with a FX5500 and a 40GB WD.
- Gigabyte 8IPE1000-G - 20 RON
- Winfast NF3UK8MA - 10RON - neat lil' nForce 3 mobo, hope it works as it's nice to have.
- Pentium II 350MHz - 10RON

Bought these cards today at my local thrift store for €1,50 each

Philips PCA750AF ymf719e-s

ExpertColor S3 trio64

No picture yet (my phone seems to have issues uploading pictures to the forum) but for the small sum of 2 euros I came back home with:

• A Logitech Serial Mouse
• Some generic ("Promouse ZKN-98302") serial mouse
• Two parallel port cables

Also last but not least, a gnarly sunburn that I got trying to fish out the two mice from a box of cables. Though that was free.99¢. All of that in a yard sale right next to my house.

Both mice work pretty well and are fairly clean for their age, and feel unusually responsive for ball mice.

I can share the weird feeling when a serial ball mouse is as responsive as a modern laser mouse 🤣

So I finally decided to go to the local weekend flee market last weekend, to see what it's like.

Last weekend's scores:
- One 2.5" WD Blue 1 TB HDD for the equiv. of $0.50... untested of course, and upon trying it out, I found it had 5 bad sectors. But the PCB had pretty tarnished contacts for the headamps. Cleaned that and reassembled the drive. Gave it a quick surface scan, and so far all is good. As a bonus, I got a Windows 10 license key out of that drive, as the previous owner's Windows 10 installation was still on it. Probably won't use it, but perhaps good to have for testing.
- small nick-knacks picked off the ground for free: 6 Amp 500V fuse, an Energizer Enerloop battery (a little beaten, but holds a charge OK), some CD jewel cases, and a few 7" vinyl records for decoration

This weekend's stuff, ALL UNTESTED:
- An RX460 for the equiv. of $15. Kinda pricey, or at the top of what I like to pay for an untested card. Hopefully it's not a dud... though it very likely will be. The guy had a bunch of other computer parts. While all of them looked to be in pretty decent condition, he admitted they all came from taken apart PCs. So a good chance these are all defunct hardware. To make it at least not a total loss, I asked if I can get a bit of a discount if I picked up some RAM sticks from him... and so I did: 2x 4GB DDR3 RAM for a few more bucks.
- Radeon 9000 64MB 128-bit. Definitely looks like a trash-picked part, as that's what a lot of folks sell on this flee market. But the video card looked very well preserved, so I have high hopes. And it was only $1.50, so it was hard to pass. Looking forward to testing it and the RX460 above in the next few days.
- 40 GB Maxtor "slim" desktop IDE HDD - *that* model from the early 2000's known for its rather poor reliability. But it was completely dust-free and possibly may be a "0-hour" / NOS drive. Only quickly tested on a spare ATX PSU when I got home, and it seems to complete calibration at powerup without any weird sounds... so high hopes for this one? For $0.50, it's not a bad gamble, IMO.
- silver 5.25" HLDS CD-RW/DVD-ROM IDE combo drive with a curved front. IIRC, it's from an eMachines tower from the early 2000's. Like the Maxtor above, I only powered it up with a spare ATX PSU to see what it does. Ejects and closes fine. Was also only $0.50, and I got it with a free 5ft 3.5mm-3.5mm audio cable
- USB cardreader for $0.50 again. Didn't really need it, but good to have a spare on hand. I still use cameras with SD and CF cards.
- AMD s754/939 CPU cooler for $0.50
- 2x 80 pin and 1x floppy parallel cables - free, picked from the ground. One of the 80 pin cables has a small tear on 2-3 conductors. Will see what I can do about that.
- 1x 70 mm fan and 1x 80 mm Intel CPU cooler fan - both from Delta, and both free (picked off the ground / trash piles.) The 70 mm was extremely filthy, but cleaned up nicely. The 80 mm is PWM type, but has cut cables. Both spin OK, so they likely are fine. We'll see.
- a vintage "SMOKING FORBIDDEN" sign from the soviet era for $0.25. 🤣 Just couldn't pass it up at that price. It's currently sitting on my desk next to my monitor... though I'm thinking it would be more funny (or appropriate?) if I put it on my workbench close to my soldering iron 🤣 (that is, when I eventually get to re-setup my workbench, as a big portion of it is still in moving boxes.)

- and last but not least, the real pick of the vintage litter (quite literally): an old Northern Electric rotary dial phone. MADE IN CANADA. Nice army-green vintage color. Needs a wash, as it's extremely filthy. Pretty sure it came from a trash can, given all of the "garbage juice" over it. But it was $1 only and essentially worth at least that much in scrap metal weight (not that I would do it... though the person I got it from would have scrapped it for metals if it didn't sell, for sure.) Nearly dislocated my shoulder carrying it with me all day long, but I think it was worth saving.

Vynix wrote on 2024-06-09, 16:45:

Also last but not least, a gnarly sunburn that I got trying to fish out the two mice from a box of cables.

Same.
It's from today's stay at the local weekend flee market, since I waited pretty much until it ended (~1 PM), as that's when a lot of sellers (scrappers) reduce everything down to mere cents, just so they don't have to carry it back of throw it away. It was extremely sunny today, so several hours under the intense sun... I am quite literally a REDNECK now. 🤣 🤣

PcBytes wrote on 2024-06-09, 09:59:

- Radeon 9600 Pro - 10RON - FAKE RUBYCONS!

That's a must see for sure. 😁

PcBytes wrote on 2024-06-07, 22:42:

I'd go for 4870. 4850s seem a bit more prone to failure, for whatever reason.

They use cheaper coolers on the 4850's - typically single-slot ones... so they run just as hot as the 4870's. The 4870's and 90's are higher-binned chips, so of course they are also of slightly higher quality too.

Still, I think to get the best of both worlds is to get a 4870 or a 4890 (whatever can be gotten cheaper), and mod its BIOS to use the lower voltage and 3D clocks of the 4850. That way, now you have a 4850 with a cooler that can actually handle its TDP properly without running hot. (Of course, don't forget to edit the fan settings in the BIOS too so that the card is not running with the shitty stock fan profile that is known to cook these GPUs.) Also, DON'T flash a 4850 BIOS onto a 4870! The memory (and thus memory timings) are way different.

I'd bet that 90% of your stuff will work fine as long as it didn't get banged around too much. Obsolete systems are doomed by one part going bad, or none, and nobody finds it worth doing diagnostics or testing on them so just pull them apart, so most of the parts still gonna work.

So I just got around cleaning the "9600 Pro" from my previous post, the one with fake Rubycons.
But it wasn't just those fake Rubycons that came as a surprise 😀

What sorcery/fakery is this. 🫢