MattRocks wrote on 2026-05-28, 21:20:

I learned my lesson on the "mystery box" postings where I included photos as soon as my offer had been accepted - before the ite […]
Show full quote

devius wrote on 2026-05-28, 20:36:

That's why I only post stuff I actually have in my possession in this thread. Don't want to jinx it 😅

I learned my lesson on the "mystery box" postings where I included photos as soon as my offer had been accepted - before the item had been dispatched.

It was listed by a seller of many boxes who promises they never open the box. It was photo'd for eBay with panels cleanly sealed and no plastic out of place, yet somehow arrived with trapped plastic housing protruding from where panels had been hastily forced on and screwed shut.

Having now added that seller to my blacklist, I recently purchased another mystery box for a fraction of the price. It probably won't qualify as vintage.

Did it come from overseas? Customs can be neanderthals.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-29, 02:52:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-05-28, 21:20:

I learned my lesson on the "mystery box" postings where I included photos as soon as my offer had been accepted - before the ite […]
Show full quote

devius wrote on 2026-05-28, 20:36:

That's why I only post stuff I actually have in my possession in this thread. Don't want to jinx it 😅

I learned my lesson on the "mystery box" postings where I included photos as soon as my offer had been accepted - before the item had been dispatched.

It was listed by a seller of many boxes who promises they never open the box. It was photo'd for eBay with panels cleanly sealed and no plastic out of place, yet somehow arrived with trapped plastic housing protruding from where panels had been hastily forced on and screwed shut.

Having now added that seller to my blacklist, I recently purchased another mystery box for a fraction of the price. It probably won't qualify as vintage.

Did it come from overseas? Customs can be neanderthals.

It came from a city about 1.5hrs drive from me, and it was delivered in black plastic wrap. My experience, coupled with the fact that most of their boxes have at least one rear expansion card cover missing, convinces me the seller opens every one of their "vintage unopened" box!

In contrast, my latest mystery box comes from a liquidation. They accepted my £7 offer. The liquidators have bigger things to worry about like selling cars and flatbed trucks. The box itself is not old, but I'm hopeful it is a full sized standard ATX.

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-05-27, 05:39:

High-end cards do look more impressive... but I personally, have always been more drawn to these mid and low tier cards, probab […]
Show full quote

RaverX wrote on 2026-05-26, 19:39:

dominusprog wrote on 2026-05-24, 15:16:

Bought this MX400 32MiB for the K6-2 build.

The attachment IMG_20260524_184212.jpg is no longer available

Nice, very nice, I'm not into mid/low-end hardware, but I do like videocards with tv tuners, and that one looks great...

High-end cards do look more impressive... but I personally, have always been more drawn to these mid and low tier cards, probably because I used a bunch of them in the past. I was very young and didn't have a job back then... so I suffered with Radeon VE... or MX 200... even SIS 315 (with a whoping 64 MB of VRAM 🤣)

Anyway, I got my new purchase today... The original Radeon.

It's a DDR model with 64MB of VRAM. I suppose it probably isn't the 180ish MHz version, but it's still one of the faster models. Adding this card to the 3850 AGP, X1950 XTX, and 9700Pro pretty much completes my collection of those premium-priced cards.... now if I could only get my hands on a reasonably priced dual-chip Rage.... Their prices have been ridiculous lately, they even outmatch Voodoo 5s at the moment.

Based on the memory chip (HY5DV651622 TC-G55) is a 64Mb DDR memory chip manufactured by Hynix and the clock speed is: 183 MHz. 😉
So, I think it's a retail version (183 MHz), faster than the OEM (166 MHz), but not as fast as the "special version" (200 MHz).

There is one Rage Maxx at ~250€:
https://retroit.hu/uzlet/ati-rage-128-pro-dual-gpu/

Anyone in the UK able to order from Serdashop? I'm trying to buy something but there is no option for "United Kingdom" in the country drop-down.

