liqmat wrote:

King_Corduroy wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

Where I saw had that kit plus the whole front bezel. It was in two parts though. Not one kit for everything.

Interesting! I'm going to have to ask around and see if we can find any more info on this. Thanks! 😁

So you, being extremely into Packard Bell equipment,...........

bladerunnerpcdvd.jpg

I'm not "extremely into Packard Bell equipment" in the way you're suggesting. Least not anymore. it's just that was the first (and only) store-bought computer i ever had. I was forever looking for ways to upgrade it back in the 90's so I did a lot of PB research but only within a limited scope applicable to that machine and a little bit for models 1 or 2 steps up from it.
While back I toyed with the idea of resurrecting it from memory but frankly I don't have any place to put something like that.
Further I learned it wasn't a standard model. It was one of those custom configurations exclusive to a store chain.
Best I could do is get close.
.

Uh I think he meant me... 🤣

King_Corduroy wrote:

Uh I think he meant me... 🤣

Then he shouldn't have included me in the quote.

Oh I think that happened because it was a quote of my quote. Just a flaw of hitting the quote button and not editing it.

UPDATE: If you saw my post earlier in this thread about finding 8 towers on the curb, I talked to the woman again today - she brought more, this time a bunch of parts.

She also said this was all in her GARAGE, and she has another entire COMPUTER ROOM to clean out. So I might be getting more.... 😲

She said she repaired and resold hardware for years so she has quite a lot of it. She ALSO told me her brother was helping her put out the towers I got, and he took a "1988 IBM" to "gut it." 😠

Anyway a list of what I got today:

GENOA X4 ISA/VLB 486 motherboard w/ Intel DX4-100 CPU and 2 sticks of RAM (SiS 471 chipset)
TYAN S1692 DUAL SLOT 1 440LX board w/ single P2-266 installed & 64MB EDO DIMM 😲 😲
CIB "3 1/2" External Subsystem" external USB IDE enclosure w/ own power supply
CIB CompUSA 56k PCI WinModem (:lol:)
CIB beige rubber dome keyboard - not yellowed!
Box for the MSI K7 PRO board that was in one of the towers
(Alliance ProMotion AT3D PCI video, ISA super I/O & game port card, ISA modem & 72pin RAM were all in the MSI box)
NIB Acorp 7VIA71A slot A motherboard - still sealed in ESD bag with CD, brackets etc! 😲
486 "MOTHER BOARD" box w/ VLB super IO controller, Orchid ProDesigner 1280 ISA video and 2 IDE hard drives
CompUSA InkJet Starter Kit
CIB FIC SD11 slot A motherboard w/ brackets, cables, etc!
Allsop floppy cleaning kit

It's certainly a lot and I hope to find more!! 😀 😀

marry this woman

Not really retro:

Found a case sitting like this next to the paper recycling container:

I noticed it had a motherboard, CPU and PSU so I took it home. CPU cooler was missing though, and also no RAM.

I was really happy to find this buried in a bunch of cables:

A 128 GB Samsung 840 PRO SSD. 😀 Not sure what I am going to do with all of it. CPU is a i5-3350P. I think it is quicker than my current desktop PC, but I was just looking to get rid of that and replace it with a Thinkpad T420/T430 or something like that.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Not really retro: […]
Show full quote

Not really retro:

Found a case sitting like this next to the paper recycling container:

What an awesome find and free makes it epic.

The IT guy at work knows I'm interested in those "weird old useless crap", so he called me today and told me he is about to dump two old IBM desktops and I can take whatever I want from their insides.

Nothing fancy, but now I have a socket 478 Celeron, a slot 1 celeron, some DDR/SDRAM sticks, and a SB16 Waveffects in my backsack 🤣

Cyrix200+ wrote:

A 128 GB Samsung 840 PRO SSD. 😀 Not sure what I am going to do with all of it. CPU is a i5-3350P. I think it is quicker than my current desktop PC, but I was just looking to get rid of that and replace it with a Thinkpad T420/T430 or something like that.

You can use a PCI Promise Sata 150 controller in a retro computer and hook up that SSD to it. The access times and throughput will make you swear off HDDs for everything possible.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Not really retro:

Found a case sitting like this next to the paper recycling container: ...

Reminds me of this X79 box from a while ago, but yours looks more complete and in better shape. Very lucky.

tayyare wrote:

The IT guy at work knows I'm interested in those "weird old useless crap", so he called me today and told me he is about to dump two old IBM desktops and I can take whatever I want from their insides.

