TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[debs3759]

There seem to be a lot of graphics card collectors in Europe, same as CPU collectors (although with the latter I know people all over the world).

 

[Retrorockit]

Yes FWIW more AMD K6-3+ seem to have escaped from laptop OEMs there than in the US. Some people over here think they don't exist.

 

[debs3759]

I just bought a AMD K6-III+/500ANZ, faster than the K6-2+/570ACZ I recently bought. It will be going in one of my GPU testing systems. Just got to check if the only Socket 7 board I have can cope with the low voltage, or if I need to search for a suitable board

 

[Retrorockit]

There were secret low voltage jumper setting for some boards, and posts on appropriate BIOS settings for those BIOS without native support for that CPU. The K6III+ 400 had jumper settings for 4X100 multiplier and 6X66 multiplier to run @ 400 on Intel based 66Mhz boards. Of course 6X100 was a lot more fun. I had mine on an FIC VA503+ board. Maybe if you google that board you might find some of the posts I'm referring to. I don't know how the multi's went on those over 400Mhz. Tyan had some Super 7 boards with 2 MB "L3" cache. I found this page listing a few MB that support these
http://www.amdzone.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=71269

 

[Trekkie4]

Seems like most of the interest In Voodoos is in EU. Not surprising really with the planned obsolescence driven "economy" we've got here in the US.

There seem to be a lot of graphics card collectors in Europe, same as CPU collectors (although with the latter I know people all over the world).

IDK about rest of the world, but around here ppl are not really that into old technology. Well, some of them obviously are, but what we lack are clubs, meetings & trade markets, where collectors would be able to exchange, buy and sell their collections & experience. Which works in my favor, I'm not going to complain because this makes most of the old and/or obsolete hardware completely worthless. Let's take 3dfx Voodoo cards for example, I used to come across those almost every other day, and they've been dirt cheap. Well, most of them anyway - paid 3$ per card (Voodoo2 to be exact), and I took several of them!

Things are rapidly changing however, I honestly don't remember when was the last time I saw 3dfx card for sale (and for a decent price) And not just 3dfx, old Pentiums & 486 systems as well - heck, you can't even find those any longer, which is why I only have 2.5 of those in stock, they are becoming pretty rare nowdays.

In just couple of years from now, most of these builds will be considered "ancient", partially because of the huge amounts of destroyed units, throughout the world. Most of the folks don't understand (or don't care) what they have & simply throw it out the window or recycle for gold, thinking they'll get rich if they scrap their old motherboard for example *sigh*. Take this last 5x86 for example, the guy wrote in his ad that he's going to throw it to e-waste within couple of days, if no one calls him back. What else is there to say

 

[Retrorockit]

Think about all the Dell and HP BTX's coming out of offices now and being scrapped by the millions. Delta AFC1212DE 120X38 BTX fans that draw 1.6A are so common they're $5-$10 a piece. The Dell heatpipe cooler I'm using for my QX6800 O/C is $12-$15 on Ebay. (T9303, or D9729). I bought a couple Dell server fans Delta AFC1512DG 150mmX50mm for $15. Nobody knows what to do with them.

http://www.overclock.net/g/i/2610507/150x50mm-1-9a-next-to-delta-120x25mm-8a/u/441031/flat/1/

 

[Trekkie4]

Think about all the Dell and HP BTX's coming out of offices now and being scrapped by the millions. Delta AFC1212DE 120X38 BTX fans that draw 1.6A are so common they're $5-$10 a piece. The Dell heatpipe cooler I'm using for my QX6800 O/C is $12-$15 on Ebay. (T9303, or D9729). I bought a couple Dell server fans Delta AFC1512DE 150mmX50mm for $15. Nobody knows what to do with them.

http://cdn.overclock.net/4/43/200x200px-ZC-43d5e631_037.jpeg

Today those may not be worth anything, but tomorrow people will start looking for them & will bid for the highest prices. Figuratively speaking, of course not literally. It'll be at least 5-10 more years before this stuff becomes "vintage" But yes, every piece of hardware (or even software, in some cases) starts expensive, then gets cheaper over the years & then (as the time goes on) more expensive again, to the point where (and when) it costs millions!

After all, same thing happened with all those Slot-1 and 486 systems over the years. These used to be so common back in a day, so when companies finally upgraded to something better, these were showing up all over, even destroyed, recycled. I'm not saying either Slot-1 or 486 are rarity, you can still find them everywhere, but they certainly ARE on the road to oblivion. In couple of years from now, these models will become rare, ot least a collector's thing. As in, they'll only be found among the ppl who collect them, most of the other samples will be destroyed. Same thing happened before (with 286, 386 machines & earlier), and same thing will happen again and again, that's how large corporations earn their income.

