This is kind of a mish mash. The two motherboards I literally just found, and the P3B-F was my "first" motherboard and I really cut my teeth on that when I was 14 (36 now 🤣) but I had a tualatin and a slocket then and I paid $20 for the whole setup 🤣

The CRT I paid $60 and it is perfect. But the period desk was free, the peripherals were leftovers (The intellimouse was bought at Value Village...)

The little MATX cube system was partially free partially paid for (5tb worth of free hard drives, free ddr4, retired 5600g, free GTX 1080, PSU, case) and it runs our homeserver stuff. I paid $20 for the motherboard and $20 for a CPU cooler.

The XP machine itself was 100% free. Facebook marketplace find, A64 3200+ @ 2.55ghz, 2gb of OCZ EL Platinum PC3200, modern psu (Free) and a GTX 760 and the watercooling is entirely spare parts and was also entirely free. Never crosses 60.

The loose board beside the mouse is an N64 board we found in the bags at value village and it works.

+1 Baldurs Gate

FadedSpark wrote on 2026-07-11, 01:29:

The XP machine itself was 100% free. Facebook marketplace find, A64 3200+ @ 2.55ghz, 2gb of OCZ EL Platinum PC3200, modern psu (Free) and a GTX 760 and the watercooling is entirely spare parts and was also entirely free. Never crosses 60.

nice set up and the above... cool! very nice for free!

Ydee wrote on 2026-07-11, 13:15:

+1 Baldurs Gate

I also spy DS-9 and Enterprise-A on his desk.

This guys nerd credentials are not in dispute.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2026-07-12, 19:05:

Ydee wrote on 2026-07-11, 13:15:

+1 Baldurs Gate

I also spy DS-9 and Enterprise-A on his desk.

This guys nerd credentials are not in dispute.

Yea, seems like nice, cozy boy's den 😀

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2026-07-12, 19:05:

Ydee wrote on 2026-07-11, 13:15:

+1 Baldurs Gate

I also spy DS-9 and Enterprise-A on his desk.

This guys nerd credentials are not in dispute.

Hallmark christmas ornaments. My girlfriend found them at value village. I had the Galileo as a kid and it was beat to hell after the years, speaker no longer worked, etc. I told her and she kept her eyes out forever.

She told me I needed to come buy something for her because she couldn't (She was working there at the time and they can't buy stuff for two days 🤣) but didn't tell me what it was.

I have basically a full hero ship set minus the Ent-D

Ydee wrote on 2026-07-13, 07:41:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2026-07-12, 19:05:

Ydee wrote on 2026-07-11, 13:15:

+1 Baldurs Gate

I also spy DS-9 and Enterprise-A on his desk.

This guys nerd credentials are not in dispute.

Yea, seems like nice, cozy boy's den 😀

We try hahah, GF has her profile on the windows XP machine for her stuff (Baldur's gate is actually hers!)

When for a walk and some 100 metres away from my door I just happened to see this lying on the floor.
Unfortunately almost all pins are missing...

Well, get busy with the fine wire and soldering iron, you can do it, we believe in you 🤣 🤣 🤣

Yeah that's a bit of a hard no for most of us, but a pretty amazing find so close. Closest finds for me were a curbed socket 754 system about 15 years ago a few houses away and a bought for a dollar HD5450 5 years back at a yard sale a few houses the other way.

Edit: Oh yes, there was also a three quarters of a s775 system unit, run over by a snowplow on the block over a few years back, that might have come inside the same circle. The case was twisted and missing panels, but the board, celeron CPU, heatsink, drives seemed to survive.

Just clean it up and use it as a display piece

Saw this at a flea market last week:

While I found it intriguing seeing such an old model, I had no intention to purchase it: weighed like 20 kg or so and almost as large as a modern ATX casing.Just how did it come to Taiwan?

Interesting find! That screen is cake...but like, literally cake 😁

Got these today for free on Freecycle:

Unknown if any of it works. Was stored in loft for years. It appears to be a HP branded Pentium and SMC branded Pentium III if case labels are correct. Monitors are IBM and Time. I am assume the HP is going to be a proprietary PSU so probably no choice but to use it and hope for the best. The SMC is probably standard ATX.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Yesterday, 14:41:

Got these today for free on Freecycle: […]
Show full quote

Got these today for free on Freecycle:

The attachment 20261101_142816.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20261101_142941.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20261101_142946.jpg is no longer available

Unknown if any of it works. Was stored in loft for years. It appears to be a HP branded Pentium and SMC branded Pentium III if case labels are correct. Monitors are IBM and Time. I am assume the HP is going to be a proprietary PSU so probably no choice but to use it and hope for the best. The SMC is probably standard ATX.