Nothing fancy, but now I have a socket 478 Celeron, a slot 1 celeron, some DDR/SDRAM sticks, and a SB16 Waveffects in my backsack 🤣

Gotta love it when that happens.

cyclone3d wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

A 128 GB Samsung 840 PRO SSD. 😀 Not sure what I am going to do with all of it. CPU is a i5-3350P. I think it is quicker than my current desktop PC, but I was just looking to get rid of that and replace it with a Thinkpad T420/T430 or something like that.

You can use a PCI Promise Sata 150 controller in a retro computer......

Never tried that but I figured it would work and was planning to.
Thanks for the confirmation.

mmm ThinkPad T420/T430

solid machines, just wish the screens were better

Btw, T430 is the last ThinkPad with XP support (there are official drivers on site for everything, but USB 3.0 controller).

EliteBook 8460p and 8470p (sandy/ivy) both have XP drivers as well. Though the USB 3.0 driver only works in the 8460p.

A colleague of mine asked me if I was interested in taking an old laptop and "Palm Pilot." Of course I was! 😊

All of the original packaging, accessories, and documentation were included. The devices themselves were in pristine condition. Obviously, she took great care of her stuff. Wish more people would do that!

The Palm Pilot turned out to be a Toshiba Pocket PC.

Well, two pocket PCs, actually! 😁

The laptop had a fresh install of Win XP Media Center 2005 and the following specs:
Turion 64 ML-40 CPU (2.2GHz, 1MB cache, Socket 754; equivalent in performance to an Athlon 64 3400+)
2GB of RAM
Two 160GB PATA hard drives.
128MB Radeon X300
17.3 inch display with GLORIOUS color and viewing angles. I'm guessing it's an IPS panel of some sort.
HP Expresscard TV tuner.
Two remote controls!
DVD burner

All of the accessories were included, and some looked to have never been used. Even a spare battery was included!

Battery was in great shape and clocked in at just over 1.5 hours.

The cheesy MCE setup video.

Saved this one from a one-way trip to the dumpster:

An old (1998 vintage) desktop system. The exact opposite of the incredibly filthy, smoky stuff I actually paid (a small amount of) money for last week - this system was meticulously clean inside and out, with just a minimum of yellowing on the front and a tiny bit of very fine dust around the CPU fan. The cards in particular look like they could have come fresh out of their antistatic wrappers.

Stuff inside:
- Asus P2B rev 1.10 (not 1.12 unfortunately, but beggars can't be choosers)
- P2-350
- 3x 128MB PC133 (three unmatched DIMMs, all of them significantly newer than the rest of the hardware - the only indication this system had ever been touched since first build)
- Diamond Viper V550 (nVidia Riva TNT AGP 16MB)
- Ensoniq AudioPCI, with a 'Sound Blaster PCI64' sticker on the (assumedly ES1370) chip. This must have been shipped very shortly after the takeover of ESS by Creative in January 1998.
- Yet another RTL8139D 10/100Mb NIC, this one with a Q-Tec sticker on it.
- SPC121X ISA parallel port card.
- Creatix CTX402_3 V.90 HAM PCI 56k modem
- Seagate ST36811A 6.4GB IDE
- HP 8100 CDRW
- DVD-ROM
- Very solid ATX midi tower with feeble 235W FSP PSU and a removable motherboard tray.

That last bit is what I am happiest about. My end goal for my retro stuff is to take a block of drawers and have a complete system in each of them. The woodwork isn't too hard, but for the actual board and card mounting I very much want a set of trays like this. I now have one 😀

Just a shame to gut such a nice tower to get it...

Very nice find! Similar to the system I found: Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

dionb wrote:

- Ensoniq AudioPCI, with a 'Sound Blaster PCI64' sticker on the (assumedly ES1370) chip. This must have been shipped very shortly after the takeover of ESS by Creative in January 1998.

The system I found had one of these as well (I thought it was just a cheap knockoff card at first), I actually just put it into my Deskpro EN as it has Soundblaster compatibility. If you're interested the driver CD is on web archive - https://archive.org/details/sb_install

Nice DVD ROM drive as well! Trying to find something like that for another build I'm working on at the moment.

It looks like a Lite-on LTD-163 drive. I love those.

Also, Ensoniq =/= ESS.