That dual socket 8 machine is sweet. I'd totally get a 2nd CPU and up the ram and have a NT4/ 2000 system.

I found this combo in the dumpster here at the apartment complex I'm living at. I've gotten as far as installing the sound card and so far it seems fine, not sure about how I'll go about testing the box.

Wow nice find repo man

Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-04-18, 18:50:

I found this combo in the dumpster here at the apartment complex I'm living at. I've gotten as far as installing the sound card and so far it seems fine, not sure about how I'll go about testing the box.

The drivers should be available on the web, although it's possible that you won't find them at the M-Audio/MIDIMan website, because their driver archive is screwed up.

The outs should be easy to test (just pay attention to the output level settings, some consumer equipment can't stand professional signals and will blow out). For the ins you'll need to route a signal into the box. MIDI should just work as usual...

yawetaG wrote on 2021-04-18, 20:20:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2021-04-18, 18:50:

I found this combo in the dumpster here at the apartment complex I'm living at. I've gotten as far as installing the sound card and so far it seems fine, not sure about how I'll go about testing the box.

The drivers should be available on the web, although it's possible that you won't find them at the MIDIMan website, because their driver archive is screwed up.

The outs should be easy to test (just pay attention to the output level settings, some consumer equipment can't stand professional signals and will blow out). For the ins you'll need to route a signal into the box. MIDI should just work as usual...

Thanks for the tips. First hurdle to overcome is that I didn't see the power adapter in the dumpster, and it uses an unusual 9 volt AC adapter. Worst case scenario the box doesn't work, but it looks like the going rate for the sound card on Ebay is over $100.00.

I saw a video on YouTube where they took one apart to reveal some obviously bad capacitors, so I took the cover off. Now I know why it was in the dumpster; luckily, I have some practice when it comes to replacing capacitors.

Obtained a bunch of beige boxes from my university's to-be-thrown-out hardware storage a little while back (+ some more not on the pic).

Lugged home one by one on the bike. Good old steel boxes, these things are heavy!

Unfortunately at some point some asshat has removed almost all EPROMS and some other non-soldered chips from those machines and add-on cards.
That same asshat could at least have removed the leaky batteries but of course not. Oh well.
So now i'm on a quest to restore these things back into a working state!

The one on top is a Suntac 286 that got fixed last week, the 386 is also missing a CPU and keyboard controller, and the 2x 486 are the same super old board revision that hasn't been dumped yet and is generally a nightmare of jumpers to config correctly.

Tbh not sure what i'm going to do with all of these but not having them end up dumped in the sea is a good start.

My probably weirdest find so far is this PCI card:

RJ-45, Serial port + 4 LEDs?
Says "AP Biotech" and appears to be part of some kinda really expensive lab equipment. Seems to be worth quite a bit still, but no idea what it's good for.
Universities really have no idea what they throw away.

fgenesis wrote on 2021-04-20, 20:47:

Obtained a bunch of beige boxes from my university's to-be-thrown-out hardware storage a little while back (+ some more not on the pic).

Chunky! Nice desktops (once cleaned up and maybe retro-brighted). Are they AT or ATX? Think I like the one the left the most.

pan069 wrote on 2021-04-20, 20:54:

Chunky! Nice desktops (once cleaned up and maybe retro-brighted). Are they AT or ATX? Think I like the one the left the most.

Nah, they shall stay authentic and filthy 😁
All of them AT / Baby-AT.
I haven't seen a case like the left one before. It opens like the front of a car; there are no screws to close it permanently, only those two buttons to press in and it'll swing open. As if it's made for constant repairs. I's amazing.

I forgot to top the weirdest-find-so-far:

This came from the audio/video department.
The front of one card is labelled "Silver Box" which I unfortunately don't have and looks like a thin external SCSI connector. The other card has a bunch of firewire connectors. Both cards are connected on the side by what looks similar to a SLI bridge.

Again, what the actual fuck are they throwing away. I wish i could use any of this, it looks amazingly complicated.

Given the pcb tracks out to the connector from the Altera FPGA chip, and given it's from the AV department, could be some custom real time video processing by loading filters on to the FPGA? I think there were some video connectors that used SCSI like connectors (SGI stuff?). Plus C-Cube look to have been early in making MPEG encoder/decoders.

fgenesis wrote on 2021-04-20, 20:47:

My probably weirdest find so far is this PCI card: […]
Show full quote

My probably weirdest find so far is this PCI card:

DSC00723.JPG
DSC00724.JPG

RJ-45, Serial port + 4 LEDs?
Says "AP Biotech" and appears to be part of some kinda really expensive lab equipment. Seems to be worth quite a bit still, but no idea what it's good for.
Universities really have no idea what they throw away.

https://btiscience.org/wp-content/uploads/201 … dmin_Manual.pdf
Looks like it's a CU-900 control/monitor card for chromatography lab equipment. Section 2.2.2 for how to install the card.
https://spwindustrial.com/ge-amersham-pharmac … reat-condition/
I'm assuming they don't actually sell for that these days.

fgenesis wrote on 2021-04-20, 20:47:

Obtained a bunch of beige boxes from my university's to-be-thrown-out hardware storage a little while back (+ some more not on the pic).

Your doing god's work fgenesis
I'd say job well done on saving the cases alone but the fact your taking the time to repair the hardware inside is awesome.

I couldn't agree more Chinny!

Twins!!!

They both have huge Coolmaster cases, Abit IP35-pro mother boards, ATI 3850 video cards, 2GB ram, Q6600 CPU's over clocked to 3Ghz, adjustable fans and some of the biggest passive heat pipe coolers I've ever seen.

Somebody loved these things back in 2008.

Wow!!! That's a hell of a dumpster find. Nice going

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-04-22, 18:50:

Wow!!! That's a hell of a dumpster find. Nice going

Like the World Trade Center, each tower was impressive, but the fact that there were two identical giant towers provided a certain gestalt to this find.

Hopefully this will hold me over until I find that system with an Asus PVI motherboard with MR BIOS, Cyrix 5x86-133 CPU, and what the hell, one of those ATI Mach 64 video cards too. =)

Those look like a cooler master cm-690 case. I have one of them since 07 new in box. Hopefully this summer/fall I'll have time to swap my daily 775 build into it.

IP35 Pro is a great board. I recently put in an LGA771 Xeon in it after modifying the BIOS to include the correct microcode. I can’t remember off the top of my head which chip it was exactly.

fgenesis wrote on 2021-04-20, 21:05:

I haven't seen a case like the left one before. It opens like the front of a car; there are no screws to close it permanently, only those two buttons to press in and it'll swing open. As if it's made for constant repairs. I's amazing.

I love this style of case. Two of my turbo XT clone machines have cases like this. I'd also never seen anything like it before. Now I want more of these cases, it would be awesome to build a 386/486 machine into one!

fgenesis wrote on 2021-04-20, 20:47:

Unfortunately at some point some asshat has removed almost all EPROMS and some other non-soldered chips from those machines and add-on cards.

I've got a collection of keyboard controllers and BIOS chips if you need any let me know.

A friend's employer decided to get rid of the junk and old spare parts stored in the attic and let me splurge a little.
The place hasn't been cleaned in 50 years and everything was covered in dust.
There is also a big box of generic S3 Trios and interface cards, a few typewriters and empty PC cases but nothing really interesting.
It was a good run.