Reply 54520 of 56703, by momaka
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I missed the flea market last weekend and also couldn't go yesterday due to stomach problems. So I went today... but rain interrupted it and it all ended early.
Nevertheless, this is what I got:
- a Seagate U10 (ST310212A) 10 GB 3.5" IDE HDD - untested, as usual. Just shy of $2, so still worth the gamble. I finally managed to test some of the IDE HDDs I've been getting from this flea market, and so far had good luck. Granted all of the working ones have a few bad sectors on them. But they do work fine, so they'll be OK to use on a retro rig (especially one that doesn't see daily use.)
- Gigabyte GA-M61pme-s2 socket AM2 mATX motherboard. Untested, sold as scrap PCB. Probably should have looked a little closer at it, since the back is pretty scratched up and some traces look torn / broken. But it was starting to rain pretty hard and I just didn't care. Neither did the seller - he reduced the price down to 50 cents. I gave him $1 simply because I didn't feel like looking for change... and because it was raining and getting cold. 🤣 With any luck, if the GeForce 6150 chipset in that thing is still OK, I should be able to take care of the broken traces and most other stuff (if any.) Caps look OK and are OK series, AFAIK. I don't really have a build in mind for this board nor any spare parts for it. Only got it, thinking that if/when the ECS MCP61PM-AM mobo in my Gateway GT-5656 completely dies, I can put this on in it's place with the original Athlon X2 6000+ and pretty much keep the PC the way it was. The mobo in the GT-5656 is already on its way out.... though it's been that way for ~5 years now. Every now and then I have to flex the motherboard and put huge pressure on the chipset to get it going. Then it works fine for a while. Then it doesn't. Wash, rinse, repeat... and here I am still tolerating it. It's a beater retro gaming PC, so I have absolutely zero care for it... yet I do care for it, because I don't want it to die, because it has a good deal of the retro games I like to fire up once in a while. Anyways, we'll see when I get to the Gigabyte mobo above. I'm quite backed up with projects lately and piling up even more.
- Deepcool socket 775 (or perhaps it's a 115x) cooler. Nothing too special - extruded aluminum and 92 mm fan. Looks very much like a stock "full height" Intel cooler, except it uses a proper screw tension mechanism with a metal backplate for the mobo, rather than stupid push pin design. Fan is a 3-pin type, though, so I'll probably have to replace that, which is no biggie (I have a huge box of these.) I do like the black anodized look on the heatsink, though. For $1, it was a no-brainer.
- large-ish socket 370/462 cooler with a 70 mm fan. Heatsink isn't that big, so probably won't be any good for any of the more power-hungry Athlon/XP's. But probably will be fine for my Duron 750 or 1400 Applebred... or just as an over-sized Pentium III cooler with the fan running at 5V only. In fact, that last idea was what I had in mind when I went back to the seller to buy it. At that point, it was just starting to rain and she reduced all the small items to 50 cents. So I got it and the item below for $1.
- 3.5" 1.44 MB standard floppy drive. Alps-branded. No idea if it works. Has a piece of paper and other garbage inside. Probably some kid stuffed it who knows when way back.
And that's all my retro purchases for this and last week.
I also found a pair of Philips over-the-ear headphones that were abandoned, along with a wireless mouse of some sort (with the receiver missing.) The mouse will go towards my scrap/parts pile, but the headphones look OK, minus a damaged jack and being a bit dirty.
BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-28, 21:43:better start planning to live another 2 decades 'coz I'm slow as shit.
Ooooff, that statement hits really hard at home for me too.
More like, I need an extra century to finish all of the projects I have started.
Yeah, I work slow as molasses too. The good thing is, when I do finish something, usually I've put so much thought into it that it then works flawlessly and reliably... well, usually. 🤣
Shadzilla wrote on 2024-09-25, 07:53:Interesting information, thank you! I've had that thought in the back of my mind - even if it's been unused the components may have started to degrade inside - so I've considered having it checked out, maybe I'll need to prioritise that just in case.