 

[Ruru]

I have a Sunon fan which draws 36W on my server, I think I need to put a resistor or a fan controller to it if I want to use that machine more than a hour in a day..

 

[Trekkie4]

Happy to say that my 586 is finally completely finished



Meanwhile, I got something interesting... Athlon? K7 "Summit" board made by Chaintech, from around 2003, 2004 in the original box! It has Spire FalconRock cooler mounted on top of it, but I'll most likely to remove it either way, for the sake of cleaning & visual inspection. Pics coming up shortly!

Edit
Removed the heatsink - CPU underneath is AXDA2500DKV4D, aka AMD Athlon XP 2500+ @ 1833MHz (according to cpu-world)

 

[Ruru]

Put a voodoo2 (SLI?) to it next?

I mean da real oldskool machine, not the AXP

 

[Ruru]

Seems like most of the interest In Voodoos is in EU. Not surprising really with the planned obsolescence driven "economy" we've got here in the US.

Just sold one Voodoo2 12MB, here in Finland people like to use Voodoos on retro PC's.

 

[Trekkie4]

Just sold one Voodoo2 12MB, here in Finland people like to use Voodoos on retro PC's.

People like to use Voodoos on retro PCs everywhere, not just in Finland lol But nah! A - I'm all out of Voodoo2 cards at the moment and B - I already got 5 SLI rigs put together 2x Diamond Monster 3DII 8MB SLI, 1x Creative CT-6670 12MB SLI, 1x 3dfx Voodoo2 1000 12MB (although different board revisions) SLI and last but not least 1x "Mismatched" SLI with Creative CT-6670 paired up with Diamond Monster 3DII, both 12MB.

However, I WILL add Voodoo1 card to that Celeron/Pentium2 build that I've mentioned before 586 project popped out. I've been planning to do so right from the beginning actually!

 

[Retrorockit]

I have a Sunon fan which draws 36W on my server, I think I need to put a resistor or a fan controller to it if I want to use that machine more than a hour in a day..

My 3.4A. 2 motor fan is in my daily use computer. It's PWM so the power and noise ratings are "theoretical" for everyday use. It normally runs at 25%, maybe 30% when stress testing. The only time I used 100% was when I ran 4GHZ and it crashed , and wouldn't reboot. Then I unplugged the blue PWM wire which sent it to 100% and got it booted, got my validation, and turned it back down to 3.72Ghz. It's actually quieter than a faster single motor fan. When stress testing it reaches 73*C. the fan speeds up a little and blows it back down to 65*C, and it never goes back up again. The 150X50s won't fit in my Dimension case. I'm saving them for an Optiplex where they can be Velcroed in behind the front air intake. I just bought 2 more GFB1212VHGs for $21 each. There's a "Delta Fanatics" forum at Overclock.net. Some people collect these things. I seem to be the only one actually using them to mod my computer.

 

[Trekkie4]

Chaintech Summit, Socket A board with Athlon XP 2500+ (and Spire FalconRock CPU cooler) The first (and only, so far) mobo in my collection to use active cooling on the chipset!

 

[Ruru]

I'd put my Soundblaster live! to my server if it would accept it, it just accepts universal keyed PCI cards and it doesnt have integrated sound. :/

 

[Retrorockit]

I have a SB GoPRo USB sound card in my laptop. With Logitech Z523 speakers it sounds pretty good. Not very retro, but any port in a storm.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

I think most of the old hardware we see here in the nostalgia thread would be getting a lot more rare not only those Voodoos and 486s. The problem of planned obsolescence have been around since the very start of PC era or any other electronics consumer though at that time it was not very apparent yet. As electronics and computers are very expensive and even the older 2nd stuff have value in normal computing usage. I remember a time when the 2nd hand computer market was thriving business.

Now the planned obsolescence is apparent from the pushing on of ever faster product or a product is more shinier and newer. I sadly called into this trap many years ago. I remember my dad buying a used HP Pentium 4 deskstop. And I said it was useless. I said there are faster computers around and was rather unhappy with that. The deskstop was eventually thrown away with old ddr1 Rams from the early 2000s that is lying around the house. It take me a few years to realised what a mistake I letting such history to be thrown away like that. A very useful piece of history that can grow my understanding of how computers works. Having the space to keep that old PC was an issue too. I am still sadden throwing away completely workable PC like that.

I guess in many people's mind I went through happen to them and it is possibly even worst as normal people are not interested in how a computer is build or how it works. Just wanting something to run fast. It is more than just planned obsolescence disinterest plays a huge part too and the lack of knowledge how to fix things.

