BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-22, 17:35:

Nice! You're gonna need that kidney if you haven't got a dual board yet 🤣

The idea is to put them in an HP Kayak XU800. The biggest hurdle to take is getting Tualatin microcode into the BIOS, which can't be edited because the ROM file is encrypted. (If someone thinks I'm mistaken, please say so!)

Hmm is it some version of that Little Ben chip in the way I wonder? Though should not be super tough, given that they thought DES and CSS were invulnerable in 1998.

Edit: Just thunk, maybe do an end run around it and plant an ABit/Asus/Supermicro BIOS on a ROM on the ISA bus 🤣
Though further thinking along that line, should figure out a troubleshooting card, bare minimum AT class BIOS, just uses standard addresses basic modes for VGA, HDD etc, just enough to get a system going and find WTF is going on with it.

I picked up a few USB media keyboards at the thrift store today, along with an unopened and unused Adaptec USB Connect PCI card, which is just the sort that you'd use with Windows 9x/XP systems.

oldGPU wrote on 2026-10-21, 03:25:

classic_cola wrote on 2026-10-20, 21:49:

Bought an "Omega" (UK OEM) branded socket 7 PC.
[. . .]
So far I've added a CompactFlash reader

Great condition! What speeds do you get on the CF reader?

Good question, haven't tested CF speeds yet. Was delighted with the condition! The only small complaint I had was that in shipping, one of the plastic hooks next to the socket had snapped off, the ones that the cooler retention bracket clips on to. Fortunately there are two hooks each side, and seems okay on the one good hook so far.

I guess after 30 years, some of the plastics get a bit brittle.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-09, 17:40:

Curse those sneaky underhanded seller offers that lowball you into purchase 🤣 🤣 🤣

So I got a 30 piece lot coming in, nothing unicorn in it, not sure seller is experienced handling PC hardware though, so hope it doesn't end up more than 30 pieces by the time it gets here. It's a bit of a roulette lot, and kind of a spread from mid 90s to mid teens. If 2 of the pieces work, great, it paid for the lot plus $60, another and we're up to 100, 2 others 150, another 5, $250, the other 20 are probably $10 average "good to have around" stuff, there's about 5 that I wouldn't have bothered with though 256MB DDR, modem, etc.

Yes this is a teaser, only got a "what I think it is" on a lot of stuff rather than positive ID so it's a bit speculative until I have it in hand and can ID more definitely.

Well, I have ended up a bit disappointed here. It was a parts/as is lot, but somewhere between the seller taking pics, and it getting here, something happened to it. The box it arrived in was fairly crisp, and it was semi swaddled in large bubble, bubble wrap. It was a general thrift store sending it, so I knew they weren't gonna be all that good with computer parts. However, some 50% of the lot is done for, cracked boards, lifted components, and scrapes like it was kicked around the floor, not scrapes like it jiggled a bit wrapped up in a crisp box. There are also bracket deformations that seem improbable, given the amount of movement that didn't happen in the sides of the box it arrived in.

It seems a bit like UPS store wrapping, with the swaddle of large bubble wrap and the type of box with no vendor note on it. IDK if they dropped it off and the UPS store kicked it round the floor before packing, or it got reboxed after United Parcel Smashers burst it and kicked it around the floor, stood on it and drove over it with a towmotor somewhere along the way. I say floor because some of the scratches seem a little gritty, also multisized, circuit boards scrape back to back and it plows component lead sized furrows, gritty surface scrapes and you get a huge variety of scratch sizes and depths.

I've had stuff packed worse than this through regular parcel mails before and i) the box was in worse shape for less internal damage and ii) the damage was usually slight bracket tweaks and a scuffed off capacitor or two, not whole BGA packages shaved off..... and not in the box. i.e. there's some parts missing that seem too big to have escaped out of the minor corner gaps.

Anyway, it was a fairly unusual lot to me, because it had a high proportion of things I would use, so I'm picking through everything real careful to figure out if enough things survived I would have paid $10-15 in the baggie for at a local thrift that I am still going to want to keep. It's just I didn't make out awesome on it and it's sad to see stuff carelessly broken.

