austinham wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:22:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:43:

And no, some items are not affordable to the average person. Anything Roland is $400+ now, anything usable Amiga is $1000+ for a working system, GUS's go for $300+ etc. All the coolest hardware is getting crazy expensive, and I don't think things like the GUS were particularly rare.

were on earth are you getting those prices?

I just saw an Amiga 3000 listed on eBay with a $1017 asking price last night. The Amiga madness is real...

Yes, normal asking price for a A3000 and A4000. But these are the most expensive ones and not the measure of all things.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:39:

That's a nice board you got imi what do you have planned for it?

thanks, I already had a slightly different revision of this board, so I also got it to have one spare, but the deciding factor was the 512KB COAST and the really nice green heatsink (yeah I admit it, I sometimes go for looks ^^)
It may end up in one of my museum machines because it is such a nice ATX board, but I have yet to decide which one is going to take that place.

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-06-08, 18:00:

That's a nice board, they are built like a tank! I have the LT430TX, which looks really similar but it has a 430TX chipset. Mine came from a 1997 Gateway 2000 (my first "retro" pickup during the early 2000s), with the exact same green heatsink (AAVID brand I believe).

I was able to flash the Intel BIOS by using the recovery feature in order to have the latest one and get rid of the Gateway branding. Unfortunately it came with the side effect that the on-board ATI VGA does not work due to some resource conflict. Do you know if yours OEM or Intel-branded?

nice, that's a good question, the number on the sticker "MBDSAC056AAWW" leads me to believe this is also a Gateway OEM board.

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:44:

One pet peeves of mine is the price of the SB AWE32s (the real ones, not the SB32): not that I'm even interested in those, but why are they so expensive? Is it because they are "long" cards or something and they look impressive? Many even have the non-authentic FM but still sell for nearly $100! In comparison, I recently got a CT1770 with bug-free DSP AND real OPL3 for about $20... this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

well, like I said above, sometimes I go for looks, I got some of them because they are long cards, they are just nice to look at ^^
and longest AWE32 I have, the CT3980 is one of the more expensive sound cards I got, but even for that I paid much less than $100
hard to put a price on it, it was listed for €60 or so iirc, but I got it together with a bunch of other things from the same seller and got a rebate on the whole package some items which were more valuable imo were listed for cheaper just to prove the point that yes this card was probably listed for the highest price because it was long ^^
and ofc I went for the CT3980 because it's one of the best AWE cards to use imo, so not just for looks ^^

I would of bought it for that coast module as well. There's nothing wrong with buy a part that looks good. It's your system and you want it to look nice

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:05:

I run the largest FB Market place for my town, it has around 20k people in it and I've removed all the other PC and game collectors and anyone that tells other people these items are worth money. I rely on people buying the "recycling centers will charge you to get rid of these" line to sell me stuff for peanuts. I just don't care anymore, I will do anything to protect my interests. We need to gatekeep this hobby better. It's getting hard for the average man with a 30k a year salary to keep up.

Yikes. I'm glad I don't live in your neck of the woods. And, I for one am thankful for eBay and the like... price inflation and all. At least it's an open market where buyers and sellers can compete somewhat fairly. I don't use FB markets and didn't realize the individuals organizing them can boot competition and either sow misinformation or prevent others from stopping the spread of misinformation... based on your post, it sounds like such markets are to be avoided or at the very least should be considered stacked against buyers and sellers if there is a conflict with the personal priorities of the person running the marketplace.

I agree there is some inflation, and as a Lego enthusiast I can vouch for the problem being even worse in that hobby. It's not all bad news though. If it weren't for these inflations of cost, we wouldn't have the rich ecosystem of simulators/emulators, and we wouldn't have quite so many replica efforts underway. In many cases these open up options... I love my replica Adlib for my old 8-bit XT, and am fully aware that it wouldn't exist if the originals hadn't gone up so much in price.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:05:

I quit the retro console gaming hobby over this, the social pressures literally turned me into a psycho. You can read about my e […]
Show full quote

386SX wrote on 2020-06-08, 15:41:

Anyway I know it's probably the usual well known "how the market works" but some prices nowdays are becoming "ridicolous" for some components. I know that when things become more and more uncommon and rare people think they are selling "gold" but it's not always that way. I suppose it may be somehow ok that a card already rare back in its time nowdays it's almost impossible to find has some price but not everything from that period. Then I know, none tell us we must buy the card or the components and can skip to the next one will find, but hobbies nowdays are becoming more expensive than essential things.
Sometimes it makes me thinking if I should sell every components I sort of collect and switch to other hobbies, I don't know.. to read books? 😁
Other times it happens I came back to the same hobby and become again looking for mainboards, cards, components.. 😁

I quit the retro console gaming hobby over this, the social pressures literally turned me into a psycho. You can read about my experience here on reddit:

*LINK TO BE INSERTED WHEN IM AT MY DESK*

I was sick of games that sold millions of copies going for $80+ and the gems going for $180. Everyone knew the games were valuable now which meant you couldn't find them cheap from someone who was unaware, and you would have crazies and man children that spend all their time looking for deals to compete against. I sold my whole collection, I realized I would never have the kind of collection people like MetalJesus or AVGN had unless I suddenly became an urbanite making $150k+ a year.

