H3nrik V! wrote on 2022-12-21, 18:31:

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-12-21, 17:44:

BetaC wrote on 2022-12-21, 00:28:

I can finally add a golden boy to the collection.
CF01D533-1EB4-48F3-BBC5-589A0CBED08A.jpeg

I was thinking that only a 60&66mhz have golden version

All the way up to 100 MHz, actually. 😀

Wow! unfortunately they will be covered by a heatsink... i love 486 low freqency because can work "naked"

Turbo -> wrote on 2022-12-19, 19:36:

Murugan wrote on 2022-12-17, 17:43:

Turns out to be a very nice system with some nice components. The previous owner got taste 😀

Very nice.

I bought some cards and a PC case. Any good?

I meant to reply to this the other day but forgot.

I'm not familiar with the large card in the first picture, but the Geforce 2 MX should be a good card for Windows 9x games. Also the Leadtek Winfast card appears to be a Geforce FX 5200. It looks really disgusting and the heatsink looks crooked, but if it works it's an okay card for late Windows 9x and early XP gaming. The PCI Rage 128 GL card isn't going to be blazing fast, but it isn't bad and PCI cards with passable 3D capabilities are getting tough to find so it's a good one to hang on to.

... that case though! That's super cool! I've never seen one of those before. I actually had to take a close look at it to be sure it wasn't some weird BMW-licensed thing, because it looks so much like an early 2000s BMW front end.

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-12-21, 19:55:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2022-12-21, 18:31:

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-12-21, 17:44:

I was thinking that only a 60&66mhz have golden version

All the way up to 100 MHz, actually. 😀

Wow! unfortunately they will be covered by a heatsink... i love 486 low freqency because can work "naked"

You're right. It's a shame that such a nice work of art must be covered with a heat sink. However, as I understand, the gold tops had better thermal properties than the ceramic ones.
I'm actually missing P60 and P66 in ceramic, I only own them in gold top versions...

liqmat wrote on 2022-12-21, 17:51:

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-12-21, 17:44:

I was thinking that only a 60&66mhz have golden version

I had a Pentium 90 gold top back in the day. Upgraded from a 486 so I could play Earthsiege at a smooth frame rate with all details up.

I had a P90 system as well, back in 1994. Upgraded from a DX50 and it truly felt like a massive leap.

Chip was also a gold top but after many years the heatsink damaged the markings on it. I gave away the board with the CPU to a fellow vogoner years ago, hope they had fun with it 😀

MMaximus wrote on 2022-12-21, 22:34:

I had a P90 system as well, back in 1994. Upgraded from a DX50 and it truly felt like a massive leap.

Chip was also a gold top but after many years the heatsink damaged the markings on it. I gave away the board with the CPU to a fellow vogoner years ago, hope they had fun with it 😀

The Pentium 90 was my first Pentium and it was a big improvement for me. Those were exciting times in PC games & hardware. You might remember that video I did for college credits demonstrating the Pentium 90 in 1994 (pictured below). That was my Pentium 90 gaming rig. You can see my gold top was also fairly scraped up and it had only been installed for a few weeks before that video. No thermal compound was needed for the 90 which led to more scuff marks as a result. Had a new, shiny AWE32 in there as well. Good times.

AlessandroB wrote on 2022-12-21, 17:44:

BetaC wrote on 2022-12-21, 00:28:

I can finally add a golden boy to the collection.
CF01D533-1EB4-48F3-BBC5-589A0CBED08A.jpeg

I was thinking that only a 60&66mhz have golden version

As it turns out, very early 75s also are.

Few G80 cards that looked unmolested:

My local market for retro parts basically dried out post pandemic.. Now I'm just glad to have hoarded so much in the last five years! Does anyone else feel the same?

Post pandemic? So until 2020 you've found out retro stuff? Consider yourself lucky, here it dried out in 2010. Sure, you can still find a thing or two, but 2-3 times per year. Before 2010 I was finding each weekend a lot of stuff. Now it's only broken phones and tablets, laptops and "modern" components.

But yes, I'm also glad that I bought pretty much everything I could find back in the day.

In my quest to get a fully functional Dual Pentium III setup I bought a Gigabyte GA-6VTXDR a few months back, while the board does work it has bloated caps and right at this moment sourcing new through Hole low ESR caps for it is proving difficult, both Mouser and Digikey seem to be out of stock for the correct ones and the board honestly needs at least 18 of the caps replaced. Its entierly possible their search engine has an PEBCAK issue which needs resolving 😉

So that board is currently on the shelf till I can get the right caps for it without it costing me a small fortune in postage costs.

Now some here might think I spend far too much time on Evilbay 😜 but its more that I have dozens of saved searches for interesting bits of gear and the Gigabyte GA-6VTXDR is one of my saved searches so when it pinged with a hit I had to have a look and a seller who I have bought parts from previously had a Rev 1.1 version of it with dual 1400s Tuallys and 2GB of ram for a good price, I couldn't resist.

