EduBat wrote on 2025-12-03, 18:31:

Found this "beauty" in a pile of rubbish today. Goldstar GS300 with a date of Feb 1990 and a serial number of 002000011.
Is this really the eleventh computer out of the manufacturing line?

They might have only made 11!

I wonder if it need reference disks like a PS/2 or if it has a BIOS setup screen.

What is the integrated VGA? Maybe it's time to start hunting for a Mach32 MCA board. https://www.ardent-tool.com/video/ATI_GUP.html

You should start a thread for this guy in System Specs

douglar wrote on 2025-12-04, 00:17:

They might have only made 11! […]
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EduBat wrote on 2025-12-03, 18:31:

Found this "beauty" in a pile of rubbish today. Goldstar GS300 with a date of Feb 1990 and a serial number of 002000011.
Is this really the eleventh computer out of the manufacturing line?

They might have only made 11!

I wonder if it need reference disks like a PS/2 or if it has a BIOS setup screen.

What is the integrated VGA? Maybe it's time to start hunting for a Mach32 MCA board. https://www.ardent-tool.com/video/ATI_GUP.html

You should start a thread for this guy in System Specs

Second this, we need photos of the inside! It also looks like the exterior should clean up pretty nicely.

Hi,

Here is a photo of the "planar".

After this photo I gave it a bit of a clean, opened and checked the power supply, which has no RIFAs. Then I tested the power supply, which had all the right voltages.
After that I put it all back together.
Upon power on I had a big explosion, a lot of smoke and finally experienced the awesome smell of blown up tantalum capacitor (in the morning.)
Unfortunately I was unable to find my phone on time to take a picture of the cloud of smoke. The wife found it all extremely funny.

Anyway, I removed the shorted capacitor and tried again. Unfortunately I see nothing but a blank screen. There isn't even a single beep from the speaker.
All the voltages are correct so the power supply is working fine. I have a cheap oscilloscope and plan to try to find the reset and clock signals and to probe the address/data signals on the BIOS chips, maybe some line is stuck either high or low. Any further help/ideas will be welcome.

Some more info:

The processor is a 80386SX-16
The computer is mostly based around the intel 82311 chipset
https://theretroweb.com/chipsets/259
82303 - Local I/O support chip (parallel port)
82304 - Local I/O support chip
82307 - DMA Controller/Central Arbiter
82308 - Micro Channel Bus Controller
82309 - Address Bus Controller
82077 - Floppy controller

Also on the motherboard are:
NS16550A - Serial port controller
I8742 - PS2 Keyboard & Mouse controller
MC146818 - Real time clock

The onboard VGA is provided by this chip
WD90C00-LK
https://theretroweb.com/chips/3997

There are also 2Mbytes of DRAM

So it seems a PS/2 (or MCA) clone. Noice. Explosion not so.
Good for you the wife had fun. Noice². It could've backfired; "get that filthy thing outta the house!".

EduBat wrote on 2025-12-06, 16:40:

Any further help/ideas will be welcome.

Change the RTC battery for a fresh one.

Thanks to the help of two of my close friends, I've scored a Sony KV-14M1B, it's not looking great at the moment but I think it's salvagable.

The only issue though?

...there is a big ol' crack on the board... ouch.

Thankfully, it appears that the only severed traces are fairly thick, so I guess it should be easy to fix.

Retrieved this Compaq from my parent's attic some months ago. It originally wouldn't turn on and exhibited no signs of life. On a whim, decided to replace the coin battery on the motherboard and it booted right up! So PSA, these Compaq Presario 5000s need a working cmos battery.

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-12-08, 02:39:

Retrieved this Compaq from my parent's attic some months ago. It originally wouldn't turn on and exhibited no signs of life. On a whim, decided to replace the coin battery on the motherboard and it booted right up! So PSA, these Compaq Presario 5000s need a working cmos battery.

Man... I worked on SO MANY of those back in the day when I was first repairing PCs. Those and the Compaqs (or HPs?) with the CD holder on the top of the case. Did anyone ever actually store CDs in their tower?? It's been 25 years, but I have no memories of ever seeing those spaced occupied by discs...

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-12-08, 02:39:

Retrieved this Compaq from my parent's attic some months ago. It originally wouldn't turn on and exhibited no signs of life. On a whim, decided to replace the coin battery on the motherboard and it booted right up! So PSA, these Compaq Presario 5000s need a working cmos battery.