I'm into retro video games too, but I care for playing them, not so much for collecting, so I just got the authentic console (SNES, Sega Genesis, NES, Neo Geo,PS1,...) and then got the multicart for the respective console (SD2SNES, Mega Everdrive, Everdrive N8, NeoSD Pro,PSIO,...) and that's it. Some games I really like, I get them into their own cartridge (all Streets of Rage games, Mario RPG, the Metal Slug or King of Fighters series, etc.) but I ended there. Now I have all the games I want to play, whenever I want them and on authentic hardware. I'm really happy with the results.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:05:

[...]

I run the largest FB Market place for my town, it has around 20k people in it and I've removed all the other PC and game collectors and anyone that tells other people these items are worth money. I rely on people buying the "recycling centers will charge you to get rid of these" line to sell me stuff for peanuts. I just don't care anymore, I will do anything to protect my interests. We need to gatekeep this hobby better. It's getting hard for the average man with a 30k a year salary to keep up.

If cheating naive people who trust you is the way to "keep up", I'm very glad I have no such desire, regardless of salary. On the contrary, I have very good experiences with being open and honest - I regularly get extra stuff thrown in (and once even had the price halved without asking for it...) by telling people exactly what I was doing and why, even when doing a lowball offer.

Just purchased a Gravis Ultrasound PnP v1.0 for $136 off eBay with the Make Offer button. All this GUS talk has made me want another. 🤣

Picking up a pair of big late 2000's Rosewill cases w/like 6 120mm fans a piece, two 850watt Rosewill PSU's and a grab box of unknown parts. Like I need any more crap, but a friend wanted me to pick him up a full tower if I found one and the deal is take all or nothing xD

I traded a dead 486 board for this mobo with a Ceelron 2.4ghz at recycler center:

AOPEN MX4GVR
There some scratches in the back but started okay.
The bios has even the cooler case controls/settings

wiretap wrote on 2020-06-08, 22:20:

Just purchased a Gravis Ultrasound PnP v1.0 for $136 off eBay with the Make Offer button. All this GUS talk has made me want another. 🤣

Soooo Jelly!

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-06-09, 02:12:

wiretap wrote on 2020-06-08, 22:20:

Just purchased a Gravis Ultrasound PnP v1.0 for $136 off eBay with the Make Offer button. All this GUS talk has made me want another. 🤣

Soooo Jelly!

You can never have too many GUSes, IMHO .

Browsing through the office I could have dropped these two at the recycler today… although I don’t have any use for them right now I couldn’t find it in my heart to dump them.

A 16” EIZO FlexScan L461 built in August 2001 and a 17” Philips 170S4 built in March 2004.

these old EIZOs have a certain appeal in their very boxy design :3

imi wrote on 2020-06-09, 08:07:

these old EIZOs have a certain appeal in their very boxy design :3

Older Sun LCDs have that kind of charm too, even if not quite as boxy. For some reason seeing these reminded me of the one I sometimes used in a professional setting .

dionb wrote on 2020-06-08, 21:06:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:05:

[...]

I run the largest FB Market place for my town, it has around 20k people in it and I've removed all the other PC and game collectors and anyone that tells other people these items are worth money. I rely on people buying the "recycling centers will charge you to get rid of these" line to sell me stuff for peanuts. I just don't care anymore, I will do anything to protect my interests. We need to gatekeep this hobby better. It's getting hard for the average man with a 30k a year salary to keep up.

If cheating naive people who trust you is the way to "keep up", I'm very glad I have no such desire, regardless of salary. On the contrary, I have very good experiences with being open and honest - I regularly get extra stuff thrown in (and once even had the price halved without asking for it...) by telling people exactly what I was doing and why, even when doing a lowball offer.

Exactly this.
A while ago I bought stuff from a guy just half an hour driving away. He was sincerely not aware of what he was selling and if it had any value. When I was there I got thru some other stuff he was selling and picked some more AGP graphics cards (some nice ones) and told him exactly what he had there. And left some of them (who needs 3x an ATI 9800pro when running mainly socket 7 and older).
Made him an offer that was realistic but a bit low. And told him that. He said: take it, I'm done with people that keep telling everything is worthless while it probably isn't.

