This 5150 clone arrived today.
Siemens 8088-1 CPU, interesting Unitron motherboard with SIPP module socket and Acer chipset, CGA video and two 360kB floppies. Case has some shipping dammage (one corner is dented - fixable though) and HDD bay fillers are missing but other than that pretty nice conditions.

ATI Graphics Ultra (0,5 MByte DRAM VGA, 1 MByte VRAM coprocessor)

Very nice ! Will you image these floppy disks ?

Nope, don't have a 5,25" floppy drive.

I bought one of these inexpensive de-soldering guns from china.
It does not work. It does not heat up enough. Has anyone else had any luck with these inexpensive guns?
I just have a few motherboards to fix so I did not want to buy an expensive gun, but it looks like I might have to now.

5,25 diskettes? wow, how old these gfx cards are?

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I bought one of these inexpensive de-soldering guns from china.
It does not work. It does not heat up enough. Has anyone else had any luck with these inexpensive guns?
I just have a few motherboards to fix so I did not want to buy an expensive gun, but it looks like I might have to now.

Sorry to hear that! I just use a cheap pen-style soldering iron, doesn't have heat settings or anything. I have a gun that gets a little hotter but don't usually bother with it. By experimenting with the angle of the tip, coming in at like a 30° angle, getting more of the side of the tip into the solder joint, I've had better luck with my desoldering, and with a solder sucker, I'm able to "get in and get out" a lot faster

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I bought one of these inexpensive de-soldering guns from china.
It does not work. It does not heat up enough. Has anyone else had any luck with these inexpensive guns?
I just have a few motherboards to fix so I did not want to buy an expensive gun, but it looks like I might have to now.

I looked at those before I bought my soldering station. Pretty sure there is even a teardown video of it on youtube. Decided it was a piece of trash and didn't buy it.

The desoldering gun I did end up buying is an antique and works very well.

That soldering gun is for 230V, China uses USA plug for ungrounded things but it won't be 120V but 230V instead hence not heating up enough.

i got one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07542D82F/ … 0?ie=UTF8&psc=1

works perfectly, if you go slow and take your time. I recently desoldered 2x 387-pin cpu sockets and had zero issues.

Along with a host of water cooling stuff, my two little retro-related pieces from China that I posted about earlier arrived today.

The third party charger but looks like a real IBM charger for the Thinkpad 600E I found:

The PS/2 Header for my P55T2P4

retropol wrote:

5,25 diskettes? wow, how old these gfx cards are?

These would have sold new in 1991-1992, when most PCs still had 1.2mb drives. I got my 486 PC in late 1992, and it did not have a 5.25" drive, but strangely the OEM shipped the PC with the same Graphics Ultra and 5.25" driver disks, so I was unable to install the 256 colour windows driver until I was able to convince neighbour to help convert the disks to 3.5" format. Pretty annoying.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I bought one of these inexpensive de-soldering guns from china.
It does not work. It does not heat up enough. Has anyone else had any luck with these inexpensive guns?
I just have a few motherboards to fix so I did not want to buy an expensive gun, but it looks like I might have to now.

That looks familiar 😁

I bought the same one, except for use in the UK. It's pretty useless even at 230 volts, the electromagnetic plunger makes the tool jerk so much that it's very difficult to keep it on the part you're trying to desolder. The soldering power of it is also quite weak. I get on a lot better with a high temperature soldering iron and a manual desoldering pump

5 lbs of copper.
2 socket 604 coolers.

retropol wrote:

5,25 diskettes? wow, how old these gfx cards are?

Until the cdrom (93-94), they put big fdd to the machines.
https://books.google.at/books?id=7k7q-wS0t00C … epage&q&f=false

Intel486dx33 wrote:

I bought one of these inexpensive de-soldering guns from china.
It does not work. It does not heat up enough. Has anyone else had any luck with these inexpensive guns?
I just have a few motherboards to fix so I did not want to buy an expensive gun, but it looks like I might have to now.

I don't have this exact model (I have ZD-8915 desoldering station - inexpensive as well, works as charm even with post-RoHS stuff). I would try to fix this desoldering gun you have - for starters check the heating element (if it is not shorted/burned). If it's OK then check the temperature sensor.

Hi everyone, happy to finally have something to share in my first post here! Today the CD-R drive for my current project arrived. It is MITSUMI CR-2600TE from 1997, and I got it in a box with manuals etc.

According to the content list printed on the box, it seems that only some Disk Inspector Utility, IDE cable and initially attached blank CD's are missing. The drive is meant to be included in my dream machine from 1997, which I am currently building around Pentium 200 MMX.

LuckyPiquel wrote:

Hi everyone, happy to finally have something to share in my first post here! Today the CD-R drive for my current project arrived. It is MITSUMI CR-2600TE from 1997, and I got it in a box with manuals etc.

I think you have the same optical drive as me on one of my retro desktops. Although the optical drive I have has a rectangle button instead of an oval one like you have, but still.

Bought this Mediavision PAS16P, Aztech Wavefront and Vibra16 (with OPL3).
Also this Gainward S3 Virge DX and Miro S3 Trio 64V+.

Also Magitronic A-B245... seller claimed it's working just no keyboard socket, but when I installed RAM (tested both the SIPPs and DIPs) it won't work - stops on post code 19 (memory refresh test). There is some corrosion under DIP40 KBC socket. I will test it with Landmark Diag ROM and I will decide if I will return it. I bought it partially because of IIT NPU and it would be a shame, but on the other hand I paid a bit too much too:/

Also this 286A-16 Rev. 2.0. with integrated serial/parallel/gameport/FDD/HDD controllers. This one works OK, but obviously need new Dallas chip... Also one of the memory modules seems shot.

Got myself a full tower AT/ATX case from ebay with a turbo button and MHz display.