Nice PC, looks new almost! have any plans for it?

gerry wrote on 2025-12-08, 10:52:

dukeofurl wrote on 2025-12-08, 02:39:

Retrieved this Compaq from my parent's attic some months ago. It originally wouldn't turn on and exhibited no signs of life. On a whim, decided to replace the coin battery on the motherboard and it booted right up! So PSA, these Compaq Presario 5000s need a working cmos battery.

Nice PC, looks new almost! have any plans for it?

I was thinking I would install the factory recovery disc with Windows ME and various apps/accessories, and from there, probably install some games, especially the stuff my pentium 1 doesn't play so well.

For once I found something...

The dpad on this is way better than on the Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle.

It wouldn't surprise anyone that it doesn't work in dos, but I have other pads for that anyway.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-19, 00:01:

Okay, small update. […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-17, 02:26:

Ohhh boy. […]
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Ohhh boy.

An older friend of mine brought me a couple of computers he's had laying around for a while. One is from 2007, and one is from 2013. To put it mildly, these things were overkill at the time.

When he opened the trunk of his SUV I couldn't believe how MASSIVE these things were.

To give some perspective without giving it all away: The one from 2007 is an OEM system with its original 1000 Watt power supply, and it has two video cards in SLI. The one from 2013 is a custom prebuilt that was built with... get this... 64GB of RAM, two 512GB SSDs, a Bluray Burner and a Corsair AX1200i 1200W 80 Plus Platinum (!) PSU... yes, built that way in 2013. It also had two GPUs in SLI, though he said it never quite worked right with both, so one had been taken out and put in storage somewhere for a while (he will get it to me when he finds it).

To temper expectations: Neither one has top of the line GPUs for the time, sadly, but they are both really unique and (as far as I can tell) somewhat rare systems these days.

They are quite dusty from many years of use, so I want to get them cleaned up before doing their photo shoots. I will post pictures and more detailed specs later.

Also, these are two of the largest computers I own. The 2013 one is by far the largest tower I've ever seen in person, and I own some full towers from the early 90s and had an early 2000s Gateway server\workstation chassis for a while as well. This is bigger than all of them.

Stay tuned. 😮

Okay, small update.

I did some cleaning on the 2013 system. When I started seeing some weird bluish green crud down in the massive (and unecessary) bottom "chamber" in this case, I remembered what my friend told me a while back. He said when he bought the computer they only gave water cooling as an option, even though he didn't want it. Eventually, something did actually fail and it leaked all over the place and killed the motherboard. They replaced the motherboard and he used the computer for years and then gave it to a relative when he bought a new machine.

At some point it stopped booting and he took it back from the relative. He assumed the processor had been damaged by the old motherboard and finally just stopped working. I know this is pretty uncommon (especially for high end gear chips like a Socket 2011 Ivy Bridge CPU), so I was hoping it was something more easily fixable.

Sooo... after getting the machine all cleaned up and pulling out the Corsair AX1200i PSU (absolutely awesome PSU) for inspection, I decided to give it a go. The motherboard (Asus P9X79-E WS) would give a 00 code and a blue light near the CPU socket. I googled it and the number one suggestion was to use the BIOS Flashback feature to reflash the latest BIOS. I cannot believe how EASY it was to do this! I just put the file on an old FAT32 drive, named it P9X79EWS.cap, stuck the drive into the flashback port on the PC, pressed the BIOS flashback button for 3 seconds and the light started blinking. When it stopped blinking 5-10 minutes later, I turned the system on and it is now booting to the BIOS just fine!!

This thing is a BEAST by the way.

The case is a CyberpowerPC badged AZZA Genesis 9000B. It is reversible and arrived to me with the motherboard upside-down and the case opening on the opposite panel of a normal ATX system. You can pull the motherboard+ card tray out completely, flip it around and then make it a standard ATX layout. It also has incredibly huge fans in the top. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the case compared to what I had at the time (CoolerMaster CM 690 II Advanced). Fiddly mechanisms, surprisingly cramped spaces (despite it's insane size) and massive chunks of useless plastic that hinder airflow. Still, it is a unique and interesting design. Very very 2010s.

I have attached some pictures of what I have done so far. It is just flopped onto the floor for now. In the pictures it is about 3-4 inches shorter because I have the bottom plastic panel removed (I had to hose out the dust and water cooling crud). It stands around 26" tall. 😮

It has an EVGA GTX 770 4GB (with a second one that I will get eventually), 64GB of XPG DDR3-1866 CL10 RAM ("only" 16GB installed currently... some of the heatsinks fell off too), an i7 4930K and 2x 512GB Adata SX900 SSDs.

