best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Dan81]

Not much activity here:

- CUSL2 + P3 1000EB run great - gotta love the flexibility of the AGP Pro slot, allowing me to change between a V3 3000 and a Geforce 6600 whenever I want
- 7800GS unfortunately turned up dead
- the ASUS lappies are pretty much troopers. Sandy Bridge was one of the few last Intel chips (along Ivy and Haswell, as Broadwell was the first to switch to all soldered BS) that were great for laptops. GPU wise, i5 got a GT540M, i7 does with a 610M. Both have 2GB worth of VRAM.
- PS2 cleaned off well, received new case and parts
- PS3 works fine, got to check Syscon logs

[Topcat]

Good drop off today!!

Two complete Nintendo systems; a NES classic and a Super NES. Yes, the mario bros 3 game is unopened.



A Cobra 86XLR Base station with classic D104 Mic



A bunch of other audio & radio gear.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

And gee, I totally forgot to put up a pic of the LG Studioworks CRT!

umm... why does the top one-third of the monitor screen appear darker and the lower two-thirds appear lighter? is this a screen defect with the monitor or a photography issue with the camera?

- custom build - C2D E6600, Gigabyte P35-DS3

ah! i've heard u've been trying to get your hands on one of those gigabyte p35 chipset boards. well, u got one finally! so gratz!

- ASUS A9550GE 256MB - some sort of "souped up" 9550 w/ Infineon RAM (standard package, not BGA) and likely 9600XT clocks?

nah, prolly just a slightly overclocked gpu. the stock 9550 clocks are 275 mhz. this one maybe overclocked to 300 mhz? the 9600 non-pros are clocked at 325 mhz.

A shame I couldn't find any working 9800s. The more I find locally, the more they turn out dead

yes, the stock cooler on those 9800 series cards are absolutely crap and run the gpu at 80-90°C. to add insult to injury, the fan also fails after a while. so no surprises there why those cards dont last. i think many are dead by now and looking on ebay those 9800 cards are going the way of the gf4 ti cards. over 50 to 80 bucks for one. i think be happy with your 9700 cards which i think u have some and be done with it! i have a couple of 9700 series cards and both overclock to 9800 pro speeds and more! so i think i'll use those first and save the 9800 cards for a rainy day...

Today's megascore is a Supermicro C7X99-OCE-F.

beautiful revival of that mobo! such a quick, simple and easy fix! i wouldnt think of reflashing the bios using a thumbdrive or optical drive using that method! i always think u need to use a flash rom programmer and either pry out the bios chip from the socket or desolder it if its soldered.

[Dan81]

These came yesterday:

- ASUS CUSL2 + P3 1GHz, 512MB SDR (2x128MB + 1x256)
- 2x ASUS K53S (K53SV and K53SD I think... one of them has a i7), X553M (scrapped X553M due to bad MB)
- Pine Tech/XFX GF2 MX400 64MB
- PS3 CECHL03
- Xbox 360 Falcon
- PS2 SCPH-50004a w/ roaches

[stj]

cheap DMR radio
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006317647277.html
it was even cheaper, i paid £32 uk.

[TechGeek]

9C was probably the CPU tossing an MCE and shutting down because it got put into an invalid/corrupt state by the faulty BIOS.

[Dan81]

Apart from the US gems (hehehe), I have a 7800GS AGP that has to show up Tuesday, as well as a whole mystery build that has an I/O shield for my Soltek

Fingers crossed that the 7800GS arrives intact and working. I already have a zombie 6600 AGP running and god knows for how long... a 7800GS wouldn't hurt an Athlon XP, would it?

[Topcat]

Today's megascore is a Supermicro C7X99-OCE-F. Bought from one of the gazillion R2 resellers on ebay as "non functional, won't boot" for $25 shipped, in original box with accessories. Ok, that's worth the gamble, these are ~$200 boards working.

Arrived today, and of course the first thing is to check the 'usual suspects; such as damaged pins in the sockets, and other physical damage to the board, RAM slots, etc....none found. Next, in the oven with a CPU & RAM...and no post... Looking at status codes and current draws, it would roll through until '9C'....I was never able to find out what that status code exactly is, but the google says "machine check exception"....whatever the frack that is....

Next step is to get the manual and study all jumper & switch settings after pulling the CMOS battery and make sure everything is cleared out of it.... I noticed a switch was in BIOS recovery mode for some reason....ok, red flag... Hoping maybe someone did that accidentally, I set it to normal and tried again...same result, no POST and status code 9C. Hmmm.....so what the hell, try the supermicro BIOS recovery (can be tricky)....but nothing to lose, so switched it back to recovery mode. Grabbed the latest BIOS, renamed it to 'super.rom', put in the root of a USB drive, powered up and pressed CRTL+HOME....and held the keys and my breath....well Sonofabitch, it POST'd and went through the recovery process....rebooted when done and here we are!!





Box & goodies...

[Dan81]

Heh, it's nice to hear the whir of that SCSI Seagate once in a while

Meanwhile, it's a nForce 2 party most of the time. That "Golden Flame" Soltek looks gorgeous with the red LED fan and ADATA Vitesta sticks, and the NF7 v2.0 besides me is stomping stuff with a 210FSB overclock.