JAKra85 wrote on 2026-05-29, 09:53:

Based on the memory chip (HY5DV651622 TC-G55) is a 64Mb DDR memory chip manufactured by Hynix and the clock speed is: 183 MHz. […]
Show full quote

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-05-27, 05:39:

High-end cards do look more impressive... but I personally, have always been more drawn to these mid and low tier cards, probab […]
Show full quote

RaverX wrote on 2026-05-26, 19:39:

Nice, very nice, I'm not into mid/low-end hardware, but I do like videocards with tv tuners, and that one looks great...

High-end cards do look more impressive... but I personally, have always been more drawn to these mid and low tier cards, probably because I used a bunch of them in the past. I was very young and didn't have a job back then... so I suffered with Radeon VE... or MX 200... even SIS 315 (with a whoping 64 MB of VRAM 🤣)

Anyway, I got my new purchase today... The original Radeon.

It's a DDR model with 64MB of VRAM. I suppose it probably isn't the 180ish MHz version, but it's still one of the faster models. Adding this card to the 3850 AGP, X1950 XTX, and 9700Pro pretty much completes my collection of those premium-priced cards.... now if I could only get my hands on a reasonably priced dual-chip Rage.... Their prices have been ridiculous lately, they even outmatch Voodoo 5s at the moment.

Based on the memory chip (HY5DV651622 TC-G55) is a 64Mb DDR memory chip manufactured by Hynix and the clock speed is: 183 MHz. 😉
So, I think it's a retail version (183 MHz), faster than the OEM (166 MHz), but not as fast as the "special version" (200 MHz).

There is one Rage Maxx at ~250€:
https://retroit.hu/uzlet/ati-rage-128-pro-dual-gpu/

Thanks for the tip. 😁 That's quite a bit more sensible.... I'll keep my eye on that one. Concerning the Radeon... Yes those clock would be really good, but I still haven't got around to test it. Today is the day 😁

Edit

It works OK... 3Dmark 2001 gave 4100 points with 3 GHz Prescott which should be in the ballpark for this card and games run fine without glitches. Odd thing is GPU clock ain't recognized properly. GPUZ and ATI tool report 20 or 30 MHz core clock. HWInfo sensors and Powerstrip report 183, as it should be. I don't know why that is happening but behaviour in 3D suggests it is running fine.

Meanwhile another card came from e-bay. A sealed 3DLabs Oxygen VX1. Wasn't particularly expensive, but it seemed cool to have one.

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-05-29, 14:18:

Meanwhile another card came from e-bay. A sealed 3DLabs Oxygen VX1. Wasn't particularly expensive, but it seemed cool to have on […]
Show full quote

Meanwhile another card came from e-bay. A sealed 3DLabs Oxygen VX1. Wasn't particularly expensive, but it seemed cool to have one.

It is always fun to have boxed stuff and unboxing NOS stuff has always its charm.

I have one of these cards and they are extremely… mediocre at best. If I remember correctly it has difficulty beating TNT1 in pretty much anything as far as performance goes. Of course 3DLabs was aiming their cards more for professional use, so image quality should be good.

Anyways, I haven’t found so far any actual use for it and for late 90s box I would rather pick something from Matrox if IQ is important.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on Yesterday, 06:51:

It is always fun to have boxed stuff and unboxing NOS stuff has always its charm. […]
Show full quote

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-05-29, 14:18:

Meanwhile another card came from e-bay. A sealed 3DLabs Oxygen VX1. Wasn't particularly expensive, but it seemed cool to have on […]
Show full quote

Meanwhile another card came from e-bay. A sealed 3DLabs Oxygen VX1. Wasn't particularly expensive, but it seemed cool to have one.

It is always fun to have boxed stuff and unboxing NOS stuff has always its charm.

I have one of these cards and they are extremely… mediocre at best. If I remember correctly it has difficulty beating TNT1 in pretty much anything as far as performance goes. Of course 3DLabs was aiming their cards more for professional use, so image quality should be good.

Anyways, I haven’t found so far any actual use for it and for late 90s box I would rather pick something from Matrox if IQ is important.

