We started giving away old HP laptops at work and today the count got to 100 and have dozens more to clear out. Will consider this retro with models such as HP nc4200, nx6110, nx6125, nx6310, x6325 and 6510b offered now.
Comes without PSU and OS, so im suprised so many already have gone.

dionb wrote:

But back on-topic: Got some stuff from a gentleman whose computers keep dying who vocally complains about how they don't build ' […]
Show full quote

But back on-topic:
Got some stuff from a gentleman whose computers keep dying who vocally complains about how they don't build 'em like they used to. Performed a little autopsy:

Yes, the CPU and motherboard were toast, quite literally - signs of overheating everywhere. And yes, this gentleman is a heavy smoker, he has cats and dogs and the PC lives on the floor. And no, he hardly ever cleans his house. But no, that can't possibly have anything to do with why his computers keep dying on him 😵

Note that this was a late-ish P4, so about 15 years old. I'm no fan of Netburst, but if surviving this abuse for 15 years isn't a sign of excellent build quality, I can't imagine what is.

And some people find it weird I try to avoid buying used stuff as much as possible, the guys house must be a sight to see.

I'd like to suggest using a large vat of sulphuric acid and 20Kg of TNT for cleaning that up.

Enough of this Amiga stuff and closed that case again.

Bought this thing as damaged and had some work with it:

For the case, there is nothing to restore. No way to remove that ugly white lacquer.

Fixed the battery damage on the mainboard and repaired 2 traces. I was lucky to find an image of the board with CPU socket removed, therefore it was easy to find the broken ones.
Then I replaced one damaged floppy with a standard PC one, in which I did the modification to work in an Amiga - was easy and works.

The ALF 232C SCSI controller with a Quantum 50 mb HD was bought seperatley, looks like new and works very well.

Installed a Kickstart 2.0 ROM from an A500 I had lying around to get the A2000 boot from HD.

This 2088 XT bridge board was from another scrap lot and after some heavy restauration it works at least on a cold boot.

I also bought a keyboard, but never used it as I set up everything in WinUAE. Indeed a very cool option to connect the Amiga SCSI drive to the PC and install everything there without plaing disk-jokey.

I also attach the ALF 232C and the bridgebroard ROMs for reference and for use in WinUAE

Crank9000 wrote:

And some people find it weird I try to avoid buying used stuff as much as possible, the guys house must be a sight to see.

I'd like to suggest using a large vat of sulphuric acid and 20Kg of TNT for cleaning that up.

Actually, brushing off the 'coffee grounds' and chucking the heatsink and plastic parts into the dishwasher did the job admirably. The aluminium looks slightly oxidized now, but given the way the oxide protects the metal beneath with aluminium I'm not concerned. Didn't bother with the fan though, that went straight in the bin. I have enough spares.

Despite this filth, this is a clear example of why used stuff can be a good idea. This system was - as expected - a writeoff, but I also got its predecessor. That was another dead motherboard, but with a very nice and very working Voodoo3 3000 PCI and CT3900 Soundblaster AWE32 with 2x 4MB SIMMs in it. They are rumoured to exist new, but not at a price I'm prepared to pay.

Throwing together some Yamaha stuff into the Vectra VEi8, running a Coppermine 800 with 512MB SDRAM

https://imgur.com/a/MLPQ2in

Yamaha DS2416 DSP Factory Mixer Card
Yamaha SW1000XG PCI + PLG100-DX plugin Board.
Yamaha SW60XG ISA
+ AX44 Expansion Unit

Predator99 wrote:

For the case, there is nothing to restore. No way to remove that ugly white lacquer.

That's pretty defeatiest; there are very effective ways of removing paint from plastic.. Have you really tried them?

liqmat wrote:

If you want cheaper rates to Europe from the U.S. I personally use Parcelmonkey.com and usually TrakPak wins within that service. It takes a bit longer, but if time is not a big deal it can be quite a savings. Shipping to Europe is always cheaper for me this way. Canada not so much with Parcelmonkey, but I will say that USPS may be a bit more than UPS or FedEx initially to Canada, but the Canadian receiver then gets the brokerage fee from UPS and FedEx which puts that amount much higher overall than USPS. This has been my experience anyway.

I got to be the Canadian guinea pig on this one. 😉

Thallanor wrote:

liqmat wrote:

If you want cheaper rates to Europe from the U.S. I personally use Parcelmonkey.com and usually TrakPak wins within that service. It takes a bit longer, but if time is not a big deal it can be quite a savings. Shipping to Europe is always cheaper for me this way. Canada not so much with Parcelmonkey, but I will say that USPS may be a bit more than UPS or FedEx initially to Canada, but the Canadian receiver then gets the brokerage fee from UPS and FedEx which puts that amount much higher overall than USPS. This has been my experience anyway.