I am lucky to see old hardware that is here that is spared from the millions of computers in the e waste dumps. I don't think things are looking bright for hardware 2010 and before. The saving grace now is increase of computing power is slowing down a lot making people stick to their electronics longer.

 

[Retrorockit]

Actually there is a large market in used computers now. They're selling a lot of refurbished BTX office machines almost all of them LGA775. They sell for about the price of a Windows license in many cases. I spend a lot of time at Tomshardware answering questions about upgrading these. The supply is much larger than the demand, so many still get scrapped. They're usually bought by people with little money and no experience. There are no aftermarket parts for these OEM computers so adaptation is required. There is also a lot of disinformation out there. BTX is no good, you can't overclock a Dell etc.. My Dimension E520 is a Pentium 4 era machine that got a BIOS update for Core2Duo technology. It's my myth buster. Using readily available parts and sound overclocking techniques I've got it running 3.72Ghz Core 2 Quad, and 71 fps in Unigine Heaven. Mine was built in 2006. I have more radical mods in mind that will require fabrication of parts, water cooling etc. But right now I have a nice mid range computer that's 10 years old. I've been a victim of advertising and mythology myself. I have a huge pile of aftermarket coolers, and fans I thought I would need, only to find out that what I already had or could buy surplus was much superior. I do suppose my electric bill could be smaller.

 

[Trekkie4]

I think most of the old hardware we see here in the nostalgia thread would be getting a lot more rare not only those Voodoos and 486s. The problem of planned obsolescence have been around since the very start of PC era or any other electronics consumer though at that time it was not very apparent yet. As electronics and computers are very expensive and even the older 2nd stuff have value in normal computing usage. I remember a time when the 2nd hand computer market was thriving business.

Now the planned obsolescence is apparent from the pushing on of ever faster product or a product is more shinier and newer. I sadly called into this trap many years ago. I remember my dad buying a used HP Pentium 4 deskstop. And I said it was useless. I said there are faster computers around and was rather unhappy with that. The deskstop was eventually thrown away with old ddr1 Rams from the early 2000s that is lying around the house. It take me a few years to realised what a mistake I letting such history to be thrown away like that. A very useful piece of history that can grow my understanding of how computers works. Having the space to keep that old PC was an issue too. I am still sadden throwing away completely workable PC like that.

I guess in many people's mind I went through happen to them and it is possibly even worst as normal people are not interested in how a computer is build or how it works. Just wanting something to run fast. It is more than just planned obsolescence disinterest plays a huge part too and the lack of knowledge how to fix things.

I am lucky to see old hardware that is here that is spared from the millions of computers in the e waste dumps. I don't think things are looking bright for hardware 2010 and before. The saving grace now is increase of computing power is slowing down a lot making people stick to their electronics longer.

Yeah, that's a shame Personally, whenever I have a decent system that's completely operational (and I don't have any obvious purpose for it, and/or consider it to be too modern for my retro collection), I pass it on to other ppl who need it more than I do. Friends, family, charity, etc. In fact, I donated 3 machines that way, one to each of them. I would probably donate even more stuff, but let's face it - there's only so much you can do with old hardware, there's a good reason why ppl throw these (completely functional) machines to e-waste & recycling yards, no matter how heartbreaking it might seem to us here, in Nostalgic Hardware club.

Actually there is a large market in used computers now. They're selling a lot of refurbished BTX office machines almost all of them LGA775. They sell for about the price of a Windows license in many cases. I spend a lot of time at Tomshardware answering questions about upgrading these. The supply is much larger than the demand, so many still get scrapped. They're usually bought by people with little money and no experience. There are no aftermarket parts for these OEM computers so adaptation is required. There is also a lot of disinformation out there. BTX is no good, you can't overclock a Dell etc.. My Dimension E520 is a Pentium 4 era machine that got a BIOS update for Core2Duo technology. It's my myth buster. Using readily available parts and sound overclocking techniques I've got it running 3.72Ghz Core 2 Quad, and 71 fps in Unigine Heaven. Mine was built in 2006. I have more radical mods in mind that will require fabrication of parts, water cooling etc. But right now I have a nice mid range computer that's 10 years old. I've been a victim of advertising and mythology myself. I have a huge pile of aftermarket coolers, and fans I thought I would need, only to find out that what I already had or could buy surplus was much superior. I do suppose my electric bill could be smaller.