Few weeks ago I got a message from him about this cool PCI 486 system he got, but the battery was dead and the system got in a bootloop (Dead Dallas clock, posted it here a little while ago). Befor he went to local online marketplaces he gave me the chance to make him an offer. Again told him what he had and made a similar low but realistic offer (and again told him it wasn't a high bid).
I could have it, we had a nice chat (at one and a half meters distance) and before I knew it, I had an extra hard disk (unknown Seagate u*) and two old CD-ROMs (1995 and 1998) for the same price. And then he asked me what I would do with an ATX full tower. I don't have a use for it now but he just have it with me, telling he got a bit frustrated with peolple pretending to collect and got it online next day for a big plus. All I had to do was promise he wouldn't see it online any time soon.

There may be another source of stuff from a friend of his, who's gonna move and has to lose some 80's and 90's stuff...

So being honest got me some nice extra stuff in good shape for free 😀

waterbeesje wrote on 2020-06-09, 10:06:

Exactly this. A while ago I bought stuff from a guy just half an hour driving away. He was sincerely not aware of what he was se […]
Show full quote

dionb wrote on 2020-06-08, 21:06:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-08, 16:05:

[...]

I run the largest FB Market place for my town, it has around 20k people in it and I've removed all the other PC and game collectors and anyone that tells other people these items are worth money. I rely on people buying the "recycling centers will charge you to get rid of these" line to sell me stuff for peanuts. I just don't care anymore, I will do anything to protect my interests. We need to gatekeep this hobby better. It's getting hard for the average man with a 30k a year salary to keep up.

If cheating naive people who trust you is the way to "keep up", I'm very glad I have no such desire, regardless of salary. On the contrary, I have very good experiences with being open and honest - I regularly get extra stuff thrown in (and once even had the price halved without asking for it...) by telling people exactly what I was doing and why, even when doing a lowball offer.

Exactly this.
A while ago I bought stuff from a guy just half an hour driving away. He was sincerely not aware of what he was selling and if it had any value. When I was there I got thru some other stuff he was selling and picked some more AGP graphics cards (some nice ones) and told him exactly what he had there. And left some of them (who needs 3x an ATI 9800pro when running mainly socket 7 and older).
Made him an offer that was realistic but a bit low. And told him that. He said: take it, I'm done with people that keep telling everything is worthless while it probably isn't.

Few weeks ago I got a message from him about this cool PCI 486 system he got, but the battery was dead and the system got in a bootloop (Dead Dallas clock, posted it here a little while ago). Befor he went to local online marketplaces he gave me the chance to make him an offer. Again told him what he had and made a similar low but realistic offer (and again told him it wasn't a high bid).
I could have it, we had a nice chat (at one and a half meters distance) and before I knew it, I had an extra hard disk (unknown Seagate u*) and two old CD-ROMs (1995 and 1998) for the same price. And then he asked me what I would do with an ATX full tower. I don't have a use for it now but he just have it with me, telling he got a bit frustrated with peolple pretending to collect and got it online next day for a big plus. All I had to do was promise he wouldn't see it online any time soon.

There may be another source of stuff from a friend of his, who's gonna move and has to lose some 80's and 90's stuff...

So being honest got me some nice extra stuff in good shape for free 😀

Honesty is always the best policy . If a seller believes he is sitting on a pile of gold, he will eventually realize that, with some exceptions, stuff advertised at certain crazy prices on Ebay does not necessarily actually sell at those prices . People who actually need to "move product" in a reasonable amount of time know that and the occasional seller who wants to clear his garage of old tech stuff before the next ice age will learn it too . Not everybody has the time to wait for the occasional sucker/desperate dude to come along once in a blue moon and buy some of their grossly overpriced old stuff .

Because having 1 ISA based Graphics accelerator is NOT enough, I decided to get another:

Will pitch it against the Cirrus Logic GD5428 on my 386 in Windows 3.1

And because I find it hard to walk past a cheap sound card with wavetable on it without pressing the buy now button:

And because I trashed an old S3 virge with faulty memory, a replacement is needed to pretend I didn't butcher the original with my soldering Iron

Now just the ebay waiting for postage game .... its quite a long, drawn out game, living in Perth Australia.

Picked up another PRO32 PNP Card today. For an ALS100 chip card this has very nice sound quality and is very quiet, and the added Crystal/Dream Synth sounds really good.

devius wrote on 2020-06-08, 17:50:

Should we start a new "Collecting rants" topic?

This isn't actually that bad an idea in a way. I'm pretty sure that there's a lot that can be said about this and not just the complaining or the bad side of it.

And my apologies for being offtopic with this here.