Show off your old and retro computer parts

[Bitter]

12 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

Graphics controller in a Proliant server my roommate and I picked up. 3 texture mapping units, 1 rasterizer, 200mhz, 180NM process... but it's from 2007, 6 YEARS after the previous card in this series released. It's based on a Rage 6 series die. It's not identical to any other GPU in the series though - all of them either have pixel and vertex shaders in addition to TMUs/ROPs, are clocked differently, etc. I have two guesses why these exist. A, the manufacturing equipment for these '01 chips was still kicking around and was cheaper to use than modern equipment since no modern die could be made on it at the time. B, these were Radeon 7000 series dies that were defective and had some bits shaved off. In that case it would be an overclocked Mobility Radeon 7000 with the two pixel shaders disabled, as it has the 3 TMUs/ROPs (+2 pixel shaders) but only a 183mhz clock.

 

Either are possible, or it's a variant that ATI made specific to the server/business market to hit some niche min spec on really old fab or they just had a lot laying around and kept using them and stamping the current year date to track production issues. It's probably as you suggested, defect chips with a custom BIOS. You don't need much to make a basic text display for trouble shooting so even that seems like overkill so I suspect they gave it just enough to render a Windows GUI desktop in case it was needed.

[da na]

1 minute ago, Bitter said:

Either are possible, or it's a variant that ATI made specific to the server/business market to hit some niche min spec on really old fab or they just had a lot laying around and kept using them and stamping the current year date to track production issues. It's probably as you suggested, defect chips with a custom BIOS. You don't need much to make a basic text display for trouble shooting so even that seems like overkill so I suspect they gave it just enough to render a Windows GUI desktop in case it was needed.

It takes time to draw the graphics on POST - less than a second, but the screen loads in 3 sections

[Bitter]

14 minutes ago, Mel0n. said:

It takes time to draw the graphics on POST - less than a second, but the screen loads in 3 sections

Well I didn't say it would be a good experience, just that it could be an experience. Old Toshiba laptop here has a Rage something or other in it and it was just enough to render Windows XP and play a couple 2D games. Forget anything else.

[da na]

2 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Well I didn't say it would be a good experience, just that it could be an experience. Old Toshiba laptop here has a Rage something or other in it and it was just enough to render Windows XP and play a couple 2D games. Forget anything else.

Same, Rage XL Pro AGP in my Presario laptop is too weak to have a high resolution wallpaper

[8tg]

Something about taking a dremel tool to an extremely rare piece of computer hardware causes me pain 

but it does look better

[8tg]

It only just absolutely works mate

now the fancy system above with the gtx 275 however does not post at all and I think I know why, but I want to get a little bios beeper to figure it out first 

I think it’s the ram, those dimms may not be playing nice but removing that ram will be a hassle 

[DietzDiet]

On 12/19/2013 at 3:26 PM, Lanoi said:

E4500? yum. Currently have DDR2 in my system, so I can't show it off. Don't have anything old because I'm 12.

 

EDIT -- 23-7-14 I do not run my system with DDR2 anymore. I still have a Core 2 Quad Q9500, a E7500, and a E5300.

wait waht ur 12??? bruh i thought u were supposed to be 13 to be here lol even tough ur like 21 now  i am friggin 12 lol

[SimplyChunk]

2 hours ago, Mel0n. said:

That's great photography

[flibberdipper]

2 hours ago, Mel0n. said:

Same, Rage XL Pro AGP in my Presario laptop is too weak to have a high resolution wallpaper

Then there's the Rage LT Pro AGP with an absolutely staggering 4MB of VRAM in my ProSignia that will happily churn away at SimCity 3000 (less happily churn away at SimCity 4) at native 1024x768 all day long.

[RetroSwim]

Plenty of piles-o-parts posted already, so won't post yet another! :)

 

However, did you know Sega and IBM co-developed a PC that is also a Mega Drive? Sega TeraDrive. One motherboard with a 286/10 PC and a MegaDrive on deck, and a sleek low-profile desktop case.



Amstrad later released the MegaPC, but it was slightly less cool (though still quite cool), a regular PC with a Mega Drive on an ISA card, and it was beige!
 

The TeraDrive may be the coolest thing in both my computer collection AND my console collection.

[Dabombinable]

Another card welcomed to the family. I need to find the 128MB 9200 and see if replacing the damaged (stabbed) cap stops it from artifacting (not as badly as my GF2 however).