Well, just crack it open and see for yourself. Nothing dangerous with these, especially if it's been unplugged for a long time. AFAIK, there's only 4 screws that hold the back cover on. Need to flip the CRT so that it's screen down facing the ground before you do that, though (and don't forget to put the screen on a clean towel or something similar, to prevent scratching it.)
Shadzilla wrote on 2024-09-25, 07:53:The tube is supposed to be a Diamondtron, which I thought was a Mitsubishi thing? Unless that's more of a generic term and it was made by other manufacturers as well?
I would be surprised if the same model uses a completely different tube.
Diamondtron (and Trinitron) tubes use aperture grille, which is a completely different animal from shadow mask tubes (Hitachi, Samsung, ChungHwa, just to name a few.) Thus, specs would have to be different for the same model of CRT, which doesn't make sense. So probably yours is the same as mine (or at least a shadow mask tube from another manufacturer.)
Of course, you'll know when you fire it up. 😉
Diamondtron and Trinitron tubes have two very faint dark horizontal lines (the tension wires for the aperture grille) that will be visible at approx. 1/3 and 2/3 down the screen.
Shadow mask don't have this.
Wes1262 wrote on 2024-09-29, 04:48:It has a very fixed artifact like a large stripe in the middle of the screen. Probably memory?
Memory rarely goes bad in these old GPUs. Usually it's the memory-to-GPU connection that gets faulty on the GPU chip (die to substrate connection issues - i.e. bumpgate issue.)
The problem is that these (and really most high-end) cards run too hot and cook themselves.
Give it a reflow or three and it might come back. No need to reach full solder-melting temps. Even a lower-heat reflow can get the GPU working again... though don't expect it to be a long term fix, especially if nothing is done to keep the load temperatures in check. For ATI/AMD stuff, I think 55-56C is as high as anyone should go, at least if you want a longer-lasting GPU.
fosterwj03 wrote on 2024-09-29, 13:33:I feel the same way. The GTX 480 I mentioned earlier in the thread posted fine on the first boot. It shorted out as soon as Windows began to load with pre-installed drivers. A single test in Windows 7 would have found the fault before listing the item for sale (of course, this fault might have damaged the seller's equipment like it did mine).
If the card really shorted out (and now can no longer power up at all), then that's just down to poor luck on your end. There's no way anyone can know when that will happen. I had the same happen on a Pentium III motherboard I got for cheap in a junk PC. Initially, it worked OK and powered into BIOS. Then I turned it off, attached some HDDs and an ODD for a test, and the clockgen chip decided to go bye-bye on me - overheated and died a silent death.
Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-09-26, 14:03:Has this happened to you? You spot a beige rectangular something somewhere and immediately think "Is that an abandoned computer?" only to get a good look and realize it's actually an abandoned microwave...
Nope. 😁
As an oldie trash picker, I can spot the MW from pretty far away... and I do usually pick them up. Sometimes they do confuse me as a small CRT TV from very far away. But those I sometimes pickup too. So I always get closet to see.
I think the worst are white rectangular cardboard boxes. Those are by far the ones that confuse me the most when I see them from far away and get my hopes up that it's an old beige PC.
Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-09-26, 14:03:And speaking of that, it has occurred to me that this hobby of playing with/working on old computer hardware probably seems as strange to many outsiders as collecting old toasters or microwave ovens would.
Well, the people who collect old toasters, microwaves, and other similar stuff don't really do it for the purpose of collecting as a hobby. Typically, it's scrappers. MW ovens and CRT TVs are particularly valuable, because they have lots of copper inside (for MW, it's the large HV transformer, and for CRT TVs and monitors, it's the yoke windings.) Sad part is, these two are never spared, even if they are decent high-end models - especially the TVs and monitors. With MW, at least sometimes someone might pick it up to use as a "beater" MW in the garage or similar (provided it works.) I actually collected several in the last few years. One worked, so I donated it after I cleaned it. The other two were dead and not worth restoring/fixing (one had a badly bent door, and the other was too old and beaten on the outside.) So I took them apart for their parts.
