One used Gameboy Advance SP with some games for my son. He has this odd thing of fantasising too much, whenever he is playing something that are too real in gfx. Like Justice Gods Amoung Us. That is a fighting game, with DC comics super heroes. If he play's that, he will get too violent and get drawn into his own fantasy world for hours on end. And it is a real shame, as he is in love with gaming. If he get something like the original super mario brothers, then there are no issues with my son. Then he can just turn the machine off and act as if nothing have happened.

Sooooo.....

I see no reason why I should forbid him to game as in gaming in general. If he gets the correct game, then he does not show any signs of anything bad. That is why I have bought this GBA-SP for him, and he will be getting games like Tetris and Super mario. Platform and puzzle games are good for him. Fighting games and too realistic games (Ps3 and up) are bad for him. It is like he changes mentally, for the worst, if he play's something that are too realistic in GFX. Even the Ps3 gsame called Fuel are not good for him. Yet Starwing and Supermario All Stars have no mental impact on him. I have to be a responsible dad and avoid him to be drawn into a fantasy world, and at the same time allow him to play electronic/computer/console games because he just loves it.

GBA it is then....

SW-SSG wrote:

Thermalwrong wrote:

The new old stock 486 motherboards from Ukraine arrived today 😁

Oh neat, I was watching the listing for the FIC for a while but ultimately decided against it. Nice to see that it was the real deal...

I haven't had a chance to actually test the FIC 486 VIP IO2 yet, only replaced the dead soldered lithium battery with a CR2032 holder. I've noticed 2 damaged traces by the PCI slots but they don't seem bad, so hopefully it works when I get a chance to plug it all in, I'll report back when I do 😀

I've had pretty good luck with the Russian / Ukranian sellers, no damaged / lost packages and only one I couldn't pay because (I think) their address details / something else was wrong on their end.

Local recycling moved to a new bigger place. Went to see if they already put out all the spare parts that they used to have. "Oh no, we ditched all the old shit, nobody buys those". So they threw out all the AGP and ISA cards that I saw in their storage before... 😵

Ah the Hercules 3D Prophet II GTS, the 32MB version of the GeForce 2 GTS. It cost me 10€ plus shipping along with the original manual and driver CD with some game demos!

I remember oogling this card in some tech magazines back in 2000/2001. Although my computer didn't even had a AGP interface...

Arrived in the mail today…
OCTEK FOX M 286 motherboard with 16MHz AMD CPU - pretty dirty, bent pins, BIOS chip pins bent badly and out of the socket… no battery leak visible, but still very minor leak dammage when i removed it… Motherboard would start: which looked like this:
https://youtu.be/pIjtABDM6pg but I fixed this problem already (it was broken trace near the external battery connector!) This board needs some proper cleaning, and I need to cover the spots where I had to remove the soldermask on the fixed trace.

ZyMOS Poach VGA/EGA - pretty neat! Never seen a card of this brand before. It seems it's some sort of Trident Clone.

I paid for this card and OCTEK FOX M above around 15 USD (shipping included)

OCTEK FOX III 286 motherboard with 20MHz Harris CPU - had minor battery leak. There is some corrosion in the general area, but motherboard works fine!

I paid around 15 USD for this one as well.

Gigabyte GA-586TX3 - I paid for different TX board, but this one arrived… It works fine anyway. To be honest I never imagined there were motherboards as advanced as this one in Socket 7 era - it has CPU temperature sensor, and other more modern features… Pretty cool! Paid <10 USD so I'm not complaining, guy said he will sent me this other board for free, but I'm going to pay him anyway as soon as I'm getting the board I originaly ordered. Not much honest people left in this world.

HanJammer wrote:

ZyMOS Poach VGA/EGA - pretty neat! Never seen a card of this brand before. It seems it's some sort of Trident Clone.

Yeah, apparently it's a rebadge of the Trident 8800CS, maybe only the third or fourth VGA product out of that company. Btw you may want to cover up the window on that upper ROM ASAP, lest its contents be UV'd out of existence before too long...

SW-SSG wrote:

HanJammer wrote:

ZyMOS Poach VGA/EGA - pretty neat! Never seen a card of this brand before. It seems it's some sort of Trident Clone.

