sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-18, 02:30:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-11-17, 20:23:

This Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 Ti reference card in a retail box arrived today and it is absolutely as cool as it looked in the pictures.

This looks pretty neat! What era was that card from? I'm not very familiar with this time period of cards, so I have no reference point.

I know I can look it up but that's boring when someone passionate about their new acquisition probably wants to talk more about it 😛

Haha, fair enough. It's from 2011. Not as retro as most of the stuff here, but in January it'll already be 15 years old. It is an upper mid range DirectX 11 level card which was later given basic support for DX12 features via a driver update years later.

Nothing really all that special aside from the apparently rare Nvidia packaging and the fact that it is complete. Probably makes a solid card for a Windows XP build though. 😀

My first ATi Rage2+DVD PCI with 4MB, before i had only 2MB ones for PCI.

I think this is probably okay since the listing is already over, but can anyone explain to me why this listing got so much attention? It was just listed yesterday and I noticed that in a short time it had half a dozen watchers, and now it has already sold via best offer.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/357933307551

I feel like I'm pretty good at spotting rare or valuable PC parts since I've been doing it almost every day for ~10 years, but this one is just so incredibly boring looking that it's bothering me. What am I missing here?

To me the only things that look even remotely interesting are the processors. The Intel 486DX2-66 with the blue heatsink is cool, and people list them for sale at fairly high prices, but they only actually sell for $30-$40 right now. The others look like a couple of 486s, an early Pentium (probably Socket 4) and I think an Intel Overdrive (not Pentium). They have value, but not that much.

There is some assorted RAM that's useful... and an Oak VGA card that's probably only an OTI037, and it doesn't even have the extra output for CGA\EGA displays.

The rest is just misc networking, modems and controller cards (SCSI, IDE, MFM, CD-ROM) as far as I can tell. Maybe the old laptop hard drives are valuable if they work, but those are such a gamble and are so easily replaced by CF cards these days... I highly doubt it.

I know people are going insane for gold-bearing chips and RAM right now, but not this much... I see nothing that would draw droves of collectors to this lot within hours of it being listed. But I always love to learn new things! What do you see in this lot that you'd actually pay money for?

To me, I see quite a few 8 bit ISA cards in the mix. Just the two Western Digital MFM controllers are nice to have. Not surprised it sold so fast.
Also a 8bit creative (Sigma) DVD/Mpeg decoder (kind of rare), lots of memory, 486/Pentiums. It was a good deal for the lucky buyer

AndrettiGTO wrote on 2025-11-23, 01:15:

To me, I see quite a few 8 bit ISA cards in the mix. Just the two Western Digital MFM controllers are nice to have. Not surprised it sold so fast.
Also a 8bit creative (Sigma) DVD/Mpeg decoder (kind of rare), lots of memory, 486/Pentiums. It was a good deal for the lucky buyer

I don't know. In my experience here in the US, the value of the lot for retro enthusiasts or resellers is probably under $220 (USD) assuming someone had a use for all of it. And that's the main issue... even for retro enthusiasts hardly any of it is useful, desirable or easy to sell. So unless they took a super low offer (sub $100 + shipping) within 12 hours of it being listed I wouldn't say it's much of a deal, as most of it is likely to just collect dust and be hard to resell.

Hardly anyone has MFM drives these days and there are hundreds of similar controller cards listed for sale at any given time. The other 8bit cards are token ring network, dial-up modems, and CD-ROM controllers... none of which are anything that people are looking for. That isn't really very much RAM at all either. Also, the Creative DVD decoder card is PCI and they are listed for ~$10 with none recently sold. The only other thing that stood out to me is the one 8bit ISA card is marked "Floptical", but I think it might just be SCSI... which is, again, not worth a lot or hard to find.

Basically, it wouldn't take long for someone to find most of this stuff in a couple scrap lots for probably $75 + shipping, maybe less, while also getting a few more desirable items. Even for that I wouldn't personally have found any of this stuff interesting, except for the CPUs... But the issue isn't so much what the lot is worth to me... It's why did so many people watch it and then pounce on it so quickly? I see lots like this listed constantly and they might go a week with one or two watchers and no sale, probably for half this list price. The only ones that get a lot of attention have obviously rare or desirable parts in them. I can imagine one or two people who actually need this weird combination of stuff maybe watching this and making offers, but not as many as there were. I think there were six watchers shortly after it was listed, and I don't know how many more there were when it sold in the morning which was ~13 hours after the lot was listed. I'm just dying to know what all those people saw here. 😅

Asrock Fatality Z68 Professional.

After extensive research, I've found the perfect replacement for the Asrock N68-S as a bridge between all my retro systems and the modern world. With this Z68, I can browse the internet quickly and connect to any data source on my older computers for data transfer, performance testing, troubleshooting, etc.

It came with an i7 2600 and 16GB of RAM. I don't know if it's the fastest processor I can fit, and whether the listing on the Asrock website is accurate or not. I think 16GB of RAM for Windows 10 is plenty. I'll install it in the rack case under my IBM retrocomputers and see if I can use it...

AlessandroB wrote on 2025-11-23, 07:43:

Asrock Fatality Z68 Professional.

