Probably the Roland CM-64 I nabbed last year for $50. It was on Marketplace as one of many listings from a departed muso's shed clear out. Not only was the seller happy to ship it, he insisted on taking payment only if it arrived working! It did. I paid.

Pierre32 wrote on 2024-11-11, 08:06:

Probably the Roland CM-64 I nabbed last year for $50. It was on Marketplace as one of many listings from a departed muso's shed clear out. Not only was the seller happy to ship it, he insisted on taking payment only if it arrived working! It did. I paid.

What a score! Well done

Either my £50 Rage Fury MAXX or my free Geforce 256 DDR.

Both within the last 3 years.

A boxed and complete GeForce 3 for 7€

Found a seller that offered mislabeled 7800GTX 512MB (the very rare highly overclocked version) for 11€ each (but untested)... i think i bought 7 of these. For 3 finally working in total. I think that is still a good deal.

Some free stuff too (Voodoo2, Asus P5A...)

Best dumpster find: beat up filthy old case containing shorted out PC Chips M537 with a pristine and fully working Videologic Apocalypse 3Dx (PowerVR PCX2).

Best free pickup: huge pile of mid 1990s stuff. I responded to ad at other end of country with potatocam pic that seemed to show a Model M keyboard. Free, but I had to promise to take everything. I had to be in the vicinity anyway, so went for it. I have a pretty large (7-seater) car and only just managed to fit myself and my son in once we'd loaded it up. I forget exactly what it all was, but a couple of Model Ms were just the beginning. Contained a significant number of systems that I later used in sci-tech lessons at my son's school.

Best value I spent money on...
- EUR 5 for a pile of old junk which contained a Roland MPU-401AT (just a shame the dual slot 1 server board in the lot didn't work)
- EUR 50 for another full car (although that was my slightly smaller regular 5p station wagon - but no passenger in the front seat), with a lot of early 1990s stuff. It was basically the stock of an old computer shop. The owner closed it, then continued trading at large computer fairs. However the organization that did them in NL went bankrupt abruptly in the mid 2000s and he was left with this attic full. Now he needed to sell up to go into a retirement home. Bagged 20 full systems, a pile of NOS early 486 boards, some 3MB VLB VGA cards and lots, lots more. This was in early 2019.

Radeon X800 GTO 256MB AGP for 1$.

Last two years: Voodoo 5 5500 AGP 5 euro, Nvidia FX5900XT with Accelero passive cooling 5 euro, Matrox PowerVR PCX-2 2.5 euro, Radeon 9600Pro with a lot of other parts 10 euro.

A DDS5 tape drive for 12 €… though it's still not clear if it works (apparently tapes must have the factory LLF in place, and most ones I have are DDS2 so read only, only one DDS4)

Free, a working IBM 8503 monitor

though none of those are as interesting to me as my first own PC (80 € in 2005) or the budget one we got around 2004 to replace the broken motherboard in our first one (free to me, probably a fat ripoff for my dad)

Not what I say is the greatest old find but a few months ago for $15 on ebay I found an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro for Power Mac.

I'm not into Apple as I never owned one and was going to see if I could flash it for PC until I looked around and noticed there wasn't a ton of info on it. Seems these things were a special order only for Power Mac G4 M8570. Felt since I had other 9700 pros for PC it was better to leave it as is.

I dont think the seller knew anything about what the card was as they were also selling an two ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac edition for $229.99 and both sold, I think they would have asked a bit more for it. They just had it listed as ATI P/N 102A0650102.

Picked up a Power Mac G4 M8570 to test the card in and flip or keep the Mac, didnt ever think I would add a Mac to the collection of PCs.

Grem Five wrote on 2024-11-12, 00:44:

Not what I say is the greatest old find but a few months ago for $15 on ebay I found an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro for Power Mac. […]
Show full quote

Not what I say is the greatest old find but a few months ago for $15 on ebay I found an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro for Power Mac.

I'm not into Apple as I never owned one and was going to see if I could flash it for PC until I looked around and noticed there wasn't a ton of info on it. Seems these things were a special order only for Power Mac G4 M8570. Felt since I had other 9700 pros for PC it was better to leave it as is.

I dont think the seller knew anything about what the card was as they were also selling an two ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Mac edition for $229.99 and both sold, I think they would have asked a bit more for it. They just had it listed as ATI P/N 102A0650102.

Picked up a Power Mac G4 M8570 to test the card in and flip or keep the Mac, didnt ever think I would add a Mac to the collection of PCs.

A lot of Mac edition video cards, especially those at particular inflection points in Mac history, can be very, very valuable. I know very little about the 9700/9800, in particular how well-supported they are in the classic OS. The GF4 Ti4600s that are the last and greatest video cards supported in the classic OS are now listed on eBay for $1000USD - everybody building an MDD G4 pandemic project wanted one.

