best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

MEGA score today.... While prowling ebay for the usual things I look for, a listing appeared for an 'Intel dual slot-1 motherboard'.....ok, not anything to get excited about until I looked a little closer and noticed that the CPU's in it seemed a bit tall...... I love sellers that don't know what they have! Turns out it's a dual slot-2 GX board in a standard ATX WITH an AGP and no onboard video. These were EXTREMELY rare!! Pretty much everything slot-2 was some proprietary server board with no AGP! ...and to find one with all the brackets & VRM's....and a seller that doesn't have a clue....so a lowball offer and accepted!!

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

My free scores are from last week's Wednesday (Thursday trash day):

- Protective cardboard/styrofoam corners for moving furniture - about 30 pieces of various types. Gonna come in handy soon.

- One 3 ft x 6 ft sanded 5-6 mm equiv. plywood sheet, along with some other scrap lumber (I just can't pass up good lumber. )

- 1x 1 gal. of white flat paint (about 3/4 can left). There were many more cans, and all were recent too. Should have picked up those too, but ran out of space in the car.

- and the best for last: a pair of Insignia NS-B2111 passive stereo speakers. There are not anything to special to write home about... but they were $100 speakers at around introduction time and do sound pretty decent. The (main) speaker drivers imitate similarly-sized KEFs (with the tweeter mounted on the bass driver's pole piece.) Despite this, As usual, the bass department is where they could do better - seem pretty decent down to 45-50 Hz, but drops out very quickly after that. The port is pretty big on these speakers. I'm thinking reducing its size might help a little.

Scored some nice HW today, a Radeon X1950 Pro AGP, as well as an ABIT IS7-E v1.2 mobo.

Nice!

I also have an x1950 Pro AGP, but mine's from VisionTek... 256 MB version. (Picture of my card below.) Bought it from eBay for about $20-25 a few years back, IIRC.



Make sure to install a heatsink of some sort on the bridge chip. A lot of the x-series cards dies due to this. Mine uses the backplate as a cooler, so I think I'm good there.

MEGA score today.... While prowling ebay for the usual things I look for, a listing appeared for an 'Intel dual slot-1 motherboard'.....ok, not anything to get excited about until I looked a little closer and noticed that the CPU's in it seemed a bit tall...... I love sellers that don't know what they have! Turns out it's a dual slot-2 GX board in a standard ATX WITH an AGP and no onboard video. These were EXTREMELY rare!! Pretty much everything slot-2 was some proprietary server board with no AGP! ...and to find one with all the brackets & VRM's....and a seller that doesn't have a clue....so a lowball offer and accepted!!

This is why I still like and prefer eBay for my online shopping of used PC parts - one can find some really neat gems there sometimes... though my local Craigslist hasn't been too bad either in the last few years. Back in the 2010's, my local Craigslist was only a good source of CRT monitors for me. Now? - If anyone posts one for sale, it usually disappears within days. And if free - gone instantly (I'm not exaggerating here at all.)

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Mine did have a half-dead bridge chip actually. I did a quick thorough reflow on it, and then heatsinked it so it won't die anytime soon.

[jiroy]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Another set of free scores from last month :

- A box of original electronic components .. The former owner said they go back to a time when he wanted to learn Electronics and later changed his mind .

- A LG27 LCD Screen , not working after some maid's cleaning . The attached pictures show clearly the damages . Must say a good maid , lol .

- A PSU , not working .. First check ups proved useful .. I Always spend some 10 minutes examining a device before attempting anything else . The tall capacitor had a detached leg . Some soldering too and it's as good as new . I don't know if it's clear in the picture .

- A Starsat SR-F10hd .

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

MEGA score today.... While prowling ebay for the usual things I look for, a listing appeared for an 'Intel dual slot-1 motherboard'.....ok, not anything to get excited about until I looked a little closer and noticed that the CPU's in it seemed a bit tall...... I love sellers that don't know what they have! Turns out it's a dual slot-2 GX board in a standard ATX WITH an AGP and no onboard video. These were EXTREMELY rare!! Pretty much everything slot-2 was some proprietary server board with no AGP! ...and to find one with all the brackets & VRM's....and a seller that doesn't have a clue....so a lowball offer and accepted!!

I was thinking of Epox' GXB-M and SuperMicro's P6D8E since they're standard ATX, until you mentioned VRM modules.

Now you got me curious as to what it is. Is it actually a Intel branded board? (y'know, like Desktop Board or Server Board, along those lines.)