So far, hopeful survivors, ATI Expert 98 PCI 8MB, Radeon HD6570, AWE64 ISA, tweaked bracket though, 2x 4 port PVR cards I wanted for security cams, maybe 2 of the 4GB DDR, 2 PCI riser, 8 port SAS/SATA, 2 port SATA...

Definitely pooched: Asus 1050GT 2gb, half the RAM modules, dual port gigabit NIC.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-22, 22:32:

Well, I have ended up a bit disappointed here. It was a parts/as is lot, but somewhere between the seller taking pics, and it ge […]
Show full quote

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-09, 17:40:

Curse those sneaky underhanded seller offers that lowball you into purchase 🤣 🤣 🤣

So I got a 30 piece lot coming in, nothing unicorn in it, not sure seller is experienced handling PC hardware though, so hope it doesn't end up more than 30 pieces by the time it gets here. It's a bit of a roulette lot, and kind of a spread from mid 90s to mid teens. If 2 of the pieces work, great, it paid for the lot plus $60, another and we're up to 100, 2 others 150, another 5, $250, the other 20 are probably $10 average "good to have around" stuff, there's about 5 that I wouldn't have bothered with though 256MB DDR, modem, etc.

Yes this is a teaser, only got a "what I think it is" on a lot of stuff rather than positive ID so it's a bit speculative until I have it in hand and can ID more definitely.

Well, I have ended up a bit disappointed here. It was a parts/as is lot, but somewhere between the seller taking pics, and it getting here, something happened to it. The box it arrived in was fairly crisp, and it was semi swaddled in large bubble, bubble wrap. It was a general thrift store sending it, so I knew they weren't gonna be all that good with computer parts. However, some 50% of the lot is done for, cracked boards, lifted components, and scrapes like it was kicked around the floor, not scrapes like it jiggled a bit wrapped up in a crisp box. There are also bracket deformations that seem improbable, given the amount of movement that didn't happen in the sides of the box it arrived in.

It seems a bit like UPS store wrapping, with the swaddle of large bubble wrap and the type of box with no vendor note on it. IDK if they dropped it off and the UPS store kicked it round the floor before packing, or it got reboxed after United Parcel Smashers burst it and kicked it around the floor, stood on it and drove over it with a towmotor somewhere along the way. I say floor because some of the scratches seem a little gritty, also multisized, circuit boards scrape back to back and it plows component lead sized furrows, gritty surface scrapes and you get a huge variety of scratch sizes and depths.

I've had stuff packed worse than this through regular parcel mails before and i) the box was in worse shape for less internal damage and ii) the damage was usually slight bracket tweaks and a scuffed off capacitor or two, not whole BGA packages shaved off..... and not in the box. i.e. there's some parts missing that seem too big to have escaped out of the minor corner gaps.

Anyway, it was a fairly unusual lot to me, because it had a high proportion of things I would use, so I'm picking through everything real careful to figure out if enough things survived I would have paid $10-15 in the baggie for at a local thrift that I am still going to want to keep. It's just I didn't make out awesome on it and it's sad to see stuff carelessly broken.

So far, hopeful survivors, ATI Expert 98 PCI 8MB, Radeon HD6570, AWE64 ISA, tweaked bracket though, 2x 4 port PVR cards I wanted for security cams, maybe 2 of the 4GB DDR, 2 PCI riser, 8 port SAS/SATA, 2 port SATA...

Definitely pooched: Asus 1050GT 2gb, half the RAM modules, dual port gigabit NIC.

That's rough man. You saw it coming yourself - a seller not familiar with computer parts probably isn't familiar with making them 'UPS proof' - where you assume that the courier is going to play football with the box at the depot.

FWIW, I bought a PC from eBay about a year ago, and the guy sent it with no box or protection, just wrapped the whole thing in brown paper and handed it to the courier. It was almost completely destroyed, as I unwrapped it, plastic was pouring everywhere. The GPU, which was a chunky GTX 1080 had flown of the PCIe port because he'd never screwed it in, and bounced around inside the chassis breaking capacitors and causing havoc.

Hope you can salvage some goodies.

