best cheap/free scores 1.1

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yea, not even going to bother a resto attempt; as rounding up all the authentic hardware would be pretty futile...not to mention KB, mouse, and display.... FWIW, I do have a 14" Triniton gateway2000 monitor of the period that works.....but this will be a weird dually for the fleet... I have a P6DNE dual P-pro that a varta battery did very mild damage to, but I can't get it to POST....if I could get that to work, that'd be my first choice to go in it. I do have a backup plan of a working Tyan S1564D dual skt7....which this system was originally a single skt7...

Is that monitor from the early-90s? (pre-94)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

That'd be a New Tower case.
Too bad it's incomplete, these were pretty unique systems. My '93 80486DX system was pretty much complete (other than it missing a hard drive), sporting a 50MHz 80486DX CPU (not a DX2 or a DX4, a straight-out 50MHz DX) on a non-EISA/non-VLB Micronics motherboard. From what I've been able to tell, a lot of these systems were either core-swapped to something else (usually either a higher-end Pentium board or to an AMD K-series platform), or were simply gutted for parts decades ago.

Yea, not even going to bother a resto attempt; as rounding up all the authentic hardware would be pretty futile...not to mention KB, mouse, and display.... FWIW, I do have a 14" Triniton gateway2000 monitor of the period that works.....but this will be a weird dually for the fleet... I have a P6DNE dual P-pro that a varta battery did very mild damage to, but I can't get it to POST....if I could get that to work, that'd be my first choice to go in it. I do have a backup plan of a working Tyan S1564D dual skt7....which this system was originally a single skt7...

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I don't know, I haven't looked inside it yet.

It looks like this one; some random pic I stole off the interwebs, as I haven't taken any of mine yet:



Since it's incomplete, it's worthless for originality....so gonna have a little vintage fun with it....seeing what dual CPU board I can shoehorn into it...

That'd be a New Tower case.
Too bad it's incomplete, these were pretty unique systems. My '93 80486DX system was pretty much complete (other than it missing a hard drive), sporting a 50MHz 80486DX CPU (not a DX2 or a DX4, a straight-out 50MHz DX) on a non-EISA/non-VLB Micronics motherboard. From what I've been able to tell, a lot of these systems were either core-swapped to something else (usually either a higher-end Pentium board or to an AMD K-series platform), or were simply gutted for parts decades ago.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Today's scores:

- Xbox 360 Zephyr w/ box - rare as heck here, unfortunately E73s (though better than just 3-led RROD!)
- funny Nokia-styled JNC "TAC" build w/ N6600GT
- earbuds clone that needs cleaning and charging
- Dell Latitude C600/610 that needs repairs.

[Xenon-Codex]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

This Pioneer was "fixed" with a piece of cardboard to press the plate. But the plate was not perfectly seated and then the player did not read any disc.
Not even the tray belt needed replacement. It also lifts the laser unit to read the disc.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Is this one of the rare penthouse-tower styled cases (hard disk cage at the very top, capable of accepting twin full-height 5.25" SCSI drives), or the New Tower case, where the hard disk cage is now under the power supply?

I don't know, I haven't looked inside it yet.

It looks like this one; some random pic I stole off the interwebs, as I haven't taken any of mine yet:



Since it's incomplete, it's worthless for originality....so gonna have a little vintage fun with it....seeing what dual CPU board I can shoehorn into it...

[TechGeek]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Some interesting drops this week.

A couple 7th gen I5 laptops.
Gateway ZX4270 AIO w/bad HDD. E1 APU & 8GB RAM. Stuck a SSD in it and reloaded it. Not a speed demon, but very usable.
Dell pentium-m laptop w/1gb ram & xp....works but utterly useless.

The pick of the litter: Gateway2000 P5-90 full tower case. Motherboard & drives missing but case is in great shape....and AT.

Is this one of the rare penthouse-tower styled cases (hard disk cage at the very top, capable of accepting twin full-height 5.25" SCSI drives), or the New Tower case, where the hard disk cage is now under the power supply?

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Some interesting drops this week.

A couple 7th gen I5 laptops.
Gateway ZX4270 AIO w/bad HDD. E1 APU & 8GB RAM. Stuck a SSD in it and reloaded it. Not a speed demon, but very usable.
Dell pentium-m laptop w/1gb ram & xp....works but utterly useless.