Speaking of Slot1/2, I have a Gateway here that might need some pimping, now you've got me the motivation to slam a Soyo board in place of its WS440BX

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This is why I still like and prefer eBay for my online shopping of used PC parts - one can find some really neat gems there sometimes... though my local Craigslist hasn't been too bad either in the last few years. Back in the 2010's, my local Craigslist was only a good source of CRT monitors for me. Now? - If anyone posts one for sale, it usually disappears within days. And if free - gone instantly (I'm not exaggerating here at all.)

Ebay isn't what it used to be; its pretty much an Amazon competitor for a bunch of chinese junk....but I am with you in that I still really like ebay for finding weird things like this....you just have to know how & where to look. I have certain search criteria I use that will make some of the off-beat stuff show up and badabing, a cheap dual slot-2 board shows up!! It's not here yet, but it has shipped. When it gets here, I'll test it and toss some pics up. I don't even know what CPU's are in it....and didn't really care. I'll run it up in 'the oven'..... I don't have a build in mind for this as of yet.....A very nice 90's era case would have to be found for it.

I still have a few CRT's.....I really don't do much with them anymore. I instead seek out beige flats for retro rigs....keeps in spirit with the retro-look, but so much easier to deal with.

I was thinking of Epox' GXB-M and SuperMicro's P6D8E since they're standard ATX, until you mentioned VRM modules.

Now you got me curious as to what it is. Is it actually a Intel branded board? (y'know, like Desktop Board or Server Board, along those lines.)

Speaking of Slot1/2, I have a Gateway here that might need some pimping, now you've got me the motivation to slam a Soyo board in place of its WS440BX

Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what it is other than an Intel.....the seller was vague with details and pics of numbers.....but I knew what I was looking at when I saw the CPU's and the top view of the board.

I've got a Supermicro S2DGU dual slot-2 running a pair of Casacades Xeons @ 900MHz (fastest 100FSB CPU's it can take; GX chipset didn't support 133FSB) +3DFX Voodoo3 GPU. Slot-1 stuff is still pretty common and easy to find....but slot 2, not so much; especially anything non-proprietary and WITH an AGP!

Post some goodness of that Gateway build.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Post some goodness of that Gateway build.

Sure, just gotta finish a old case (Techsolo TC10-SR) as I got a new plexiglass for it (original panel was shattered beyond any salvation) and gotta find someone to cut the 50x50 piece I have to shape. That one will house either some nice ABIT IS7 goodness, or its original ASUS A8N-SLI config, albeit with a few changes, hopefully.

I'm trying to cram it all in this one day so everyone gets to be happy. If not, I'll post it here anyways, and expect replies around the next days.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

And as promised, photos.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

nice! a made in singapore creative sb16 value isa sound card. a good memento to remember the late founder of creative by!

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

And as promised, photos.

I'm diggin' it....but get that CPU runnin' at the correct speed!! It's either 550 or 733....I couldn't see the numbers, ATX cable is obscuring it!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

It's a 550. For whatever reason I forgot that I took its CMOS jumper, which must've drained all CMOS data (the battery still measures 3v) - the picture you're seeing was straight after the first power-on, where it defaults at 66MHz FSB - I got into the BIOS shortly after I took it, and set the CPU to 550MHz.

It's now running @ 550MHz stable - Katmai core by the way, so pretty much no chance of getting it any higher than 600 or 633 tops I guess - 600MHz was already the core's limit, if I'm not mistaken.

Anyways, on to the thread's topic, today's scores were rather slim. Got a free ASUS socket 478 cooler (this to be fully exact) with copper base and a ASUS rebranded AVC fan that was gone beyond any salvation.

The other score was a Winfast PX9800GT 1GB GDDR3 video card w/ a broken 70mm fan - this one was a easy fix as well - ghetto rigged a fan from a skt754/939/AM2 stock heatsink so well that you wouldn't easily tell it isn't supposed to be there - the only giveaway is that the original fan had a 4pin header, and that it was considerably slimmer (the whole card is slim and surprisingly doesn't require any separate PCI-E connector - I'll put up some pics in the ghetto thread soon enough.) than the cut up AMD cooler I've used.

Now... to find a suitable build for the 9800GT - 939, AM2, or 775?

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

It's a 550. For whatever reason I forgot that I took its CMOS jumper, which must've drained all CMOS data (the battery still measures 3v) - the picture you're seeing was straight after the first power-on, where it defaults at 66MHz FSB - I got into the BIOS shortly after I took it, and set the CPU to 550MHz.

