The thrifts haven't had a lot in the past few months, so I guess I get overexcited and buy marginal shit when it turns up. Today found an additional IDE HDD removable caddy, and three "mystery bags" at $5 CDN each, well not too much of a mystery since they were transparent....

So turned out to have 7 2.5" SATA drives, 60, 120, 2x250, 3x320. I guess the 60 and 120 are a little meh but I still find the other sizes useful for juggling stuff around and arranging archives... also I think I still have an XP laptop with only a 120 so it can have a 320 now.

RAM, shovelfuls of RAM, heh, like I needed any more, seem to go for the RAM lots a lot and end up with 10% I can actually use... well surprise surprise, only some of it is useful to me, 64MB SDR SODIMM, good size for the 9x laptops, one of the DDR SODIMMs might be a biggie, 16 chip, gotta look it up for sure but think it's 1GB. The other 256 is prolly gonna sit unless something dies. Then the PC2 SODIMM are 512s and 1GBs which I already had scads of, oh well, will be SMD donors I guess. The desktop stuff, got some useable size SD 128 and 256s, two 256 DDR which I would throw in the shoebox full but they're 400mhz which miiiight find them a purpose. The 512s could still be useful. Nothing much good in the PC2s, 256, 512, 1GB... though the 1GB may find a seat in an early DDR2 board that take 3.5GB for XP/Vista with 4 slots. Then two DDR3 4GB which are useful still, for retro-ish and still modern useable stuff.

Anyhooooo, all in, I think I got 15 things I might use, so at a buck a thing it ain't too bad.

Heh, I might be making a Network Agglomerated Random Storage box with some of those drives in, got that 12 port atom board and laptop drives use little power so connect all the things 🤣

Edit: I'm a doorknob that 120GB travelstar is a PATA drive, I thought I saw PATA in store, then unpacked and couldn't see it and thought I imagined it, then look at the pic again and it's right there you schmuck. So that is actually nicer than having a 120GB SATA because of early noughts machines. Would have been nice if the 60GB was a PATA too though, even "in the day" I thought it was pretty weaksauce that they made SATA under 160GB or so, since common PATA sizes were "up there" by the time motherboards actually had SATA and "backfilling" all those small drive sizes seemed stupid.

Alexraptor wrote on 2025-04-17, 13:23:

Managed to get my hands on something really special... A brand new 17-inch Compaq 7500!!! […]
Show full quote

Managed to get my hands on something really special... A brand new 17-inch Compaq 7500!!!

It's been 20 years since I had the pleasure of experiencing a fresh-out-of-the-box CRT and even my best used monitr, a Dell 991 Trinitron, shows it's age.

The attachment GovP3IRXMAAN88n.jpg is no longer available

The attachment GovP3GoWIAAlACY.jpg is no longer available

The attachment GovP3J6XEAAPxN1.jpg is no longer available

That's a really cool find. Just the thought that some of this stuff still sits a warehouse or someone's basement somewhere, amazing.

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan to build a X-Fire machine around them with a Blue and Gold motif.

HIS did make some lovely looking cards and the IceQ coolers were pretty good at cooling these GPUs.

I have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, I have a pair of 2gb Sapphire 4890s which were monster cards for their price ..well monsters till the 8800 Ultra came in and crushed every other GPU on the market.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan […]
Show full quote

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan to build a X-Fire machine around them with a Blue and Gold motif.

HIS did make some lovely looking cards and the IceQ coolers were pretty good at cooling these GPUs.

The attachment HIS 4850 1.jpg is no longer available

The attachment HIS 4850 2.jpg is no longer available

I have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, I have a pair of 2gb Sapphire 4890s which were monster cards for their price ..well monsters till the 8800 Ultra came in and crushed every other GPU on the market.

They look beautiful. Great buy!

Bought a couple of socket 8 coolers. The large one is extremely difficult to use. So I gave up and I think I will just keep it in storage and never use it.

The smaller one is easier to use, but I still havent tested its effectiveness. You basically just slide the CPU in, then lock it in via the ramps that squeezes the heatsink down onto the cpu. I am not sure how much contact it ends up having, this is a potential issue until I test it out.

clownwolf wrote on 2025-04-19, 19:16:

Bought a couple of socket 8 coolers. The large one is extremely difficult to use. So I gave up and I think I will just keep it i […]
Show full quote

Bought a couple of socket 8 coolers. The large one is extremely difficult to use. So I gave up and I think I will just keep it in storage and never use it.

