best cheap/free scores 1.1

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Had a walk-in drop a pickup load of relics....

In the pile is a custom-built system, plexiglass front & side from early 2000-ish era, has a Athlon XP in it. An IBM PS2/77 486 DX2 @ 33MHz, 16mb RAM, and a 540mb scsi hdd. Sometimes it boots, sometimes it doesn't. It's complete, even including the old clickety keyboard. There was also a complete CTX system with monitor, AMD K6-2 @ 333, 256mb RAM and a 8.4gb HDD....the oddity here was the Super 7 board with an AGP and no onboard GPU. Some HP system with an AMD Athlon in it....a Toshiba Satellite P4-era laptop without the charger....but tested off my bench supply, it works. A newer 24" Samsung LED IPS monitor, a 22" LED AOC monitor, and the usual laundry basket full of keyboards, mice, and other whatnots that breed at night.











The old IBM PS2 will be a fun one to tinker with; albeit pretty useless.... The case with the plexiglass is in very good condition....a little 'blingy' for my normal taste, but would beautifully house a VP6 retro gamer system and remain period-specific...case quality is good (not great), but not completely flimsy like today's trash. As for the rest, meh, more stuff to tinker with.

Slick score indeed... the plexiglass case does look nice. Hopefully it doesn't take as much modding as my Atech plexiglass case I have did.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Slick score indeed... the plexiglass case does look nice. Hopefully it doesn't take as much modding as my Atech plexiglass case I have did.

I don't think it'll need much (if any) modding. This one is classy enough to house one of the BCN VP6 polymer editions....also keep that old Pinnacle card in mind....its period-specific for this build, and I've already cleaned & tested it.

FWIW, there's one more system not shown....think Dell Precision, old enough to be beige...

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The Athlon XP series didn't even get launched until 2001, with Palomino, which is after T-bird. T-bird was the most famous for being the first Athlon that a bunch of people got, albeit that wasn't the first-gen or second-gen, which came out shortly before 2000.

The Athlons before T-bird, seem rare. T-bird first came out in 2000, AFAIK.

The best Athlon XPs, are the Barton and Thoroughbred-B.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The Athlon XP series didn't even get launched until 2001, with Palomino, which is after T-bird. T-bird was the most famous for being the first Athlon that a bunch of people got, albeit that wasn't the first-gen or second-gen, which came out shortly before 2000.

The Athlons before T-bird, seem rare. T-bird first came out in 2000, AFAIK.

The best Athlon XPs, are the Barton and Thoroughbred-B.

Somewhere I have a Gateway Kadoka slot A board. Can't remember if it had an Argon or T-bird in it though (I think it's an original Argon!).

Momaka has a couple of them as well. Strange boards in that they have three rear USB ports (not the usual 2/4), soldered VRM heatsinks, and no electrolytic caps (all ceramic and tantalum).

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Somewhere I have a Gateway Kadoka slot A board. Can't remember if it had an Argon or T-bird in it though (I think it's an original Argon!).

I skipped the first-gen and second-gen Athlons, apparently. My first, was a T-bird 900 Mhz. Shouldn't even be a surprise, because my first Athlon build wasn't until 2001, probably June of that year, when my first Athlon build, was super crashy! Due to a Soyo BIOS bug, you have to lower the Vcore some, on the SY-K7VTA-B. (Via KT133 chipset)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This system is built on an Asus A7V8X, cpu is a t-bred 2600+, 3gb RAM and an ati 9550. Not a bad build for its time....

A little 'ricey' with the lighting....





Yea, that is a temp gauge....and it seems to work. The sensor is just loose in the case....perhaps it was supposed to be stuck in the CPU heatsink....but ohh well.



Nifty door....with magnetic latches...



The guts will probably end up on ebay or something (it all works, caps are good, etc)....I'd have no use for anything like that around here.....the case will be super for a Poly VP6...

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Just best offered and won a couple of hard-to-find Atech Flash Professional card readers:

-New XM28U Silver: $12 shipped. Has all the cables too. I have a few of these around... AFAIK this is the nicest silver 3.5" reader they made, and the last to support smartmedia.
-Used Pro-35U (Black): $14 shipped. Probably missing the cables (no biggie, for large Supermicro cases I've had to roll my own before). AFAIK this was the the last/nicest non-kiosk 3.5" USB 2.0 reader they made.

