Show off your old and retro computer parts

[The Smokin Deist]

On 8/27/2019 at 3:14 PM, Bloody-George said:

And here's a close-up shot of the Cirrus Logic GD3454 VGA, with its whopping 1MB of VRAM that could be expanded if you included memory chips in the brown banks on the right. Pretty neat feature that ceased to exist.

 

 

Cool to see old hardware. My old A4000 had the Picasso IV RTG Card for the graphics. It used a Cirrus Logic GD5446. It was a great card/GPU. It had 4 MB of video RAM--a lot for those days.

Edited August 29, 2019 by The Smokin Deist
Trimmin' down the quote

[Bloody-George]

17 hours ago, The Smokin Deist said:

Cool to see old hardware. My old A4000 had the Picasso IV RTG Card for the graphics. It used a Cirrus Logic GD5446. It was a great card/GPU. It had 4 MB of video RAM--a lot for those days.

That Picasso card looks like it was a beast. I wish you had pictures of that A4000 so we could see it. I simply adore retro builds.

[Energycore]

My very first gaming GPU.

I don't have a photo of mine because it's 200 miles away right now lol.

 

But this chip was badass. It was a GPU with no VRAM*

 

I'm pretty sure the PCB and capacitors were more expensive than the GPU itself

[Crunchy Dragon]

42 minutes ago, Energycore said:

My very first gaming GPU.

And you just gon not tell us what model it was?

[The Smokin Deist]

On 8/28/2019 at 1:21 PM, I lost it said:

I have a brand new Commodore 64 everything still sealed. I'll get pics when i get it out.

Like an old system that was never opened? I would still open it up and inspect the capacitors on the motherboard just to be safe. Inspecting the PSU for it may or may not be possible. I think some of those old Commodore caps get a bit leaky over time. Luckily enough, you don't have to worry about battery leakage like you would with an Amiga.

It's pretty easy to open up and inspect. I don't remember if you need any special bits. I was part of a Commodore user's group for several years and I have opened up quite a few older systems to try to swap socketed chips to see if I can get it to work. I've also installed the JiffyDOS ROMS in several systems from the C64 to the 128D.

 

Another fun task was soldering in device number switches in the old 1541 floppy drives.

[The Smokin Deist]

5 hours ago, Bloody-George said:

That Picasso card looks like it was a beast. I wish you had pictures of that A4000 so we could see it. I simply adore retro builds.

The Picasso IV was one of the best that came out for the Amiga--I just wish I could have added some of the modules to it. The Picasso96 software was pretty nice and it allowed me to create custom display modes and resolutions. I did lose a few, lesser used screen modes and the ability to peel down the different screens on the Amiga--the stock GFX chipset allowed you to drag down different screens displaying them all well even if they were at different resolutions at the same time.

I had two A4000/040 systems before. The first was in the standard desktop case and it was a nice step up for me from my A2000. But we had flooding in the FLGS I was co-owner of and the building's insurance paid for my replacement. So I ordered another A4000/040 (refurbished) from Software Hut but this one was in the Elbox Tower case with the larger daughterboard. That was my main system until I ended up handing all my old Amiga stuff to someone in the user's group to take care of a debt--I'm pretty sure I got boned in the deal.

I also wish I had a pic of all my old Amigas but we were still using film cameras at that time and it cost money to take and develop pictures.

I don't remember everything I had in there but I remember that the motherboard was fully populated with RAM that was hot-glued for some weird reason. It had my Picasso IV RTG card, An X-Surf II Ethernet card so I could surf via DSL, a Catweasel card to hook up PC floppy drives, maybe a Buddah IDE card, and possibly a SCSI card.

My biggest bottleneck was that I had the stock Commodore '040 board installed--I really wished I could have afforded good accelerator in there like one of the '060+PPC boards.

There should be a pic of my old A2000 earlier in this thread though.

Edited August 30, 2019 by The Smokin Deist
Added info

[Energycore]

1 hour ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

And you just gon not tell us what model it was?

I like to remain mysterious so you take interest in me.

[Crunchy Dragon]

3 minutes ago, Energycore said:

I like to remain mysterious so you take interest in me.

Bet

[I lost it]

9 hours ago, The Smokin Deist said:

Like an old system that was never opened? I would still open it up and inspect the capacitors on the motherboard just to be safe. Inspecting the PSU for it may or may not be possible. I think some of those old Commodore caps get a bit leaky over time. Luckily enough, you don't have to worry about battery leakage like you would with an Amiga.

It's pretty easy to open up and inspect. I don't remember if you need any special bits. I was part of a Commodore user's group for several years and I have opened up quite a few older systems to try to swap socketed chips to see if I can get it to work. I've also installed the JiffyDOS ROMS in several systems from the C64 to the 128D.

 

Another fun task was soldering in device number switches in the old 1541 floppy drives.

Yep completely untouched besides opening the box to eye my prize lol. Zero discoloration and absolute perfection. Guy i got it from bought it new for his kid back in the day and his kid too zero interest in it when he showed it to him so he just stored it. All discs still sealed and everything. I think i am the first to take it out of the plastic lol. I'll get pics this weekend

[The King of the Undead]

9 hours ago, Energycore said:

I like to remain mysterious so you take interest in me.