Hopefully you kept that Power Mac and have been exploring the classic Mac OS?

I once bought a PC-9821An with a Pentium 90 CPU. Turns out, after recompiling Pentbug it showed it was a FDIV Pentium 90, and both Windows 95 detecting this in device manager and checking the stepping confirmed it was a FDIV Pentium.

I swapped the CPU out for a random Pentium 100 pulled from another machine (it still runs at 90mhz) just to "fix" the bug.

VivienM wrote on 2024-11-12, 01:47:

A lot of Mac edition video cards, especially those at particular inflection points in Mac history, can be very, very valuable. I know very little about the 9700/9800, in particular how well-supported they are in the classic OS. The GF4 Ti4600s that are the last and greatest video cards supported in the classic OS are now listed on eBay for $1000USD - everybody building an MDD G4 pandemic project wanted one.

Hopefully you kept that Power Mac and have been exploring the classic Mac OS?

From what I can gather "The 9700 Pro is pretty close in performance to the 9800 Pro, supports Core Image in OS X , however the driver support in OS 9 is still limited:"

Since my card has an ADC port I'm not sure if that will lead me down the road of getting a Apple Cinema Display out of curiosity, damn rabbit holes..... oh and the PM G4 MDD has a few issues that confuse this PC guy so not leaving anytime soon.

A few years back I picked up an IBM PS/2 Model P70 (Luggable, orange plasma screen 386) fully working with a carry suitcase thing for £30

99% of my whole Vintage hardware collections were great deals, I get my parts from a recycling center that is 20min drive from work, I usually stop by every 2 weeks, I pay $7 per pound, so usually around $3 per card.

here are some of my favorites pulled from the scrap bin, all of them fully functional:
- ATI 9700PRO and 9800XT
- Geforce 2 GTS and Geforce 2 PRO
- STB Ultrasound 32 Pro (GUS PNP equivalent)
- Sound Blaster AWE 64 Gold
- 3 486 VLB Motherboards , one with a AMD DX4 120Mhz
- 2 Super Socket 7 Motherboards
- 2 Slot 1 motherboards
- 2 Socket 7 motherboards
- 4 Sound Blasters 16
- 2 Aureal Vortex 2
- 2 socket A motherboards (1 via and 1 Nforce 2)
- 1 Voodoo 3 3000 and 1 Voodoo Banshee

I have a lot more from there, but this are some of my favorites.

I'm stingy and prefer to fish in muddy waters.

Voodoo1 for free.
Voodoo2 12MB for the equivalent of about $5.
Geforce 256 DDR for the equivalent of about $7
Radeon DDR for the equivalent of about $7.
Diamond Monster Sound MX300 for the equivalent of about $5.
Sound Blaster Pro 2.0 CT1600 for free.
Sound Blaster 32 CT3670 for the equivalent of about $8.
Diamond Viper V330 for about the equivalent of $2.
Geforce 8800 Ultra for about the equivalent of $25.
Sapphire X800 XT AGP for about the equivalent of $8.

My few notable ones are:

- Athlon 64 FX-57 CPU "for free". Technically it wasn't at all. A little over a decade ago, I was working in an electronics repair shop. Owner had this CPU sitting on his desk, at the bottom of a pile of other junk. Wasn't used for testing or anything like that, since it was full of bent pins. When I saw it one day and inquired about it, owner told me I can have it if I fixed a few things around the shop... which I did - most were easy fixes. Then he asked to get some other stuff fixed... and again I did. When he asked a 3rd time, I said, "nah, F--- it, that CPU ain't worth that much." So I never inquired more about it. Eventually shop was moved a little further down the road. During the move and helping with the packing, owner picked up the CPU and said, "hey you want this anymore? If not, it's going in the trash. I know you like this old stuff, so you should take it."..... and I did. 😀
Aside for all of the fixes I did for the owner, I also had to repair 3 completely broken pins on this CPU, after having to straighten nearly every pin too. But in the end, I was rewarded with a working socket 939 Athlon 64 FX-57 CPU. Worth it? IDK. Perhaps it is now with the current prices. Not that I intend to sell it anytime soon, though. Pretty cool high-end single core CPU and socket 939 reminds me of my teenager years, when I was dreaming to have a high-end s939 PC back then.