Atech's pro line is legitimately well made stuff... as in flip-covers on the CF slots kind of well built. Every non-OEM cased build I've done in the last several years has had one... only really have had one failure; the used Pro-77u (USB3 5.25 reader with powered Hub) currently in my basement system has a sketchy SDHC slot (which is annoying, but I haven't been inclined to replace the slot). Their photo kiosk (and forensic!) units are even beefier yet... but are very "colorful" and also often very expensive (as in over $100 new). Not the usual noname junk readers!

Lately even the new readers they still sell I've had a hell of a time finding... so whenever one of these "nice" units comes up for cheap, to a point, I'll snap them up. I only had one of them sitting anyway (a 3.5" USB 3.0 Pro-37U)... and I have at least one build coming up where some other options might be warranted.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scored an Acer 7551 for free. Athlon P340, Radeon IGP, 4GB DDR3, no HDD and charger. The issue? A dud CMOS battery.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yesterday my wife came back from the Salvation Army store and said there was a ton of computer stuff there.....so like a train wreck I had to go look... I always look for 3DFX stuff at places like that, it's where you can find 'em for $3....but none of that today.....but worry not, I didn't leave empty handed!!

I brought home two boxes.....

Box 1:


Box 2:


Box 1 contains:



a Plextor 40x10x40 CDRW, 2x plextor 24x10x32 (one internal one external), a new-in-box APC 550 (given the age, batt is probably bad), new in box Startech 2-port USB/DVI KVM switch (including audio support), a new in package AMD Athlon64 3200+, a 4-port analog KVM, An IDE to SCSI adapter which allows an IDE HDD to run on a SCSI bus (never even knew anything like that existed), an adaptec 1210 SATA RAID controller NIB, and finally a NIB masscool isurf2 3.5" HDD cooler.

Now we get to box 2; and the pick of the litter!! I stumbled over this box twice and paid no attention to it until after I had already checked out.....and then it dawned on me....that box said Supermicro on it.....so I went back and opened the flaps to see this!



I looked at it no further....I closed it back up and walked it up to the counter.

...and here's what I got!! Brand new in box Supermicro SC-742 eATX chassis!! It's of course in perfect condition and BEIGE!! Anything NIB beige is getting nearly impossible to find, then add in it's a Supermicro! MEGA SCORE!!!



Bag still sealed.


Taken out of the bag for the first time.....it even still smelled new!

HDD's are internally mounted, it doesn't have the hotswap backplane...but I can live with that.


Case internals, shiny & new!!


FSP 300w PSU....that's nothing to get overly excited about.....but is an ok PSU....I'll still check the caps before use.



Not a bad haul. The case was $25. Total, I spent $70 bucks.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yesterday my wife came back from the Salvation Army store and said there was a ton of computer stuff there.....so like a train wreck I had to go look... I always look for 3DFX stuff at places like that, it's where you can find 'em for $3....but none of that today.....but worry not, I didn't leave empty handed!!

I brought home two boxes.....

Box 1:


Box 2:


Box 1 contains:



a Plextor 40x10x40 CDRW, 2x plextor 24x10x32 (one internal one external), a new-in-box APC 550 (given the age, batt is probably bad), new in box Startech 2-port USB/DVI KVM switch (including audio support), a new in package AMD Athlon64 3200+, a 4-port analog KVM, An IDE to SCSI adapter which allows an IDE HDD to run on a SCSI bus (never even knew anything like that existed), an adaptec 1210 SATA RAID controller NIB, and finally a NIB masscool isurf2 3.5" HDD cooler.

Now we get to box 2; and the pick of the litter!! I stumbled over this box twice and paid no attention to it until after I had already checked out.....and then it dawned on me....that box said Supermicro on it.....so I went back and opened the flaps to see this!



I looked at it no further....I closed it back up and walked it up to the counter.

...and here's what I got!! Brand new in box Supermicro SC-742 eATX chassis!! It's of course in perfect condition and BEIGE!! Anything NIB beige is getting nearly impossible to find, then add in it's a Supermicro! MEGA SCORE!!!



Bag still sealed.


Taken out of the bag for the first time.....it even still smelled new!