A shame I couldn't find any working 9800s. The more I find locally, the more they turn out dead
Guess X1xxx/HD series it is. I think I found a HD2600XT somewhere once, for a rather accessible price (around the same as 9800 Pro.)

[Topcat]

Y'know why

I have a sneaking suspicion...

[Dan81]

Scores of today:

- Toshiba 4TB Surveillance HDD - dead
- 2x 1TB Hitachi Ultrastar, Sun Microsystems OEM - one appears to be dead, the other seems to work, haven't tested them further yet.
- custom build - C2D E6600, Gigabyte P35-DS3, 4x1GB DDR2, WD Green 1TB (yikes), MSI GT210 1GB, SB X-Fi SB0730, Win7 - POSTs, haven't checked HDD.
- PS3 CECHH04 - works, need to replace USB/BT/WLAN daughterboard tho.
- Acer Aspire 8530G - works after recasing using my other dead 8530G
- 1GB DDR400 Zeppelin stick - a nice addition for my Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL "Golden Flame"
- ASUS A9550GE 256MB - some sort of "souped up" 9550 w/ Infineon RAM (standard package, not BGA) and likely 9600XT clocks?

In the meantime, I brought my MSI 694D Pro-AR over so I can have matching CPUs ready. Y'know why

[Topcat]

Had a few PC's dropped off last week... One of the picks was a Dell XPS 630 red-face. PSU doesn't work. is a C2Q 9650 @ 3GHz 4GB RAM. GPU & HDD was missing. Has the liquid cooler for the CPU, first one I've seen; I didn't know it was an option. Case is in mint condition. One of my favorite Aluminum cases from dell. It's full & standard ATX not that goofy BTX. Breathes amazingly well and is built like a tank. Weighs a ton, even for an aluminum.

[Dan81]

Having fun with Athlon XPs.... trying to get a mobile 2600+ Barton in that "Golden Flame" beauty. I seriously am dumb regarding getting a XP-M running on a desktop mobo, but it should be worth it over a standard Barton I suppose.

[Dan81]

While I'm still halfway on the long road of waiting for the VP6s to arrive (they're in Nederlands as of this post, so mid April-early May would be my guesstimate of arrival here ), I simply COULD NOT pass up the oportunity to post this beauty.



This is the above-mentioned Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL "Golden Flame" mobo, which came from a fellow Romanian retro collector.
Not sure how many of you still remember these - they were usually notorious of shipping with GSC crappers left and right, and KZG in the VRM low, with only the high side being either Sanyo or Panasonic.
This one was surprisingly not the case - except for about two caps that were replaced*, all the caps on this one were OST RLX, much like most of ASUS' cap choice was during this era.
Quite of an unexpected surprise, knowing how awful GSC was. I mean, OST RLX isn't the brightest, but it's almost a whole magnitude higher than GSCs!

*one dinged 1000uF 10v between AGP and first DIMM slot, and what I suppose was a GSC near the 3rd DIMM slot. For whoever owns a similar board, positions EC42 and EC66.

[Dan81]

And another great score has been found and secured! Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL "Golden Flame".

This thing absolutely rivals the NF7 in beauty. One chap told me this isn't as much great OC-er as the NF7 or Lanparty Ultra B... guess he wasn't accustomed to the poly treatment.
Up next might be a fitting GPU for this beast - I'm thinking of a X1950 or a Geforce 6/7 series GPU, if they're available at reasonable prices.

And gee, I totally forgot to put up a pic of the LG Studioworks CRT!

[Dan81]

Ah, good times. The B450E would be the second unit from them I own.
I have (or at least remember owning) a older B400ATX that I had rebuilt myself.
Wonder if it still runs... has a K-Mex branded fan of all things

Nowadays it's mainly Delta/Chieftec, Andyson, FSP, CWT ISO and Seasonic for me. SS-351FS for older systems and CWT ISO-500PP for newer stuff that requires SATA. Andyson-built Raidmax RX-700AC if I need 8pin PCI-E, and a 450W Chieftec powers my dual P3 1GHZ/MSI 694 Pro-AR build.

[TechGeek]

Torrent Computers, LOL!
Just as likely to screw up your computer as a virus torrent!

[Dan81]

Moar freebies yesterday:

- LG StudioWorks 563N CRT monitor - works fine, nice picture. Shame it's 1024x768 only, unlike the Philips 107P4 I have.
- Syntax SV266A mobo - the lowest "HongKongFlyApartLLC" version of the ECS K7VTA2 rev2.0
- ASRock P4VM800 - nothing much interesting, P4M800 chipset.
- Torrent Computers LC-B450E - much more gutless than the ANS branded counterpart I yanked out of the Thermaltake from my previous post. Yes, it's one of those trace-jumpered crapola specials.
- ASUS Radeon 9200 128MB
- Quantum LCT15 HDD
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 40GB
- Athlon XP 2000+
- Celeron D (unknown speed)
- MSI DVD-ROM + LG DVDRW

[Dan81]

Indeed I'm already making preparations for them. Just need to score another similar SL4C8 800EB.

Scored today:

- P5Q Pro
- GB Radeon 9000
- Medion GF4 MX460
- Thermaltake case w/ what I suspect is a Core 2 Duo
- 2x Galaxy A5 2016
- ASUS GF 6600 (non-GT unfortunately) AGP
- Dell 2407WFP monitor - hella massive!

[Topcat]

I know what your next score will be when it gets there...