Next on the list: my Sony GDM-FW900 monitor(s). Yes, I put "s" in quotes, because I have two of them... though one isn't really working. I got these............ wait for it......... for absolutely nothing - yes, FREE! Gratis! $0. They were a pickup from a local Craigslist ad probably at the height of the "CRT dumping" era in my area. Basically I saw the ad one night, but didn't reply to it since it wasn't super close to my house (i.e. maybe a 25-30 minute drive) and also because at this point, I already had collected several nice & large high-end free CRT monitors off of CL already. Thus, I was worried where I'd put these if I took them... and moreover, get even more yelled at home for picking up "useless old junk". So I just bookmarked the post and watched it. After a week or so, the post went into the abyss of expired ads. No telling if someone had picked them up or not. Then, the following week (or about), the post went up again. This time, the poster said they really needed these gone and only for serious inquiries. I waited a few more days, then finally decided to send a reply when I saw the ad was still up. I mentioned that I'd come pick the monitors up, but only if no one else did before they decided to get rid of them. To my surprise, the poster replied right away and said that works with him. So after a few days... yup, I got the email to come collect them. And long story short (gonna save ya'll some of the details of when I went and how I went about it to hide from my family where I was going 🤣 ) I picked up the monitors. Not only that, but the guy was so happy when I came. He said literally I was the only one that actually replied to his email replies and followed through with my promise. Actually, for all of the CRT monitors I picked up on CL, I think this was the case just about every time: owner/poster were literally smiling and happy to see me. One guy even wanted to give me a beer for it, since it meant he wouldn't have to move the monitor himself. But anyways, back to the two GDM-FW900's... got them home (don't ask where or how I hid them - I actually didn't, and yet they didn't get noticed until a year later 🤣 ) and tested them briefly. One powered up and screeched/arced, while the other did nothing. This was mentioned in the ad, though... or at least that they are not working. Anyways... eventually managed to fix the one that "did nothing". It just had a few cracked solder joints in the PSU. The screeching/arcing one turned out to be a bad tube (which apparently is quite common for the GDM-FW900.) Still, one working GDM-FW900 is better than none. When I finally looked online some info about it, only then I realized that this is actually one of the highest-end CRT monitors and could one day become quite valuable (and indeed it has.)
That said, if I have to be completely honest (and this should probably go in the Retro Confessions thread), I've never quite liked the picture quality of the GDM-FW900... or any of my other late large-screen Sony CRTs (21"+) But I've kept it, mostly just for retro status points 😁 (if there is even such a thing.)

And that's more or less all of the notable stuff. I do have quite a few retro video cards that could probably also be listed here... but it'd be a large list. Along these, I suppose the more notable ones are:
- Leadtek Winfast GF4 TI4400 for ~$15 to my door (IIRC, around $11 for the shipping and $4 for the card... or was it the other way around?) Had bad caps visible on the listing, so I HAD TO save it from unsuspecting buyers. 🤣
- Dell GF4 TI4600: free, pulled from a Dell PC destined for recycling that I couldn't have (was at a large electronics retailer... not gonna name who... but basically not allowed to take stuff from the recycling bin.) Worked OK.
- HIS Radeon HD4670 for $1 "shipped" to my door. Long story short on this one, I was browsing on ebay and saw this card in an auction for $0.99. Shipping was... substantially more. But I saw it was local listing and asked seller if I could do local pickup. Seller said yes. So I put my bid down... and won without anyone else bidding even a cent more. I messaged seller to see when I could come to pickup... or if that was still OK with him, given the low winning price (I try to be understanding and undemanding to people... thus if a low winning bid doesn't seem right to them, I tell them it's OK if they don't want to sell - just refund me and all is good.) Seller messaged me back and basically said, don't worry, I'll just drop it off on my way to some errands on the weekend. Come Sunday, and I hear an unfamiliar car pull into my driveway. It's 8-9-ish AM, so I was still half-asleep... but got up and saw this dude in an old[er] Volvo go out of the car and put a box in front of the house. I realize what it is, so I try to run downstairs to thank the guy. Not even a chance, though - he was long gone before I could put on some proper clothing, let alone run downstairs. So anyways, I picked up the box... and sure enough, the video card is inside - nicely packed away as if it would have been shipped. And card was 100% like in the auction picture - with one bad cap that the seller mentioned/explained (so maybe that's why there wasn't any interest in it.) Anywho, got some NOS caps the following day, recapped it, lapped the badly-machined factory Arctic Silencer cooler... and presto: a nice, working older mid-range card for $1.
- Mad Dog Radeon 7200 AGP. Story on this one: decided to take a random walk halfway through my bus ride on the way from university to my home. Saw a box in front of one of the houses, sitting on a table next to the trash can with a "free" sign on the box. Looked inside and saw some cassette tapes and... the Radeon video card in between. Grabbed it and continued on my way home. It was a totally cool coincidence, because the prior week, I picked up a Gateway Slot A PC from next to a trash can on the complete opposite side of town. As it turns out, that particular Gateway PC (Select 750) did actually have it as an option to come with a Radeon 7200 or 7500 video card, IIRC (Voodoo 3 2000 was another option.) The one I found didn't have a video card in it, though. So when I found the Radeon 7200 randomly, it was like it was meant to be. When I got home, I slapped it in the Gateway PC, hit the power button, and the rest is history.

OK, I think that's enough "stories" / hardware for now. Hopefully didn't annoying anyone too much with my long posts lately.