Won an classified for 3x FIC PA-2013 from a scrapper I frequent.

If I get all three working I'll be amazed.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-12, 00:04:

Won an classified for 3x FIC PA-2013 from a scrapper I frequent.

If I get all three working I'll be amazed.

Woah dude. Thanks for sharing, I've never seen a backwards-looking board like that before. Pretty cool! Good luck getting them all working!

Today I found a SB Live! at a regular thrift store. It was 5 bucks, so I figured "why not?". It came with an Audigy CD, so I want to guess someone upgraded at some point and put the old one in the bag the new one was in.

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-01-12, 01:13:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-01-12, 00:04:

Won an classified for 3x FIC PA-2013 from a scrapper I frequent.

If I get all three working I'll be amazed.

Woah dude. Thanks for sharing, I've never seen a backwards-looking board like that before. Pretty cool! Good luck getting them all working!

Today I found a SB Live! at a regular thrift store. It was 5 bucks, so I figured "why not?". It came with an Audigy CD, so I want to guess someone upgraded at some point and put the old one in the bag the new one was in.

Dell. SB0220 is a Dell OEM variant.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-01-11, 22:24:

I've seen those memory heatsinks with the little copper heatpipe before. I don't know if it has any practical use, but it's super cool.

It looks like a handle 😂
It might actually help by having the RAM cooler more into the air flow (if you have a tower CPU cooler for example)

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-01-12, 01:13:

Woah dude. Thanks for sharing, I've never seen a backwards-looking board like that before. Pretty cool! Good luck getting them all working!

Thanks. As far as I can tell from the photo he used in the ad (which he sent me on WhatsApp beforehand), I can tell the following:

-one of them is a 1MB version, identifiable by the Winbond cache chips. The other two might be 2MB versions, given both use TMTech chips.
-two of them have broken socket levers - might be able to transplant a 370 socket on those and reuse it as SS7 because they have virutally the same socket type and pinout (bar one blanked pin)
- the 1MB board might also need a new PS/2 socket - I have a dead 2MB PA-2013 to remove that from.

I guess that means I gotta get some Tillamook or K6-III/3+ chips and read a lot of @Sphere478's Socket 7 adventures 😀

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-01-09, 17:12:

I can't believe that the power control board/sub-board was damaged anywhere near enough to cause it to not power on... unless there's something on these sub-boards which just dies:

One of mine did. I couldn't detect any problems with the board visually. Maybe a chip on it went bad, although it's mostly all passives.

I had a HUGE haul today! Excited to have two more Audigys in the collection. I will probably be using some of the IDE controllers right away, as the PPro I'm working on doesn't want a CDROM on either channel. I'm working on another computer that'll just be spinning a large amount of Quantums, so that'll be fun.

I also had to grab THIS glorious CHONK of a drive: Seagate ST43400N. I thought the Seagate I had in my AT/Pentium computer was large; this is double thick compared to that one. Holy crap, it's heavy, too! A few oz short of 8 LBs!

There was also this tape drive. Hopefully, THIS one will work properly. Doubt it, but worth it for a dollar.

Then there is THIS thing: A Removable hard disk drive and 3 45MB "drives". They indeed DO look like platters in there. Should be fun to play around with as well.

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-01-12, 21:00:

[snip snip]

About that platter drive thing, that's a SyQuest drive, seems like you've wound up with a 44mb drive, normally the drive type is written on the front.

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-01-12, 21:00:

I had a HUGE haul today! Excited to have two more Audigys in the collection. I will probably be using some of the IDE controller […]
Show full quote

I had a HUGE haul today! Excited to have two more Audigys in the collection. I will probably be using some of the IDE controllers right away, as the PPro I'm working on doesn't want a CDROM on either channel. I'm working on another computer that'll just be spinning a large amount of Quantums, so that'll be fun.

The attachment 20250112_143446.jpg is no longer available

I also had to grab THIS glorious CHONK of a drive: Seagate ST43400N. I thought the Seagate I had in my AT/Pentium computer was large; this is double thick compared to that one. Holy crap, it's heavy, too! A few oz short of 8 LBs!