I will post more later as I make progress... probably in it's own thread.

So yeah... this is easily the most beastly machine I have ever been given in a non-working state.

CyberPowerPC is a systems integrator. The case looks like an Aerocool; maybe one of the X-Predator range?

For reasons I'm not convinced added cooling value, a long-running trend was to hijack the flat tops of cases for active exhaust vents.

MattRocks wrote on 2025-12-26, 10:05:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-19, 00:01:

Okay, small update. […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-08-17, 02:26:

Ohhh boy. […]
Show full quote

Ohhh boy.

An older friend of mine brought me a couple of computers he's had laying around for a while. One is from 2007, and one is from 2013. To put it mildly, these things were overkill at the time.

When he opened the trunk of his SUV I couldn't believe how MASSIVE these things were.

To give some perspective without giving it all away: The one from 2007 is an OEM system with its original 1000 Watt power supply, and it has two video cards in SLI. The one from 2013 is a custom prebuilt that was built with... get this... 64GB of RAM, two 512GB SSDs, a Bluray Burner and a Corsair AX1200i 1200W 80 Plus Platinum (!) PSU... yes, built that way in 2013. It also had two GPUs in SLI, though he said it never quite worked right with both, so one had been taken out and put in storage somewhere for a while (he will get it to me when he finds it).

To temper expectations: Neither one has top of the line GPUs for the time, sadly, but they are both really unique and (as far as I can tell) somewhat rare systems these days.

They are quite dusty from many years of use, so I want to get them cleaned up before doing their photo shoots. I will post pictures and more detailed specs later.

Also, these are two of the largest computers I own. The 2013 one is by far the largest tower I've ever seen in person, and I own some full towers from the early 90s and had an early 2000s Gateway server\workstation chassis for a while as well. This is bigger than all of them.

Stay tuned. 😮

Okay, small update.

I did some cleaning on the 2013 system. When I started seeing some weird bluish green crud down in the massive (and unecessary) bottom "chamber" in this case, I remembered what my friend told me a while back. He said when he bought the computer they only gave water cooling as an option, even though he didn't want it. Eventually, something did actually fail and it leaked all over the place and killed the motherboard. They replaced the motherboard and he used the computer for years and then gave it to a relative when he bought a new machine.

At some point it stopped booting and he took it back from the relative. He assumed the processor had been damaged by the old motherboard and finally just stopped working. I know this is pretty uncommon (especially for high end gear chips like a Socket 2011 Ivy Bridge CPU), so I was hoping it was something more easily fixable.

Sooo... after getting the machine all cleaned up and pulling out the Corsair AX1200i PSU (absolutely awesome PSU) for inspection, I decided to give it a go. The motherboard (Asus P9X79-E WS) would give a 00 code and a blue light near the CPU socket. I googled it and the number one suggestion was to use the BIOS Flashback feature to reflash the latest BIOS. I cannot believe how EASY it was to do this! I just put the file on an old FAT32 drive, named it P9X79EWS.cap, stuck the drive into the flashback port on the PC, pressed the BIOS flashback button for 3 seconds and the light started blinking. When it stopped blinking 5-10 minutes later, I turned the system on and it is now booting to the BIOS just fine!!

This thing is a BEAST by the way.

The case is a CyberpowerPC badged AZZA Genesis 9000B. It is reversible and arrived to me with the motherboard upside-down and the case opening on the opposite panel of a normal ATX system. You can pull the motherboard+ card tray out completely, flip it around and then make it a standard ATX layout. It also has incredibly huge fans in the top. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the case compared to what I had at the time (CoolerMaster CM 690 II Advanced). Fiddly mechanisms, surprisingly cramped spaces (despite it's insane size) and massive chunks of useless plastic that hinder airflow. Still, it is a unique and interesting design. Very very 2010s.

I have attached some pictures of what I have done so far. It is just flopped onto the floor for now. In the pictures it is about 3-4 inches shorter because I have the bottom plastic panel removed (I had to hose out the dust and water cooling crud). It stands around 26" tall. 😮

It has an EVGA GTX 770 4GB (with a second one that I will get eventually), 64GB of XPG DDR3-1866 CL10 RAM ("only" 16GB installed currently... some of the heatsinks fell off too), an i7 4930K and 2x 512GB Adata SX900 SSDs.

