Got several cheap motherboards from a scrapper:

Among them:

Dual Slot 1 Asus P2L97-DS
Slot 1 Asus P2B 1.04
386 PCChips M321
386 board with onboard Intel 386SX-20
286 board with Siemens 286-12 and AMD 287-10, SIPP memory
486 board with VLB and EISA — really bad shape

My biggest interest is the dual slot 1 P2L97-DS. If it works, I would be able to fit it with two P2s, WinNT or Win2k and build an Internet server for multiplayer shooters. I want a solution that works with vanilla versions of games like Doom, Descent, Duke Nukem 3D and others. Ideally something similar to Dwango (maybe there's a clone package somewhere) because I've never experienced services like that.

jheronimus, nice loot! I see the M321 board there! It's really nice board, having even a write-back cache support. (Need to populate the socket near cache chips)
That VLB + EISA 486 board would also be really cool to get up and running.

Do you mind writing down, what's written on the bios chip? Is there a marking "v2.11" or something different?

Finally I managed to get a Chaintech 340SCD

Minimum battery damage, very very cheap (sold as not working)... Really nice!

Looks pretty good. How much was it? Minimum battery damage is better than major battery damage. Why motherboard companies used Ni-Cd batteries instead of Lithium batteries is beyond me.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Looks pretty good. How much was it? Minimum battery damage is better than major battery damage. Why motherboard companies used Ni-Cd batteries instead of Lithium batteries is beyond me.

Same reason RBMK reactors had a positive void coefficient and moderator rod tips of pure graphite: price. And to be honest, these batteries only started failing long after the boards' economic and design lifespan had passed. Still doesn't make it good engineering, less good news when you see old boards rotten away by it, but we're the ones going far, far out of spec here by keeping >25yo low-end systems running 😉

bjwil1991 wrote:

Looks pretty good. How much was it? Minimum battery damage is better than major battery damage. Why motherboard companies used Ni-Cd batteries instead of Lithium batteries is beyond me.

Well, just a little of trace corrosion on the battery traces, nothing else and of course it works perfectly fine. It could happen to mistake it for dead since Chaintech 340scd has bank0 and bank1 of ram simm slots divided in even and odd rows and not in continuous blocks.
Like so:
Bank0 - Simm1
Bank1 - Simm2
Bank0 - Simm3
Bank1 - Simm4
Bank0 - Simm5
Bank1 - Simm6
Bank0 - Simm7
Bank1 - Simm8

So if you test it with 8x1MB Simms there is no problem, but if you test it with only 4 Simms you have to insert them leaving even slots empty or it will not boot, since you are not filling banks correctly.
Same goes for cache sockets.

ready... set... build!!!

Madowax wrote:

Finally I managed to get a Chaintech 340SCD […]
Show full quote

Finally I managed to get a Chaintech 340SCD

Minimum battery damage, very very cheap (sold as not working)... Really nice!

Where did you find this? His is one of my favourite native 386 boards. My board had acid damage everywhere and required a lot of wire patches.

Artex wrote:

Hah! Batyra and Hard1k are right up there with me. Mad respect for these gents too for their ability to source these relics.

You're right. I think you're probably ahead by a nose, but all three of you guys have crazy nice collections.

wirerogue wrote:

ready... set... build!!!

IMG_20190618_182522.jpg

That looks interesting, I'm looking at socket 604 Xeon stuff on ebay now.

I just might have to buy some of this stuff...

feipoa wrote:

Where did you find this? His is one of my favourite native 386 boards. My board had acid damage everywhere and required a lot of wire patches.

On ebay, sold as not working "ARB17A". I was searching for this Chaintech for quite some time, it's in very nice conditions, working fine.

How's this for retro hardware? I'll take "Things I Didn't Really Need" for $14.99, Alex:

I've been vaguely looking around for a Sony boombox of this vintage, but every one I've seen has been trashed or being asked ludicrous money for. This JVC is in absolutely fantastic shape and was the right price. Every slider is smooth and crackle-free, the drivers are all perfect, the tape deck plays accurately and doesn't even need a new belt, & most importantly, it sounds amazing. There weren't even any manky old corroded D-cells left in the battery compartment like 99% of these I see. The battery terminals look like it was made yesterday.

^^ The "3D" button seems to turn on & off the subwoofer. I don't know either.

In case you couldn't tell, this thing is totally freaking sweet. It does need a dusting with a good brush & q-tip, but that's all it needs. The black & gold colour scheme really works for me.