The attachment 20250112_143643.jpg is no longer available

The attachment 20250112_143658.jpg is no longer available

There was also this tape drive. Hopefully, THIS one will work properly. Doubt it, but worth it for a dollar.

The attachment 20250112_143753.jpg is no longer available

Then there is THIS thing: A Removable hard disk drive and 3 45MB "drives". They indeed DO look like platters in there. Should be fun to play around with as well.

The attachment 20250112_144903.jpg is no longer available

Congrats, cool stuff. Think I got the brother of that chonker of a drive, a 1GB one in external case, that one was $5000 or so at launch, this one probably worth as much as a new family car, stupendous amounts of storage at the dawn of the 90s but the prices and drive physical size for same amount of storage dropped real fast.

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-01-12, 21:00:

I also had to grab THIS glorious CHONK of a drive: Seagate ST43400N. I thought the Seagate I had in my AT/Pentium computer was large; this is double thick compared to that one. Holy crap, it's heavy, too! A few oz short of 8 LBs!

Holy fudge! Is that a 5.25" (like the Bigfoot drive) or plain 3.5"?

[Edit] removed wrong attachment references

ECS 741GX-M (462) with Sempron 3000+ and 2GB of RAM - I got this gem for only $10! I used the Sempron in my 2001-2002 system since that other board (PCChips 925) detected it as an Athlon XP 2000+ (temporary cheat before I get a legit Athlon XP). Now, that ECS board is running an old Duron 800, supposedly compatible, but recognized as a Mobile Duron 500 (5*100). To push it further, I’m running it at 5 * 166 for a slight overclock to 833 MHz.

SC386 SX25 - This awesome piece is on the way! It seems to be in working order, though it will need significant aesthetic restoration (once the Canadian winter is over). I’m excited to get started on it! I already gathered another floppy drive, extra 4mb, Audician 32 plus, 2gb drive, Trident 8900D (not sure what Trident model is in there yet) and of course a Geekenspiel 386 badge! I am debating the need to get a co-processor for it...

Just seeing a HD3650 AGP come onto the radar, and you might have heard me say I don't have any higher end AGP GPU... but also I don't really have boards that demand it. Got a s754 board that may or may not be much good. Then maybe a s478 one that takes everything. So yeah, not sure if it would be a white elephant.

Linoleum wrote on 2025-01-13, 04:07:

SC386 SX25 - This awesome piece is on the way! It seems to be in working order, though it will need significant aesthetic restoration (once the Canadian winter is over). I’m excited to get started on it! I already gathered another floppy drive, extra 4mb, Audician 32 plus, 2gb drive, Trident 8900D (not sure what Trident model is in there yet) and of course a Geekenspiel 386 badge! I am debating the need to get a co-processor for it...

Nice, the SX25 is the slowest 386 that I "like", meaning others feel artificially slow. This, you know it's a 386, don't set the world on fire, but it gets through DOS stuff and a bit of light win3x-ing. FPU is pretty much pointless on low speed 486, so doubly so on a 386 and some more again on the SX. You might see me at some point stick one in an SX machine, but that's because it arrived here ages ago for next to nothing and no effort. In fact, I'd even probably wait until I had the case open for some "real" reason, before I put it in. Then I'll probably only run Landmark or something to see it's working, then it will just sit there, doing bugger all 99% of the time.

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-01-13, 04:34:

Nice, the SX25 is the slowest 386 that I "like", meaning others feel artificially slow. This, you know it's a 386, don't set the world on fire, but it gets through DOS stuff and a bit of light win3x-ing. FPU is pretty much pointless on low speed 486, so doubly so on a 386 and some more again on the SX. You might see me at some point stick one in an SX machine, but that's because it arrived here ages ago for next to nothing and no effort. In fact, I'd even probably wait until I had the case open for some "real" reason, before I put it in. Then I'll probably only run Landmark or something to see it's working, then it will just sit there, doing bugger all 99% of the time.

I got plenty of faster systems, so slow is very welcomed in my stable! After reading a few things about coprocessors, I might not do it after all (even if they are going for cheap on eBay). I certainly don’t plan to play Simcity 2000 on that machine, nor Quake! It’ll be for games between 1988 and 1992… Maybe Fast Doom, just for fun.