HDD's are internally mounted, it doesn't have the hotswap backplane...but I can live with that.


Case internals, shiny & new!!


FSP 300w PSU....that's nothing to get overly excited about.....but is an ok PSU....I'll still check the caps before use.



Not a bad haul. The case was $25. Total, I spent $70 bucks.

Cool! Honestly wish to go on journeys like that! I honestly like how the case looks!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Here's the UPS....time to see if this one was going to work, mainly battery condition.

Cracked the box open!!


Factory check slip....


Unwrapped....


Indeed, battery had never been connected.


Battery has a build date of 2006, so that battery has sat for ~15yrs..... I measured it upon removal last night, it was reading ~7v. I put a trickle on it overnight with the bench supply, and removed it around 8 this morning. I then let it sit 4 hours to watch the drop:


That's an acceptable level....so reinstalled in the unit and fired off:


It's not bitching about bad battery.....


I pulled the plug with a light load on it, it held 5 minutes and was still holding when I plugged it back in. So far so good!

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I put a trickle on it overnight.

errr wha?! u left a battery in an unknown condition that hasnt been used in decades to charge overnight unattended?! my my! im shocked topcat! u're lucky it didnt go fubarr and burned the place down! others were not so lucky like u!!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

errr wha?! u left a battery in an unknown condition that hasnt been used in decades to charge overnight unattended?! my my! im shocked topcat! u're lucky it didnt go fubarr and burned the place down! others were not so lucky like u!!

Bench meter current trip set @ 200ma. Pull beyond that it would have shut down. At no point did I see it pull more than ~50ma. I monitored it the first few hours.

If it were a LION or a NICAD, I'd agree.....not horribly worried about a SLA though....When those are bad, they just won't come back to life. I'm not this dumb!

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yesterday my wife came back from the Salvation Army store and said there was a ton of computer stuff there.....

I now approve of your wife and marriage.

I always look for 3DFX stuff at places like that, it's where you can find 'em for $3....but none of that today.....

^ Both because you didn't find any and because older stuff like that NEVER appears at my local thrift stores. A lot of them seem to think that everyone is middle-upper class in this area, so they typically scrap old stuff like that and only sell the modern junk at complete rip-off prices. Rarely, if something get mis-labeled (got a few SATA-Molex adapters for 50 cents each once) is the only chance I'll find worthwhile stuff, and that rarely ever happens, so I kind of stopped going to these places.

Box 1 contains:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616708763

a Plextor 40x10x40 CDRW, 2x plextor 24x10x32 (one internal one external), a new-in-box APC 550 (given the age, batt is probably bad), new in box Startech 2-port USB/DVI KVM switch (including audio support), a new in package AMD Athlon64 3200+, a 4-port analog KVM, An IDE to SCSI adapter which allows an IDE HDD to run on a SCSI bus (never even knew anything like that existed), an adaptec 1210 SATA RAID controller NIB, and finally a NIB masscool isurf2 3.5" HDD cooler.

Really cool. Must have come from someone like you - the stuff looks in very good shape in the pictures. Beige optical drives, especially good ones, are getting more rare now. The Athlon64 3200+ is a pretty funny find - these are literally the average s478 Pentium 4 Prescott in AMD form... though they easily OC to 25% more... that is assuming you have a socket 939 CPU there. Is it? If it's 754, that would be a much better score, because higher-end Athlon64's are good to have around (many s754 systems come with lower-end Semprons.)... Not that these CPUs are worth anything nowadays. But good to know if you do have a higher-end chip from some socket, in case you ever need it.

Now we get to box 2; and the pick of the litter!! I stumbled over this box twice and paid no attention to it until after I had already checked out.....and then it dawned on me....that box said Supermicro on it.....so I went back and opened the flaps to see this!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616708763

I looked at it no further....I closed it back up and walked it up to the counter.

That's so funny!
You must be used to seeing that SuperMicro logo so often from your SM hoard that you probably hardly ever pay attention to it anymore.

...and here's what I got!! Brand new in box Supermicro SC-742 eATX chassis!! It's of course in perfect condition and BEIGE!! Anything NIB beige is getting nearly impossible to find, then add in it's a Supermicro! MEGA SCORE!!!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616708763

Bag still sealed.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616708763

That is beautiful!