Also scored some NOS tapes for it; these were $1.99 on the "wall of crap." I don't usually buy Type-1s anymore, but I was 'in the mood' and the design on the Sony was so appealing I had to bite. Didn't have one of those yet. One of these days I'll put together a little gallery of blank cassette packages, because I've got a lot of them and there were some really cool designs floating around.

I scored a couple of late-'90s trancey CDs up there for a couple bucks too. Naturally I had to try them on the JVC via it's handy line-in:

They sound awesome through this thing! That sub can deliver a ton of bass if you let it, but the adjustable EQ really works well to make a nice punchy, crisp sound. I am seriously impressed for how good it is for a boombox of this type.

Incidentally that's my O.G. CD/VCD player up there, which I ordered from NCIX.com in 2001 and carried everywhere for a few years. Yes, it has a video-out for VCDs, and yes, I thought that was the coolest damn thing in the world at the time. Still works great, and I even still have the remote.

Anyway I'm pretty happy with this score, if you can't tell. Now back to your regular retro programming...

Love the boom box! They had a hard life in general I suspect - I looked for a specific Sony for years and finally found one a couple of months ago, but it was in pretty awful shape. Full of sand, belts long gone, and generally worn out. I did my best with it and it came up OK, but it's never going to look as nice as yours (and cost a lot more than $14.99 😵 ).

xjas wrote:

How's this for retro hardware?

You have a CD player? Your parents must be rich! (simulated comment from the late 80s)

Some 1996-1997 VGA goodness:

... today yet another sound card 😎

Jed118 wrote:

^^^I recently sold a Pentium in such a case. From what I recall, it wasn't a particularly good case. […]
Show full quote

RetroPC_King wrote:

dogchainx wrote:

So....i'm going to just post my entire "AT CASE" purchases I've done for the past 3 years or so... All of these were between $5 […]
Show full quote

So....i'm going to just post my entire "AT CASE" purchases I've done for the past 3 years or so... All of these were between $5 and $15 each at my local thrift store.

That case from first column under the first case in the upper-left I have on my AMD K6-2 333MHz system! What brand is this case?

^^^I recently sold a Pentium in such a case. From what I recall, it wasn't a particularly good case.

Up until 2005ish the local thrift stores did indeed sell the computers whole. Since that time, they either part them out (never leaving the hard disks intact) or flat out recycle them. It pains me to think about how many x86 systems were thrown out because of this stupid process. I got a lot of cool programs off hard disks this way 😉

IMO if you don't erase the data off your systems prior to disposal, that's on you.

Indeed, it was very cramped.

dogchainx wrote:

Holy shiz, thats an old photo of my collection...

The case from the 2nd upper left? With two 5.25" and the floppy drive slot in-case? If that's the one, I don't know who made it. I'll see if I still have it (probably do) but from what I remember the buttons on it suuuuuuuck. Very flimsy, ultra-small case. My collection has grown probably 2x over that photo. Ugh. I have a problem, step 1....

No, that one with blue Power and Reset buttons and cut out floppy drive with Creative 52x Cd-rom and without a faceplate. That is my cas eof my old K6-2 build

I have a really hard time trying to find stuff locally, so I usually pay more for shipping alone than some of the finds in here 🙁
local thrift stores seem to only sell clothes and decorations and barely any electronics at all and if they do than only newer "useful" computers, seems like most of the really good stuff just gets thrown away nowadays, I feel like I started with collecting retro hardware about 5-10 years too late, luckily I already have some good parts at home from past times.

anyways picked these up yesterday:

2x ET4000AX (already had one of these at home, but more is better 😀 )
OTI077 with an odd mix of memory chips
a card that was listed as serial/parallel controller turned out to be a Tamarack TD3088A2
and an old intel network card, I have a bunch of ISA network cards already, but none from intel so a welcome addition.
paid 25€ for the lot of cards

but sometimes I get hit by a bit of luck and this arrived today:

it was listed for a price that was way too good, so I contacted the seller and they were hesitant to ship because a few people already showed interest picking it up locally (obviously all the good stuff is in the big city and not where I live), so I just straight up offered more than twice the asking price and still got a really good deal in my opinion ^^

jheronimus wrote:

386 PCChips M321

Like every M321 I've ever seen, the tag RAM is not socketed, so while it has open cache sockets the maximum cache is 128K unless you replace it, which I suppose isn't THAT hard if you're decent with desoldering/soldering. Not sure why they didn't socket it if part of the marketability was otherwise how it was upgradeable.