The attachment 20250419_120213.jpg is no longer available

The smaller one is easier to use, but I still havent tested its effectiveness. You basically just slide the CPU in, then lock it in via the ramps that squeezes the heatsink down onto the cpu. I am not sure how much contact it ends up having, this is a potential issue until I test it out.

The attachment 20250419_120243.jpg is no longer available

Hi! Nice find.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-04-19, 21:39:

clownwolf wrote on 2025-04-19, 19:16:

Bought a couple of socket 8 coolers. The large one is extremely difficult to use. So I gave up and I think I will just keep it i […]
Show full quote

Bought a couple of socket 8 coolers. The large one is extremely difficult to use. So I gave up and I think I will just keep it in storage and never use it.

The attachment 20250419_120213.jpg is no longer available

The smaller one is easier to use, but I still havent tested its effectiveness. You basically just slide the CPU in, then lock it in via the ramps that squeezes the heatsink down onto the cpu. I am not sure how much contact it ends up having, this is a potential issue until I test it out.

The attachment 20250419_120243.jpg is no longer available

Hi! Nice find.

Heatsink works well enough, even though I may have added too much thermal compound.

I'm tired of jerry-rigging my own Pentium Pro coolers, so I ordered 1 more as a spare.

clownwolf wrote on 2025-04-20, 04:38:

Nexxen wrote on 2025-04-19, 21:39:

clownwolf wrote on 2025-04-19, 19:16:

Bought a couple of socket 8 coolers. The large one is extremely difficult to use. So I gave up and I think I will just keep it i […]
Show full quote

Bought a couple of socket 8 coolers. The large one is extremely difficult to use. So I gave up and I think I will just keep it in storage and never use it.

The attachment 20250419_120213.jpg is no longer available

The smaller one is easier to use, but I still havent tested its effectiveness. You basically just slide the CPU in, then lock it in via the ramps that squeezes the heatsink down onto the cpu. I am not sure how much contact it ends up having, this is a potential issue until I test it out.

The attachment 20250419_120243.jpg is no longer available

Hi! Nice find.

Heatsink works well enough, even though I may have added too much thermal compound.

I'm tired of jerry-rigging my own Pentium Pro coolers, so I ordered 1 more as a spare.

I've given up on using thermal paste om PPro CPU's, especially the black tops.
The reason is that the CPU's are far from flat compared to the heat-sinks (the extruded ones anyway), and there's no way to get a good connection with regular paste.
The solution is using thin (o.5 mm) thermal pads, the soft variant.
Not only does this give a way better thermal connection it's reusable if you are careful =)

pan069 wrote on 2025-04-18, 20:59:

Alexraptor wrote on 2025-04-17, 13:23:

Managed to get my hands on something really special... A brand new 17-inch Compaq 7500!!! […]
Show full quote

Managed to get my hands on something really special... A brand new 17-inch Compaq 7500!!!

It's been 20 years since I had the pleasure of experiencing a fresh-out-of-the-box CRT and even my best used monitr, a Dell 991 Trinitron, shows it's age.

The attachment GovP3IRXMAAN88n.jpg is no longer available

The attachment GovP3GoWIAAlACY.jpg is no longer available

The attachment GovP3J6XEAAPxN1.jpg is no longer available

That's a really cool find. Just the thought that some of this stuff still sits a warehouse or someone's basement somewhere, amazing.

Indeed! It's quite mind boggling. I even did a visual inspection with a flashlight through the ventilation grille, no leaking or swollen caps, not the slightest hint of corrosion, nothing! Even smells factory fresh! It's hard to believe it was manufactured over 20 years ago.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan […]
Show full quote

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan to build a X-Fire machine around them with a Blue and Gold motif.

HIS did make some lovely looking cards and the IceQ coolers were pretty good at cooling these GPUs.

