That's amazing. Congrats on the V5's.

Cool, I'll have to check out that place in Shenzhen on day.

A few more visits and the Voodoo crowd may crown you their new king.
Nice haul!

amadeus777999 wrote:

A few more visits and the Voodoo crowd may crown you their new king.
Nice haul!

Maybe if I bought the Voodoo2s, 3s and Rushes as well. But I think I already bought too many, I have nothing that I can do with so many. Caught up in the excitement (and great price compared to eBay), ya know?

But even outside 3dfx. Hundreds of GF4 MX for a couple of dollars each. 1400MHz Tuallys for a few dollars, 1000MHz Coppermines for about $1.50, slower Pentium IIIs for even less. Hundreds of them. Didn't see too many Pentium IIs, but heaps of Pentium I and 486s which were more expensive. Lots of Socket 5 and 7 motherboards too.

It's all sold for industrial equipment over there. The Voodoo5s for example - one of the AGP cards is pretty much new. No dust, not a scratch on the PCB or IO slot. One just looks like a normal used card (with the slightly chipped ferrite on the inductor), and one is in great physical condition but smells awful. The fan stickers are slightly browned. Doesn't smell like cigarette smoke, so it was probably in some factory somewhere. All the same price though. They aren't collectors. They are working, or not working and that determines the price.

There were charts showing what CPUs and Motherboards to buy for different types of industrial equipment. Embroiders, CNC machines, all that kind of stuff.

They weren't just those new Chinese industrial boards either. There was ASUS, Gigabyte, Epox,and more. On the server/workstation side there was plenty of Tyan, Supermicro and the like.

A staggering amount of CPU cards in almost any config you could imagine. More ISA cards, and types of ISA cards than I'd ever seen before.

A few cool sound cards too. Anything from the old trusty AWE64 Gold for around $25 each to some Aureal cards for a couple of dollars, right up to full length cards with half the world's capacitor supply on them.

It really just comes down to everything being "useful" in China. Everything has some value.

If anyone's watched Strange Parts' videos, it's basically that but with old PC equipment. I wish I could have brought more back but it's way too impractical.

Of course, there's more than just pre Y2K equipment. Anything used was there. Especially Xeons and "100% legit Engineering Samples" for more recent CPUs. Around the same area are plenty more buildings just packed with electronics of all sorts, PC or otherwise. I'd challenge even the most seasoned collectors to not smile like a little kid on Christmas walking around that place.

I really really need to arrange a study visit to one of our Shenzhen-based vendors. Last time my colleague went and spent all his free time on wine&women. Something to be said for that, but you can do that anywhere. This though... probably unique.

Wow that is cool, would have loved to seen some pics from the mall. Too bad you lost the pics =/

China, here I come.

x0zm_ wrote:

But even outside 3dfx. Hundreds of GF4 MX for a couple of dollars each. 1400MHz Tuallys for a few dollars, 1000MHz Coppermines for about $1.50, slower Pentium IIIs for even less. Hundreds of them. Didn't see too many Pentium IIs, but heaps of Pentium I and 486s which were more expensive. Lots of Socket 5 and 7 motherboards too.

For those who can't make the trip to China, things like this can be also bought from Taobao and Xianyu for good prices compared to anywhere we normally buy from. These sites are basically the Chinese equivalent of eBay, so you need to use a shipping forwarder unless you have an address in China.

Some of the things I've bought from there are multiple P3-S 1.4 for $5 each, Voodoo 5500 for $80, Voodoo 2 for $20 (prices in AUD), etc. Last time I checked, there was even a Voodoo 5 6000 for around $3000 which I believe is a decent price. You could probably make a living buying it all up and reselling it back here.

Taobao used to be awesome for old PC stuff. There's still a few things here and there, but it's been largely picked over.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Taobao used to be awesome for old PC stuff. There's still a few things here and there, but it's been largely picked over.

Which is funny, because I never thought about using Taobao much for retro hardware. I've used it for a long time for other things though.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Taobao used to be awesome for old PC stuff. There's still a few things here and there, but it's been largely picked over.

I'm Chinese, so I'm able to do some small chat with the sellers on the Aliwangwang app. They say the PRC govt has heavily cracked down on overseas shipping for electronics at least on Taobao. The list of unrestricted items is already getting thin.

