Show off your old and retro computer parts

[da na]

2 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

got some more pics of the GA-586ATV Rev-4B and the Sound Blaster Pro 2.  Both fully tested now and working (Motherboard needs the battery replacing).

 

These will be going in my Classifieds thread shortly before going on eBay.

 

  All the caps look good on the motherboard can't see any bulging ones at least.  Not sure where the battery sits on it as there is a space for a button cell holder but no holder

 

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And the soundcard is in equally good condition for it's age

 

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Lovely hardware!
There is a possibility the board uses an RTC module with the chip and battery together in one DIP package, but I don't see any suspiciously wide ICs in the photos. Also possible someone could've removed a leaking battery in the past.

And wow, that board really has no I/O! 

 

Great looking soundcard too; makes me wish I had a working ISA system.

[SimplyChunk]

8 minutes ago, da na said:

There is a possibility the board uses an RTC module with the chip and battery

there's a clock chip on the board I'm guessing it's in there.  That's what you mean by RTC isn't it?

 

the RTC is here on the board..

[da na]

3 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

there's a clock chip on the board I'm guessing it's in there.  That's what you mean by RTC isn't it?

 

the RTC is here on the board..

RTC = Real Time Clock.

With the utter girth of that module, the battery is definitely inside there. 

There are a few replacement kits for those modules which can be soldered on - a PCB with a new clock chip and socketed button-cell battery.

[SimplyChunk]

12 minutes ago, da na said:

Great looking soundcard too; makes me wish I had a working ISA system.

I can sell you a case, a PSU, a Motherboard-CPU-RAM combo and the sound card.  They're in my thread in the classifieds

 

I can throw in a serial mouse and an AT keyboard too

[ThePCNerd129]

47 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

That doesn't belong here.  This isn't a DEAD hardware thread

No I mean it still works just fine, I was just saying the gtx series rest in pece

[da na]

9 minutes ago, ThePCNerd129 said:

No I mean it still works just fine, I was just saying the gtx series rest in pece

"If it can run Fortnite, it doesn't belong in this thread"

The card's like 5 years old, right? Not quite retro.

[Average Nerd]

1 hour ago, da na said:

The card's like 5 years old, right? Not quite retro

Not even that old either, considering that much older cards are still performing reasonably well. (GTX 10xx series for example)

[SimplyChunk]

1 hour ago, Average Nerd said:

Not even that old either, considering that much older cards are still performing reasonably well. (GTX 10xx series for example)

the 980ti and Maxwell Titan can still rock in the right games too 

[ThePCNerd129]

4 hours ago, SimplyChunk said:

the 980ti and Maxwell Titan can still rock in the right games too 

My friend has a 970, says it still preforms great.

[da na]

4 hours ago, SimplyChunk said:

the 980ti and Maxwell Titan can still rock in the right games too 

My old EVGA 980 SC with a 15% overclock was only limited by its 4GB VRAM, the card was quite the beast. Really miss it, wish I hadn't sold it.

I recall being absolutely elated to pay only $300 for that card - it was 2021 and 980s were selling for $450

[da na]

I'm a little surprised this crusty fella is still running. Might hold the record for the longest-lasting 7200.7 drive on the planet - the drive itself is close to 20 years old with close to 12 years of flying hours, and still no SMART errors. 

Spoiler

One of my favorite sounding drives too. Makes a nice purr on the randoms.

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, da na said:

I'm a little surprised this crusty fella is still running. Might hold the record for the longest-lasting 7200.7 drive on the planet - the drive itself is close to 20 years old with close to 12 years of flying hours, and still no SMART errors. 

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One of my favorite sounding drives too. Makes a nice purr on the randoms.

I've got 2x 200GB SATA 7200.7 that were run in RAID 0 in the PC they originally came from. 1 has SMART errors however and they run both hot and loud (seeks are very "crunchy" due to being the SATA models). Which is why I don't use them in my Barton PC build anymore (250GB 5400RPM laptop HDD from 2008 is so much quieter+faster).

[da na]

47 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

I've got 2x 200GB SATA 7200.7 that were run in RAID 0 in the PC they originally came from. 1 has SMART errors however and they run both hot and loud (seeks are very "crunchy" due to being the SATA models). Which is why I don't use them in my Barton PC build anymore (250GB 5400RPM laptop HDD from 2008 is so much quieter+faster).

Hands down the best HDD arrangement I've ever seen was the HDX Dragon "laptop", with two Momentus 7200RPM 120GB drives in RAID 0. Blazing fast. Controller automatically configures RAID if two HDDs of the same capacity are inserted in each bay so the array can be recreated with other drives too. 