Never had a BTX machine before, and frankly - don't think I'd ever want to actually own one. In fact, I only got to see BTX in person once, in my entire life. It was put on display, at some local hardware shop... First thing to notice was the (wrong) position of the motherboard, since it had the mirrored ATX design (mobo & cards on the right side of chassis and back panel on the left) Besides, BTX wouldn't work with ATX & vice versa, and since most of my retro stock is either AT or ATX based, I'd have some serious problems putting it together or replacing components since they're getting hard to find these days

 

[Sasqui]

Chaintech Summit, Socket A board with Athlon XP 2500+ (and Spire FalconRock CPU cooler) The first (and only, so far) mobo in my collection to use active cooling on the chipset!

Mine was a Cyrix 200+ One time, the PC started acting flaky, freezes, reboots, etc. Found the wire to the fan was in the blades. Fixed that and it worked great lol

 

[Trekkie4]

Ceramic package, right? Yes, these things were resilient to extreme heat, most of the modern(ish) units would most likely to either throttle down or fry

 

[Retrorockit]

[



Never had a BTX machine before, and frankly - don't think I'd ever want to actually own one. In fact, I only got to see BTX in person once, in my entire life. It was put on display, at some local hardware shop... First thing to notice was the (wrong) position of the motherboard, since it had the mirrored ATX design (mobo & cards on the right side of chassis and back panel on the left) Besides, BTX wouldn't work with ATX & vice versa, and since most of my retro stock is either AT or ATX based, I'd have some serious problems putting it together or replacing components since they're getting hard to find these days [/QUOTE]

I'm retired and since it would take me only a couple of hours to build an ATX, I decided to take on the BTX challenge. It didn't hurt that I already owned one and had failed to overclock it a few times. The motherboard has never been out of mine. Once you figure out how they work they're actually very good machines. The whole purpose of the design was to cool 130W PentiumDs, and 3.8Ghz Pentium4s. Once you defeat the locked BIOS, and learn that the 1.6A. fan running off the Mb causes crashes they actually overclock quite well.

 

[Sasqui]

Ceramic package, right? Yes, these things were resilient to extreme heat, most of the modern(ish) units would most likely to either throttle down or fry

I was recalling it having some "bling" to it, so a quick google and I found it. PR200 it was, (I could swear it said 200+) ... the overall package was ceramic, but a gold heat spreader I wonder if I've got it floating around somewhere... I think it was in a Chaintech MB.

I've got a 486 Dx-33 in a MB right next to me in a bookcase. I think that was retired for that Cyrix CPU

Source: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/6x86/Cyrix-6x86MX-PR200 (66MHz 2.9V).html

 

[Trekkie4]

I'm retired and since it would take me only a couple of hours to build an ATX, I decided to take on the BTX challenge. It didn't hurt that I already owned one and had failed to overclock it a few times. The motherboard has never been out of mine. Once you figure out how they work they're actually very good machines. The whole purpose of the design was to cool 130W PentiumDs, and 3.8Ghz Pentium4s. Once you defeat the locked BIOS, and learn that the 1.6A. fan running off the Mb causes crashes they actually overclock quite well.

Right, gotta like your attitude I learned quite a lot about hardware, all thanks to vintage stuff - and will hopefully learn a lot more!

I was recalling it having some "bling" to it, so a quick google and I found it. PR200 it was, (I could swear it said 200+) ... the overall package was ceramic, but a gold heat spreader I wonder if I've got it floating around somewhere... I think it was in a Chaintech MB.

I've got a 486 Dx-33 in a MB right next to me in a bookcase. I think that was retired for that Cyrix CPU

Source: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/6x86/Cyrix-6x86MX-PR200 (66MHz 2.9V).html

Kinda related to my previous post (in response to @Retrorockit ), this is exactly what I'm talking about! I never heard of 6x86 CPUs before, in my entire life! To be perfectly honest, I never heard of 5x86 ones either, until I got that system couple of days ago! Pretty impressive stuff, considering how old this is

What I DO know is that 4x86 CPUs are still being produced (and used) today, although not in the same form & only for specific hardware purposes. (such as ATM machines, for example)

 

[Sasqui]

Kinda related to my previous post (in response to @Retrorockit ), this is exactly what I'm talking about! I never heard of 6x86 CPUs before, in my entire life! To be perfectly honest, I never heard of 5x86 ones either, until I got that system couple of days ago! Pretty impressive stuff, considering how old this is

Hey, who are you calling old? hahaha... Cyrix produced quite a few CPU's, no idea what happened to them. I found that one at a PC tradeshow here in Manchester, NH back in the 90's

What I DO know is that 4x86 CPUs are still being produced (and used) today, although not in the same form & only for specific hardware purposes. (such as ATM machines, for example)

Go figure... also the F-35 apparently