So the Asus HD6570 gets to a desktop fine, as far as I tested ATM, yeah it's a $15 card, but has been hard to find locally, and I want it to mess with Dual Graphics with an A6 or A8 APU. Another card that came in a HD4350 I had some idea of trying with AM2+ chipset graphics in ATI/AMD hybrid graphics, but not quite sure it's a match. Though all in all the hybrid seems to be lagging the era more than the dual graphics iteration does. Anyway, HD 4350 struggled to a desktop. Seems to have output problems, monitor had trouble syncing on it and there's weird banding. It's about the least marked up of the cards, so assume it was pre-existing electric gremlin, maybe the 27.x crystal has gone out of whack. The 8300GS I am not going to bother testing, no heatsink on it, and I don't need one of these. Picked out the least battered 4GB modules try, inconclusive, they're DDR3L and not sure the motherboard likes them. The next 2 didn't seem to want to boot, though not sure if they might stand a bake as they were flexed a bit. A 2GB module I didn't really care about seems to work, but I am still suspicious of it. For some reason can't locate a stick with memtest on. Swear it was on one of the Lubuntu 18 sticks, does it only show up in legacy boot mode or something? IDK... Anyway, that's kinda the limit of easily testable on what's on the bench at the moment, unless I stick the PCI riser in it and see what PCI IDs come up when I stick the PCI cards in. It's a left hand riser, so one extra slot on your mATX in a big box, I can't believe how many 32bit slots there isn't these days, one or nil. That be why I was wanting one... now of course I came up with something that needs 3 PCI 32bits 🤣

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-10-08, 13:46:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-08, 13:43:

Good luck with the HD7770. Haven't done much with mine, but I have had a HD7750 longer. Now that has refused to work on a couple of boards, common factor might be that they are PCIe 1.0 so maybe not a card for 754, 939, Netburst era systems. I don't have the figures to hand or embrained, but PCIe 1.0 was particularly weak on the initialization power available at 1x, and the GPUs need to bootstrap off that to request full power and extra PCIe lanes. Anyway, just a thing to point out that if you haven't tried the previous HD7770 on a higher PCIe version, you maybe haven't tried them.

The two dead ones are dead Jim, they won’t post on any boards I have for testing, Z97, Z68, x58 and my 754 board all refuse to post with them.

I didnt bake them, not sure that would help though, open to trying weird stuff with them since they are dead.

1) Wash. Soap+water+toothbrush, or dishwasher without soap. You'd be surprised how many cards I've revived from dead with only a wash.
2) Inspect. Look for bad looking things. Upload pics.
3) Multimeter! Look for shorts. 12v, 5v, 3.3v. Edge and molex. check fuses/0ohm resistors.

Baking is extremely hamfisted and did sort of work occasionally for two very specific periods:
The early days of lead-free solder before the process was tuned to perfection, and TSMC "bumpgate" ~7800/xbox360 era.

It's not likely to work.
It's likely to make more faults IF you ever try and do it properly.

myne wrote on Yesterday, 03:58:

1) Wash. Soap+water+toothbrush, or dishwasher without soap. You'd be surprised how many cards I've revived from dead with only a […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-10-08, 13:46:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-08, 13:43:

Good luck with the HD7770. Haven't done much with mine, but I have had a HD7750 longer. Now that has refused to work on a couple of boards, common factor might be that they are PCIe 1.0 so maybe not a card for 754, 939, Netburst era systems. I don't have the figures to hand or embrained, but PCIe 1.0 was particularly weak on the initialization power available at 1x, and the GPUs need to bootstrap off that to request full power and extra PCIe lanes. Anyway, just a thing to point out that if you haven't tried the previous HD7770 on a higher PCIe version, you maybe haven't tried them.

The two dead ones are dead Jim, they won’t post on any boards I have for testing, Z97, Z68, x58 and my 754 board all refuse to post with them.

I didnt bake them, not sure that would help though, open to trying weird stuff with them since they are dead.

1) Wash. Soap+water+toothbrush, or dishwasher without soap. You'd be surprised how many cards I've revived from dead with only a wash.
2) Inspect. Look for bad looking things. Upload pics.
3) Multimeter! Look for shorts. 12v, 5v, 3.3v. Edge and molex. check fuses/0ohm resistors.

