As time goes on, it seems like I have more and more "rare" items, with "rare" being something difficult to obtain at present day, or at sound price. By the way, I think we had this same topic a few years back.

Starting with CPUs:

Cyrix 5x86-133/4x. Two of these. They actually run stable at 3.6 and 3.7 V.
Cyrix 5x86-120/4x. These will not run at 133 MHz stable.
Cyrix 5x86-120/3x with factory green heatsink. Usually you find the -100's with the heatsinks and the -120's bare.
Cyrix 5x86-100/4x. A few of these. These were Cyrix 5x86-133/4x chips which failed qualification at 133 MHz.
Cyrix 5x86-100QP, in the QFP package rather than PGA
Cyrix 5x86-80GP. Two of these. Not common at all. I wonder if they are stable at 100 MHz?
IBM 5x86-100 in the QFP package which run at 133 MHz (2x66).
AMD Am486 DX4-90. For systems with a 30 MHz FSB.
AMD Am486 DX2-66V16BGC with a mid 2002 datecode. These will run at 2x66 (133 MHz).
Intel 486 DX2-66 with L1 write-back cache (not write-through). SX955.
UMC Green CPU U5SX 486-40. The 40 MHz speed rating is getting harder to find.
Intel Pentium Overdrive 83 for socket 3 which works at 100 MHz without modification.

TI 486 SXL2-50
Cyrix DRx2 33/66GP

Cyrix MII-433GP - Ever seen one on eBay? Neither have I.
Various Cyrix MII-400GP
A 2.2 V Cyrix MII-366GP - usually the 2.2 V chips were the MII-400. The MII-366 were usually 2.9 V.
Silver-top Cyrix MII-333GP 2.2 V
Cyrix 6x86-P90*GP 80 MHz - the original Cyrix 6x86 - if you thought your Cyrix 6x86 gets hot, try out this baby.
Various Cyrix-VIA chips. Perhaps some are rare now, depending on the speed.
FPGA form of the Cyrix/National Geode GX1-300P - it was very hard to find, though not very useful.
Winchip2 W2A -266
Winchip2 W2B - 200
Winchip2 - 240 - Winchip2's aren't very easy to find anymore, especially the W2A, W2B, and the W2 in the 240 MHz speed. There's a 200 MHz W2 selling for $15 on eBay though. The original Winchips (none-2's) are easy enough to find.
AMD K6-III/450AFX - non-plus K6-3, and of the lower 2.2 V variety.
AMD K5 PR200 - Think you can overclock you P166 to 133 MHz? Forget it! These chips only seem to up-clock 4 MHz at best.
RiSE mP6 333 engineering sample
RiSE mp6 266 - these are actually becoming more expensive and harder to find working chips
Intel PIII 1100 for 100 MHz FSB socket 370, matched pair
Intel PIII 1000 for 100 MHz FSB slot 1, matched pair
AMD Opteron 180

For motherboards,

Tyan S1598 - Super Socket 7 with 2 MB of L2 cache on board
MSI MS-9105 Pro266TD Master LR - the most stable dual Tualatin board w/AGP that I've tested.
Biostar MB-8433UUD - stable UMC-based PCI 486 board - not hard to find, but the prices have become outrageous
Gigabyte GA-5486AL - fast ALi-based PCI 486 board
DTK PKM-0033S, Chaintech 486SPM, MSI MS-4144 - fast/stable SiS-based PCI 486 boards which accept 1024 K of cache and can be modded for a PS/2 mouse
Gigabyte GA-486AM - one of the better UMC-based PCI 486 boards which accept 1024 K cache. The other common one which can take 1024 K is the HOT-433, which is junk in my opinion.
Asus-VL-I-486SV2GX4 - all around best VLB 486 motherboard. Not rare, but becoming scarce.
AMI Mark V Baby Screamer - very fast/stable VLSI-based 386 board.
Chaintech 340SCD - very fast/stable SiS Rabbit based 386 board.
Tyan Tiger100 S1832DL and Dell Precision Workstation 410 motherboards. Very well made and stable dual Slot 1 systems.
ECS P5GX-M - Best Cyrix MediaGX motherboard. Once plentiful on eBay, they have vanished.

