Show off your old and retro computer parts

[BrianTheElectrician]

1 hour ago, ragnarok0273 said:

How exactly do I update the BIOS?
I'm not sure how I would do that with this board.

It does have 2 USB ports, but I think a floppy would be more likely.

Yes, exactly. A clean boot disk is used, no memory managers or anything and has the flash utility and bios file on it. Then the flash utility is run, which writes the new file to the flash memory for the bios on the board. Might not need to update at all though, I'm checking into it.

[Bitter]

I haven't updated a BIOS from floppy since at least a socket 370 board or maybe my Asus P4 setup. Still need to find a home for that!

[Lokki Deathwish]

My very first GPU when I was little kid. I bought it at Walmart when they use to actually carry GPUs!  Its a BFG FX5500! I still remember the box and my excitement I had opening it. That point on I was hook.  I have it hanging on my wall as some strange decoration now lol. 

[8tg]

 

HP Omnibook 4150

working on reinstalling 98SE right now, switching to an IDE to SD setup

[8tg]

Also this

[BrianTheElectrician]

3 hours ago, 8tg said:

Also this

Love the old omnibook and board. That omnibook should run windows 2000 pretty nice too if your so inclined, especially with using an SD card. Makes it quick and easy to swap between drives and configurations.

 

Board looks like a late socket 7 considering it has both sd ram and 72 pin simm slots. Even has a USB header between the floppy/ide headers and the headers for the printer/comm ports and being able to use either at or atx power supplies is nice. A board that late should support the dual voltages needed for a pentium mmx as well. Any plans for a vintage build?

[BrianTheElectrician]

23 hours ago, Lokki Deathwish said:

My very first GPU when I was little kid. I bought it at Walmart when they use to actually carry GPUs!  Its a BFG FX5500! I still remember the box and my excitement I had opening it. That point on I was hook.  I have it hanging on my wall as some strange decoration now lol. 

 

Nothing strange about having an old video card as a decoration haha I have old motherboards on the wall in my workshop...

 

I never knew Walmart ever sold GPUs, either I never noticed growing up or they didn't up here. Any plans to do a build with it?

[Lokki Deathwish]

On 12/31/2020 at 8:46 PM, BrianTheElectrician said:

Nothing strange about having an old video card as a decoration haha I have old motherboards on the wall in my workshop...

 

I never knew Walmart ever sold GPUs, either I never noticed growing up or they didn't up here. Any plans to do a build with it?

Huh.. Always thought every Walmart had them. I live in the town that's the Home Office of Walmart. We have the "showroom" store here. Its where they take all the investors and buyers to show off the what Walmart could be. Majority of the store here are in pristine condition so I cant really speak for other places. They had a full pc section at one point, cpus, gpus, ram, cases, etc. They took it out about 15 years ago when they cut back the electronics and focused more store space on things like cell phones displays. To be honest the store changes all the time so i don't know the real reason. 

As for a build, i would love to get my hands on a any board that has AGP. I can even see the board i used to have in my head but don't know the model.  I was about 10 years old when i built this PC. I was broke so i know most of my parts where hammy downs and random bits. I have no clue if the old card still works. But I am going to hunt around on eBay till I at least find the board. As for the cpu I know for sure I had a Athlon 64 but don't know the exact one.

[Joseph K]

1 hour ago, Lokki Deathwish said:

Huh.. Always thought every Walmart had them. I live in the town that's the Home Office of Walmart. We have the "showroom" store here. Its where they take all the investors and buyers to show off the what Walmart could be. Majority of the store here are in pristine condition so I cant really speak for other places. They had a full pc section at one point, cpus, gpus, ram, cases, etc. They took it out about 15 years ago when they cut back the electronics and focused more store space on things like cell phones displays. To be honest the store changes all the time so i don't know the real reason. 