The pick of the litter: Gateway2000 P5-90 full tower case. Motherboard & drives missing but case is in great shape....and AT.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I forgot to take pictures of the case after cleaning it up, but here is how the motherboard came out:

yea thanks for posting the pic with the motherboard chipset die visible so i can identify exactly what flavor of the 815 chipset it is by looking at the s-spec number on the die. i can just make out sl4cb which means its just the standard vanilla 815 chipset, no E, P or G suffix, no smp support, universal agp 4x with onboard video.

the only thing i dont like about that board is that the dimm slots are too close to the agp slot, so u need to remove the video card first to add/remove ram. *grumble* but other than that, its a nice board.

it was a SERVER (I guess I wasn't explicit enough with the "no computers" part, LOL!) Not sure if was socket 604 or slightly newer like 771, but it was a dual socket system with the RAM and HDDs still in it.

since u were in the US, should have saved the whole thing for topcat or ratdude!! they luv server stuff like that!

HDDs were a bunch of 1 TB Western Digital RE4's w/ 64MB cache.

nice! those are enterprise grade hard drives! better, faster and more reliable than the samsung f3 1tb drives i used to like. definitely worth saving. i know u dont like high capacity hard drives because they arent just as reliable and long lasting as the older drives but the RE4 line of drives have proven reliability. no probs running them in raid like the consumer line of wd drives (black and blue) also. i bought 4 of them in a firesale a few years ago. i run 4 of them in a raid 0+1 config for my bittorrenting machine.

MORE WD RE4 1TB HDDs

YES! save them! save them all!!

Yes, it does have 815 chipset (not sure if E or EP?)

remove the chipset heatsink if any and just look at the sspec number on the die. it should be sl4 something or sl5 something. that should indicate which flavour and stepping of the 815 chipset it is.

and lastly, as for vogons, yes i visit there from time to time to educate myself and learn more about retro machines and how to run them correctly and what NOT to do!

however, when i tried to register, i never got a registration email back from them to activate my account. i think i answered one of their registration questions wrongly so i never got the registration email and they thought i was a spambot. booo!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I had one of those Netvistas given to me for cheap at one point...

Apart from the 1GHz Celery I got out of it, I wouldn't count on that board being too much useful. Yes, it does have 815 chipset (not sure if E or EP?) but it's really locked down BIOS wise on terms of what you can do. That's a 4x AGP slot btw. (or at least should run at 4x.)

I remember switching the mainboard and front panel on mine and slapping a "mean" (yeah, right.) EPoX EP-3VCM + P3 1GHz Coppermine combo. VIA 694X instead of 815, but hey, at least I didn't have to deal with such a castrated 815 mainboard - no more 512 MB limitation was a big plus, and a 4x slot that I would actually rely on to do 4x (again, the slot on the board you have might not do 4x despite being keyed accordingly.)

I unfortunately don't have the IBM case anymore, though I think I still have the CPU, HDD and the replacement Epox mobo I used inside it (along with the nice 1GHz P3 I had in it). I remember dualbooting WinME and 2000 Server SP4 last time it ran, for whatever reason that escapes me.

[momaka]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

So...

Yesterday's free score was a PC with either a Pentium 4 or an Athlon 64 of some sort. Not sure exactly, because it was dark and I just saw the thing by a public dumpster. Looked like it was possibly an OEM system back in the better part of its life, but hard to tell - system is/was so badly mutilated that I couldn't even tell it was a desktop PC at first. It's missing all of the case covers, plastics, and front IO / faceplate. Really, this "PC" is now more of a metal tray with just a motherboard in it (and a PSU, as if by some luck). If this was back in the US, I'd probably not even bother (or maybe I would, knowing the hoarder in me ). Well, I'm currently in Bulgaria, and this is about as good of a free score as I can get here.
...
Anyways, I'll see if I can snap some pictures later today or this week for comical effect. Certainly it's not a "best" free score. But hey, if life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

OK, so I was both right and wrong about this PC. Yes, this indeed turned out to be an OEM system after eventually taking a closer look at the model numbers on some of the small labels. Though I haven't powered the system On yet to confirm, I think it's most likely an IBM NetVista A40 Type 6578 after some research. What I was wrong about, and I realized this almost instantly I took a 2nd look at the motherboard when I got it home was that the heatsink was too small to be a Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 heatsink... and the retention bracket was the dead giveaway - either socket 370 or 462. Finally, looking at the motherboard's chipset - Intel i815 - cleared it up that it was indeed a Pentium III PC. And I should have know that even quicker - note the lack of a 4-pin 12V CPU connector.

Anyways, as promised (though a little more than a week later), here are the pictures:







Can we say, Filthy!