After extensive research, I've found the perfect replacement for the Asrock N68-S as a bridge between all my retro systems and the modern world. With this Z68, I can browse the internet quickly and connect to any data source on my older computers for data transfer, performance testing, troubleshooting, etc.

It came with an i7 2600 and 16GB of RAM. I don't know if it's the fastest processor I can fit, and whether the listing on the Asrock website is accurate or not. I think 16GB of RAM for Windows 10 is plenty. I'll install it in the rack case under my IBM retrocomputers and see if I can use it...

3770K would be the fastest a Z68 board can do.
But since you already have an 4c8t CPU I wouldn't bother unless you find one really cheap =)

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-11-22, 18:59:

I think this is probably okay since the listing is already over, but can anyone explain to me why this listing got so much atten […]
Show full quote

I think this is probably okay since the listing is already over, but can anyone explain to me why this listing got so much attention? It was just listed yesterday and I noticed that in a short time it had half a dozen watchers, and now it has already sold via best offer.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/357933307551

The attachment s-l1600.jpg is no longer available

I feel like I'm pretty good at spotting rare or valuable PC parts since I've been doing it almost every day for ~10 years, but this one is just so incredibly boring looking that it's bothering me. What am I missing here?

To me the only things that look even remotely interesting are the processors. The Intel 486DX2-66 with the blue heatsink is cool, and people list them for sale at fairly high prices, but they only actually sell for $30-$40 right now. The others look like a couple of 486s, an early Pentium (probably Socket 4) and I think an Intel Overdrive (not Pentium). They have value, but not that much.

There is some assorted RAM that's useful... and an Oak VGA card that's probably only an OTI037, and it doesn't even have the extra output for CGA\EGA displays.

The rest is just misc networking, modems and controller cards (SCSI, IDE, MFM, CD-ROM) as far as I can tell. Maybe the old laptop hard drives are valuable if they work, but those are such a gamble and are so easily replaced by CF cards these days... I highly doubt it.

I know people are going insane for gold-bearing chips and RAM right now, but not this much... I see nothing that would draw droves of collectors to this lot within hours of it being listed. But I always love to learn new things! What do you see in this lot that you'd actually pay money for?

It's that smart FAXmodem, with the 8 bit CPU, ppl be wanting a co-pro to run 1970s Microsoft 8bit BASIC on 🤣

But you are adding it up there yourself, 5 CPUs at 30, plus "any" ISA graphics is getting 30 that's $180 leaving the rest to make up $40. But yeah it's difficult to see individual collectors seeing more than about $100 of value to themselves in parts they need. Possibly though there are unicorn S-Spec hunters that will buy it like a surprise bag just to double check the CPUs up close figuring they'll flip the rest or all of it again, those guys can get a bit nutty. The thing with socket 4 pentiums though if that's what that one is, it's the long waits for good ones to come up rather than pricing, so if someone is sitting with an empty board, that might do it.

As far as gold scrap goes, there's about $150 there in gold scrapper math for known yields, and that is only processing a dozen things, the rest might come out at another 50 or so, but there's sometimes jackpot potential in everything built when gold was a lot cheaper... I mean like a large portion of a gram, not hiding a full bullion bar in there 🤣

But echoing what I said probably about 8 years ago, when ppl were complaining about not being able to get a crappy old "nothing" 486 CPU for $5 any more, if you don't wanna see old hardware scrapped, you gotta pay more than the scrappers.

All that said though, as a random find at a yard sale or something without particularly needing anything in there, I doubt I would have paid more than $50 for it.

Just bought a mystery card, could it be a Banshee or Velocity? Or something completely different like a Permedia... Seller pic:

Sorry about the black bars

PD2JK wrote on 2025-11-23, 20:59:

Just bought a mystery card, could it be a Banshee or Velocity? Or something completely different like a Permedia... Seller pic:

The attachment Screenshot_20251123-215718.png is no longer available

Sorry about the black bars

Some sort of Trident

parts missing ? dont bealive thats the memory layout

Quite right, the memory lay-out looks 'funny'. It should be here tomorrow.

PD2JK wrote on Yesterday, 13:22:

Quite right, the memory lay-out looks 'funny'. It should be here tomorrow.

I'm really interested in knowing what it is too.

As strange as the memory layout is, it could just be a lower capacity model of a card that has them all populated.

I don't think it's a Banshee or anything like that. More likely it is some kind of "pro" oriented card. It doesn't look enough like any specific card for me to say what it is though.

I don't think it's a Trident, because they didn't have any chips that needed heat sinks until the Blade XP/T64/T16, and I don't think those normally used SGRAM. I guess it's a possibility, but it would be the only one like that I've seen it that's the case.

Definitely a mystery! 😁

If you put a gun to my head I'd go for Permedia 2 - but it's odd regardless. The fact that exactly 4 pads are empty and 4 contain chips make me suspect this was actually sold like this rather than scavenged for its SGRAM. But that's just conjecture.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-11-23, 02:26:

[...]

The only other thing that stood out to me is the one 8bit ISA card is marked "Floptical", but I think it might just be SCSI... which is, again, not worth a lot or hard to find.

