sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-13, 00:29:

The 102 differed from the others in that the function keys on the left side.

So, what does the row of printed function key outlines at the top do?

devius wrote on 2025-11-13, 10:09:

sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-13, 00:29:

The 102 differed from the others in that the function keys on the left side.

So, what does the row of printed function key outlines at the top do?

Nothing 😂

It's just a plate. Not sure why it's there, one would think maybe it was to save on molds but the other keyboards have a slightly different design. I guess one of these days I'll open it up and see what's beneath.

I didn’t buy these today, but I’ve slowly purchased components to build my second ever 386 (my first being a 386SX pre-built by Gateway 2000 in 1993). I had a hankering to experience the slower periods of PC history instead of my usual retro rockets.

So far, I’ve purchased the following:

- Biostar MB-1333AEA-G motherboard with an AMD 386DX-40, 256 KB cache (configured for 128 KB?), and 5 MB of 70ns FPM RAM - $114 US shipped
- Diamond Speedstar Pro ISA (with a CL-GD5429 chip) - $46 US shipped
- Generic Super I/O board (Floppy, IDE, Serial, Parallel) - $24 US shipped (but in very dirty condition)
- MediaVision Pro Audio Spectrum 16 (PAS16SL) - $61 US shipped
- Voltage Blaster (Enhanced) for the PAS16 - $14 US shipped

I don’t think I got any Earth-shattering deals on these components, but I didn’t think these costs look too bad considering eBay prices these days.

I’ve already upgraded the motherboard to 8 MB of RAM by replacing the four 256 KB modules with 1 MB modules. I ultimately plan to upgrade to a full 32 MB to run Windows NT on this system, but I can wait a bit for that. I also ordered a new tag RAM chip since the board came to me with 256 KB of cache, but with a tag chip meant for up to 128 KB (the board came to me jumpered for 128 KB as well). Why would someone spend the money to almost fill out the cache, but not use it all? Who would do that to save a couple of bucks even in the early 90’s.

The motherboard has an empty FPU upgrade socket begging for a chip. I know I don’t need a FPU for most of the software I plan to run, but I hate to see empty upgrade sockets.

I also think I’ll upgrade the CPU to a Cyrix or TI 486DLC at some point. Does anyone know if a TI 486SXL2 can run at a higher bus speed (say 40 MHz) without clock doubling? I don’t think the motherboard’s BIOS supports clock doubling at boot time, but it might enable the 8 KB of Level 1 cache in the newer TI chip. I wouldn’t care if it ran at 40 MHz instead of 50 or 66 MHz (clock doubled) if the cache worked properly. SXL2 chips are also a little less expensive on eBay these days.

Update: I just read the datasheet for the Ti 486SXL chip and I answered my own question. The 40 MHz variant can either run at 40 MHz clock doubled (20 MHz bus) or 40 MHz on the bus without clock doubling. That may be true of the SXL2 chips, but I could just look for a 40 MHz SXL chip when the time comes.

Voodoo Rufus wrote on 2025-11-13, 05:15:

That's a throwback to me. The 8KHA+ was my first motherboard build for my college PC, which I also watercooled. First time I turned it on, my brand new Thunderbird 1333 smoked itself, literally, because I mounted the waterblock wrong and it wasn't in contact. I didn't make the same mistake with the 1400 that replaced it. Then, the 5V lines in the ATX 20-pin Molex smoked and melted. I soldered a pair of 12Ga wires to the CPU power plane on the backside of the motherboard using a zero-loss RC quick connect mated to the 5V lines on the PSU.

I kinda hated that board...

Wow, that was kind of annoying experience. It sounds like you got the 12VHPWR experience in 2001-2002 😁

That was due to most likely a bad connection issue, in similar way that can happen with 12VHPWR. With TB1400 pulls something like 13-14 amps from the 5V line and if there is too much resistance, it certainly will melt something.