Not sure if all of the dirt in this machine came because it was stored outside or if the rain that we had the same day before I found this machine, kicked up the dirt in there. In any case (punny!), I took it apart and gave everything a wash. Now, unlike my USA home, I don't have a utility sink in the new place. The bathroom sink is too small, and the kitchen sink... nah, no way I'd be putting such dirty thing in there where my dishes go. However, the apartment does have a basement unit and also a shared storage space with a dingy utility sink (with cold water.) Ah well, what other option do I have? So I went there, took apart the PC, and cleaned/washed it. I forgot to take pictures of the case after cleaning it up, but here is how the motherboard came out:




So, does it work? - I don't know yet. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to play with it before I had to put it away as I had to pack my bags the next day to get back to the USA. But when I get back, we'll see. The PSU still needs cleaning up too and upon giving it a quick inspection with the covers off, I noticed it had several bulged Teapo caps in it. Clearly it's going to need those serviced before I can use it back in the system. Otherwise, it looks well-built. I'll grab pictures of it eventually when it goes through my bench.

Speaking of Teapo caps... notice how the whole motherboard has good Rubycon caps everywhere, except for the four brown Teapo SEK near the CPU? It seemed strange to me why Foxconn (I presume as the builder) would do this. And indeed I don't think they did. If you look more carefully at the picture of the backside of the mobo, you can see some uncleaned solder flux right on those brown Teapo SEK caps. Not only that, but there is one cap spot that is unpopulated, but its joints look disturbed, so it likely wasn't like this from the factory. Now, as to why someone pulled out the original caps and installed these, I just don't know. So besides the PSU, I will also likely need to replace these Teapo SEK caps on the motherboard too. Otherwise, the mobo looks quite pristine, especially after the wash. The best part is that it does have an AGP (2x?) connector. So it can be turned into a decent retro system, if desired.

Given the state of the case, though, I might actually mutilate it a little further and put something slightly newer in it. I have a bright red socket 939 board and some other cool hardware that could use a barebones tray like this to be turned into something a little more saucy (or ricey?) But that's (unconfirmed) plans for the very far future. At the moment, the system is just put back together, waiting to be tested (minus the PSU, of course, which awaits its own recap & testing.)

Bummer....hope you come back to the US soon

Roger! Back already indeed.
Unfortunately, I won't be staying for too long, as I'm only coming back to free up the rest of my parents' house.

Nonetheless, get this:

Right the 1st day after I get back, I go out with the bike on my usual route to the grocery store. As I was going, I prayed to the dumpster and trash gods to please NOT find any more TVs or (large) speakers... or even computers - I have a ton of that stuff to clear from my parents' garage already. Well, it seems like the trash/dumpster gods listened. I didn't find any TVs or speakers. But I saw a metal box with a fan cutout on the back that looked like some kind of industrial equipment. Well, it wasn't quite that... it was a SERVER (I guess I wasn't explicit enough with the "no computers" part, LOL!) Not sure if was socket 604 or slightly newer like 771, but it was a dual socket system with the RAM and HDDs still in it. HDDs were a bunch of 1 TB Western Digital RE4's w/ 64MB cache. One was even loose inside. The cover was off, so not sure what happened. Either way, I didn't want to be "impolite" and rummage through it any further while on the person's property (it was on their front lawn, right behind the trash can, but no labels that it was for donation or anything like that, which I always check for, just in case.)

Being that I was only with a backpack and on a bike, no way I could take it now. However, a look around the other boxes next to the trash can revealed one with a keyboard, a mouse, and underneath... MORE WD RE4 1TB HDDs. Four, to be exact. OK, those I could grab and carry with me... and I did. Now that's a nice(er) free score! I never say no to free HDDs.

On the other side of the trashcans were 2 LCD monitors. One looked like a 19" 5:4 AR and the other possibly either a 19" widescreen or more likely 21-22" widescreen (Viewsonic.) Again, those were too big to grab, so I just stuck with the HDDs. There was also a case with books, CDs, and other stuff... but once more, I didn't want to rummage any further. Figured I'd come back later on and just grab the stuff... if it was still there. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) when I came later on that night, EVERYTHING was gone except for the box with books & CDs. It was dark, but I just grabbed a bunch of the CDs, since they appeared to have nice cases that I could reuse if nothing else. Turns out, those 5 CDs I grabbed were all genuine classic/hall Jazz music CDs of well-known artists. My uncle loves Jazz, so that'll make for a nice surprise for him next time I see him.

And that's all. Not bad for a 1st day back in the US.

Another I wouldn't dream of poisoning with win98....if for no other reason the dual CPU's. ...which is an old specialty of mine. Very few single-CPU systems in my fleet.....but I digress. Win2k will scream on this....but yea. the GPU wall...

Dual CPU machines have no business running 9x whatsoever.

