AndrettiGTO wrote on 2025-09-27, 00:15:

Like that Rampage and wondering if you got the LAN/Audio card with it. Combined with the 980x and XFire, it would make a fun 4.2+ Ghz Win7 box 😀

The Rampage comes with its original box and should be complete. As an audio card I’ll be using an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion, though. The machine will dual-boot Win7 and WinXP 😀

Picked up an IBM Thinkpad 355C this morning. 486SX 33MHz with 12MB of RAM and 250MB hard drive.

I got some of them from thrifting and some from ebay for a really good bargain. My first 3dfx card and I have one more coming up which is to be put in my yet to be assembled Win 95 system.

So, I got some stuff today. Flea markets are something else in the weekends. Let's start with something normal:

A USB floppy drive. Perfect to write floppy images on my modern PC, so I can finally install DOS on my 486. Luckily, it's in perfect working order, and even works as-is on modern Linux (never tried that before TBH). I wanted one for YEARS, but I didn't really need it when I didn't even HAVE PCs old enough to actually need them. All in all, a nice convenience boost, until I get a Gotek or two 😁

A PCI IDE controller with the ITE IT8212F chip. A quick search shows that it's a low-end IDE/RAID controller chip, but it supports UDMA-6 speeds, and has BIOS updates and driver support ranging from DOS and Win9x, all the way to Vista, so it can't be that bad. Who knows, maybe I'll put it in a newer system that doesn't have IDE, or an older system that has limited IDE in terms of speed or capacity. Of course, I might have to find a proper bracket, since someone removed it, but I'll figure something out.

A Realtek PCI NIC. Nothing too interesting, it just has Gigabit Ethernet, while also having proper drivers for Win98.

Had to split the post due to the attachment limit, so the Oddware is in the next.

Time for the weird ones:

Not sure if it even counts as retro (does December of 2008 count? I wasn’t even a teen, and now I’m nearing 30, so I think it should), but it's definitely odd: an OCZ 250GB SATA II SSD, but with an extra miniUSB connector! Since it's SATA II, it's obviously an early one, so it must have been VERY expensive when it was new with that capacity. It's functional, haven't really checked its health. Whoever had it used it as an external SSD, and filled it with kids' movies. I'm surprised it didn't have Shrek. Maybe I should fix that 🤣

A third-party PS2 controller by Logic3. Normally I wouldn't go get one when working official ones are still relatively cheap and plentiful (just avoid the 'H' ones like the plague, 'A' are fine), but this is made of METAL. Also kinda heavy, not sure what they were thinking, or what alloy it is, but it sure looks cool. Sadly, it's kinda wonky, especially when I press the cross. I'll look into it later, I guess.
I also got a somewhat broken PS3 controller just to reshell it with a chrome silver aftermarket shell, but I seem to have lost the shell...

sgraffite wrote on 2025-09-28, 16:32:

Picked up an IBM Thinkpad 355C this morning. 486SX 33MHz with 12MB of RAM and 250MB hard drive.

i cant use more than 5 minutes a DSTN panel, let alone play something other than solitarie or something that dont have much movement.

I bought an SB16 SCSI off ebay to replace an ES1869 with an SB16 compatible card with real OPL (and have a SCSI interface for whatever piques my interest)

Got this beautiful rare Asus V9280S (Geforce 4 Ti-4200 8x AGP) for Parts / Repair. Hopefully I can get her going again.

From hothardware.com “Taking a closer look at the specs, we find that this is attributable to a 10% increase in the GPU clock (250 to 275MHz) and a 20% increase in the memory clock (500MHz to 600MHz)”

Performance is pretty good for a 4200

zuldan wrote on 2025-09-29, 10:52:

Got this beautiful rare Asus V9280S (Geforce 4 Ti-4200 8x AGP) for Parts / Repair. Hopefully I can get her going again. […]
Show full quote

Got this beautiful rare Asus V9280S (Geforce 4 Ti-4200 8x AGP) for Parts / Repair. Hopefully I can get her going again.

From hothardware.com “Taking a closer look at the specs, we find that this is attributable to a 10% increase in the GPU clock (250 to 275MHz) and a 20% increase in the memory clock (500MHz to 600MHz)”

The attachment E4A64932-6F1E-47C1-B02C-752233001B71.jpeg is no longer available

Performance is pretty good for a 4200

The attachment 3BDBECB1-8725-43D2-B5D4-1E60C86CF441.jpeg is no longer available

Nice thing! It has the Ti4800 reference board by the looks of it. In case you look for schematics.

zuldan wrote on 2025-09-29, 10:52:

Got this beautiful rare Asus V9280S (Geforce 4 Ti-4200 8x AGP) for Parts / Repair. Hopefully I can get her going again. […]
Show full quote

Got this beautiful rare Asus V9280S (Geforce 4 Ti-4200 8x AGP) for Parts / Repair. Hopefully I can get her going again.

From hothardware.com “Taking a closer look at the specs, we find that this is attributable to a 10% increase in the GPU clock (250 to 275MHz) and a 20% increase in the memory clock (500MHz to 600MHz)”

The attachment E4A64932-6F1E-47C1-B02C-752233001B71.jpeg is no longer available

Performance is pretty good for a 4200

The attachment 3BDBECB1-8725-43D2-B5D4-1E60C86CF441.jpeg is no longer available

i sold the V9280 (the difference is minimal) for u$s 60 last week.

Been sitting on top of a lot of stuff with no use and i feel is the right time to let it go.