FSP 300w PSU....that's nothing to get overly excited about.....but is an ok PSU....I'll still check the caps before use.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616708763

I see model number is FSP300-60PFN.
If that's anything like the FSP400-60PFN I recapped a while back, it should be one helluva solid PSU.

Only downside would be that you probably would want to recap it. While on mine up there only the 5VSB caps appeared bad, the big 6800 uF CapXon caps on the outputs have also started to go high capacitance now on my bench a few years after recapping that PSU - so good thing I did a full recap back then, because the secondary heatsink really does have to be removed to get to all the caps (especially the 5VSB ones.)

Not a bad haul. The case was $25.

And a STEEL at that [har har har ]

Had a walk-in drop a pickup load of relics....

In the pile is a custom-built system, plexiglass front & side from early 2000-ish era, has a Athlon XP in it. An IBM PS2/77 486 DX2 @ 33MHz, 16mb RAM, and a 540mb scsi hdd. Sometimes it boots, sometimes it doesn't. It's complete, even including the old clickety keyboard. There was also a complete CTX system with monitor, AMD K6-2 @ 333, 256mb RAM and a 8.4gb HDD....the oddity here was the Super 7 board with an AGP and no onboard GPU.

That is a pretty awesome score too! And you got CRTs!!!! May not seem like much, but asking prices are getting sillier by the minute on eBay for those (however, selling prices are still not as high... though slowly going up too from what I see.)

The old IBM PS2 will be a fun one to tinker with; albeit pretty useless....

... unless you open a museum.

The case with the plexiglass is in very good condition....a little 'blingy' for my normal taste, but would beautifully house a VP6 retro gamer system and remain period-specific...case quality is good (not great), but not completely flimsy like today's trash.

Blingy? - Yes.
But compared to today's taste-less RGN nonsense, this case is still way more classy.

This system is built on an Asus A7V8X, cpu is a t-bred 2600+, 3gb RAM and an ati 9550. Not a bad build for its time....

I think the RAM must have been updated later on at some point - 3 GB was crazy for the time. Most DDR systems from that era were considered battleships if they came even with 1 GB of RAM. 256 MB was the 4GB "barely adequate norm" of today (with Windows 10), and 512 MB was considered average for a gaming rig.

A little 'ricey' with the lighting....

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616616204

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616616204

Yeah, a little bit. But this (silver with blue lightning... OR red... OR greee... but rarely all three) was very typical styling for the mid-2000's... and not a bad color-combo IMO. Actually, I liked it back then quite a bit and still OK with it today, if it was to ever come back.

Yea, that is a temp gauge....and it seems to work. The sensor is just loose in the case....perhaps it was supposed to be stuck in the CPU heatsink....but ohh well.

Yup, you're supposed to stick it to whatever component/piece/heatsink you thought would be the hottest or deserved the most attention. Some did it to the chipset, some to the GPU (as GPUs back then didn't usually have thermal sensors), and some to the HDD. It wasn't super-accurate, buy kind of fun to see.

Nifty door....with magnetic latches...

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616616204

That's probably the only "feature" I didn't like when it got introduced to mainstream cases of that era - case doors. I always liked all my buttons, ports, floppy, and optical drives to be accessible without having to fiddle with any doors. And overall, even people that liked them... I think they also ended up not liking them too much after some time, as I've seen a ton of cases with busted doors (most likely because people would leave them open all the time so they wouldn't have to open them and close them all the time... waiting for the "perfect" accident to happen and break the door.)

The guts will probably end up on ebay or something (it all works, caps are good, etc)....I'd have no use for anything like that around here

So just curious... what motherboard was in there?

errr wha?! u left a battery in an unknown condition that hasnt been used in decades to charge overnight unattended?! my my! im shocked topcat! u're lucky it didnt go fubarr and burned the place down! others were not so lucky like u!!

I guess you never worked with / charged Lead-Acid batteries - they are pretty tame for the most part. Sure if a cell shorted internally after getting fully charged or overcharged (super-extremely rare), it would just end up boiling the acid inside and puffing up a lot of (bad) fumes, but nothing much else besides that. They are hardly a fire hazard, which is why they are still used in cars - they can take a beating from huge temperature swings and won't go nuclear when abused with extremely high currents or shorted out (which a car starter pretty much does all the time), unlike a Li-Ion or Li-Po.