The attachment HIS 4850 1.jpg is no longer available

The attachment HIS 4850 2.jpg is no longer available

I have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, I have a pair of 2gb Sapphire 4890s which were monster cards for their price ..well monsters till the 8800 Ultra came in and crushed every other GPU on the market.

HIS cards look awesome! Wish i would have bought one in the early days for a UV build. I remember the early ones (X800 era) had awesome UV reactivity. (Pic from internet)
Should have gotten one to complement my DFI board back in the days. Would have been far less noisy than my Sapphire X850XTPE aswell. Don't know wether or not the HIS cards were that much more expensive.

G-X wrote on 2025-04-20, 19:26:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan […]
Show full quote

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan to build a X-Fire machine around them with a Blue and Gold motif.

HIS did make some lovely looking cards and the IceQ coolers were pretty good at cooling these GPUs.

The attachment HIS 4850 1.jpg is no longer available

The attachment HIS 4850 2.jpg is no longer available

I have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, I have a pair of 2gb Sapphire 4890s which were monster cards for their price ..well monsters till the 8800 Ultra came in and crushed every other GPU on the market.

HIS cards look awesome! Wish i would have bought one in the early days for a UV build. I remember the early ones (X800 era) had awesome UV reactivity. (Pic from internet)
Should have gotten one to complement my DFI board back in the days. Would have been far less noisy than my Sapphire X850XTPE aswell. Don't know wether or not the HIS cards were that much more expensive.

mmmmm UV build ....no I musnt ..need to resist.

Logitech Wingman Force

Listed as unused item.
Are these any real good? It has USB + Game port, good for Win and Dos.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-04-21, 07:59:

Logitech Wingman Force

Listed as unused item.
Are these any real good? It has USB + Game port, good for Win and Dos.

I believe it's USB + serial, not game port. This won't work in DOS at all.

Hello beautiful.

Been after one of these cases for a while. Going to build my XP AGP 6800GT 939 system in it.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-04-21, 16:25:

Nexxen wrote on 2025-04-21, 07:59:

Logitech Wingman Force

Listed as unused item.
Are these any real good? It has USB + Game port, good for Win and Dos.

I believe it's USB + serial, not game port. This won't work in DOS at all.

Guess you are right.
It can work in DOS, probably with unreal work I don't even know where to start from 😀
Let's read TLOTR instead 🤣

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-21, 00:38:

mmmmm UV build ....no I musnt ..need to resist.

Well ... you're halfway there :p

Speaking of which do you need the oldschool UV CCFL's for this or do modern led strips also work for this purpose? I'd imagine the coverage might not be as uniform with a led strip.

Sometimes you get lucky on eBay. I managed to get a coast stick for my PCChips M919 Rev 3.2 for $20. The coast stick didn’t have the usual “M919 only” markings. It was advertised as “Toshiba memory”. I recognized the PCB layout and grabbed it. The item had been listed for 2 weeks, so either no one worked out what it was or everyone already has a coast stick for their M919 😂

I couldn’t get it working at first but managed to fix the issue PCChips M919 Cache Stick not being used [FIXED]

Nice PC Chips cache 😀

Picked up something more prosaic locally here:

Two AUI transceivers. Can't see much use for the BNC one, but AUI to UTP is nice for stuff like my Etherlink II

Someone was selling an IBM monochrome card for $4.89 on eBay last night, so I bought it lol. It was too ridiculously low of a price to pass up. Of course I paid $20 for shipping, but it was worth it for the meme. I don't have one of those cards yet so I figured I might as well add it to the stash, even though I have no particular use for it right now.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-04-19, 07:17:

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan […]
Show full quote

Couldnt resist buying these two lovely looking HIS IceQ 4 4850 cards for 20 bucks each, if they both work ok then I have a plan to build a X-Fire machine around them with a Blue and Gold motif.

HIS did make some lovely looking cards and the IceQ coolers were pretty good at cooling these GPUs.

The attachment HIS 4850 1.jpg is no longer available

The attachment HIS 4850 2.jpg is no longer available

I have a soft spot for the HD4000 series, I have a pair of 2gb Sapphire 4890s which were monster cards for their price ..well monsters till the 8800 Ultra came in and crushed every other GPU on the market.

amazing !
I am still in the AGP era but for sure many early PCIx cards are very interesting already