[Dabombinable]

26 minutes ago, da na said:

Hands down the best HDD arrangement I've ever seen was the HDX Dragon "laptop", with two Momentus 7200RPM 120GB drives in RAID 0. Blazing fast. Controller automatically configures RAID if two HDDs of the same capacity are inserted in each bay so the array can be recreated with other drives too. 

That'd have been using one expensive controller. The best I ever managed was 3x 250GB Samsung 250GB 5400RPM HDD in RAID 0 on my Abit VP6. Would have been the full 4x250GB if 1 drive (not using Samsung DRAM) hadn't been DOA. Didn't know much about benchmarking HDD back then, and they later ended up in OG Xbox (another one died a few years ago as well ).

[SimplyChunk]

DOS 6.22 With Soundblaster drivers, CD-ROM drivers, the Roland MT-32 emulator working and a mouse.

 

Glad i put the extra time in to it

 

I'm using CTMOUSE.EXE

[Skyesgaming]

1 minute ago, SimplyChunk said:

 

I'm so happy for you after all the work that you've spent putting into Frog. I see how happy you are as you're typing away on him, getting him all set up. I'm so proud of you for getting so far, especially with everything that's happened with him, I can't wait to see all the other things you end up doing/working with on Frog. While I don't understand it, it makes you happy so it makes me happy . 

What foreign language is this? Can you teach me one day?

[da na]

More scummy phone photos of the pristine FX 1800 (G94 die, same as 9600GT/9800m). It still has under 100hr of usage, still the cleanest, shiniest 9000-series card out there. Funny to compare it to the beat-up ones on eBay.

Tomorrow or the next day I'll have a great deal more old video cards to post; 17 untested cards from '06-10 are arriving. Two 9800 GX2, FireGL v7200 (single slot Radeon X1800), and a pair of HIS 4850 cards among others (mostly high end GeForce). Hope I get some nice working cards out of it.

[da na]

I was April Fools'd hard with all the graphics cards I bought, most of which were promised to be in working order.

Out of 13, only three output video, two of those have broken fans, and only one is noteworthy. 

The 9800GTX didn't have its plastic sticker peeled yet, I had the pleasure of doing so. Its fan is jammed and only spins backwards (???) but luckily/unfortunately I now have an abundance of dead cards from which to harvest cooler parts. 
I don't know what the little ones are, I'd venture perhaps a 9600 and a 9400GT? Will have to see when in the OS though.

Here's the graveyard. XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog, HIS HD 4830, ATi FireGL V7200, HIS HD 4850, Asus GT 210, Radeon 2600XT, EVGA 8800 GTS, Radeon HD 3450, EVGA 8800GTS ACS, EVGA GeForce 9800 GX2. Most of these POST but give no video out, some (namely FireGL) are so dead they don't even POST.

Of course the 9800GX2 is the saddest card to lose because that's two 9800 GTX down the drain. 

Another sad loss is this EVGA ACS card - the build quality is astounding. That shroud is completely metal. 

It also has a giant backplate, earliest card I've seen (aside from Quadros with their full-coverage shrouds) to include one.

I did get a laugh from this other EVGA 8800GTS though, the shroud of which peeled off in shipping to reveal that the EVGA branding is just a sticker - the original Nvidia-branded shroud is still underneath. 

Hopefully I can get a refund from the guy who sold one particular lot of 8, one of which was working (9600GT?). I don't pick bones with "untested" listings but if you say "most of the cards work", I don't count one working card to be a majority. I bet the seller just tested the cards for POST and not video output, since almost all of them do pass that bar.

 

I couldn't believe I got this many dead cards, every few GPUs I'd swap in a Quadro 2000 or GeForce 6800 (on the table) to make sure the motherboard wasn't the issue. Started out testing on the 775 board up top, then moved to the AM2 board on the floor since I discovered its POST codes were a little more descriptive - it would tell me if a card POSTed but didn't output video; the 775 board would display a POST error on cards like that. Alas the board was not the issue. 

Pretty sad to only get one good card out of this. I will see if I can bring any of the others back to life. If it fits, I'd love to mount the EVGA ACS cooler onto the working 9800 GTX+ since that metal shroud is SOLID.

[da na]

At least the EVGA 9800GTX+ is working great. I paid $12 for the lot that had this card, HD 2600, 8800GTS, and GT 210, and that is still a fantastic price for a perfectly working 9800 GTX+. 

This is the card whose fan would only spin correctly in reverse. I accidentally fixed the problem - I had the card sitting on my desk and I was idly spinning its fan around while eating dinner, and now the fan spins correctly. Must be an Easter miracle, huh? 

