It's definitely full of furbies inside 💯

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - reminds me of the one an old family PC had. Today only one other person bid, so I got it for 3 times lower than I was willing to pay.

Place your bets.

No No No!!

You use the vintage laptop with IRDDA to *BRAINWASH* the Furbies!!
They speak a very simple IRDA capble protocol, and you can use it on your OG ones fine.

The modern ones are also vulnerable, and even more so!
https://medium.com/@chloecondon/how-to-hack-y … de-d4337c458296

And if you want to get all Dr Frankenstein on them.. Well... There's all manner of awful you can do with a PIC microcontroller!
https://www.instructables.com/Furby-Hijack/

I suppose the latter two can be combined using a modern raspberry pi zero W+, since those have wifi and bluetooth, AND have lovely GPIOs to use for the frankenstein creations, and could be turned into a general purpose computer as well....

But enough of that! Bring on the ancient analog computers made of vacuum tubes!

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-03-30, 23:21:

Place your bets.

Pentium 4, or its Celeron counterpart.

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-03-30, 23:21:

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - remi […]
Show full quote

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - reminds me of the one an old family PC had. Today only one other person bid, so I got it for 3 times lower than I was willing to pay.

The attachment 111.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 222.jpg is no longer available

Place your bets.

Early to mid 00's E-Machines.
Pentium III era.

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-03-30, 23:21:

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - remi […]
Show full quote

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - reminds me of the one an old family PC had. Today only one other person bid, so I got it for 3 times lower than I was willing to pay.

The attachment 111.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 222.jpg is no longer available

Place your bets.

Wow... that one is going to be tough. Truly a mystery box with very few obvious clues!

I will say... a 56x CDROM is somewhat unique here (possibly an AOpen drive?). The majority peaked at 52x, and I don't know if there was any functional difference going to a 56x or if it was just marketing. Also, the fact that it doesn't have a DVD drive definitely dates it as well. I remember a friend having a DVD-ROM in his Gateway back in ~1999 or so, and they were far from standard at that point... but to not have a DVD drive or a CD burner a couple years later, I would say this was a very low budget built.

Between the CD-ROM drive and the case alone I am guessing this system was built in 2001-2002.

For more specific specs, I'm noticing these things:
Overhanging power supply is a bit cramped for a Socket 478 system... it could definitely have one anyway, but in 2001-2002 a Socket 478 setup was also more expensive than alternatives, so I feel like this was a budget build (no extra cards, no CD-RW, no DVD, etc.).

So, I'm leaning toward this being either a Socket A Duron or possibly a Socket 370 Celeron.

AND... I don't think it is common to have PCI slots up that high, so it is much more likely that it is an AMR\ACR\CNR slot with a small modem card in it.

That helps quite a bit since the number of budget Socket A and Socket 370 boards with AMR slots at the top, integrated video AND integrated LAN is quite small.

I am going to go out on a limb and say it has one of the following boards or something similar to them:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ecs-k7vmm-5.2c
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/ecs-p6stmt
(That one would be a neat find... Socket 370 with Tualatin support, SiS Chipset + Video and an unpopulated spot for an ISA slot... interesting!)
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/biostar-m6vlq
(Specifically the ECS P6VEMT variant)
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/asus-cuwe-fx

Misc random guesses:
128MB of RAM (maybe 256MB if it was upgraded)
A very unhealthy (or totally dead) 20GB hard drive -OR- a newer replacement 40-80GB drive.
250-300W generic power supply
Possibly bad caps on the motherboard... but for some reason I feel like it probably doesn't have them. A lot of the really cheap boards from this period did not have swollen or leaky caps. Often times it was, ironically, the mid range boards that were probably trying to have very low ESR caps on the cheap and ended up with the plague instead.
The PSU might have bad caps though. Open that baby up and do a thorough inspection before trying to use it. 🤣

... actually, it has probably run very hot due to the stupid PSU placement, so the caps might be bloated just from having too much heat left in the board. Those things always end up directly over the CPU fan and at best were just restricting airflow, or at worst the PSU fan would be fighting against the CPU fan.

This was fun. Can't wait to find out what is in there. Thank you for posting! 😁

wierd_w wrote on 2026-03-30, 23:28:

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-03-30, 23:21:

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - remi […]
Show full quote

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - reminds me of the one an old family PC had. Today only one other person bid, so I got it for 3 times lower than I was willing to pay.

The attachment 111.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 222.jpg is no longer available

Place your bets.

