First post, by BitWrangler
- Rank
- l33t++
Howdy folks,
Thought I'd start a thread about the stuff you swore you had, but you can't find, or keep track of, or it turns up during unrelated to retro PC endeavours, then sneaks back into hiding when you put on the Techie hat again. Sliding back into the fog of the rest of the collection or pile or something. ... and also to celebrate the re-finds, or surprise finds of stuff you forgot about.
So biggest piece that I seem unable to find is a Toshiba T3100SX or something closely related, that I had ~18 years ago, but I can't figure where it went. It might be doing something sneaky like hiding under a bunch of Popular Mechanics mags or something that I haven't needed to dig out since google digitised them, or PM did. I ain't in fit shape to move heavy boxes at a rate of more than one or two a day, so can't do the fine tooth comb search. Thing is really, I have to take the "It'll turn up" approach because I have too many things to play with, so I am not real desperate yet, or at the "I must know! I must have it!!!" stage. A lot of that goes for the rest too.
GFX... Now I keep thinking I have a GF 8800 series... a green one... it got "recorded" on some partial inventories I wrote out 10 years back, I think it was in front of me or nearby at the time, but the darn thing is never around when I want to put it into something... I have a faint idea that it surfaced once in between hardware sessions, like I was looking for VHS tapes or something in the general area, and hey, GF 8800, cool, then poof, gone again next time I think of it. Now a mystery was sorta solved over the last two days, I thought I had two earlier Geforce cards, a GF2mx400 and aaaaaaa... plain jane Geforce?? another Geforce2... wth, why can't I remember... so yesterday, a Geforce256 appeared in the closet, and I may have questions about that in future, might need some repair. Then today, in the basement I came across a Creative Labs GB0010 (GF2GTS) installed in a system, well damn, I don't remember building this one, 🤣... Weirdness, I had somehow half remembered both of the cards and had this weird morphing combo of the two in my head that I couldn't nail down to real hardware. Yah, that's two cards I was thinking were one, I have the GF2MX400 as well. Now this might be another one like that, what I thought I had was a Diamond Monster 3D 2 8MB, the first Voodoo 2 I bought some 15 years back, used, because I'd never messed with them. Now I swear I remember the logo on it, and I swear I remember wondering if I could do SLI with it at all being an 8MB... now what I've got that I know where it is, is a Creative Labs 12MB and a 3DFX/STB 12MB, both very plainly 12MB cards... and I only remembered buying another 1... what the heck... have I got a third V2 somewhere, even a 4th, because I think I was comparing a 12MB card with the 8MB at one point, and why the heck would I put them in totally different places?? So is there another one? another two? IDK
CPUs... I was fairly certain I had an intel DX4-100 and an AMD-5x86-133... but these seem absent from my boxes of CPUs... I have however found an AMD-DX4-100 and an AMD-DX4-120 that I wasn't expecting to have, or forgot about, so now I wonder if I'm crazy and the 100 was an AMD and the 5x86 was a 120, I don't know... I had a vague idea I'd turned up a second Cyrix 5x86 over my original one also, but that hasn't seen light of day either, but I feel like that one is installed in a system at the bottom of the pile, so that's not one I'm "worried" about yet. Another thing is I thought I had a Winchip2, that got written on some old notepads too... that's playing hookey too now... Then there's CPUs that seem to be breeding, I had one K6-266(3.2V)... now I've got 2... I had two K6-2-350s, now I've got 4... must be mitosis 'coz I can't tell between the males and females to separate them. 686PR166s bred as well... 3 of those now. Also got in my head that I had a real P-200, but again think that's in one of the systems in the pile.
Motherboards... now these damn things, despite being larger than VGA cards, and MUCH larger than CPUs have some funny tricks to play... There's one board a 440EX slot 1 with a PII-233 in it that keeps turning up, oh no it doesn't, now it's a 440BX with a 450 in it... well well, I should put that in a case... 2 days later, aha, an empty ATX case, let me go and get that...440EX??? dammit... I'll do something else then... those two are gaslighting me deliberately I know it. One that's gone AWOL that I really want to play with at the moment was a SiS chipset baby AT that was halfass super7 with a 6326 onboard... think it had one of those VX-Pro stickers on it. That one doesn't want to be found for now. Actually a few socket 7 boards absent, I might be looking for a forgotten box, I had several T2P4s, a FIC board and a Shuttle of some description, not to mention a couple of craptastic FXes of some description.
Then completely random crap surprises you, ISA CDROM interface card, CL, just a little short bugger with only the IDE(?) on, weird, C-Cube Mpeg decoder card, forgot about it, but I had it set up aeons ago, only had 1 video CD it worked with. Number Nine Revolution IV... now I wasn't surprised at having A number nine, I was surprised this one turned up in a box of things that I thought had been untouched about 7 years+ in the basement, when I LAST saw a number nine card in my upstairs desk area... do I have two of them??? ISA floppy/SCSI... what's that doing here, isn't it installed in the mid tower upstairs??? It's that mitosis thing again... oh yah, SB16 cards... what works on them? DDT?? I'm beginning to fear an infestation... could lose the whole first floor... j/k.. I probably just overbought a bit... thrift store like "oooh, soundblaster, better grab that to make my surplus retro rigs more saleable, retro geeks love a soundblaster..."
So, wasn't meaning to write a novel (Movie rights still available) but anyhoo, what's hiding from you, what weird crap just turned up from the depths?
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.