giantenemycat wrote on 2026-03-22, 21:18:

Have set up two contenders for my alternate-timeline-2006-second-hand-cheapo-PC. […]
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Have set up two contenders for my alternate-timeline-2006-second-hand-cheapo-PC.

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The MESH has an ASUS A7V-E - Socket A (VIA KT133). Athlon 1100, 256MB SDRAM.

On the right in that lovely tacky case, we have a Gigabyte GA-8SIMLH - Socket 478 (SiS 651). Pentium 4 2.0 (Northwood), 512MB DDR (in single-channel for the jank).

Which would you pick?

I'd put the AMD in the blue case 😉

Looked through my boxes of IC tubes, for a 6264 (8k SRAM), lots of 62256s (32k) but no 6264s! Then I "remembered" the "long forgotten" boxes of ICs in a back corned of my workshop and went through then... found 5 6264s (yay!) but also a some other pretty interesting old ICs:

Several 2016 (2k SRAM) and 5516 (2k CMOS SRAM)

2x 486 CPUs - I didn't think I had any x86 prior to Pentium anymore!

3x 8080, 2x 8085, and 2x Z80 CPUs

4x 68000 CPUs (original 64pin DIPs)

1x 1702 EPROM (256byte) I knew I still had a few 2708s (1k) but I've not seen a 1702 in years (this is the first EPROM type I ever worked with!)

1x 1771 floppy disk controller (very early - might be the 1st WD)

Lots more "old stuff" but these were the ones which stood out to me.