Yeah, I concur.
Win98 is only acceptable on retro rigs specifically built for playing older games. Otherwise, I skip NT and 2000 and go straight to XP.

Heck, some older hardware is starting to have a retro smell....Hard to explain, but once was new hardware back when I remember it now has that 'old smell'....but it's a badge of honor!

Haha, so it's not just me who's noticed this.
Yeah, most of my CRT monitors produce quite a bit of that "retro" smell, especially when they get nice and toasty after running for a few hours. It throws me onto the memory lane right back down to when I was 5YO kid and visited my mom's workplace in the office. The computer smell of those office spaces in the early 90's is just hard to erase from my memory. (Though likewise, I also remember this same smell mixed in with cigarette smoke and that throws me in the late 90's / early 2000's game/LAN cafes. )

I haven't overclocked a computer since the 90's. Not much gain today....but I don't play modern games either....

Core 2 Duos and 1st/2nd gen core-i chips could get some decent gains (not unusual to get 20-25% higher on stock voltages), especially the lower-binned models. Same for the lower-tier socket 939 Athlon 64's like the 3000+ and 3200+. Getting 2.5 GHz out of these on stock voltages is easy and the TDP doesn't even go up more than a few Watts. So it's essentially a free performance upgrade that could (at the time) produce noticeable results.

But a lot of times, I don't bother with OCing either, unless it's easy and harmless like on those s939 Athlon 64's.

As for modern-day games... I want to turn my back on everything new, and for the most part I do. However, the oldschool gamer in me gets curious once in a while, so I do try out new(er) games from time to time, if my hardware can even run it. That was the whole purpose of the Precision T7500 build... well, aside from also being too cheap and too cool to pass up. But yeah, the requirements of today's games just boggles my mind - even the most basic-looking titles usually require a quad core or better, 8+ GB of RAM, and a powerful GPU with at least 2 GB of vRAM. Insane. What I hate the most about modern games is how volatile they are: today, they are this, but after tomorrow's update, they are that... and when the publisher feels like it, they can just close down the servers and bye bye goes the game. In contrast, I can set up and play Half-Life or Counter-Strike 1.5 on a bunch of new PCs, and it would play exactly the same way it did on the old hardware when it came out 2+ decades ago. I'm sure you feel the same about Quake and Diablo II - these are games that just can't die and wither into the wind.

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I would expect those Dell laptops to complain about the wrong AC adapter and then run slowly (heavily throttled).

I dug through my stack of Dell adaptors and found that with the battery removed (all of these laptops had completely discharged batteries when I got them), it will give the error, boot and run slow with a 90W adaptor, but won't boot with a 65W adaptor. (it is supposed to have a 180W adaptor)

The Lenovos both just power off after being turned on with no post or error message (just a black screen and a couple power light blinks) with no battery and a 90W adaptor as well as a 65W (they are supposed to have a 170W adaptor), with a charged battery they give an error message and boot after hitting ESC but won't charge.

At least a workstation like that should allow a usable display to be installed (unless Dell made two different motherboards for some idiotic reason).

I've seen conflicting information on these with some indicating it works, some indicating the display cable needed swapped, and some indicating the motherboard was incompatible (it looks like Dell used a bunch of different motherboards and multiple display standards with these, so it may depend on how and individual system was configured at the factory as to how easy a display swap is).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dell/commen...panel_upgrade/

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I would expect those Dell laptops to complain about the wrong AC adapter and then run slowly (heavily throttled).

Lenovo's are notorious for this.

Dells are bad about simply not charging with a non-genuine power supply.....they'll typically start & run, but will not charge the batteries.

[lti]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

3 Mobile Workstations that "don't POST", funny they all work fine for me (I suspect whoever tested these used undersized power adaptors)

Dell Precision M4800
Specs.
CPU: Intel Core I7-4810MQ
GPU: AMD FirePro M5100 (though windows 10 sees it as a Radeon)
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600
SSD: 480GB Intel S3500
ODD: DVD-RW
Screen: 15.6" 1366X768
OS: Windows 10 Pro

I would expect those Dell laptops to complain about the wrong AC adapter and then run slowly (heavily throttled). That 1366x768 display is even dumber than the M4600 I found where I work that had only 4GB of RAM. 1366x768 should never have existed outside of ultra-low-end Walmart TVs. At least a workstation like that should allow a usable display to be installed (unless Dell made two different motherboards for some idiotic reason).