Ni-Cd are also quite durable and pretty safe. Only unsafe thing about them is they have extremely low ESR - short a big Ni-Cd pack out, and it will happily melt cables for you. Ni-MH is a high-capacity, but more behaved version of Ni-Cd... but both suffer from memory effect, are a bit tricky to charge properly, and have lower energy density than Li-based batteries - hence the reason they got replaced with the latter.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I now approve of your wife and marriage.

She can put up with me and scouts PC junk...I've got it made!!

Really cool. Must have come from someone like you - the stuff looks in very good shape in the pictures. Beige optical drives, especially good ones, are getting more rare now. The Athlon64 3200+ is a pretty funny find - these are literally the average s478 Pentium 4 Prescott in AMD form... though they easily OC to 25% more... that is assuming you have a socket 939 CPU there. Is it? If it's 754, that would be a much better score, because higher-end Athlon64's are good to have around (many s754 systems come with lower-end Semprons.)... Not that these CPUs are worth anything nowadays. But good to know if you do have a higher-end chip from some socket, in case you ever need it.

I was told it was a doctor in Rolla, MO that had a passion for computers.....and had a massive hoard. His wife is making him downsize it, there's rumors of more stuff to come. I'll be checking regularly. Its going from one hoarder to another!

That's so funny!
You must be used to seeing that SuperMicro logo so often from your SM hoard that you probably hardly ever pay attention to it anymore.

Probably a lot of truth to that.

I see model number is FSP300-60PFN.
If that's anything like the FSP400-60PFN I recapped a while back, it should be one helluva solid PSU.

Only downside would be that you probably would want to recap it. While on mine up there only the 5VSB caps appeared bad, the big 6800 uF CapXon caps on the outputs have also started to go high capacitance now on my bench a few years after recapping that PSU - so good thing I did a full recap back then, because the secondary heatsink really does have to be removed to get to all the caps (especially the 5VSB ones.)

I figured a recapping was in order...

So just curious... what motherboard was in there?

Asus A7V8X. Seems to be solid. I gave it and the GPU the quake3 arena test. No issues.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...postcount=4866

I guess you never worked with / charged Lead-Acid batteries - they are pretty tame for the most part. Sure if a cell shorted internally after getting fully charged or overcharged (super-extremely rare), it would just end up boiling the acid inside and puffing up a lot of (bad) fumes, but nothing much else besides that. They are hardly a fire hazard, which is why they are still used in cars

Yup, I wasn't worried about it.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Pulled the trigger on some freebies. One is a discrete GPU mobo for the Acer 7551 I mentioned above, and the other is a lovely retro kit comprised of:

LuckyTech P5MVP3 mobo
AMD K6-2 500MHz
64MB PC133 (not that I will need that 64MB, as I have plenty of 128MB sticks)
SB Live 5.1 PCI
40GB WD HDD

No GPU but I will take care of that hopefully, gotta bring out my ole' stash'o cards.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Here's another one....

The particulars will come out later....but here's a hint!



This post created from it....abusing some hardware modifications.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Here's another one....

The particulars will come out later....but here's a hint!

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1616878471

This post created from it....abusing some hardware modifications.

That's a dual Pentium 3 Dell Precision, isn't it? (Or perhaps PII??)

I gave a similar one like that to a fellow workmate many years ago when I still used to volunteer at one of the IT places and they had stacks of these around (probably a good 20 machines or so.) Boss always kept asking me if I wanted to take more, and at the time, I always thought those were too old/useless for anything. Now if I could go back in time, I'd take the whole bunch in an instant! These Precisions came with proprietary Dell PSUs - still ATX form factor and connectors, but the ATX connector had the weird Dell pinout. Otherwise, these PSUs were complete tanks - rated for something like 40 Amps on the 5V rail and weighed a ton. Don't remember much else about them, but they were neat machines - at least the ones we had in that place had dual CPU slots. Not sure if they'd take Coppermine with a slocket or not, but still cool machines.

and the other is a lovely retro kit comprised of:

LuckyTech P5MVP3 mobo
AMD K6-2 500MHz
64MB PC133 (not that I will need that 64MB, as I have plenty of 128MB sticks)
SB Live 5.1 PCI
40GB WD HDD

Nice!
Don't junk the 64 MB modules, though. Some OEM socket 7 motherboards can't take 128 MB modules, so having a few 32 MB or 64 MB around could be useful if you ever run into one of those boards. Besides, for a Windows 95 rig, you really would be fine with 64 MB. Even 32 MB won't be bad at all.