I've been using an old PS/2 Packard Bell keyboard with horrible key rollover on my SS7 PC for years, but I finally hunted down a good replacement. I used SearchTempest to find this Steelseries 7G PS/2 keyboard for cheap on Craigslist in a city across the country and got them to ship it to me. That was closer than the only other one I found for sale...in Australia. In my head it seems like it released late in the PS/2 era of keyboards but fairly early in the mechanical keyboard craze, although this quote in a release article about it shows the industry was already heading in a certain direction...

"Somewhere the industry took a wrong turn when it came to gaming peripherals. It became more important to add colorful lighting and features that have no impact on professional gaming, than to create high quality products, " says Tino Soelberg, Head of R&D for SteelSeries. TechPowerUp Nov. 14, 2007

The shipping quality was not great but thankfully it arrived unbroken, although a lot of keycaps had popped off. I'm overall really impressed with it. The Cherry MX Black linear switches are luxurious compared to the worn out rubber domes in my other keyboard. The big enter key is similar to my Packard Bell 's big enter key. The backslash is in a goofy spot next to Backspace, but my Packard Bell also had the backslash in a goofy spot - to the right of the right shift key - so I can live with that quirk. It perfectly passes the double-shift-quick-brown-fox rollover typing test, meaning I can finally run diagonally in DOOM using modern WASD bindings. It's surprisingly heavy and doesn't shift around on my desk too much. For what it's worth, it also has audio and USB passthrough, and I got the Curtis mousepad as a bonus too.

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-09-29, 13:49:

zuldan wrote on 2025-09-29, 10:52:

Got this beautiful rare Asus V9280S (Geforce 4 Ti-4200 8x AGP) for Parts / Repair. Hopefully I can get her going again. […]
Show full quote

Got this beautiful rare Asus V9280S (Geforce 4 Ti-4200 8x AGP) for Parts / Repair. Hopefully I can get her going again.

From hothardware.com “Taking a closer look at the specs, we find that this is attributable to a 10% increase in the GPU clock (250 to 275MHz) and a 20% increase in the memory clock (500MHz to 600MHz)”

The attachment E4A64932-6F1E-47C1-B02C-752233001B71.jpeg is no longer available

Performance is pretty good for a 4200

The attachment 3BDBECB1-8725-43D2-B5D4-1E60C86CF441.jpeg is no longer available

Nice thing! It has the Ti4800 reference board by the looks of it. In case you look for schematics.

Looks like this person flashed their card to a Ti4800….interesting…

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/ra … 29/post-4342120

(might have to load URL twice to take you to the exact post)

IOMEGA Zip 100 parallel, complete in its box.

I ended up getting an HP and a Zenith Z-Station off of Ebay recently.

The HP I was able to get up and running again, seems to be from around the late 90s and running XP. Was able to get Battle for Middle Earth running for the first time in ages 😁

The other is a Zenith Z-station, and it has the most unusual layout of boards I've ever seen. Haven't been able to get this one to work yet and honestly not really sure where to start. There are so many boards and panels going every which way that I haven't been able to swap out it's failing floppy drive yet. It's a cool looking machine but I'd like to know more about it especially why it has such an unusual design.

ZeroSystem wrote on Yesterday, 00:17:

I ended up getting an HP and a Zenith Z-Station off of Ebay recently.

The HP I was able to get up and running again, seems to be from around the late 90s and running XP. Was able to get Battle for Middle Earth running for the first time in ages 😁

The other is a Zenith Z-station, and it has the most unusual layout of boards I've ever seen. Haven't been able to get this one to work yet and honestly not really sure where to start. There are so many boards and panels going every which way that I haven't been able to swap out it's failing floppy drive yet. It's a cool looking machine but I'd like to know more about it especially why it has such an unusual design.

Quick search suggests a Z-STATION VP in the Inwin mini-tower chassis option - this seems like the possible mainboard... https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/chicony-ch-890b

The attached jumpers from Zenith may apply

Finally all my 3dfx cards have arrived from ebay. My Win 95 build is also ready. The 3000 is probably my most expensive card(beating the likes of Titan X).

A cooler bolted to another cooler. Interesting choice.

devius wrote on Yesterday, 21:27:

A cooler bolted to another cooler. Interesting choice.

Yeah I took the idea from Phil`s computer lab video about modding coolers onto the voodoo 3000. I have also put a small geekpi cooler on the backside of the chip for keeping the thing even cooler.

Hans Tork wrote on Yesterday, 18:47:

Finally all my 3dfx cards have arrived from ebay. My Win 95 build is also ready. The 3000 is probably my most expensive card(beating the likes of Titan X).

The attachment 3dfx.jpg is no longer available

It might be worthwhile replacing the thermal compound under the 3dfx heatsink too.

With my V3 I just strapped a fan straight to that heatsink, it's got the same one yours does.

Voodoo 3 3000 - 5ns ram - Upgraded Cooling!

pete8475 wrote on Today, 00:05:

It might be worthwhile replacing the thermal compound under the 3dfx heatsink too. […]
Show full quote

Hans Tork wrote on Yesterday, 18:47:

Finally all my 3dfx cards have arrived from ebay. My Win 95 build is also ready. The 3000 is probably my most expensive card(beating the likes of Titan X).

The attachment 3dfx.jpg is no longer available

It might be worthwhile replacing the thermal compound under the 3dfx heatsink too.

With my V3 I just strapped a fan straight to that heatsink, it's got the same one yours does.

Voodoo 3 3000 - 5ns ram - Upgraded Cooling!

Yeah that is on my radar if the 3dfx card starts giving issues. I am too afraid to make any changes to it.