As for a build, i would love to get my hands on a AGP board. I can even see the board in my head but don't know the model.  I was about 10 years old when i built this PC. I was broke so i know most of my parts where hammy downs and random bits. I have no clue if the old card still works. But I am going to hunt around on eBay till I at least find the board. As for the cpu I know for sure I had a Athlon 64 but don't know the exact one.

Strange, my walmart pretty much only carries food and clothes now, rest of the departments have been shrinking over the years, although they're definitely still there. When they upgraded it into a "supercentre" and built a brand new shopping centre around it they removed or shrunk a bunch of the old departments. You can't buy anything like auto parts anymore, and I don't think they ever stocked computer parts aside from external hard drives and cables. TVs and console video games are different since those always sell.

[BrianTheElectrician]

Well, I finished re-capping this super 7 board this morning. It had a couple bulging caps and I was having stability issues (blue screens) in windows so it was time. 25x 330uf capacitors later haha and it posts! I'm happy with my solder joints too... Now just have to get it back in the system. It'll have a k6-3 450mhz and 128mb of ram with a tnt2 m64 video card.

 

I had the Pentium 166 in it for testing, as I have quite a few of those and they're not rare if something let out the magic smoke.

[8tg]

1 hour ago, BrianTheElectrician said:

Well, I finished re-capping this super 7 board this morning. It had a couple bulging caps and I was having stability issues (blue screens) in windows so it was time. 25x 330uf capacitors later haha and it posts! I'm happy with my solder joints too... Now just have to get it back in the system. It'll have a k6-3 450mhz and 128mb of ram with a tnt2 m64 video card.

 

I had the Pentium 166 in it for testing, as I have quite a few of those and they're not rare if something let out the magic smoke.

Nice, non AT ss7 boards are GOAT

i used to have a pcchips baby at board, effectively micro atx, but that thing just refused to stay alive

this octek board is pretty cool for being atx compatible, and it’ll fit in an atx case but obviously with a weird height, but it’s otherwise not that interesting from a feature standpoint

it can use simms and pc100 dimms at the same time, it’s just slow as hell if you do 

[WhitetailAni]

36 minutes ago, 8tg said:

this octek board is pretty cool for being atx compatible, and it’ll fit in an atx case but obviously with a weird height, but it’s otherwise not that interesting from a feature standpoint

I have a similar board - Asus P3V 4X. Slot 1, 1x AGP 4x, 1x ISA 16-bit, a crap ton of PCI, and that weird height (and color and port layout)

[s_k]

This was the first PC I bought new, back in 2000. Photo from 2002. It was an AMD K7 700 and the thing was horrendous. I was stuck with Windows '98 as nothing would run well on it, not even 2000 ;).
The Dell screen was part of our first PC and that thing was great, a Dell Dimension XPS M200s. I should fine one some day.

[WhitetailAni]

On 12/28/2020 at 11:13 PM, Bitter said:

I also have a 4GB Quantum Bigfoot TX, if you'll be giving it a good home you can have it.

I would be happy to preserve a piece of history (and help declutter your house).

I made a copy of the HDD just in case, and literally 10 seconds after the copy finished the hard drive kicked the bucket and made a horrible screech noise.

It is now waiting to be framed - it's just too cool to get rid of.

[Bitter]

2 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

I would be happy to preserve a piece of history (and help declutter your house).

I made a copy of the HDD just in case, and literally 10 seconds after the copy finished the hard drive kicked the bucket and made a horrible screech noise.

It is now waiting to be framed - it's just too cool to get rid of.

You're not in Canada right? Shipping outside the US gets $$$

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, Bitter said:

You're not in Canada right? Shipping outside the US gets $$$

I am in the US. Illinois, Chicago area.

[BrianTheElectrician]

39 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

I would be happy to preserve a piece of history (and help declutter your house).

I made a copy of the HDD just in case, and literally 10 seconds after the copy finished the hard drive kicked the bucket and made a horrible screech noise.

It is now waiting to be framed - it's just too cool to get rid of.