I was told it was a doctor in Rolla, MO that had a passion for computers.....and had a massive hoard. His wife is making him downsize it, there's rumors of more stuff to come. I'll be checking regularly. Its going from one hoarder to another!

That's how it always is, isn't it?

We can be swimming in computers, and yet there's always space for "one more".

Asus A7V8X. Seems to be solid. I gave it and the GPU the quake3 arena test. No issues.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...postcount=4866

Apparently I can't read. You stated what the motherboard was right in that post, lol.
Yup, that's a pretty classic (but nothing spectacular) Athlon XP board from the mid-2000's. Should make a nice retro PC hardware for someone indeed.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

That's a dual Pentium 3 Dell Precision, isn't it? (Or perhaps PII??)

I gave a similar one like that to a fellow workmate many years ago when I still used to volunteer at one of the IT places and they had stacks of these around (probably a good 20 machines or so.) Boss always kept asking me if I wanted to take more, and at the time, I always thought those were too old/useless for anything. Now if I could go back in time, I'd take the whole bunch in an instant! These Precisions came with proprietary Dell PSUs - still ATX form factor and connectors, but the ATX connector had the weird Dell pinout. Otherwise, these PSUs were complete tanks - rated for something like 40 Amps on the 5V rail and weighed a ton. Don't remember much else about them, but they were neat machines - at least the ones we had in that place had dual CPU slots. Not sure if they'd take Coppermine with a slocket or not, but still cool machines.

Yes, it's a Precision 410, dual P2/P3 (slot-1). It came with a pair of Katmai 500's....but you know me better than that!! That's not what's in it now. It also came with the ARO1130 RAID addon card for the onboard SCSI. After fixing all the firmware nonsense common for these, it's testbedding some scsi goodness now. These systems are nearly impossible to find now, they've all gone to the shredders. There was a Precision 610, same case, but the motherboard was a dual slot-2. Good luck ever finding one. I did find a motherboard from a 610 and considered a 'conversion'.....but since this one is now in working order, I decided not to do it. When I got it, it had a strange RTC issue. The clock ran so fast when in the BIOS that it would count off an entire day's time in ~4 minutes....it was crazy to watch....I should have taken a vid with my phone. When researching any possible solutions, I downloaded the manual and noticed some jumper caps in places they shouldn't be and it had the first release BIOS on it. Removing those jumpers and updating the BIOS fixed it.

We can be swimming in computers, and yet there's always space for "one more".

...and if there isn't room, I make room!!!

Some people rescue cats & dogs....I rescue computers... My wife tells me I treat them like 'little people'...and they don't poop on the rug!

Apparently I can't read. You stated what the motherboard was right in that post, lol.
Yup, that's a pretty classic (but nothing spectacular) Athlon XP board from the mid-2000's. Should make a nice retro PC hardware for someone indeed.

No worries, happens to me from time to time as well. Something else came up for going in that case, so the Poly VP6 has been scrubbed for it... This is a good one....since this case was born AMD, it'll stay AMD....just not with the present stuff....Nothing I build can only have one processor....that's boring! I found a good & proper board and it showed up with more than I bargained for... More on that later.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Nice!
Don't junk the 64 MB modules, though. Some OEM socket 7 motherboards can't take 128 MB modules, so having a few 32 MB or 64 MB around could be useful if you ever run into one of those boards. Besides, for a Windows 95 rig, you really would be fine with 64 MB. Even 32 MB won't be bad at all.

Don't worry. It's only one scrawny PC133 module that wouldn't work on most boards (I'm surprised this P5MVP3 actually runs it). I have good PC100/PC66 64MB modules for those that only cache 64MB max (or was it 128 for the i430TX?). The MVP3 goes waaay higher than the i430TX/VX in that regard (IIRC it's as high as the 430HX, around 512MB max cacheable) so no reason to stick with small sticks.