Yes... this card is more like... a curiosity... I got it because it's got the same core as Permedia 3 card (as far as I know), and I was actually interested in comparing it to Permedia 2, for which I know has some horrible dithering and blending capabilities in games... 3DLabs also, has some kind of charm to it (at least for me), recently I also got and VP 560 Wildcat and I also have brand new GLoria XL from ELSA that uses 3DLabs chips. So at some point... I plan to compare their capabilities against mainstream gaming cards of the time and maybe writeup a few articles concerning those topics.

Shader_BiH wrote on 2026-05-27, 05:39:

High-end cards do look more impressive... but I personally, have always been more drawn to these mid and low tier cards, probab […]
Show full quote

RaverX wrote on 2026-05-26, 19:39:

dominusprog wrote on 2026-05-24, 15:16:

Bought this MX400 32MiB for the K6-2 build.

The attachment IMG_20260524_184212.jpg is no longer available

Nice, very nice, I'm not into mid/low-end hardware, but I do like videocards with tv tuners, and that one looks great...

High-end cards do look more impressive... but I personally, have always been more drawn to these mid and low tier cards, probably because I used a bunch of them in the past. I was very young and didn't have a job back then... so I suffered with Radeon VE... or MX 200... even SIS 315 (with a whoping 64 MB of VRAM 🤣)

Anyway, I got my new purchase today... The original Radeon.

It's a DDR model with 64MB of VRAM. I suppose it probably isn't the 180ish MHz version, but it's still one of the faster models. Adding this card to the 3850 AGP, X1950 XTX, and 9700Pro pretty much completes my collection of those premium-priced cards.... now if I could only get my hands on a reasonably priced dual-chip Rage.... Their prices have been ridiculous lately, they even outmatch Voodoo 5s at the moment.

Gorgeous Radeon 7200 DDR.

Picked up an old PC today I tough I'd completely forgotten about:

It's been sitting in my parent's attic for God knows how long. It's one of my first high(er) end builds.

CPU is a socket 939 athlon 64 X2 4800+. Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard. 2GB of kingston ram, dual XFX 7950GT Extreme Edition Passive, full tower case by Chieftec. No PSU. 320gb SATA HDD

One of the finest stock coolers from AMD fitted with heatpipes. Got one when I bought the infamous Opteron 165...good times.

I had the A8N-SLI Deluxe with the lousy NB fan, which gotten replaced by a Zalman NB47J.

Just to close the £7 liquidated PC box mention: It was actually a miniATX, which is slightly disappointing - but I do have a miniATX Athlon64 motherboard occupying a full ATX case - so I might reshuffle some systems. The box has an 250W FSP ATX PSU - but I could reshuffle again and pair it with a Socket 7. It's also full of industrial dusts and some corrosion, which makes it unsafe to switch on before a thorough cleaning. There's an SSD, an optical drive, and probably a boring i3. It was PAT tested in Birmingham in 2018, which is ironically one of the more interesting features 😁

In more exciting news I might have a GeForce 256 arrived but any reveal requires better weather as a dry heat wave is not the most sensible time for unboxing or testing.

PD2JK wrote on Yesterday, 09:36:

One of the finest stock coolers from AMD fitted with heatpipes. Got one when I bought the infamous Opteron 165...good times.

I had the A8N-SLI Deluxe with the lousy NB fan, which gotten replaced by a Zalman NB47J.

That is one good cooler. Not original to the CPU tough. Not sure the 4800+ came with a boxed cooler, it probably did, but if it's stock cooler is just the generic AMD aluminum slab with a 70mm fan on top then yeah, this AM3 Black Edition cooler is a huge upgrade.

The whole computer stinks tough. The inside is coated with a thick brown film of tar + nicotine, and despite the PSU missing, when i turned the thing on it filled my workshop with a powerful wet cigar smell. I think i used this machine back in my smoking days - used to do two packs a day easily. No idea what to wash the tar off with. Soap and alcohol aren't doing much, guess I'll try acetone.

Bought a batch of cards today, including two PCI Creative sound cards, plus a couple of cards that I didn't identify well, one PCI-E and the other PCI, one of these looks like a serial or parallel (?), the other instead I didn't quite understand what kind of card it is.
Normally I would not have considered this lot, but the seller offered me a fair price, and so I decided to accept his offer (discounted), the lot will arrive in a few days, we will see to understand something more when I have it between my legs.