Well, from what I've been able to find, your board should be able to support drives up to 128Gb, possible with a BIOS upgrade which is still available from ASUS' website. I've got a bunch of larger drives if you'd like, lots of 40Gb and 80Gb with some smaller capacities mixed in as well. If you prefer something smaller, let me know but for the 40Gbyou could pick between a Western Digital, IBM Deskstar or a Samsung Spinpoint. The 80Gb I have Maxtor's, Seagates, Western Digitals and Hitachi Deskstars. A larger drive would give you the ability to store disc images on the machine as well as having a large array of programs/games installed on it so your not having to install/uninstall all the time. I'm happy to send 2 or 3 your way if you like.

[BrianTheElectrician]

Just a few ide hard drives, 120gb and under. Have many more already in systems too.

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, BrianTheElectrician said:

Just a few ide hard drives, 120gb and under. Have many more already in systems too.

"Just a few" has 32 spares, while I have none
I like 1,3,2 and 1,6,3.

1st number = image number
2nd number = x-coordinate by hard drive count from bottom left
3rd number = y-coordinate by hard drive count from bottom left

The black one looks cool.

[BrianTheElectrician]

4 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

"Just a few" has 32 spares, while I have none
I like 1,3,2 and 1,6,3.

1st number = image number
2nd number = x-coordinate by hard drive count from bottom left
3rd number = y-coordinate by hard drive count from bottom left

The black one looks cool.

So the 80Gb Maxtor and the 15Gb Western Digital?

 

...Actually there's more than 32 spares haha these are just the drives 120Gb and under, that are IDE. There are actually a few more that would fit in this catagory but they're hooked to my test bench to be wiped and tested yet.

[WhitetailAni]

2 minutes ago, BrianTheElectrician said:

So the 80Gb Maxtor and the 15Gb Western Digital?

 

...Actually there's more than 32 spares haha these are just the drives 120Gb and under, that are IDE. There are actually a few more that would fit in this catagory but they're hooked to my test bench to be wiped and tested yet.

Yep!

[BrianTheElectrician]

1 minute ago, ragnarok0273 said:

Yep!

Haha of course you have to pick the 15Gb WD. One of the few drives out of all of them I don't want to part with lol I have a big soft spot for the old Caviar drives. Something about the sound of them, they're unique. I have a 15Gb Maxtor I'd rather part with but if you really like the WD I'll part with it.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, BrianTheElectrician said:

Haha of course you have to pick the 15Gb WD. One of the few drives out of all of them I don't want to part with lol I have a big soft spot for the old Caviar drives. Something about the sound of them, they're unique. I have a 15Gb Maxtor I'd rather part with but if you really like the WD I'll part with it.

If you want to keep it, it's fine.
Does 1,3,1 work?

[BrianTheElectrician]

8 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

If you want to keep it, it's fine.
Does 1,3,1 work?

The 80Gb Samsung Spinpoint? Yeah its fine, and I'm ok giving up the 15Gb WD if you want it, just one I'd prefer to hang onto but I don't exactly need it either haha.

 

I could send 2,4,1 your way as well, a 8.4Gb Fujitsu. It is good to have a drive under 8Gb if your wanting to get more into old computers as well, just in case you run into a bios limitation.

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, BrianTheElectrician said:

The 80Gb Samsung Spinpoint? Yeah its fine, and I'm ok giving up the 15Gb WD if you want it, just one I'd prefer to hang onto but I don't exactly need it either haha.

 

I could send 2,4,1 your was as well, a 8.4Gb Fujitsu. It is good to have a drive under 8Gb if your wanting to get more into old computers as well, just in case you run into a bios limitation.

Thank you so much!
I'm pretty sure it has an updated BIOS - the CPU and RAM capacities I have in there aren't listed in the manual anywhere (Asus P3V 4X has 133 MHz Pentium III support at highest and 512MB RAM stick support for highest, but I have 500 MHz and 1GB sticks, so yay?)

We should probably take this to DMs - the mods might get mad.