EvieSigma wrote on 2026-05-15, 23:11:

An extremely good motherboard, turns out... […]
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douglar wrote on 2026-05-15, 01:24:

EvieSigma wrote on 2026-05-14, 21:40:

The E-waste bins at work typically only have crap LCD monitors, peripherals, and broken laser printers. So when some stuff that very much ISN'T that got dumped today, I grabbed as much as I could!

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I love that style of ~1994 AT case. Those were by favorite. Looks just like my 486-100 VLB system.

What's inside?

An extremely good motherboard, turns out...

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Haven't figured out the CPU yet but I imagine it's probably a K6 or K6-2.

Crap, do I envy parts with less tight-arsed disposal legislation.
Here in Germany, junk yard staff beat you with tennis rackets if you come to close to those things.
Some crap about privacy commitments, regarding hard drives.
Also, to enrich some Bulgarian buddy of theirs.

The ALI chipset for SS7 was supposed to be quicker and have better compatibility, as opposed to the VIA offerings.
Going by the optics, that board is at least the second inside that case.
The PSU makes sense as the K6-x line was maybe the first to have that "you'll need a really huge new PSU" craze attached to it.
(If not Pentium III or Athlon).

Is that ATI card anything to write home about? I used to dismiss those als "well, ATI, generic low-end junk."

More importantly, what's with that full-lengh ISA card? That certainly wasn't anything consumer/retail?

I think the long isa card is one of those multimedia modem cards that may have advertised that it supported video conferencing. As long as your idea of that was an animated postage stamp. So I am saying it's a soundcard and modem in one, may or may not have extra hardware video codecs on.

Cuttoon wrote on 2026-05-17, 00:45:

Crap, do I envy parts with less tight-arsed disposal legislation. Here in Germany, junk yard staff beat you with tennis rackets […]
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EvieSigma wrote on 2026-05-15, 23:11:

An extremely good motherboard, turns out... […]
Show full quote

douglar wrote on 2026-05-15, 01:24:

I love that style of ~1994 AT case. Those were by favorite. Looks just like my 486-100 VLB system.

What's inside?

An extremely good motherboard, turns out...

The attachment PXL_20260515_224702636.jpg is no longer available

The attachment PXL_20260515_224706396.jpg is no longer available

Haven't figured out the CPU yet but I imagine it's probably a K6 or K6-2.

Crap, do I envy parts with less tight-arsed disposal legislation.
Here in Germany, junk yard staff beat you with tennis rackets if you come to close to those things.
Some crap about privacy commitments, regarding hard drives.
Also, to enrich some Bulgarian buddy of theirs.

The ALI chipset for SS7 was supposed to be quicker and have better compatibility, as opposed to the VIA offerings.
Going by the optics, that board is at least the second inside that case.
The PSU makes sense as the K6-x line was maybe the first to have that "you'll need a really huge new PSU" craze attached to it.
(If not Pentium III or Athlon).

Is that ATI card anything to write home about? I used to dismiss those als "well, ATI, generic low-end junk."

More importantly, what's with that full-lengh ISA card? That certainly wasn't anything consumer/retail?

I agree that the board is not the original for this system. It was probably upgraded somewhere between 1999-2000 (ALi chipset is dated mid '99), which is kind of crazy to see in a system with a 5 1/4 floppy and no CD-ROM. Even crazier is the Antec PSU, which looks like a BP\Basiq Power unit from some time between 2005-2010 (notice the embossed logo).

Someone was either tinkering with this for retro uses or, more likely, it spent many years serving a specific purpose. I'm guessing that big long card is the reason it was kept running this long, and it is something that would only really be applicable to a business. The fact that it still has a ~100-500MB Maxtor hard drive from the early 90s reinforces the idea that it was always doing the same thing and never needed to be expanded... it just needed to keep working, likely with a DOS installation that runs some software to make use of that card.

"Nothing" is happening this weekend because my collection is in my loft, we're mid-heatwave right now, my loft way too hot, and air-conditioning is being setup tomorrow (hopefully).

So, instead of fixing anything that needs fixing, I browsed Freecycle for random parts. None of the resulting box is obviously relevant to my core AGP-era collection save for the ever-useful SATA cables, MOLEX to SATA adapters, and a VIVO breakout cable.

Among the bundled parts that I felt obliged to relieve a freegler of:

• USB-powered shielded speakers of a now forgotten "William" brand. These are easy to discard. But, they also mirror a particular moment in living memory when practically every employee was commuting with a corporate laptop equipped with sufferable tinny speakers. That was the brief moment when USB-powered external speakers meant something, and their flat four cone setup looks intentionally designed - currently untested, of course.
• PS/2 EZ-7000 beige keyboard. This is another easy to discard part. The OEM chassis is more consistent than the various trade names printed on them (Google images attached). But, these keyboards also mirror a very particular day in living memory - and in that day was one brief moment when endless scrolling was emerging and still seemed like a good idea.

They are both too bulky for my liking, but we can't reinvent history.

I've also been gifted an Apple Mac PCIe Radeon, an assortment of CPUs, and boxes of memory. Much of this is newer than my collection, but there is a respectable Athlon XP and a Pentium III in the mix. Some of the memory will be useful to me if it still works.

I'll use this post to reunite the drivers with the keyboard image for the benefit of anyone seeking them through Google. It seems to be the same package for EZ-3000, EZ-7000, EZ-8000 and that makes them discoverable on Archive.org

Got this 1999 ThinkPad 390E from facebook marketplace for free! The owner wasn't able to fix it and is moving out of the town soon. He was originally selling this for $30 but no one showed any interest for weeks so he just kindly gave me for free.
Took a night trying to fix it. Turns out the original power adapter was broken. But the more tricky thing is it has supervisor password and HDD password. I did a bit of research from google and youtube and managed to clear the supervisor password (it is my first time trying to do this kind of repairing and super fun). Then I took 256+128MB SDRAM and 30G IDE drive from a dead T21 with Antix Linux installed on that drive. It just boots straight to Linux and I will call this a success! It is in very good condition too.

dc93 wrote on 2026-05-24, 19:24:

Got this 1999 ThinkPad 390E from facebook marketplace for free! The owner wasn't able to fix it and is moving out of the town soon. He was originally selling this for $30 but no one showed any interest for weeks so he just kindly gave me for free.
Took a night trying to fix it. Turns out the original power adapter was broken. But the more tricky thing is it has supervisor password and HDD password. I did a bit of research from google and youtube and managed to clear the supervisor password (it is my first time trying to do this kind of repairing and super fun). Then I took 256+128MB SDRAM and 30G IDE drive from a dead T21 with Antix Linux installed on that drive. It just boots straight to Linux and I will call this a success! It is in very good condition too.

nice rescue! always goof to hear how some machine was returned to use 😀