PC@LIVE wrote on Yesterday, 13:43:

...plus a couple of cards that I didn't identify well, one PCI-E...

Looks like a SAS controller card.

devius wrote on Yesterday, 14:31:

PC@LIVE wrote on Yesterday, 13:43:

...plus a couple of cards that I didn't identify well, one PCI-E...

Looks like a SAS controller card.

You are right: https://www.serverblink.com/405272-004-hp-lsi … eKRShFwRMBSHppn

devius wrote on Yesterday, 14:31:

PC@LIVE wrote on Yesterday, 13:43:

...plus a couple of cards that I didn't identify well, one PCI-E...

Looks like a SAS controller card.

Ydee wrote on Yesterday, 15:09:

devius wrote on Yesterday, 14:31:

PC@LIVE wrote on Yesterday, 13:43:

...plus a couple of cards that I didn't identify well, one PCI-E...

Looks like a SAS controller card.

You are right: https://www.serverblink.com/405272-004-hp-lsi … eKRShFwRMBSHppn

Thanks to both, it looks like that card, and also a little expensive (I would say), unfortunately it cannot be used in PCs that are too dated, because it requires a PCI-E slot, which began to be seen only in the motherboards of the late 2000s and early 2010.

I bought a lot of untested graphics cards. This is the first time I've made such a purchase, and the second photo shows specifically what I've gambled on.

MattRocks wrote on Today, 10:03:

I bought a lot of untested graphics cards. This is the first time I've made such a purchase, and the second photo shows specifically what I've gambled on.

If I'm not mistaken, that's an original GeForce... with SGRAM. I have that one on my list as well... good luck with those 😁 and let us know if they push pixels as they should.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-05-21, 20:38:

Well, both. […]
Show full quote

Law212 wrote on 2026-05-21, 20:31:

Are you buying parts for a particular build or just to have?
luckily it should be somewhat easy to replace the caps

Well, both.

I'll bid on something if I think it's an upgrade on what I have. So, I did bid strategically on the GeForce2Ti because I consider the novel WinFast cooler to be an upgrade on the vanilla cooler on my other GeForce2 Ti. The cooler is somewhat historically significant because at the time the various board makers were all cloning NVIDIA reference boards and producing the same performance, so a novel cooler is one of the only differentiating qualities.

But, my interest is building plausible BBC workstations - video and audio workstations. The GeForce2 Ti does not belong in those projects. I'd select silent cards for audio monitoring, or most specialist video cards for image control.

They put those coolers on their GTS cards as well, I dont know if the cooler is an upgrade it just looks better is about it. I had to replace the fan hub on mine as when I 1st got it without thinking I grabbed it by the end and my finger pushed on the fan and broke a fin off of it. Took some time to find a replacement hub that match except for the color and then of course I had to repaste the heatsink because since the cooler is cantilevered over to one side if you press on that side it the spring pins allows it to be tilted off the die. Definitely not a cooler you want to bump once you repaste it as it might change how it is seated.

MattRocks wrote on 2026-05-21, 20:23:

Thanks. I'm off the painkillers now. […]
Show full quote

Thanks. I'm off the painkillers now.

Attached is the only relevant photo I have on my phone right now. It's one of the better items - an AGPx4 card with blower-like cooler. The rear of the blower is closed, and the fan forces air along the vanes. But, I may actually have bid on this before going into hospital, and simply forgotten what happened when.

If it worked this would be my favourite GeForce2 Ti. It looks great in the photo, but the moment it initialised in my motherboard there was a great bang as the two caps by the backplate popped. So, it's currently unusable and currently not my favourite.

I'll share more tomorrow.

Can you post up some better pics of that card - maybe in the video section of the forums. That pcb layout is unlike any I can find on the web and I'm curious. Of course back then when Leadtek was making GF2 cards they seem to have a whole crap load of board designs but that one doesnt match any of the GF2 Ultras or TIs or Pros I have seen.

MattRocks wrote on Today, 10:03:

I bought a lot of untested graphics cards. This is the first time I've made such a purchase, and the second photo shows specifically what I've gambled on.

well? it paid off?