I got to be the Canadian guinea pig on this one. 😉

Yes sir, actually you are the poster child. 😉 Although, Beegle also said he had to deal with it recently as well.

appiah4 wrote:

Predator99 wrote:

For the case, there is nothing to restore. No way to remove that ugly white lacquer.

That's pretty defeatiest; there are very effective ways of removing paint from plastic.. Have you really tried them?

Not really. It sticks on plastic and metal and you cannot remove it even with a screwdriver. What do you propose..?

Got up to Pentium Pro

Decided to decorate my retro corner a bit

Predator99 wrote:

Enough of this Amiga stuff and closed that case again. […]
Show full quote

Enough of this Amiga stuff and closed that case again.

Bought this thing as damaged and had some work with it:

DSC_7771r.jpg

For the case, there is nothing to restore. No way to remove that ugly white lacquer.

Have you tried methylated spirits?

There are other options for that as well.

https://www.doityourself.com/stry/how-to-remo … nt-from-plastic

This might be a hit and miss in most cases (no pun intended).

Predator99 wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Predator99 wrote:

For the case, there is nothing to restore. No way to remove that ugly white lacquer.

That's pretty defeatiest; there are very effective ways of removing paint from plastic.. Have you really tried them?

Not really. It sticks on plastic and metal and you cannot remove it even with a screwdriver. What do you propose..?

Rub with brake fluid? (Never had paint this can't remove)
Soak in rubbing alcohol?
Spray on oven cleaner all over and let it soak for a night? (This stuff's fumes are toxic, but works very well)
Try an industrial paint remover like Citristrip? (This stuff is magical)
Sand it down and repaint?

Finally thought up a good use for my old Mac Mini G4, which I installed Mac OS 9 on natively some months back.

I'm going to have friends over on New Year's Eve and we'll be playing some computer quiz/trivia games and amongst the games will be the Mac version of "You Don't Know Jack" (UK Edition). I've been configuring the setup today and the game runs nicely on the Mini with the resolution set to 640x480 & Virtual Memory switched off. 😎

Going to install Win98se on my Sony Vaio pc.
Win95 died and too many problems with USB patches.
Also upgraded the ram to 64mb from 32mb.
And upgraded the CD-ROM drive to a Sony dvd drive just because i had one lying around.

I decided to buy a couple of dead mainboards to have a go at fixing them - this one arrived today.

Battery corrosion has eaten some traces so I washed it in Vinegar:

Then it was time for a bath:

Lots and lots of desoldering later and there are some ruined traces that have no continuity - sadly some of the corrosion got into the SRAM socket so one of the SRAM chips looks very nasty. One of the traces was under the AT power connector so off that came too:

Here it is all back together, I might give it a go tomorrow once I'm confident it's dried out:

This should be enough for now.

Older packs

I sure wish these icons were available in the 90s.

Well, got a considerable haul today, but the most exciting part is this relatively minty (seriously doubt it was used, almost no dust inside) beastie:

I've been looking pretty hard for a "5.25 era" desktop for a while. The 14" monitor is in my car and I have 4 AT keyboards (2 missing keys and none perfect, one of the ones with missing keys is super clean, though).

It cost me a box of donuts, so not bad. Didn't know for many hours how clean it was inside. So what's that video card?

Not the best pic but it's a Cirrus Logic GD5401, which is meh but very DOSsy in some ways. I might put my EGA card in here for fun, but ultimately it'll probably be a VGA. But what haven't I mentioned? Oh, processor!

AMD 286-16. Been dying to get my hands on a 286 and a late model is kind of ideal. I've removed the leaky battery (and burned my finger), and it doesn't look too bad but I bet I'll have to patch a couple of traces. Haven't tested it, but the most dust in this system looks like it fell in through cracks from the outside. None on the fan. Gonna examine the PSU and test it with something less rare, I am dying to get that floppy drive running, it also looks unused. Given the BIOS date of 1992, it'll be a 1.2Mb.

Oh and tons of RAM, couple newer video cards, nice older joystick, there's a mid-late 90s Dell in the car I haven't identified, an early Presario (probably P1), and a mid-90s case I had to dig for that turned out to be empty, but it has a "powered by Red Hat" badge on it that someone will want it for.

Edit: 🤣 The Dell is an XPS R450 Slot 1 PII with a Turtle Beach sound card in it. Never had a Slot 1, never had a Turtle Beach. Never had a 286 for that matter. It's a day for filling holes in my collection, apparently!