BitWrangler wrote on 2026-01-12, 02:42:

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

No, that's just Shuttle's "XPC" Mini-PC proprietary design. They released 10s of these XPC models over a span of 15 years at least, all built around the same design and cooling concept.
And they were pretty awesome and efficient, got a couple of them over the years 😀

That's this specific motherboard in its natural habitat:

By coincidence, last week I brought home a free Shuttle XPc SK21G. Has a Athlon 64 3400+, 1Gb of DDR ram, and a GeForce 6200 128Mb AGP video card. Motherboard caps look good. POSTs fine; haven't had time to do much more with it.

MNrocketry wrote on 2026-01-12, 14:39:

By coincidence, last week I brought home a free Shuttle XPc SK21G. Has a Athlon 64 3400+, 1Gb of DDR ram, and a GeForce 6200 128Mb AGP video card. Motherboard caps look good. POSTs fine; haven't had time to do much more with it.

The caps are starting to bulge just look at the one directly beside the chipset heatsink.

Sifting through a pile of old school computers I found this reasonably tidy IBM Aptiva 2196 equipped with an AMD K6-2 550.

Working without issue so far.

In the same pile I also found this very random Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP, also functional.

Cool, I was just looking through some chipset lists and thought. "Hey, you don't see SiS 540 very often" and there one is. Be interesting to see what numbers it makes if configured close to whatever intel chipset benchmarks you can do a close config to.

TheIpex wrote on 2026-01-24, 03:08:

Sifting through a pile of old school computers I found this reasonably tidy IBM Aptiva 2196 equipped with an AMD K6-2 550. […]
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Sifting through a pile of old school computers I found this reasonably tidy IBM Aptiva 2196 equipped with an AMD K6-2 550.

Working without issue so far.

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In the same pile I also found this very random Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP, also functional.

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Wow, that's a nice find! Such a cool looking case.

SiS540 isn't a real common chipset and the integrated SiS300 graphics is really not bad at all. As far as integrated graphics are concerned, it is surprisingly balanced for running alongside a K6-2, in my opinion.

Also, here is the motherboard: https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/univer … -scient-pro-283

Looks like it has a Crystal CS4299 sound chip (AC'97), so not ideal for retro gaming, but I think it'll do okay if you just stick to running games in Windows 9x (maybe ME?). Otherwise, could make for an interesting project to find the best low profile PCI sound card that could possibly fit. There definitely aren't many, and finding low profile brackets for them would be an even bigger challenge, but... yeah, if I had this system that is what I would do... for some reason. 😆

Also, I'm pretty sure the 550AGR is somewhat rare. I have never seen one personally.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-01-24, 03:54:

Cool, I was just looking through some chipset lists and thought. "Hey, you don't see SiS 540 very often" and there one is. Be interesting to see what numbers it makes if configured close to whatever intel chipset benchmarks you can do a close config to.

This is actually my first encounter with the AMD K6 CPUs in general. I was planning on acquiring one for an Epox SS7 board I have in storage but never got around to it.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-01-24, 03:55:

Wow, that's a nice find! Such a cool looking case.

I do like the blue.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-01-24, 03:55:

Looks like it has a Crystal CS4299 sound chip (AC'97), so not ideal for retro gaming, but I think it'll do okay if you just stick to running games in Windows 9x (maybe ME?). Otherwise, could make for an interesting project to find the best low profile PCI sound card that could possibly fit. There definitely aren't many, and finding low profile brackets for them would be an even bigger challenge, but... yeah, if I had this system that is what I would do... for some reason. 😆

Thanks for looking into it. I don't really have any plans beyond running a few games/benchmarks. The only low-profile sound card I have is the SB0570 Audigy SE (Another dumpster find) which I don't believe is desirable (or even possible?) to use on Win9x.

Intercepted today, before it met the dumpster. Comes with PSU, and a screen that is .. better than no screen 😀

This is the only 486 I have.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-26, 14:11:

Intercepted today, before it met the dumpster. Comes with PSU, and a screen that is .. better than no screen 😀

This is the only 486 I have.

Nice interception! And finding something like that with the power supply is pretty rare, so that's great. At least it gives you a chance of being able to test or repair it without having to buy one.

Also, I spy an Aztech Trident 4DWave in the background. 😁

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-01-26, 14:22:

Also, I spy an Aztech Trident 4DWave in the background. 😁

Well spotted. I have quite a few sound cards. For me the most interesting one is S3 Sonic Vibes with hard-wired environmental effects that I hypothesise might be possible to re-activate on NT6 by poking PCI bus registers, assuming NT6 does not instantly react by reinitialising the card.

First test: The laptop has a power rail problem. It momentarily touches the HDD LED, and then the whole system powers down.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-26, 14:52:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-01-26, 14:22:

Also, I spy an Aztech Trident 4DWave in the background. 😁

Well spotted. I have quite a few sound cards. For me the most interesting one is S3 Sonic Vibes with hard-wired environmental effects that I hypothesise might be possible to re-activate on NT6 by poking PCI bus registers, assuming NT6 does not instantly react by reinitialising the card.

First test: The laptop has a power rail problem. It momentarily touches the HDD LED, and then the whole system powers down.

Cool find. Did you find this page yet? https://zelandeth.org/oldtech/toshiba-t1950ct/index.htm

On there he mentions that the battery often needs a minor amount of charge for it to fire up, so try leaving it to charge for a few hours.

Though Toshibas are a bit notorious for their power boards crapping out, but there are many posts around about fixing them,

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-01-26, 15:15:

Cool find. Did you find this page yet? https://zelandeth.org/oldtech/toshiba-t1950ct/index.htm […]
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MattRocks wrote on 2026-01-26, 14:52:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-01-26, 14:22:

Also, I spy an Aztech Trident 4DWave in the background. 😁

Well spotted. I have quite a few sound cards. For me the most interesting one is S3 Sonic Vibes with hard-wired environmental effects that I hypothesise might be possible to re-activate on NT6 by poking PCI bus registers, assuming NT6 does not instantly react by reinitialising the card.

First test: The laptop has a power rail problem. It momentarily touches the HDD LED, and then the whole system powers down.

Cool find. Did you find this page yet? https://zelandeth.org/oldtech/toshiba-t1950ct/index.htm

On there he mentions that the battery often needs a minor amount of charge for it to fire up, so try leaving it to charge for a few hours.

Though Toshibas are a bit notorious for their power boards crapping out, but there are many posts around about fixing them,

Edit: I have read it now 😉

This one isn't charging though - the battery LED flashes once only, indicating it found a battery but then the LED is off indicating no charging activity - suspect an upstream power relay fault.

Or, possibly too discharged to initialise?

There's also a DRAM kit, similar to the one on the zelandeth.org page, but there are no clues on how to slide it out and read the actual capacity. All being well that means total 8mb+ - decent for a 486?

Found this guy sitting in a junk pile, HP USB-RS232 adapter. That thing came in clutch, especially since I've found myself needing a USB-RS232 adapter and since I've lent my trusty Belkin F5U10V and never ever had it returned...

No clue if it works, but hey, it was free so if it's broken, no biggie.