Is the Pentium a socket 4?
Full tower has P-II and P-III stickers, it was upgraded. My guess is 500MHz.

Nexxen wrote on Yesterday, 16:57:

Is the Pentium a socket 4?
Full tower has P-II and P-III stickers, it was upgraded. My guess is 500MHz.

Looks to be socket 7, but with a Pentium Overdrive in it? Not heard of that. I thought Pentium overdrives were for upgrading 486s. Could that be an MMX CPU in a socket that doesn't have dual voltage support?

Also it has an odd aztech soundcard that has an input for TVAudio that is linked to another card that has an external "ANT" socket (presumably for antenna):

Also a separate TV tuner card:

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Yesterday, 18:17:

Looks to be socket 7, but with a Pentium Overdrive in it? Not heard of that. I thought Pentium overdrives were for upgrading 4 […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on Yesterday, 16:57:

Is the Pentium a socket 4?
Full tower has P-II and P-III stickers, it was upgraded. My guess is 500MHz.

Looks to be socket 7, but with a Pentium Overdrive in it? Not heard of that. I thought Pentium overdrives were for upgrading 486s. Could that be an MMX CPU in a socket that doesn't have dual voltage support?

The attachment 20261101_180336.jpg is no longer available

Also it has an odd aztech soundcard that has an input for TVAudio that is linked to another card that has an external "ANT" socket (presumably for antenna):

The attachment 20261101_180252.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20261101_180300.jpg is no longer available

Also a separate TV tuner card:

The attachment 20261101_175953.jpg is no longer available

Probably yes, I don't see a populated VRM. The sokcet is missing completely.
I hoped for a socket 4 😀

Could this PC have been used to watch/record "hacked" frequencies? Like old satellite cards.
I have no idea of what I'm looking at.

You would have probably found a smart card reader and also a different TV card for that.

I would think the Philips chip on the small card would be an FM receiver.

Not sure what this guy used it for but he had some kind of CRT also, but not with any kind of input that I have seen before. Possibly some kind of professional display. It was round and similar size to a midi connector.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Yesterday, 18:17:

Also it has an odd aztech soundcard that has an input for TVAudio that is linked to another card that has an external "ANT" socket (presumably for antenna):

BitWrangler wrote on Yesterday, 18:47:

I would think the Philips chip on the small card would be an FM receiver.

That's definitively a FM receiver.
Do you need software for it?

RetroPCCupboard wrote on Yesterday, 14:41:

image of Packard bell
It appears to be a HP branded Pentium

Packard bell scam still working after all those years! 😀 https://dfarq.homeip.net/happened-packard-bell/
"In 1986, Packard Bell was the name of a defunct manufacturer of TVs and radios. Founded in 1926 or 1933 depending on how you count it, it survived until 1968 when it sold out to Teledyne.

In the 1980s the brand still had some name recognition on its own. But look at the other names it resembled: Pacific Bell, the telephone company. Hewlett Packard, the computer company. Packard, the defunct maker of luxury cars.

It sounded like an old-line company making quality products, which was what Beny Alagem counted on. He even put the slogan “America grew up listening to us. It still does,” on its early marketing literature.

People always confused them for something they weren’t, and for a time, it helped. “I don’t know about other brands,” one customer said to me when I was selling computers in 1994, pointing at Compaq and Dell. “But Packard Bell, that’s an old company.” Even my coworkers routinely thought Packard Bell was related to HP or to Packard, the car maker."

its PB640, intel FX with async cache. Atlest this PB does have L2 cache, some didnt 😀 https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/intel- … ityAliasId=1305

Back in 2001 I had a coworker that had one of those Packard Bell's and I upgraded it to Windows 98 for him. That's where I encountered the CDROM drive being controlled by the soundcard rather than an IDE for the first time (ugh). I upgraded it to the Evergreen/Winchip 200 MHz CPU that I was no longer using.