8kha+ was a legend in its day, people in enthusiast forums almost always praised and recommended that board when KT266A was the top end chipset for sA. My first Epox was 8k5a2, KT333 board. The KT266A board I bought in autumn 2001 was MSI K7T266 Pro2. I had Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3 at first, but soon went to watercooling. WC was fun in those days, it was much more DIY compared to modern days. For example first I used car heater core as radiatior, it needed few "modifications" for tube fittings and I built external box for it and plastic jar which functioned as a reservoir. Pump was a cheap aquarium pump. Later I got metallic reservoir and commercial radiatiors which could be installed inside the case. I never threw away that WC gear and it is now running in one of my sA systems. Albeit with a new pump, the old one died after a couple of days. It apparently didn't like being unused more than two decades 🤣

Here are couple of pics of the loop and gpu block in my system:

Those blocks were made by some small shop and sold by one local computer store.

Here's a pic of that 8KHA+ system I had where you can see the wiring fix I implemented. Still have the old Swiftech waterblock, plus some others that succeeded it (another clip-on Swiftech block and a pair of Cathar Storm G5's).

To keep it on topic, here's some hot rod DDR1 I picked up.

Whew, $20 and two hours of DEEP cleaning later of the nastiest gunk I have ever encountered, this Antec 900 from 2006 awaits my eventual Windows XP build (and I already see I need to do a deeper clean of the HDD bays...)

Ghostry wrote on 2025-11-14, 04:09:

Whew, $20 and two hours of DEEP cleaning later of the nastiest gunk I have ever encountered, this Antec 900 from 2006 awaits my […]
Show full quote

Whew, $20 and two hours of DEEP cleaning later of the nastiest gunk I have ever encountered, this Antec 900 from 2006 awaits my eventual Windows XP build (and I already see I need to do a deeper clean of the HDD bays...)

What will be the specs of the XP build?

zuldan wrote on 2025-11-14, 04:11:

Ghostry wrote on 2025-11-14, 04:09:

Whew, $20 and two hours of DEEP cleaning later of the nastiest gunk I have ever encountered, this Antec 900 from 2006 awaits my […]
Show full quote

Whew, $20 and two hours of DEEP cleaning later of the nastiest gunk I have ever encountered, this Antec 900 from 2006 awaits my eventual Windows XP build (and I already see I need to do a deeper clean of the HDD bays...)

What will be the specs of the XP build?

Not sure yet, I have a GTX 285 coming in the mail but still have not decided on the other component, open to suggestions.

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets!

Apparently it's a Dell Radeon 3870 X2 but there are no clear markings on it. Now it's mine.

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-11-14, 18:10:

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets! […]
Show full quote

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets!

Apparently it's a Dell Radeon 3870 X2 but there are no clear markings on it. Now it's mine.

That's a seriously nice find! Hopefully it still works

Ghostry wrote on 2025-11-14, 04:09:

Whew, $20 and two hours of DEEP cleaning later of the nastiest gunk I have ever encountered, this Antec 900 from 2006 awaits my […]
Show full quote

Whew, $20 and two hours of DEEP cleaning later of the nastiest gunk I have ever encountered, this Antec 900 from 2006 awaits my eventual Windows XP build (and I already see I need to do a deeper clean of the HDD bays...)

I got one of those for free a few years ago, though I might have spent even more time than you did cleaning it.

sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-13, 15:08:

devius wrote on 2025-11-13, 10:09:

[...]

So, what does the row of printed function key outlines at the top do?

Nothing 😂

It's just a plate. Not sure why it's there, one would think maybe it was to save on molds but the other keyboards have a slightly different design. I guess one of these days I'll open it up and see what's beneath.

It's there so you can put custom 'cheat sheets' for specific applications there, so you know what the function keys do in things like WordPerfect or Lotus 123 😉

This sort of thing:

dionb wrote on 2025-11-14, 19:29:

It's there so you can put custom 'cheat sheets' for specific applications there, so you know what the function keys do in things […]
Show full quote

sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-13, 15:08:

devius wrote on 2025-11-13, 10:09:

[...]

So, what does the row of printed function key outlines at the top do?

Nothing 😂

It's just a plate. Not sure why it's there, one would think maybe it was to save on molds but the other keyboards have a slightly different design. I guess one of these days I'll open it up and see what's beneath.

It's there so you can put custom 'cheat sheets' for specific applications there, so you know what the function keys do in things like WordPerfect or Lotus 123 😉

This sort of thing:

Ahhh, that's pretty interesting! Thanks!

I see they also made some premade ones, might have to get one of these just to add to some period correct flavor.