Baking is extremely hamfisted and did sort of work occasionally for two very specific periods:
The early days of lead-free solder before the process was tuned to perfection, and TSMC "bumpgate" ~7800/xbox360 era.

It's not likely to work.
It's likely to make more faults IF you ever try and do it properly.

I wash mine with rubbing alcohol. Pros/cons of soap+water?

Does washing only remove conducting grime that might be bridging contacts, or does it do more than that?

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 12:12:

myne wrote on Yesterday, 03:58:

1) Wash. Soap+water+toothbrush, or dishwasher without soap. You'd be surprised how many cards I've revived from dead with only a […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-10-08, 13:46:

The two dead ones are dead Jim, they won’t post on any boards I have for testing, Z97, Z68, x58 and my 754 board all refuse to post with them.

I didnt bake them, not sure that would help though, open to trying weird stuff with them since they are dead.

1) Wash. Soap+water+toothbrush, or dishwasher without soap. You'd be surprised how many cards I've revived from dead with only a wash.
2) Inspect. Look for bad looking things. Upload pics.
3) Multimeter! Look for shorts. 12v, 5v, 3.3v. Edge and molex. check fuses/0ohm resistors.

Baking is extremely hamfisted and did sort of work occasionally for two very specific periods:
The early days of lead-free solder before the process was tuned to perfection, and TSMC "bumpgate" ~7800/xbox360 era.

It's not likely to work.
It's likely to make more faults IF you ever try and do it properly.

I wash mine with rubbing alcohol. Pros/cons of soap+water?

Does washing only remove conducting grime that might be bridging contacts, or does it do more than that?

Rubbing alcohol doesn't remove dirt or particles, it just dissolves oils and adhesives and then evaporates, leaving whatever was dissolved behind. A board scrubbed clean with soap and water (and dried properly!) can look almost brand new if it is in otherwise good condition. Just using alcohol will make them look cleaner when wet, but they'll still be cloudy and dirty looking after they dry.

Alcohol will also destroy pretty much any labels, stickers or markings other than screen printing, so you have to be extra careful with it. I only use alcohol to clean off flux or sticker residue, and even then the card usually benefits from a wash afterward.

Water is the universal solvent.
While I don't expect it to dissolve much in a few minutes, I would expect micron scale dendrites that might be growing from lead free solder to be broken, possibly removed.
Yes it's a real problem. I may be remembering the name wrong. Think electrical staligtites/staligtites.

It's also just plain great at cleaning. They use lots of it in chip and board fabs.

The only 2 absolute rules: pull batteries, dry thoroughly.
Alcohol is perfect to speed up drying.

myne wrote on Yesterday, 13:10:

Water is the universal solvent. While I don't expect it to dissolve much in a few minutes, I would expect micron scale dendrites […]
Show full quote

Water is the universal solvent.
While I don't expect it to dissolve much in a few minutes, I would expect micron scale dendrites that might be growing from lead free solder to be broken, possibly removed.
Yes it's a real problem. I may be remembering the name wrong. Think electrical staligtites/staligtites.

It's also just plain great at cleaning. They use lots of it in chip and board fabs.

The only 2 absolute rules: pull batteries, dry thoroughly.
Alcohol is perfect to speed up drying.

If I was going to do the washing thing Id rinse it with Demin water and 99% ISO to rinse off the soap residue and ISO to drive off any water under the components faster, then leave it in a warm dry place for a day or two if it has a lot of ICs like a motherboard.

Overly cautious .. perhaps, but have done it before to a number of dirty working motherboards and GPUs previously and Id rather take a little extra time with the drying. (The ISO and Demin can be reused a lot before they need to be replaced, I just filter the water back into its bottle)

I just use normal tap water, and preferably 4+ hours in full sun

ymmv

I was thinking whisker was only the colloquial name but apparently an official term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)

myne wrote on Yesterday, 13:18:

I just use normal tap water, and preferably 4+ hours in full sun

ymmv

The tap water here isn't great .. full of minerals ..has killed the hot water system twice now and we are fighting a losing battle with the old copper pipes. But the sun is plentiful here being Australia along with warm days so finding a warm room isn't hard.