 

As you can see, I had plans for the 9200...which haven't panned out:

As you can see prices have skyrocketed. I thought this was the cheapest 9200 model I could buy now (that's within Australia - also just realised that the LE isn't "Lame Edition" and is actually just a 9200 with 2 letters added). Yeah I may have made a booboo:

Bought from the same small shop that sold me my Athlon XP 1800+ (and freely upgraded to Thoroughbred version when the Palomino was found to be missing) and Abit VP6 in all its dual PIII 1000+2GB PC 133+stock cooler glory.

[da na]

School tossed out some 486 machines so they're mine now! 

One is a Packard Bell Packmate PB420, has some form of 486. Will post more later on specs, don't have time right now. Although it does have  HDD so I'm excited to see what might be on it. The ISA card in the picture was loose in the case, I am not sure what it is. 

Also had this "Micro Flex" system, sticker on the back says 486dx but not sure of other specs. Will investigate further later when I'm not on a short lunch break. But it has like 4 ISA cards.

 

[da na]

With those computers I found a Packard Bell VGA monitor dated 1994, might pick it up later. Also, this cute 9" Compaq but it has very bad burn in so I will leave it to be recycled.

A couple electronic typewriters, I might plug one in to play around with it but unless they're particularly valuable I will not keep either.

Also grabbed an Optiplex 740 SFF, the AMD flavor with an Athlon/Sempron style sticker reading "AMD business class", looks like DDR2 and has a 7200.10 hard drive so probably like AM2 era, 2006-2009 is my estimate

[Bitter]

The DO NOT TURN OFF machine was probably some kind of server at the school.

[da na]

Pulled apart the 486 systems and found some very interesting things.

First, RAM on the Packard Bell system is soldered. (On the other one it is socketed. Not a DIMM.)

Then, on the non Packard Bell board... it has a 486SX, then a socket labelled "80386", then the 80387 coprocessor next to it. BIOS chip is an AMIBIOS 386DX ISA BIOS. Was this common to have two different sockets?

The Packard Bell board also had solder pads labelled "80486SX" but no CPU or socket was there. And the main CPU is a 486 of some flavor (I would think, since the socket says Overdrive Compatible). So I'm not sure what the two 486 sockets would have been for.

Then both systems had this card, does anyone know what this is. Has an "inside out" joystick port on the outside. Controller card for a something, but I'm not sure what something that something is.

Also had this completely illegible VGA card, lol what does this even say. It's a 2mb card though (RAM chips are labelled 256). Under the sticker from photos online it is a Cirrus Logic chip. Also they spelled Los Angeles wrong, near the ISA slot (Los Angles)

And these two classic HDDs. Top is 130MB, bottom is 341.3 MB. 

[Dabombinable]

7 hours ago, Mel0n. said:

Pulled apart the 486 systems and found some very interesting things.

First, RAM on the Packard Bell system is soldered. (On the other one it is socketed. Not a DIMM.)

Then, on the non Packard Bell board... it has a 486SX, then a socket labelled "80386", then the 80387 coprocessor next to it. BIOS chip is an AMIBIOS 386DX ISA BIOS. Was this common to have two different sockets?

The Packard Bell board also had solder pads labelled "80486SX" but no CPU or socket was there. And the main CPU is a 486 of some flavor (I would think, since the socket says Overdrive Compatible). So I'm not sure what the two 486 sockets would have been for.

Then both systems had this card, does anyone know what this is. Has an "inside out" joystick port on the outside. Controller card for a something, but I'm not sure what something that something is.

Also had this completely illegible VGA card, lol what does this even say. It's a 2mb card though (RAM chips are labelled 256). Under the sticker from photos online it is a Cirrus Logic chip. Also they spelled Los Angeles wrong, near the ISA slot (Los Angles)

And these two classic HDDs. Top is 130MB, bottom is 341.3 MB. 

It's unreal seeing ex school computers from the early to mid 90's that were better than the one I was rocking in the early 2000's. I've still got some 3.5" diskettes that were used to install games from my 5.25" floppy drive (most were 360KB, and most of my programs+games on 3.5" came on 720KB diskettes).

 

Said computer had a 386 DX-40 and an 80MB HDD. Some people on this forum have CPU with more cache than my first computer had storage (for my 3700X that's more cache than it had RAM).