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

3 Mobile Workstations that "don't POST", funny they all work fine for me (I suspect whoever tested these used undersized power adaptors) and a micro PC:



Lenovo ThinkPad W530
Specs.
CPU: Intel Core I7-3740QM
GPU: Nvidia Quadro K1000M
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600
SSD: 1TB Timetec (none was included I added this)
ODD: DVD-RW
Screen: 15.6" 1920X1080
OS: Windows 10 Pro



Lenovo ThinkPad W540
Specs.
CPU: Intel Core I7-4700MQ
GPU: Nvidia Quadro K1100M
RAM: 32GB DDR3-1600
SSD: 512GB Samsung PM871a
ODD: DVD-RW
Screen: 15.6" 1920X1080
OS: Windows 10 Pro



Dell Precision M4800
Specs.
CPU: Intel Core I7-4810MQ
GPU: AMD FirePro M5100 (though windows 10 sees it as a Radeon)
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600
SSD: 480GB Intel S3500
ODD: DVD-RW
Screen: 15.6" 1366X768
OS: Windows 10 Pro



Lenovo ThinkCentre M53
Specs.
CPU: Intel Pentium J2900
GPU: integrated Intel
RAM: 4GB DDR3-1600
SSD: 120GB Inland Professional (it came with a 500GB Seagate HDD which I replaced with this)
OS: Windows 10 Pro







Here's a Blu-Ray case for a size comparison:



Far from a "powerhouse" but it only draws 10W at idle and 15W with 100% CPU load, so a good substitute for something like a Raspberry PI for low-power applications (assuming you don't need the GPIO header).

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Santa Ratdude came....

Anywya, there was an AWE64 Gold, an AT socket7 board (appears to be NOS), and some other nifty things!!

I usually send him home with some goodies from here as well....but he didn't find anything to lay claim to....

The SKT 7 board turned out to be used not NOS; but complete in its original box...and identified as a DFI P5BV3+ Rev B+, super 7 board with an AGP. Included was all the rear panel connectors as well.





Invoice was in the box. Hard to believe someone paid $239 for the board and $94 for a K6-2 @ 350MHz back in the day....but yea, feels about right.



I recapped it and cleaned it. Caps were all Teyah....and as crazy as it sound 25 years later, they were not bloated and all in spec! Yea, I recapped it anyway.





In the oven.



Had its first release BIOS on it. Tracked down the latest and modded it for LBA 128GB.



This board being the "+" model, comes with the larger onboard L2 cache of 1M versus the standard of 512k.



Yea, I know...not much of a CPU....I don't have a lot of skt7 stuff around....but just wanted to share that the board had been reworked....

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Nothing much today:

- 2x Samsung Galaxy Note 3 - one working 16GB, one 43GB for parts. Swapped the 32GB mobo to the one that is working.
- HP DV5-1140eg - cracked screen, mainly got it to replace the 9200M GS mobo I had in my other DV5.
Surprised to find that the original HP install of Vista Home Premium is there, though I'll have to disable the password using the utilman-CMD trick.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A google search brought me a picture of THIS absolute unit of a mobo.



ASUS PCI/E-P54NP4. 430NX, EISA, Dallas RTC + SRAM, tantalums all around. P100 and 90s is all it supports, according to TRW.

Interesting approach is they doubled the 430NX chipset. This is probably the way they could get away with dual CPU configuration, before HX and FX came to the scene w/ SMP.

Good find. Totally forgot about the NX; which apparently does support SMP:

https://theretroweb.com/chipsets/1357

That would be a board beyond impossible to find!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

The oldest dual boards I have are dual socket 7 (1x Tyan S1564D and Gigabyte GA-586DX). Never seen a dual socket 5, but their list of supported CPU's would likely be the same. The Intel HX and FX chipsets were the only two of the era that supported SMP; skt7, skt8, and some very early early slot-1. Skt5 would also fit that list for early pentiums.

A google search brought me a picture of THIS absolute unit of a mobo.



ASUS PCI/E-P54NP4. 430NX, EISA, Dallas RTC + SRAM, tantalums all around. P100 and 90s is all it supports, according to TRW.

Interesting approach is they doubled the 430NX chipset. This is probably the way they could get away with dual CPU configuration, before HX and FX came to the scene w/ SMP.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Dual CPU machines have no business running 9x whatsoever. IDEC if it's a dual socket 5, NT or bust.

Single socket machines, I don't mind.

The oldest dual boards I have are dual socket 7 (1x Tyan S1564D and Gigabyte GA-586DX). Never seen a dual socket 5, but their list of supported CPU's would likely be the same. The Intel HX and FX chipsets were the only two of the era that supported SMP; skt7, skt8, and some very early early slot-1. Skt5 would also fit that list for early pentiums.