Yeah, apparently it's a rebadge of the Trident 8800CS, maybe only the third or fourth VGA product out of that company. Btw you may want to cover up the window on that upper ROM ASAP, lest its contents be UV'd out of existence before too long...

Yeah, I covered it as soon as I got home where I have proper tape for it.

HanJammer wrote:

[...]

OCTEK FOX III 286 motherboard with 20MHz Harris CPU - had minor battery leak. There is some corrosion in the general area, but motherboard works fine!

[...]

wait, the HT12/A chipset can handle 20mhz operation? 😕 I have a 16mhz mobo - I will try overclock 🤣
nice finds btw!!!

Found an AT case with its PSU listed for $3. Shipping cost me another $3. It's in pretty miserable shape but with some cleaning it should be a good home to something.

Can anyone date this case, by chance? Appears to have no Turbo button so probably PII/Celeron era AT case?

The case is copying Apple design details, but that's beige Apple, so it's from before 1999. I'd say it's most likely to have housed a later So7 build.

But best way to date: assume the PSU is original and look for its production date. Chances are that will give you the answer.

dionb wrote:

The case is copying Apple design details, but that's beige Apple, so it's from before 1999. I'd say it's most likely to have housed a later So7 build.

But best way to date: assume the PSU is original and look for its production date. Chances are that will give you the answer.

Ah.. Nice. Not that I need another AT Socket 7 (Already have a P133 DOS PC that I will probably upgrade to Windows 95 soon..) but another AT case is always nice to have - I can get a good trade for it some day, hopefully.

A bunch of PCI sound cards I've been expecting for a while arrived today.

Terratec DMX Xfire 1024 (Owned this back in the day, glad to have it again!) - It also came with some strange breakout stuff that I have no idea what they are for or where they are from.. SPDIF/Coax breakout? Not for this card, probably..

A Turtle Beach Santa Cruz:

A Typhoon YMF-744 card with SPDIF daughterboard:

Super happy 😀 My PCI Sound Card collection is pretty much complete now.

How are those Terratec and Typhoon cards?

Picked a Toshiba Libretto 110CT on Ebay this morning.. seller accepted $75. Sold for "parts / not working". We'll see how bad it is. 🤣 😵 I also purchased an OEM new-old-stock power adapter for it, and a mSATA M.2 NGFF to 2.5 44-pin IDE adapter and a 32GB mSATA M.2 SSD. Hopefully I can get it up and running -- if not, there are still a few sites out there that sell parts for these.. at a premium. But, hopefully it at least powers up, and if not, I'll be doing some troubleshooting and it will be another project to add to the list. 😒 I'm at least excited that it appears to be in good physical condition. (besides broken monitor latches which I can get for $5 each) Now it has to go through the USPS gauntlet.

appiah4 wrote:

Found an AT case with its PSU listed for $3. Shipping cost me another $3. It's in pretty miserable shape but with some cleanin […]
Show full quote

Found an AT case with its PSU listed for $3. Shipping cost me another $3. It's in pretty miserable shape but with some cleaning it should be a good home to something.

AT Case 01.jpeg

AT Case 02.jpeg

Can anyone date this case, by chance? Appears to have no Turbo button so probably PII/Celeron era AT case?

You could make a super sleeper system. Stick a RTX in it. No one will steal it, but it still might get recycled. 😀

appiah4 wrote:

Can anyone date this case, by chance? Appears to have no Turbo button so probably PII/Celeron era AT case?

Late 90s - 98/99.

Finally settled on a new tower to transfer my Pentium 4 2.6Ghz Northwood w/ HT + ASUS P4P800 Deluxe build into and a couple of P4 case badge options waiting. 😀

Picked up my favorite PalmOS device EVER: Handera 330

I was one of the beta testers for TRGPro and Handera 330, I was really delighted to find one, boxed and (possibly?) complete on Ebay. I paid way too much for it, but I'm pretty pleased anyway!

My Conroe865PE has finally arrived from Almaty, Kazakhstan.

the almighty Almaty, Kazakhstan.