I will post more later as I make progress... probably in it's own thread.

So yeah... this is easily the most beastly machine I have ever been given in a non-working state.

CyberPowerPC is a systems integrator. The case looks like an Aerocool; maybe one of the X-Predator range?

For reasons I'm not convinced added cooling value, a long-running trend was to hijack the flat tops of cases for active exhaust vents.

From my post you just quoted:

The case is a CyberpowerPC badged AZZA Genesis 9000B. It is reversible and arrived to me with the motherboard upside-down and the case opening on the opposite panel of a normal ATX system. You can pull the motherboard+ card tray out completely, flip it around and then make it a standard ATX layout. It also has incredibly huge fans in the top.

And yes, top exhaust fans in most situations are pointless, unless someone is using a top mounted radiator. In this situation they were beyond pointless because the motherboard tray was inverted, so the massive top fans would have been starving the GPU fans of air, as well as bringing the heat from the processor and memory up to the GPUs. Just a really poorly thought out design overall. I'm sure my Fractal Define R6 that looks like a solid block with barely any ventilation (and almost no noise) cools more efficiently than this thing. Simple bottom+front intake, rear exhaust setup just works. I'm glad case designers finally figured out that you don't need equal intake and exhaust fans. If you force air into a box, it will find a way out of the box and it will take heat with it.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-12-26, 16:26:

.. top exhaust fans in most situations are pointless..

Sure, but in almost every era consumers followed marketing and bought bizarrely inferior products. Those decisions were passed down to us as “period accurate.”

Personally, I relied on using the flat tops of cases as a desk space - balancing books, printers, or even my input device. Top vents always alarmed me!

The most bizarre top vent I’ve encountered must be the “Martian,” manufactured by A-Top Technology (USA) for Maplin (UK).

It still makes me laugh every time I think about it.

It’s an A-Top Z-Alien gamer PC case in their distinctive automotive-type metallic paint with extra exuberant factory features including.. a manual pop-up exhaust vent with a fan mounted inside.

Frustrated at being fragged? 😒
Punch the lid and respawn cooler! 😁

Was it a market success? Feels more like the end of an era.

A-Top Technology’s own website was openly complaining about counterfeits (and bizarrely linking the counterfeiters instead of legitimate retailers such as Newegg and Maplin) before itself vanishing, and Maplin was beginning its long decline toward administration. That combination suggests the Maplin Martian was a late exuberant gamble in a market that was unraveling.

Now I wonder, how many original Martians are actually out there?

For clarity: I have a Martian, which is why I have done the background research on it.

Just salvaged a Shuttle XPC SK43G, no pictures yet as it's in dire need of a cleanup and it's in not in a very presentable shape 😬

I haven't dared powering it I'm yet since... The PSU has some suspicious looking rust patches on it... (I guess that's what 8 years in a damp shed does to old hardware) hopefully I won't need to hunt down a replacement with a strong 5V rail... Then again the board has a P4 12V connector, so perhaps this is one of the Socket A boards that run the vCore from 12V? I have no idea.

Vynix wrote on Yesterday, 05:09:

Just salvaged a Shuttle XPC SK43G, no pictures yet as it's in dire need of a cleanup and it's in not in a very presentable shape 😬

I haven't dared powering it I'm yet since... The PSU has some suspicious looking rust patches on it... (I guess that's what 8 years in a damp shed does to old hardware) hopefully I won't need to hunt down a replacement with a strong 5V rail... Then again the board has a P4 12V connector, so perhaps this is one of the Socket A boards that run the vCore from 12V? I have no idea.

i have never seen a motherboard with a pci slot 1st and then AGP.

wtf?

Not a whole lot of Socket A ITX boards out there anyway. Later ITX boards tend to be similar with having the bigliest PCIe slot on the outside, near the vents, for GPU cooling.

It's not Mini ITX though (at 170x170mm that only has enough space for 1 slot), the mainboard page describes it as "Flex/MicroATX: 25,4 x 18,5 cm" but it's 1cm larger than microATX along the larger dimension, I think it's a proprietary form factor. I agree that it's likely to be for GPU cooling.

Oh, I wonder if it's that "Book PC" formfactor that never seemed to take off in the west.

All i found for months are grimy grey laptops with dirty keyboards, worthless batteries or damaged screens. I think it’s close to a year since I found anything beige.