Some of the caps look a bit odd but other photos have them looking perfectly fine, im guessing they were marked for testing.

Finally it's how I wanted it. Bought this for like 35€ a few weeks ago. It seems titanium ones are more 'rare'?
Both parts of top case had cracks but luckily I found a near new set cheap on Ebay. Upped the RAM to 4GB (well 3 🤣), swapped the Core Duo CPU for a T7200 and changed the original HD to an SSD (With Linux Mint)

The Four Musketeers

Completelly for looks, they don't have any "real" function. 😁

timsdf wrote on 2022-12-22, 13:49:

The Four Musketeers
IMG_20221222_154001.jpg

Completelly for looks, they don't have any "real" function. 😁

Wow... I have never seen or heard of those before. 😀

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2022-12-22, 14:08:

timsdf wrote on 2022-12-22, 13:49:

The Four Musketeers
IMG_20221222_154001.jpg

Completelly for looks, they don't have any "real" function. 😁

Wow... I have never seen or heard of those before. 😀

It’s lovely 2000 era tat, not useful at all but does have a nice retro look to it.

liqmat wrote on 2022-12-21, 23:18:

The Pentium 90 was my first Pentium and it was a big improvement for me. Those were exciting times in PC games & hardware. You might remember that video I did for college credits demonstrating the Pentium 90 in 1994 (pictured below). That was my Pentium 90 gaming rig. You can see my gold top was also fairly scraped up and it had only been installed for a few weeks before that video. No thermal compound was needed for the 90 which led to more scuff marks as a result. Had a new, shiny AWE32 in there as well. Good times.

IAPPC_1994.jpg

Mine was rocking a brand new CT1750 w/ ASP... those were the days 👍

appiah4 wrote on 2022-12-22, 07:19:

My local market for retro parts basically dried out post pandemic.. Now I'm just glad to have hoarded so much in the last five years! Does anyone else feel the same?

Well it really depends on what era you consider retro.
As i fulfilled most of my collection goals (period 1996->2010), I disabled a lot of my automatic searches/filters, but I still see interesting parts each day. And still buy things almost every week.
eBay is not so popular in France an LeBonCoin (~craigslist) is a lot more used.
So prices are not always high. And you can still find good deals.
For example, I just received two shippings :
- 5 IDE HDDs for 3€ a piece.
- 4 graphics cards (AGP trident image, AGP Permedia 2, PCI Millennium 2, PCI cirrus logic GD5446) = 10€ the lot.

But if you are more into 386/486 era, these beasts are far less common.

We also have a bunch of scalpers. Last week I saw a NIB Fx5200 PCI sold almost instantly for 20€. It's now on ebay for 99€ (same defects on the box. So 100% sure)

appiah4 wrote on 2022-12-22, 07:19:

My local market for retro parts basically dried out post pandemic.. Now I'm just glad to have hoarded so much in the last five years! Does anyone else feel the same?

Sometimes I wish I hoarded stuff. I'm trying to avoid being impulsive and buying stuff that I don't need, but I ended up missing out on a few things. I saw a Sound Blaster 16 for $5 locally, but didn't grab it because I didn't have anything with an ISA slot. Now that I have a motherboard that has one, I wish I'd grabbed it. I also saw a Commodore 64 for $100, but decided to sleep on it, but I sold the next day. My local buy and sell has a section for free stuff. I used to browse it, but stopped because searching for computers returned like 99% computer desks. I just missed out on a free vintage Mac. Oh well. I hope they went to good homes.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-12-22, 07:19:

My local market for retro parts basically dried out post pandemic.. Now I'm just glad to have hoarded so much in the last five years! Does anyone else feel the same?

I haven't noticed any change because recycling centers couldn't switch to home office during covid so there was a steady flow of "new" parts from the usual local sources.
Of course it all depends on what you consider local: my country is small so it all counts as local to me. People also spend less on their hobbies ever since the war started next door and the energy crisis hit and that includes retro as well. You don't want to spend too much on an old computer if grocery and utility prices doubled-tripled in the last few months and god knows when it's going to normalize.

I'm about to give this hobby up.
I specifically told the guy to pack it in a cardboard box and use tons of bubble wrap, ESPECIALLY on the front bezel. I told him I'll pay extra and he told me I'm good.
Well I'm NOT FUCKING GOOD!
I have to lie down and get away from all this for a while. I'm done.

Miphee wrote on 2022-12-23, 16:34:

I'm about to give this hobby up. I specifically told the guy to pack it in a cardboard box and use tons of bubble wrap, ESPECIAL […]
Show full quote

I'm about to give this hobby up.
I specifically told the guy to pack it in a cardboard box and use tons of bubble wrap, ESPECIALLY on the front bezel. I told him I'll pay extra and he told me I'm good.
Well I'm NOT FUCKING GOOD!
I have to lie down and get away from all this for a while. I'm done.

Fuuuuuuuuck that's awful.