The back

kolderman wrote on 2021-03-17, 06:16:

A new thing with some old things.

strategy guides 👌

Picked up two towers for $70 from the usual ewaste:

The one of the left is pretty bottom barrel (PCchips slot 1 AT board) but has one nice surprise:

Rightmost tower which I think had a 486 era board in it originally has a Socket 7/100mhz K5 with a nice complement of drives and cards (SCSI controller, additional IDE card, AWE64 value), plus an extra 5.25 drive hidden behind the blank bezel 😜

Also picked up these two crts from earlier trips to the same place - Sony Multiscan 100sx and Iiyama VisionMaster Pro 17.

mtgmackid wrote on 2021-03-20, 12:53:

Picked up two towers for $70 from the usual ewaste:

Wow, I haven't seen one of those tinted control slide doors on a case in decades. Completely forgot about those. Amazing it didn't get completely broken off after all these years especially since it looks like that case has been banged around a bit.

Never cease to amaze me how people throw machines like that away. It isnt hard to do one google search and find out they could easily make 100 euro or more from them, even if they know nothing about the machines.

Got PC-Chips M912. I know these boards have somewhat bad reputation. But if you happen to snap one with real cache chips then you are actually getting a decent VL-Bus motherboard with good compatibility, lithium battery, easy to tune/configure, etc.

Funny thing that in PC-Chips fasion, even those SN74LS245 transceivers seems to have some paint of them that peeling off when rubbed in alcohol. So they might not be actually TI branded parts 😀

vetz wrote on 2021-03-20, 13:07:

Never cease to amaze me how people throw machines like that away. It isnt hard to do one google search and find out they could easily make 100 euro or more from them, even if they know nothing about the machines.

They just don't care enough to do a basic search for them old=worthless.
And there are those who still don't care, but decide to sell. They either sell rare and valuable stuff for a next to nothing or overcharge for the most unremarkable common parts sometimes to the point I suspect money laundering rather than common ignorance.

I didn't buy these (retro) hardware today; rather, a friend gave me this green Inspiron after he bought himself a sleek new XPS 13. Before the XPS, he had been using this Inspiron as his daily driver since 2009!

Specs are:
-Core 2 Duo T9600, 2.8GHz, 1066FSB, 6MB L2
-4GB DDR2-800
-Radeon HD 4330 driving a 15" 1600x900 TN display. About as worthless in 3D as today's GeForce MX 250, the HD4330 is essentially a battery wasting frame buffer. Unlike the MX 250 however, this machine predates GPU switching, so there's no way to disable it.
-250GB 850 EVO SSD

Here's Green Dell chillaxing next to a red Dell I bought at a garage sale last summer. 😜

Got these bad boys for my PowerBook G4 Ti A1025 running OS 9.22 / 10.4.11. Didn’t play many games on Mac in my teens as we were predominantly a PC household but I bought my first MacBook (BlackBook) in 2006 after saving some hard earned coin.

pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-03-21, 00:35:

Got these bad boys for my PowerBook G4 Ti A1025 running OS 9.22 / 10.4.11. Didn’t play many games on Mac in my teens as we were predominantly a PC household but I bought my first MacBook (BlackBook) in 2006 after saving some hard earned coin.

Nice finds for all of them. So long as you don't mind worse than SC-55, better than OPL music and having a black bar where the HUD is, you have the best version of Dark Forces. It can run in 640x400, and at a higher framerate than in DOS. Just remember to rebind your controls to something you're comfortable with. Also, with Rebel Assault II, don't feel bad for using cheats. It's a punishing game, but not as punishing as the original.

One Matrox Millenium II 8MB (with expansion board) seemingly pulled from an old Compaq. Cannot. Wait.

I bought eight RAM chips 4x256K DIP20 for my 500++ project from the bay. As they’re sold and delivered from UK stock I do have high hopes that they aren’t fake ones. I don’t really care as long as they do work within the required specs.

Sold as NOS, the legs are pretty shiny though, like redone with a little tin…

Probably paid WAY too much, but searches to this forum didn't give me any pointers to price, only "searching for years" and "never shows up", so I took it ..

A Sony Trinitron 210ES (CRT screen) in excellent condition for €27.

Eat you heart out evilbay scammers !
Eat the heart you don't have ! 😁

Looks like anti-glare film is a little wiped?

Nice screen that - I found one NOS once and the anti glare had gone off on that too. I ended up painstaking polishing it off which improved the brightness but then the glass was like a mirror, very distracting so I got rid of it in the end.

I'm a noob, how do you fix anti-glare ?

Ydee wrote on 2021-03-22, 10:22:

Looks like anti-glare film is a little wiped?

Will that render the screen unusable ?

Of course not, I just have a different idea of excellent condition, that´s all.

if it's annoying you the anti-glare film can be removed, but then of course you'll have more glare ^^

mhh shiny...

also got this 386/486 board because of the on board I/O I wanted to use for a project...
unfortunately the length on UH/TH99 is incorrect as it's not 254mm but ~280mm, could have figured by just looking at the pictures more closely, but I just assumed the stated dimensions are correct... now it won't fit in the case I wanted to put it in though by just a few mm ^^
oh well, at least it came with a nice math copro

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-03-22, 12:21:

I'm a noob, how do you fix anti-glare ?

Ydee wrote on 2021-03-22, 10:22:

Looks like anti-glare film is a little wiped?

Will that render the screen unusable ?

The color monitor that was marketed with the Atari ST line (model SC1224) was a super glossy screen, but get it in a low light/dark room and it was a beautiful image. I personally like gloss and despise anti-glare in most situations. (OK, laptop while on the road is an exception) So set up your environment properly when using the monitor and behold the pure light. It is good and shiny and the pixels are emitted without filter or sadness.