For graphic cards,

ATI Mach64 VLB with 2 MB
S3 Vision 968 VLB card with 4 MB
S3 Trio VLB card with 2 MB or is it 4 MB? Forgot.
ATI Mach64 ISA with 2 MB
Diamond Speedstar 64 ISA with 2 MB - CL-GD5434
Photon Torpedo ISA with 2 MB - CL-GD5434. This card has a clearer image than the Diamond card with certain DOS resolutions. I use the Diamond VGA BIOS on the Photon Torpedo. There is one of these on eBay for $181 USD.
TSENG Labs ET4000/w32i with 2 MB. None on eBay right now? Surprising.
Voodoo3 3000 PCI (&AGP of course). Desirable, but not really rare.
Matrox Parhelia 256 PCI. Uncommon and expensive for the most part.
Nvidia Quadro FX600 PCI. Probably the fastest native PCI graphics card and impossible to find.
3DLabs Oxygen VX1 PCI with 32 MB - not terribly exciting, but hard to find in the PCI form factor.

Other,

3Com 3C515-TX - this is a 100 mbit ISA ethernet card. At least twice as fast as 10 mbit ISA ethernet cards. Rare and pricey. There are some less costly ones from Intel and IBM though.
NEC XR385 -These have vanished on eBay.
Adaptec AHA-2842A - a VLB SCSI card which actually works with your CPU's L1 cache enabled. Get one while you still can.
Acard AEC-7720U - Expensive solution for using IDE hard drives and CD-ROMs on your SCSI controller

I have tonnes of other motherboards, CPUs, etc, but I have tried to narrow down what I think are rare, uncommon, or overly expensive items today. This was off the top of my head, so I'm sure I've missed quite a bit.

Every 20+ years old piece of hardware in its original packaging should be considered rare

I have that same Diamond SpeedStar64 2000 box with card. Got mine NIB, but was disappointed when the display quality wasn't up to that of the Photon Torpedo.

What is in that Cyrix 586 GX Lite box? CPU only, or motherboard? If board, what model?

It's a not so high quality Media GX motherboard Bought these (retro) hardware today

Interesting that a PC Chips board came in a Cyrix branded box.

As far as I know, no Media GX board's have L2 cache. What I found most interesting was this sticker:

"DIMM option?! Yes!"

Cheesy. I doubt that anyone bought this board because they thought it could be upgraded to SDRAM. I thought PC Chips would have learned their lesson by that time.

It has a fake Ram slot?? Really? Please take a picture of that.....

Edit: oh i get it now. At first thought you meant one of the slots was there but not connected!

Still bad anyway....

I scored a working Roland CM-32L on an auction for few euros a few years ago 😜

If original packaging counts I have a couple of things that might be of interest

Pentium Pro (NIB unopened)

Pentium 60 (NIB opened)

TsengLabs ET4000 w32i (with box used)

Voodoo 4 PCI & APG (with box used)

- 2 Gravis Ultrasound Plug & Play v. 1.0 cards
- 1 Gravis Ultrasound Max (do not remenber the rev.)
- 1 Compaq Ultra Sound 32 Pro (Interwave based)
- 1 Audiotrix 3D/XG (card and DB60XG daughterboard)

I am really happy to have held on to (hoarded 🤣 ) this stuff since its heyday, but I find it sad that Gravis cards are so expensive these days as it makes them hard to justify (budget-wise) for many hobbyists . That said, Project Argus is poised to change all that. Then again, if prices keep on rising in the meantime, I might just be able to retire on this stuff (I wish!).

Semi-rare...

Gravis Ultrasound Classic - bought as spares/repairs on eBay
Voyetra OP-4001
Roland CM-32L
Tandy TL/2 (in the UK at least)
Yamaha DB50XG

mwdmeyer wrote:

If original packaging counts I have a couple of things that might be of interest […]
Show full quote

If original packaging counts I have a couple of things that might be of interest

TsengLabs ET4000 w32i (with box used)

Ah I had the MegaEva/1024 original 1MB ET4000 ISA card in very similar packaging ... while it's fantastic to see it again, it makes my heart break to think I tossed mine away in my "youth" 😢

Back on topic, don't own anything exclusively rare, just a whole bunch of stuff that is by now scarce due to the pace of technological advancement and dumping/recycling.