Yeah I would love to visit there one day, it's so much more vast, interesting and cheaper than places like Japan's Akihabara IMO.

Palladium wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Taobao used to be awesome for old PC stuff. There's still a few things here and there, but it's been largely picked over.

I'm Chinese, so I'm able to do some small chat with the sellers on the Aliwangwang app. They say the PRC govt has heavily cracked down on overseas shipping for electronics at least on Taobao. The list of unrestricted items is already getting thin.

Doesn't surprise me. I've had no real issues with things I've bought using Taobao's own forwarding service - mainly watercooling equipment and the occasional trinket as a gift for friends. But some items have been declared prohibited when trying to add to cart for seemingly no reason. Must be a keyword that triggers it.

Did you manage to see K6-3+, FIC PA2013 ATX Super7, and Asus TUSL2 over there?

Wow very cool! I know a lot of old PCs get shipped over to China to be stripped down, I guess this is where some of those components end up.

Wow... sorry to hear about your pics being lost, but that is quite a haul! Can't wait to see what else you found.

I know retro computing isn't in the top 10 most popular hobbies or anything, but I'm amazed that there is so much of that stuff still sitting around, even in China. Voodoo 5s have been worth a substantial amount of money for several years now... PCI cards especially.

If I ever come across a place like that (with even a fraction of the cool stuff) I'm going to have a very hard time leaving anything behind.

Palladium wrote:

Did you manage to see K6-3+, FIC PA2013 ATX Super7, and Asus TUSL2 over there?

Not off the top of my head, no.

Qjimbo wrote:

Wow very cool! I know a lot of old PCs get shipped over to China to be stripped down, I guess this is where some of those components end up.

Wouldn't surprise me!

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Wow... sorry to hear about your pics being lost, but that is quite a haul! Can't wait to see what else you found.

I know retro computing isn't in the top 10 most popular hobbies or anything, but I'm amazed that there is so much of that stuff still sitting around, even in China. Voodoo 5s have been worth a substantial amount of money for several years now... PCI cards especially.

If I ever come across a place like that (with even a fraction of the cool stuff) I'm going to have a very hard time leaving anything behind.

Yeah, I'm more disappointed losing the actual holiday pictures more than anything else. But I'll be back. It's only a short flight from here compared to the US and Europe, and can be had fairly cheap when there's airline sales. It's kind of sad to think in the current state of the retro hardware market, just selling a few of the items I brought back could fund a whole new trip. To think a few years ago you would have been nuts to buy a Voodoo 5 PCI for $200, now they are approaching $1000 AUD... through bids!

Who knows what else is sitting out there though. Inside little repair shop backrooms, or in the forgotten corners of warehouses all over the world.

At least the first of my shipments has arrived to Sydney Customs. I don't know which one it is because I didn't write which tracking #s for which boxes. Guess I'll find out shortly and have some more pics to post.

One of the things that caught my attention on Taobao is new 486 daughterboards are still being made for industrial machinery.

Very interesting - would be interesting to buy some 486 stuff there.

Judging by the weight shown on the tracking page, I think the parcel coming on Monday are the remainder of the Voodoo 5s and a few other bits and pieces that I packed in with it. Package #2 will probably be longer as that's the sea mail box with the motherboards.

Palladium wrote:

One of the things that caught my attention on Taobao is new 486 daughterboards are still being made for industrial machinery.

amadeus777999 wrote:

Very interesting - would be interesting to buy some 486 stuff there.

Do they have desirable chipsets for non-industrial use? That is interesting. I knew about Socket 370 and 478 boards still being made, but not Socket 1/2/3.

Mildly off-topic: After browsing Taobao, this Google Translated piece speaks to me on a spiritual level.

At the same time, the price of a single card of up to several thousand dollars in Voodoo2 also made a lot of players lose all their savings. It also supports the parallel running of two graphics cards and thus double the performance. However, the price of two Voodoo2s is unaffordable even if the player is selling iron. Frustration, players with no meters in their hands can only look at the evaluation on the media every day to draw bread.

With the passage of time, we will all grow up or grow old, but those things that we have used that have been accompanied by us and have given us joy have gradually been sealed by history. To retain it, we may choose to collection......