It's now running @ 550MHz stable - Katmai core by the way, so pretty much no chance of getting it any higher than 600 or 633 tops I guess - 600MHz was already the core's limit, if I'm not mistaken.

Anyways, on to the thread's topic, today's scores were rather slim. Got a free ASUS socket 478 cooler (this to be fully exact) with copper base and a ASUS rebranded AVC fan that was gone beyond any salvation.

Katmai maxed @ 600. 550 will probably be the max, 600's are getting hard to find and pricey. Will this board run 133FSB? BX's were a mixed bag with this but by default, they did not....but it should run CuMines if you really wanted to beef it; especially if it'll do 133FSB, 1000/133's are plentiful and cheap, it's the 1000/100 (SL4KL) that is impossible to find.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

IIRC it'll boot at 133 but unstable as all heck... I have about two slotkets that were originally Mendocino-only, modded to accept Coppermine CPUs, though they're also troublesome with anything else besides Mendocino and early CuMine Celerons.

I'll leave it be at Katmai since I wanted to have a Katmai build for some time already. For Coppermine, I already have a 650MHz/100FSB Slot1 chip on a ABIT BE6-II build.

I tried to check if I can find myself a BP6 on the bay - the prices there are so steep it's not funny. And not just the BP6, but anything ABIT - sweet bejeezus, it's like they're worth their weight in golden. Guess I did the right thing in stocking up the BE6-II long ago and recently, the IS7-E.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

IIRC it'll boot at 133 but unstable as all heck... I have about two slotkets that were originally Mendocino-only, modded to accept Coppermine CPUs, though they're also troublesome with anything else besides Mendocino and early CuMine Celerons.

I'll leave it be at Katmai since I wanted to have a Katmai build for some time already. For Coppermine, I already have a 650MHz/100FSB Slot1 chip on a ABIT BE6-II build.

I tried to check if I can find myself a BP6 on the bay - the prices there are so steep it's not funny. And not just the BP6, but anything ABIT - sweet bejeezus, it's like they're worth their weight in golden. Guess I did the right thing in stocking up the BE6-II long ago and recently, the IS7-E.

I actually quit trying to make 133FSB run stable on BX boards not intended to do so...the P2B-D; even the v1.06 doesn't do it kindly, and the complete hackery of the board just isn't worth it..so instead I run them with a pair of SL5QW CPU's which is a FCPGA coppermine Pentium3 @ 1100/100 running in slotkets. That makes for an unusual system; as those CPU's were aimed solely at the mobile market....they never really turned up in the desktop world. What's getting hard to find now are slotkets that support coppermine....I always favored the Abit Slotket III's, made for coppermines and never had an issue running them in a dual CPU config....and once upon a time they could be had for ~$20 on ebay all day long.....now, non-existent. I have a bunch of MSI slotkets that support coppermines, but they don't run dual.....so they're fine for a single board, but in a dual one, it won't POST with 2 (but will with 1).

I also have a pair of upgradeware slot-t adapters (slotkets that support Tualatins @ 133FSB and Dual CPU).....saving those for the right board.....probably a dual slot1 with a VIA chipset, so I know 133FSB will run without issues....but I digress.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

MEGA score today.... While prowling ebay for the usual things I look for, a listing appeared for an 'Intel dual slot-1 motherboard'.....ok, not anything to get excited about until I looked a little closer and noticed that the CPU's in it seemed a bit tall...... I love sellers that don't know what they have! Turns out it's a dual slot-2 GX board in a standard ATX WITH an AGP and no onboard video. These were EXTREMELY rare!! Pretty much everything slot-2 was some proprietary server board with no AGP! ...and to find one with all the brackets & VRM's....and a seller that doesn't have a clue....so a lowball offer and accepted!!

Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what it is other than an Intel.....the seller was vague with details and pics of numbers.....but I knew what I was looking at when I saw the CPU's and the top view of the board.

The board has arrived. It has been identified as an Intel MS440GX; dual slot-2. It was apparently used in some ancient Gateway server & Seimens server as well as being sold stand-alone. I have the 'stand-alone' version based on the BIOS revision on it, it has an Intel splash @ POST. The gateway version used one with their 'splash' in it, and had a different string according to retro web. It came with a pair of P2 Xeons @ 450MHz, 512k L2. I don't know if it'll run the 900MHz Cascades chips or not....I'm not robbing my other build to test this... I'll see if I can locate another pair....but if nothing else, simply bump it up to the same Xeon @ 450 with the 2MB L2's.....