Early to mid 00's E-Machines.
Pentium III era.

eMachines would never miss a chance to plaster their giant stickers all over the front of their PCs. And you can see a "Taurus" case badge on the front, and "Taurus Computers" on a sticker on the back.

Once the I/O on the back starts getting rainbow colourful like this, you're almost definitely out of Socket 7 and Slot 1 territory. I would say this could be Socket 370, 478 or 462. Given the modem card and Y2k era case, I'm gonna trend earlier and guess it's a Socket 370 with a Mendocino or Coppermine Celery. 256MB RAM. ~8GB HDD. Integrated video could be a lot of things, maybe SiS to go along with an SiS chipset?

I dont discount the possibility of the board going in a different case. But, yeah, I get you.

(With a system of this age, it's not safe to think this case has not been 'recycled'. If not a genuine emachines board in a recycled case, then a similarly budget board of that era.)

'Pentium iii' does extend into socket 370 land, which is indeed where I place this.

I'd guess 'no more than 512mb ram' at maximum, with a nominal guess of 64 or 128mb.

Early to mid 00's.

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-03-30, 23:21:

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - remi […]
Show full quote

I'll start out. I kept my eyes on this one that went up on auction last week, pretty much just for the lovely little case - reminds me of the one an old family PC had. Today only one other person bid, so I got it for 3 times lower than I was willing to pay.

The attachment 111.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 222.jpg is no longer available

Place your bets.

I think that's going to be a PC Chips motherboard with a Celeron processor.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-03-31, 00:34:

I will say... a 56x CDROM is somewhat unique here (possibly an AOpen drive?).

Yeah, my brain immediately went to "AOpen". I once had an AOpen 36x CD-ROM drive, and it looked just like that, with that style of font showing the speed.

Definitely a budget machine. On-board graphics, on-board sound, only a modem card (perhaps 56k, possibly a WinModem). I think it's a 1999-2000 vintage. My guess is some kind of Celeron, 128MB RAM, IDE HDD in the single-digit GBs. Curious that it would appear to be an AC-97 audio board (as evidenced by the coloured audio jacks), but the system builder didn't populate the front panel audio jacks.

Just a white box office pc from 2001-2002 on a serious budget.

A friend of mine had a case like that with an athlon 1.2 and a riva tnt 2 in it.

I think memory 128-256MB and hard disk 20-40GB unless replaced later after the first one broke.

The cdrom also looks like aopen to me. Probably the case too.

st31276a wrote on 2026-03-31, 16:28:

The cdrom also looks like aopen to me. Probably the case too.

Must be AOpen CD-956E/AKH. All the ones I can see for sale have manufacture dates of late 2001 at the earliest.

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-03-31, 00:47:

I'm gonna trend earlier and guess it's a Socket 370 with a Mendocino or Coppermine Celery. 256MB RAM. ~8GB HDD. Integrated video could be a lot of things, maybe SiS to go along with an SiS chipset?

I'm going with giant on this one.... place your bets...

It arrived today just before I went out, only had a few minutes to open it up and have a very quick look. Let's see if anyone can id the board before I get back :^)

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-04-01, 17:16:

It arrived today just before I went out, only had a few minutes to open it up and have a very quick look. Let's see if anyone can id the board before I get back :^)

It's this, isn't it.
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pcchips-m810lmr-3-0

Could well be. AM2 huh.

It's dirty and needs a bath. 😁

Pave99 wrote on 2026-04-01, 17:30:

giantenemycat wrote on 2026-04-01, 17:16:

It arrived today just before I went out, only had a few minutes to open it up and have a very quick look. Let's see if anyone can id the board before I get back :^)

It's this, isn't it.
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pcchips-m810lmr-3-0

Most likely. I can immediately tell that the CPU cooler is the reference AMD sA design, so your suggestion fits perfectly!

And who shouted PCChips, goddamit!? That guy deserves the title of computer Nostradamus.

pete8475 wrote on 2026-03-31, 04:37:

I think that's going to be a PC Chips motherboard with a Celeron processor.

If confirmed... Half Right, Half Nostradamus, Half a cookie?

tomcattech wrote on 2026-04-01, 17:57:

pete8475 wrote on 2026-03-31, 04:37:

I think that's going to be a PC Chips motherboard with a Celeron processor.

If confirmed... Half Right, Half Nostradamus, Half a cookie?

True. Dude’s avatar should be changed to pete4237,5 just to get things corrected somewhat.

Maybe he is just toying with us, not revealing all his crystal ball cards immediately.