BitWrangler wrote on Yesterday, 13:19:

I was thinking whisker was only the colloquial name but apparently an official term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)

https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/blogs/2024/t … es-in-soldering

I think wiki needs attention.
Fortunately, my memory doesn't yet...

myne wrote on Yesterday, 13:26:

https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/blogs/2024/t … es-in-soldering […]
Show full quote

BitWrangler wrote on Yesterday, 13:19:

I was thinking whisker was only the colloquial name but apparently an official term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)

https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/blogs/2024/t … es-in-soldering

I think wiki needs attention.
Fortunately, my memory doesn't yet...

TIN WHISKERS !

From the Tin/Lead solder

I am thinking they are similar but related things, the dendrites creeping along surfaces and the whiskers going into free air.

Whatever you want to call them, I think if water is going to dissolve anything at all in a few minutes, it would be them.

Ozzuneoj wrote on Yesterday, 12:55:

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 12:12:

myne wrote on Yesterday, 03:58:

1) Wash. Soap+water+toothbrush, or dishwasher without soap. You'd be surprised how many cards I've revived from dead with only a […]
Show full quote

1) Wash. Soap+water+toothbrush, or dishwasher without soap. You'd be surprised how many cards I've revived from dead with only a wash.
2) Inspect. Look for bad looking things. Upload pics.
3) Multimeter! Look for shorts. 12v, 5v, 3.3v. Edge and molex. check fuses/0ohm resistors.

Baking is extremely hamfisted and did sort of work occasionally for two very specific periods:
The early days of lead-free solder before the process was tuned to perfection, and TSMC "bumpgate" ~7800/xbox360 era.

It's not likely to work.
It's likely to make more faults IF you ever try and do it properly.

I wash mine with rubbing alcohol. Pros/cons of soap+water?

Does washing only remove conducting grime that might be bridging contacts, or does it do more than that?

Rubbing alcohol doesn't remove dirt or particles, it just dissolves oils and adhesives and then evaporates, leaving whatever was dissolved behind. A board scrubbed clean with soap and water (and dried properly!) can look almost brand new if it is in otherwise good condition. Just using alcohol will make them look cleaner when wet, but they'll still be cloudy and dirty looking after they dry.

Alcohol will also destroy pretty much any labels, stickers or markings other than screen printing, so you have to be extra careful with it. I only use alcohol to clean off flux or sticker residue, and even then the card usually benefits from a wash afterward.

I've even found sometimes that isopropyl alcohol can take some types of paint off, that was a nasty surprise while trying to clean a volume dial that was crackly and the paint around it started coming off.

Personally I use rubbing alcohol quite often for the drying step after washing, since it's great at displacing water from underneath chips.

The other day, I spotted an interesting seller that had some new old stock Thinkpad stuff, which I got notified of with a saved search. When someone is selling new-old-stock stuff they often have other interesting items so I thought I'd have a look and they had this odd soundcard that I'd never heard of...

- oh it has SCSI, that's kind of neat
- hang on, the sound card has what looks like RAM???
- uh, the box says 'gold sound compatible'. Does that mean what I think it means???

Google kind of failed with finding pictures of it but it's mentioned in a post on vogons somewhere regarding the adlib gold and it has a page here with pictures of the card: https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Cardinal_SOUNDstudio
It's an Adlib Gold, SCSI card and video card all squished onto one ISA card, though the picture is misleading and the video card parts are omitted on this SOUNDstudio card, you need the SOUNDvision for all 3.

I had to take pictures before opening this still new and sealed box from probably 1992 - the seller did a great job and packed it in a much larger box with padding so it wasn't harmed during the trip. Got to sort out a computer for this to go into now - a real adlib gold compatible card, wow!

Wanna see something crazy?

This wasn't me that got them but they listed them after I bought this Cardinal SOUNDstudio card. Then they listed up a third Cardinal SOUNDstudio card. Each time the seller puts the price a bit higher but uh, compared to what I have seen adlib gold cards go for I think this is pretty interesting 😁 I wonder how many they have?