Be carefull. @Crunchy Dragon went mad well you where gone and the whole forum has to step very lightly around him/her.

Spoiler

/s

 

[star_pilot475]

On 8/28/2019 at 1:29 PM, VFR800Essex said:

I give you my HD 4870 X2, a beast of a card  for the time, 11 years ago. Was the best you could get, for about a month!!! It ran HOT and NOISY!!!

The 4870 is actually the iGPU built into my current CPU. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

14 hours ago, will4623 said:

Be carefull. @Crunchy Dragon went mad well you where gone and the whole forum has to step very lightly around him/her.

You right

[Dabombinable]

On 8/30/2019 at 9:45 AM, Energycore said:

My very first gaming GPU.

I don't have a photo of mine because it's 200 miles away right now lol.

 

But this chip was badass. It was a GPU with no VRAM*

 

I'm pretty sure the PCB and capacitors were more expensive than the GPU itself

Geforce 6200 Turbocache 16MB?

Kind of glad that my 6200 was not only AGP (bypassing the possibility of Turbocache) but the 6200A version paired with 512MB DDR2 1066. Still the limiting factor in some games as well, despite being paired with 2x PIII 1000 (OC'd to 1100MHz).

[Energycore]

7 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Geforce 6200 Turbocache 16MB?

Kind of glad that my 6200 was not only AGP (bypassing the possibility of Turbocache) but the 6200A version paired with 512MB DDR2 1066. Still the limiting factor in some games as well, despite being paired with 2x PIII 1000 (OC'd to 1100MHz).

Yup. 16MB of video RAM. And no, it's not from 1997 lol

[Dabombinable]

Just now, Energycore said:

Yup. 16MB of video RAM. And no, it's not from 1997 lol

It' s kind of sad that both my Viper V550 (TNT) and TNT2 VANTA (performs just like the TNT due to the BUS) has the same amount. And you really did luck out, as there were 32 and 64MB versions as well. The only way to tell which was which was by looking at the RAM chip's data sheets, or counting the chips (most of the time both methods were needed however).

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

It' s kind of sad that both my Viper V550 (TNT) and TNT2 VANTA (performs just like the TNT due to the BUS) has the same amount. And you really did luck out, as there were 32 and 64MB versions as well. The only way to tell which was which was by looking at the RAM chip's data sheets, or counting the chips (most of the time both methods were needed however).

Hmm. I'll have to double check the actual amount, because the only thing I remember years ago was looking at the VRAM and saying hey that's insanely low. Back then good GPUs already had 512-1GB

[Dabombinable]

2 hours ago, Energycore said:

Hmm. I'll have to double check the actual amount, because the only thing I remember years ago was looking at the VRAM and saying hey that's insanely low. Back then good GPUs already had 512-1GB

Maybe the VGA Museum may be of help:
http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/component/k2/item/273-nvidia-geforce-6200tc

Looking at the Leadtek card (16MB), your card is/was probably 32MB.

On another note, some cards also only had a 32bit BUS, less than my VANTA. Which again, is also rather sad. Your card probably had the 64bit bus though since it had the 2x chips.

[Chronified]

On 3/2/2019 at 10:40 PM, Genwyn said:

This is pretty much the last I'll post of this then, here's some shots of what never was and what could've been.

I've gotta ask, what RAM is that?!?

[X-System]

My old flash disk USB 128MB, I use it for to transfert the datas between a modern PC and an old PC Pentium MMX with USB. It's better than a floppy disk

 

[Bitter]

 

[flibberdipper]

43 minutes ago, Bitter said:

 

Oh fuck yes daddy. My bepis is fat and my body is ready.

[mffranks34]

this is what i have

 

and i have more

 

[mffranks34]

this is what i have

 

trying to boot the old motherboard https://photos.app.goo.gl/xpv7GYTV7T4xLE7Q7

[X-System]

My Xeon collection

 

 

 

For the information, Xeon Paxville 2.8 GHz was the first dual core Xeon I bought them from a member forum for my collection (same for Pentium III Xeon, found on a website)

 

And my first Xeon rig was Xeon Prestonia LV 1.6 and I overclocked it at 2.61 GHz and I changed the CPUs to Xeon Irwindale LV 3 GHz (sold with ASUS NCCH-DL + 2GB DDR400 to a member forum)

 

And I changed my Xeon s604 rig to Xeon 5150 with Tyan workstation motherboard (I bought Xeon LV 5133 first but no supported) and I changed the CPUs to Xeon X5355 (sold with Tyan + 8GB FDIMM + HD 6870 + Win7 Pro x64 to my friend)

 

And I changed my Xeon LGA771 rig to Xeon E5-2630L v3 with Gigabyte workstation motherboard (support 3-way SLI full x16/x16/x16) and I changed the CPUs to Xeon E5-2667 v3 (today)

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

On 8/31/2019 at 4:40 AM, Genwyn said:

Also, you guys had AGP and PCIe 6200's? Mine is PCI.

Yeah, my GeForce 6200 is also PCI.

 

My GeForce 4 MX420 is AGP, though.