It looks like it has a bootROM. 8b bootable SCSI cards seem very sought-after. I was looking for one a while ago and couldn't find anything under EUR 150. So I got a Future Domain non-bootable controller and added the ROM myself 😉

If that card is bootable and particularly if it also supports large drives, it could be something of a unicorn. I can't make any of that out though from the pic.

Let's hope whomever bought all those cards, puts nice photos and bios dumps on theretroweb. 🤞

dionb wrote on Yesterday, 20:25:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-11-23, 02:26:

[...]

The only other thing that stood out to me is the one 8bit ISA card is marked "Floptical", but I think it might just be SCSI... which is, again, not worth a lot or hard to find.

It looks like it has a bootROM. 8b bootable SCSI cards seem very sought-after. I was looking for one a while ago and couldn't find anything under EUR 150. So I got a Future Domain non-bootable controller and added the ROM myself 😉

If that card is bootable and particularly if it also supports large drives, it could be something of a unicorn. I can't make any of that out though from the pic.

Interesting! I hadn't thought of that. I've never really done anything with SCSI drives or controllers, though I have in recent years accumulated some of both... I don't know if there are any 8bit SCSI cards with a ROM though.

Two questions though...

First, how did you add a ROM to one that didn't have one? Did it already have a location or a socket for a ROM, or did you have to add one in a more "creative" way? 😁
Nevermind! I found your thread here! Nice work! 😁

Second, what are the benefits of going with SCSI vs going with IDE on a retro PC these days? If you have SCSI drives on hand and want to use them that's understandable, but it seems that SCSI poses some challenges and limitations... mainly that it's so difficult and expensive to get modern solid-state replacements for SCSI devices. Where as IDE controllers can often be hooked up to either a CF card on a simple adapter or a SD card on a more complex (possibly finicky) adapter.

I have hung onto a bunch of SCSI stuff in case I ever ended up needing it, but so far I've always been able to go IDE for anything I've worked on. I'm curious to know what the benefits are these days.

Ozzuneoj wrote on Today, 04:59:

[...]

Second, what are the benefits of going with SCSI vs going with IDE on a retro PC these days? If you have SCSI drives on hand and want to use them that's understandable, but it seems that SCSI poses some challenges and limitations... mainly that it's so difficult and expensive to get modern solid-state replacements for SCSI devices. Where as IDE controllers can often be hooked up to either a CF card on a simple adapter or a SD card on a more complex (possibly finicky) adapter.

I have hung onto a bunch of SCSI stuff in case I ever ended up needing it, but so far I've always been able to go IDE for anything I've worked on. I'm curious to know what the benefits are these days.

Actual concrete benefits of SCSI? Well, it lets you run CD-ROMs as well as hard drives from a single card, as well as other, more exotic hardware. Also it's easier to make a system with workable storage using (more or less) period parts than with IDE (where you need XTIDE). But really, SCSI is just SCSI and for some people (possibly including me) it's sort of a fetish 😉

PD2JK wrote on 2025-11-23, 20:59:

Just bought a mystery card, could it be a Banshee or Velocity? Or something completely different like a Permedia... Seller pic:

The attachment Screenshot_20251123-215718.png is no longer available

Sorry about the black bars

I had some more thoughts about this...

Could be S3 Savage 3D based, but it is very uncommon to have so many memory chips without multiple graphics chips and multiple VGA outputs.

Savage 4 (LT) or Savage MX are also possibilities but you don't usually see those with big old DIP BIOS chips, and again, it's uncommon to have so many locations for memory chips without multiple graphics chips with separate VGA outputs.

A bit of a stretch but I'm also reminded of the rather obscure IBM GXT2000 series, though they seem to have much larger coolers generally, and there isn't much reason to make a cut down version of that with fewer memory chips.

Other than these, I'm inclined to lean toward Permedia 2 or 2v like dionb said... but even those are not a perfect fit. There really just aren't many (any?) cards that I know of that normally have all of the following features:

Feature connector (actually two connectors, with one being female)
Full size DIP BIOS socket
3.3v AGP (early style with no locking hook)
4-8 SGRAM chips
Small graphics chip that needs a small heatsink
Single VGA output

I'm cautiously hoping you've found some unobtainium early 3D card that we've read about somewhere but never actually seen... 😁

EDIT: This Trident 3DImage 9850 shares several of the same features, but there's just no reason to add a heatsink to these and I don't think they ever have more than 4MB of memory. Maybe a variant of ones of these weird cards based on Trident Cyber mobile chips? Lostdotfish could be right after all. By why the heatsink? 😅

Alright, it's in! The similarities with the Trident 9850 card are certainly there, but indeed, that heatsink....

And now some redeeming words.

Put away the gun, dion_b's head is safe.

Edit:
The Permedia BIOS string got me on the wrong foot. I really thought it was a Permedia 1. GLINT/Permedia drivers didn't want to install.

So I tried the Permedia 2 driver. Newsflash: it's a Permedia 2 with 4MB memory.

"Enhanced" means "2" ?

3DMark99 looks interdasting, no surprises.

VGA output quality is great, one would expect from a workstation class card. Happy with it.