Blind local buy "old computer, unknown specs, floppy drive and 24x cd rom" £20 (about 30 US)

Turned out to be in excellent condition, beige mini-tower case with:

- Duron 1000MHz Morgan
- GeForce MX 420
- 256MB SDRAM
- 20GB IDE HDD
- MSI 6340v3 mATX Socket A motherboard
- Enlight PSU

Some of the caps look questionable, but everything working! Pretty happy with that!

I dont know where my ps/2 mouses went so bought 3 optical ones.

Dan386DX wrote on 2025-11-14, 22:18:

Blind local buy "old computer, unknown specs, floppy drive and 24x cd rom" £20 (about 30 US) […]
Show full quote

Blind local buy "old computer, unknown specs, floppy drive and 24x cd rom" £20 (about 30 US)

Turned out to be in excellent condition, beige mini-tower case with:

- Duron 1000MHz Morgan
- GeForce MX 420
- 256MB SDRAM
- 20GB IDE HDD
- MSI 6340v3 mATX Socket A motherboard
- Enlight PSU

Some of the caps look questionable, but everything working! Pretty happy with that!

Is the case an Enlight too?

Okay, this was an impulse buy. I saw it, did 10 minutes of research and determined that I should grab it.

(Seller's photo.)

It appears to be a complete in retail box Nvidia branded GTX 560 Ti. These Nvidia retail boxed cards must have been extremely uncommon. I can't find any pictures of Nvidia boxed cards like this aside from a few samples used on review sites (though I only found other models from around that time period... GTX 460, 560 non-Ti, etc.), a few pictures of Nvidia boxed 980 Ti and 970 reference models (which are effectively "Founders Edition" a year before they officially started selling those) and I think one random picture of a similar 560 Ti box on an image hosting site with no context.

Anyone know what the deal is with these? How did people get these and why are they so rare?

Also... sure, I wish it had been a more desirable or more powerful card, but I had a 560 Ti and it was a really solid card at the time. I went from a GTX 470 with a blower to an MSI TwinFrozr 560 Ti and the reduction in heat and noise with a small performance gain was awesome. Too bad the TwinFrozr fans were trash and barely lasted a year before grinding terribly. Ended up replacing that with a GTX 660 just to get away from the noise. I think this reference 560 Ti will be fine though.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2025-11-14, 18:37:

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-11-14, 18:10:

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets! […]
Show full quote

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets!

Apparently it's a Dell Radeon 3870 X2 but there are no clear markings on it. Now it's mine.

That's a seriously nice find! Hopefully it still works

Well I'm lucky, after some light cleaning it works perfectly fine and it's not as loud as I expected. In GPU-Z it really shows 2 GPUs with 512MB memory each.

Minutemanqvs wrote on Yesterday, 14:29:

Well I'm lucky, after some light cleaning it works perfectly fine and it's not as loud as I expected. In GPU-Z it really shows 2 […]
Show full quote

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2025-11-14, 18:37:

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-11-14, 18:10:

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets! […]
Show full quote

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets!

Apparently it's a Dell Radeon 3870 X2 but there are no clear markings on it. Now it's mine.

That's a seriously nice find! Hopefully it still works

Well I'm lucky, after some light cleaning it works perfectly fine and it's not as loud as I expected. In GPU-Z it really shows 2 GPUs with 512MB memory each.

That's pretty much unicorn territory, isn't it? Congrats on the find!

Minutemanqvs wrote on Yesterday, 14:29:

Well I'm lucky, after some light cleaning it works perfectly fine and it's not as loud as I expected. In GPU-Z it really shows 2 […]
Show full quote

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2025-11-14, 18:37:

Minutemanqvs wrote on 2025-11-14, 18:10:

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets! […]
Show full quote

Today I saw this at the second hand shop, what caught my attention are the 2 GPU cooler retention brackets!

Apparently it's a Dell Radeon 3870 X2 but there are no clear markings on it. Now it's mine.

That's a seriously nice find! Hopefully it still works

Well I'm lucky, after some light cleaning it works perfectly fine and it's not as loud as I expected. In GPU-Z it really shows 2 GPUs with 512MB memory each.

Anti-sag trick: the elastic band! 🤣 Smart solution 😀
They are heavy cards and need good anchoring.

Nice find!