The board is in working order, BIOS updated to the latest that research revealed, and it's in the 'oven' right now. The updated BIOS changelog does show PIII Xeon support, which is a good sign for Cascades support.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Well, guess I was right on the track with Gateway, considering the build I've just done in my GP6-400's casing.

I'm thinking of getting a SFX unit for that one by the way, and see just how absurdly far I can take it in terms of horsepower with the Katmai alone - it's my own plan to push Katmai and 440BX's capabilities to the maximum extent possible. Hence why I didn't go for a Coppermine - my trusty BE6-II already takes care of that, with a "mighty" GF4 Ti4200 already.

That 200W Powertech surely isn't giving too much space to work with.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

My early socket 462 builds this reminds me of:

Via KT133 was really only a 100 MHz FSB chipset, so I needed a T-bird intended for 100 MHz FSB. You would be lucky to get 103 MHz FSB, LOL.

Stubborn me! I only had poopy PSUs before sometime in fall, 2003. Even when the Deer-based PSU that I got on July 1, 2003, was behaving a lot better than the past two PSUs!

I, for a short time, had a T-bird 1.3. (100x13.0 version) I broke it by accident.

RIP T-bird 1.3 GHz (July 5, 2002-October 13, 2002) (On October 13, 2002, I knew it was damaged, because it would power up, but nothing else happened. My CRT monitor at the time, seemed to tease me, go to green, then back to orange! Regardless, I never saw a BIOS screen with that chip again!)

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Nice scores all around today:

- some Frontier case based unit w/ a horrifyingly gutless Spire 400W unit (I have pics of the PSU) and a K7S41GX from ASRock that's unfortunately fallen victim of bad Taicons. EVERY SINGLE TAICON IS BULGING!!! And some of the KZGs too. Irony - the CPU on it is a Duron 1800.

- presumably what is a gamer machine - LC-Power LC6550 (Huntkey OEM) PSU, ASUS P5Q Deluxe, Geforce 9600GT w/ Zalman cooler (me likey!), 640GB WD AV HDD, DVD-RW drive from NEC/Sony-Optiarc very likely, as well as a "gamer" case that's been to hell and back. Oh, and did I mention a 4GB DDR2 stick? WTF!

- Sony Vaio VPCEE2E1E - untested, supposedly has S1G4 hardware. Can convert it to 1st gen i3 anytime I want, since the casing is universal for both platforms.

-Packard Bell TJ66 w/ GT240M - pretty sorry state, I hope the mainboard is at least intact enough for me to transplant it into a pristine Gateway NV52 case.

- BeQuiet BQT P5-470W-S1.3 - criminally overpowered Topower unit, needs recap as F-Yus blew on the secondary. Can double as Thor's hammer by its weight alone!

-ATP Velocity SII Pro 16GB SSD - no idea what I'd be using this for but since it was free with the 775, why not.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Updates:

- Frontier unit got dismantled. PSU and MB are worthless. CPU, HDD and the ODDs are probably gonna be the basis for a low-footprint nForce 2 IGP build - gotta love the integrated MX440 on there, even if it's just 32MB and not 64. For now though, the case will house a Q6600 build.

- gaming machine also got dismantled - everything works, CPU got bunped up from a E8400 to a Q9400. An correction I want to make - PSU is OEM'd by Great Wall, not Huntkey. Still good for 450W, though I don't really dig the idea of a single PCI-E connector.

- Vaio tested fine, has a P320 and integrated HD4250 graphics. Fairly bland and stock install, nothing of interest.

- Packard Bell works fine too, although the stuff that was on the drive required me to smash the drive to bits and pieces. For legal reasons.

- recapped the BeQuiet with a grab-bag of SC, OST, Sanyo, UCC and AsiaX caps. I had nothing else on hand and the area where they were placed is absolutely rotal pain in the butt.

- SSD is dead. Shows up as a 750GB drive, and cannot be initialized.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

- some Frontier case based unit w/ a horrifyingly gutless Spire 400W unit (I have pics of the PSU) and a K7S41GX from ASRock that's unfortunately fallen victim of bad Taicons. EVERY SINGLE TAICON IS BULGING!!! And some of the KZGs too. Irony - the CPU on it is a Duron 1800.

Was it from 2004 or 2005? Those seem more likely to go bad! Especially KZGs from those years.