Neither one is particularly rare, but still - jewels of my humble collection (PC-wise) 😀

Toshiba Libretto 50CT - good condition (broken hdd cover, few scratches)
HP 200LX - one broken & repaired hinge, broken batter cover, but fully working 😀

Probably the Roland CM-500. Not really exciting. I can't think of anything rarer. Maybe my 30 year old 40MB HDD brick.

Probably my NEC Multisync XP17 from 1994. Have the original box too. When I get home from work, I'll take pictures.

- Voodoo 5 5500 AGP - two of these, one in perfect shape, the other repaired (a few capacitors and two memory chips replaced)
- MX Based Voodoo Rush - can't remember the model exactly and It's in one of my 586 machines so too lazy to check
- Primax Soundstorm M16 C (GUS 1 Clone)
- Yamaha SW20PC (OPL4)
- Green top 100MHz Cyrix 586 - socket 3 cyrix chips are pretty rare so I'm adding it here - even if it's not the 120 or 133 model
- PCI/ISA/VLB Socket 4 motherboard by QDI + 66 Mhz gold top Pentium
- Sound Blaster 1.0 clone by Anchor Electronics (it's in my 8086 rig)

Other rare(ish) things:

- Amstrad 1512 8086 PC + monocrome monitor
- Radeon 8500 (non LE!) - these are hard to find. Most cards are the down-clocked LE version.
- FX 5200 Ultra (basically a 5200 with DDR2? - it's BGA ram - that performs a bit better then a FX 5500)
- Aopen AX59 Pro - these are hard to come by.
- Abit BE6-II - while the BH6 and BE6 models can be found (for outrageous prices) the BE6-II is rather rare.
- Abit ST6 - not really rare, but hard to get a hold of
- MSI R9 280x Lightning - this is a review sample I believe - it's clocked higher then the regular MSI 280x, and runs at a higher vcore in 3d. As far as I know these never made it into shops. This particular card I got off a friend of mine who is a professional overclocker and often gets samples like this one.

I'm lucky to have a decent collection of hardware, and what I'm not actively using I always try to put it aside in the best way - though I'm not sure what could be a rare piece among those I own - many of you speak well of the old cards TSENG , this model can be considered rare? Mod. ET4000AX:

Maybe rare, but I don't think they are collectables:

Motherboards:
- Azza PT-6IBT
- Abit KT7E
- MSI XPower series MS-7666 (known as the X58 Big Bang, not working 🙁 )

CPUs:
- Intel Xeon E5645 ES

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

Whats the most rare piece of hardware you own?

A 100 year old abacus made in the Russian Empire.

I have half a dozen nice items, but since I don't collect boxed items let alone minty sealed ones, my stuff is not likely to ever be worth their price new.

-Voodoo5 5500 Mac PCI (this and the Mac V4 are the only 3dfx cards made with digital outputs)
-Roland SCC-1 (original rev)
-GUS MAX 2.4 & GUS Classic 3.4
-ASUS VL/I-486SV2GX4 2.1 & -SVGOX4 1.5
-AWE32 CT3900
-Hercules ET4000/W32p VLB 2MB
-Plexwriter Premium (black bezel)

A small bunch of other goodies (DB50XG, MT-32, SB Pro 2, Matrox m3d, Model M keyboard, FX 5950 Ultra). Everything was collected within the last four years, so nothing crazy here.

Nothing Crazy for me. I have Multiple Voodoo 1, 2, 3s. and a Voodoo 5 PCI and AGP. I have a two m3Ds. Some Intel Engineering Sample CPUs. Some Non-Special Tualati motherboards. I've got a P2 Overdrive that goes in a Socket 8 system. Not sure what else I've got lots of stuff just don't think any of it is really all that special. Definately nothing that is worth more then it was new, but i do have stuff that is worth more then it should be.