As with most 9800 cards it is loud as hell in the BIOS but once the driver is installed, it's whisper quiet. Runs in the high 70s under load, does not really need a repaste but I will still do one for good measure.

On paper the GeForce 9800 should perform pretty close to the Quadro FX 4800, but this EVGA version has a nice overclock on it as I would expect so I cannot wait to test it. 

Also, curse Apple's damn cable spaghetti. I love this Cinema HD Display but, good god, it has the messiest cables humanity has ever borne witness to.

 

 

Edit: It is the 9800 GTX+ V.2 from eVGA, sadly not the Superclocked version with a whopping overclock of..... 2%. 

[da na]

XFX used to offer a "Double Lifetime Warranty" on their cards back when they were an Nvidia board partner, meaning the original owner and the next owner would be protected under a full lifetime warranty.

That taken into consideration, I've opened an RMA request for the dead Alpha Dog 8800GT.

The card is at least still in their system, as entering the serial number brought up the model number listed on the back of the card as well as saying it was never RMA'd before.

The build quality is great - has a thicker heatsink and extra metal brace compared to the reference model - and it's overclocked quite high. I would LOVE to get a new card.

I doubt anything will come of it; it seems very unlikely that XFX has any 8800GT cards still lying around. Worth a shot though.

[luckybob77]

Got a new plaything:

RCA VideoTex Dataterm VP3501 

 

 

made sometime mid 1981, it has a whopping 2048 bytes of S-Ram.  The modem can go at the super speed of SIX HUNDRED BAUD

 

  

 

Behold the RCA 1802 processor!  its running at 1.86mhz if the huge crystal can be believed

 

 

I have to make power and video cables from scratch, so thats going to be fun.  But the data sheets for EVERY part are still online, so doing so is going to actually be rather easy.  hopefully I can find a proper manual for the dip switches, because just guessing the setting for the modem speed is not something I want to do.

 

 

[Paddo]

The 2 oldest CPUs I still have after throwing away the rest of my collection.

Intel Pentium P54CS 150MHz

Spoiler

 

AMD Athlon A1000AMT3B

Spoiler

I think the AMD is broken since the Silicon has a few cracks on the sides but I don't have a motherboard to test it.
Currently they just serve as display items to showcase what CPUs looked like 30 years ago and how the design has changed over the years.

[da na]

9800 GX2, a very unique dual GPU card.

The bottom card is a mirror image of the top card, with the die and VRAM rotated 180 degrees. The top card holds the PCIe switch chip while the bottom holds more power delivery and the HDMI port. It is a bit odd seeing a full 9800GTX that is literally useless without another card to plug into - with no PCIe slot of its own, the bottom card cannot be used without another card connected over the ribbon cable.

The heatsink fits betwixt the cards like this - a silicon, aluminum, and thermal pad sandwich. 

Interesting to see the large cutouts in the boards for the fan intake, like Fermi cards would eventually implement many years later.

 

A full 9800GTX has a significantly different memory layout, as well as a great deal more power delivery. This EVGA version is a bit special, implementing more MOSFETs than would typically be present, but there are only a few stages of power delivery on the GX2 card while this has... three? Four? And the ring bus style memory controller is very different too. So the board design of the 9800 GX2's cards are significantly different.

[da na]

Bought a piece of satellite radio gear at a thrift shop because the I/O on the back looked suspiciously akin to a PC motherboard. Sure enough, it's based around an ITX board running a 945 chipset and Core 2 Duo mobile CPU with a 667mhz front-side bus. It boots its little operating system from a 1TB RE3 hard drive and interfaces with its FPGA boards over the IDE drive controller (which is admittedly weird as hell - the board has enough PCI lanes for each of the three custom cards so why take this route?) 

There's the MB899 industrial motherboard.

The I/O cards are based on Altera Cyclone II and III FPGA chips, with 8MB on the II and 16MB on the III. They connect to the IDE disk controller with the middle board being master and top/bottom configured as slaves. Manufacturer isn't abusing the IDE connector to send proprietary signals, either - the motherboard recognizes a hard drive plugged into the IDE port.

 

 

So the FPGA cards are sending encoded satellite radio signals over the IDE channel to the disk controller on the southbridge. The Core 2 Duo chip then decodes these digital audio/video streams and repeats them, displays over VGA, or records to the SATA hard drive.

 

 

Edit: It now runs Windows 7

Edited April 2 by da na

[Bitter]

You know what the FP in FPGA stands for? Those could be fun toys. Or you could start listening to satellites overhead.