[Dabombinable]

If only all 3 of my 250GB Spinpoint V120 were in working order. Still - I now have enough of these ultra ATA cables for all of my retro PC.

 

[da na]

5 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

It's unreal seeing ex school computers from the early to mid 90's that were better than the one I was rocking in the early 2000's. I've still got some 3.5" diskettes that were used to install games from my 5.25" floppy drive (most were 360KB, and most of my programs+games on 3.5" came on 720KB diskettes).

 

Said computer had a 386 DX-40 and an 80MB HDD. Some people on this forum have CPU with more cache than my first computer had storage (for my 3700X that's more cache than it had RAM).

They were used in the admin building, not put out for dirty little students to touch. Also from the admin building was a system with OCZ ram, so I'm a bit suspicious what sort of admining can be so demanding

[flibberdipper]

1 hour ago, Mel0n. said:

They were used in the admin building, not put out for dirty little students to touch. Also from the admin building was a system with OCZ ram, so I'm a bit suspicious what sort of admining can be so demanding

Hey man, the Office 2003 suite is incredibly demanding to run. Why else do you think I have a 12600KF so that I can properly use Office 2021?

[da na]

2 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

If only all 3 of my 250GB Spinpoint V120 were in working order. Still - I now have enough of these ultra ATA cables for all of my retro PC.

 

Nice toes drives you have there. I had some 80GB IDE spinpoints, they both died (I resurrected them then they died again) but my SATA Spinpoints still work. 

[da na]

Sweet, I’ve now got an itx-ish Athlon 64 system! (Smaller than mATX but a little longer than ITX.) Thought this little optiplex would have a Phenom processor but it has a dual core Athlon 64 x2 5200+. I’ll see how it stacks up to my core 2 duos and Athlon 64 x2 6000+. It seems like it can take 8GB of ram but is limited to 667mhz. It’s also running in single channel. I’ll see if I can fix.

[da na]

One of the CRTs I picked up works, although it isn't syncing correctly with my laptop. I believe it is a monochrome display, it only has 8 pins of the VGA connector actually filled.

Or it could just be very very screwed. I'm not exactly sure which. I'll try fiddling with the geometry and if that doesn't change anything I'll start my wild capacitor desoldering tirade.

 

The Packard Bell one seems to have issues. I would assume it's the flyback, or a capacitor nearby. It's definitely saveable, the tube looks very good so if nothing else I could sell it for that. 

 

[8tg]

Here’s the end result of the soltek 478 board, corsair xms pro led 400mhz ddr, pixelview fx5900 xt, apevia iceberg power supply, turtle beach Santa Cruz, etc

new problem, it won’t post with an ide to CF adapter and a 32gb cf card installed

i may have to actually fit a 3.5” hard drive and ide cable into here 

[bluesummer]

On 8/13/2022 at 8:36 PM, 8tg said:

Posted this other places but this is also distinctly old and retro:

gigabyte GA-8ANXP-D with the udp card for the LGA 775 meme machine 

 

I want to put the gtx 1080 on it but I already cut the tucked away the +2 pins on the pcie connectors of the psu I’m using and honestly can’t find them in the cable disaster 

 

also got this Pixelview FX5900XT

 

Gonna clean up the fan grille where someone snipped it off, it’s supposed to look like this:

 

I figure if I can at least make it smooth it’ll look fine 

here’s the 775 build which is….

mostly old and retro? This is a Pentium 4 3.2ghz on that above motherboard with 3gb of ddr2 and a gtx 275

it just happens to be in the least retro case of all time and it has an aio and rgb everywhere

 

HAHAHAHA this is gold 

 

I've never loved and hated a build this much, truly something you've got hehehe

[bluesummer]

On 8/14/2022 at 9:11 PM, RetroSwim said:

Plenty of piles-o-parts posted already, so won't post yet another!

 

However, did you know Sega and IBM co-developed a PC that is also a Mega Drive? Sega TeraDrive. One motherboard with a 286/10 PC and a MegaDrive on deck, and a sleek low-profile desktop case.



Amstrad later released the MegaPC, but it was slightly less cool (though still quite cool), a regular PC with a Mega Drive on an ISA card, and it was beige!
 

The TeraDrive may be the coolest thing in both my computer collection AND my console collection.

Any chance I could get a shot of the whole shelf? Especially if you've got any other awesome retro goodies, I die for this stuff