440BX + Tualatin have been my main DOS+Win98x system
Was curious about alternative contemporary platforms I bought this on locally - Gigabyte GA-6VX7-4X This one seems to support VRM 8.5 voltages so Tualatin conversion is possible.
Back in days I had intel 815. Internet is telling me that you will suffer 😀 with VIA 4in1 drivers. Although some say that Apollo Pro133A should be more stable than earlier VIA P2/3 chipsets
It passed quick smoke test and caps are looking good, running memtest now...

Guess I'm not the only one who decided on a 694X board then 😁 - ordered a Soltek SL-65KV2 just yesterday. Will try to figure a way to get a pic for its TRW entry.

Picked up this nice boxed Radeon 3850 AGP for just under 100$. Yea kinda spendy, but it's in really nice condition with the box and all accessories, including the case sticker!
Tested and works great 👍 I finally have the fastest agp card in the collection 😀

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-14, 16:09:

Picked up this nice boxed Radeon 3850 AGP for just under 100$. Yea kinda spendy, but it's in really nice condition with the box and all accessories, including the case sticker!
Tested and works great 👍 I finally have the fastest agp card in the collection 😀

The attachment PXL_20250114_025707071.jpg is no longer available

it might be a bit expensive but then it's in good condition, has the box etc and is a bit of a powerhouse for any agp system!

for actually application and use in the kind of vintage systems that can benefit from it i'd say it has more going for it than a lot of 'rare' and much pricier cards from all kinds of time periods

gerry wrote on 2025-01-14, 16:56:

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-14, 16:09:

Picked up this nice boxed Radeon 3850 AGP for just under 100$. Yea kinda spendy, but it's in really nice condition with the box and all accessories, including the case sticker!
Tested and works great 👍 I finally have the fastest agp card in the collection 😀

The attachment PXL_20250114_025707071.jpg is no longer available

it might be a bit expensive but then it's in good condition, has the box etc and is a bit of a powerhouse for any agp system!

for actually application and use in the kind of vintage systems that can benefit from it i'd say it has more going for it than a lot of 'rare' and much pricier cards from all kinds of time periods

Congratulations on the purchase!
I have the same card in PCI-E version, but some SMD or back came off and lost, so I would have to replace them, but I don't know what 😨 they are, besides they are tiny, in short, I don't think it's possible to fix it, without the help of an identical card to compare.

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-14, 16:09:

Picked up this nice boxed Radeon 3850 AGP for just under 100$. Yea kinda spendy, but it's in really nice condition with the box and all accessories, including the case sticker!
Tested and works great 👍 I finally have the fastest agp card in the collection 😀

The attachment PXL_20250114_025707071.jpg is no longer available

Looks mint! Not cheap indeed (was lucky to have scored both of mine under 50, one boxed the other isn't) but yours looks like it was hardly ever used. Are you going to do anything cooling wise on the bridge chip? Most people suggest to add cooling but i haven't used mine yet except for some testing.

G-X wrote on 2025-01-14, 21:31:

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-14, 16:09:

Picked up this nice boxed Radeon 3850 AGP for just under 100$. Yea kinda spendy, but it's in really nice condition with the box and all accessories, including the case sticker!
Tested and works great 👍 I finally have the fastest agp card in the collection 😀

The attachment PXL_20250114_025707071.jpg is no longer available

Looks mint! Not cheap indeed (was lucky to have scored both of mine under 50, one boxed the other isn't) but yours looks like it was hardly ever used. Are you going to do anything cooling wise on the bridge chip? Most people suggest to add cooling but i haven't used mine yet except for some testing.

Yea its quite minty fresh, still even has some new electronics smell to it. 😁 It will mostly go on the wall, but I will run some Crysis on it using my FX-60 NF3 System first!

As far as the bridge chip , I am not too concerned about adding extra cooling to it. I'm sure if they engineered it to be used without a heat sink its probably just fine. Its also directly by my CPU cooler so it will have air running over it.