TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Bungz]

But wait there is more!



Think I have another KV7 but when Abit boards come up for cheap I tend to buy them, same with the Gigabyte board. Both KT600 chipset boards which I usually find pretty reliable.

The Asus A7N266-VM is a Nforce 220 board, shame it has no Dual channel mem support but does seem to have Soundstorm. One day I must find a cheap Dolby Digital Reciever.

Oh and it needs recapping

Been trying to find one of these for about year, managed to get it for reasonable money and boxed so will update when I have had a play with it, got a few boards this will fit


Thats all for now

 

[stinger608]

That CPUEZ board is frigging awesome man!

 

[Bungz]

Plan is to take a K8Upgrade-NF3 754 socket board with limit of 1 core and 2GB of memory all the way to a Dual core with 8GB of DDR2

Fair play to Asrock too, all the info is still on the product web pages

 

[Apocalypsee]

That CPUEZ board is frigging awesome man!

My thought exactly, I never seen one before back then. Can't believe I seen one in 2017 the CPU port looks similar to AGP weirdly

 

[Trekkie4]

Agreed, I thought it actually was!! (AGP, that is) It even has that locking hook & voltage notch just like AGP...

 

[Bungz]

Have been playing with some other bits and bobs, will try test it out this week.

I am pretty sure it is a AGP slot in design but it is too far back in the board for anyone to be able to use it for a graphics card.

 

[Bungz]

Some more bits.

My black shuttle

The ECS motherboard is a odd bod SIS chipset affair. ECS 648FX-A

Looks absolutle poverty but can take 800fsb Nothwoods and doesn't seem too slow, also came with a Jet 4 cooler.

Been after a 4670 AGP for a while, they usually go for bonkers money.

 

[Trekkie4]

Things are pretty quiet on my end, I was hoping to get that S775 Asus system up & running, to have it converted into retro Steam platform for playing "Orange Box" titles, but due to the fact I can't seem to find replacement board it's not going to happen any time soon. Instead, I'm most likely going to end up swapping S775 for S478 instead (Asus P4S533-MX) and pair it with P4 chip running 2.8GHz. This is going to be a noticeable step down from the previous model due to AGP 4X (instead of 8X) and DDR333 (instead of DDR400), but I'm hoping to minimize the effects through overclock and 2GB of RAM.

The only "problem" is that I'm out of I/O shields for Asus boards, which are using uniquely shaped design due to S/PDIF jack being located where you would normally expect to find COM/serial port interface and (being a perfectionist) I don't want to leave the open gap. Besides, I had a particular situation once before with the Slot 1 Chaintech board where plugging the USB devices into the USB port would cause the system to crash, because it wasn't grounded and/or in direct contact with the chassis, so it's most definitely out of the question. After all, the I/O shield is there for a reason

On a side note, I am in the process of getting something pretty cool! New old stock, never used VHS VCR from around 1988. It's a cheap & basic model, but holds great nostalgia factor (at least for me, personally) since my family had one of those when I was around 2-3 years old and it was used intensively throughout 14 years before it fell apart. But this one is literally brand new, still inside the original box, featuring the remote control, instruction manuals, even styrofoam frames which hold the unit firmly inside the box!

 

[Bungz]

Man I loved VHS as a kid, recorded the heck out of everything!

I would check if your new deck has any belts in it, if so they will need to be sourced.

And it is easier to figure out what belts go where before you press play and they all snap and turn to mush!

Ask me how I know that.

 

[Trekkie4]

Don't worry, I happen to be somewhat skillful with these things lol Seriously though, I'm collecting VCRs, and been tinkering with inner workings ever since I was old enough to hold the screwdriver But yes, this is a reasonable & valid warning, belts are most definitely going to be shot. Either completely dried up, have that solid plastic feel OR alternatively they completely melted into tar-like material, and will have to be scraped & cleaned from the pulleys inside.

This particular one uses the famous Funai Mk3 drive, which was (and still is) among cheaper designs, using 4 belt configuration & two motors. One, primary motor drives the capstan through the wide, flat belt AND it also drives the idler, clutch assembly. When ejecting the tape, the main motor also snaps into position closer to the nearby pulley, so it doubles as tape elevator, aka ejection mechanism motor as well. The other, smaller motor drives ONLY the cam gear alone, and uses a separate belt. Simple design, yet seems to confuse the heck out of most ppl who take these apart, as most of them can't seem to work out how the tape eject portion works since there's no apparent source of power, torque

This SEG VCR HERE is one of many VCRs created on the same image & design, running IDENTICAL drive inside. There was a lot of these around back in the 90s, the one we had when I was younger was made by the company "Marquant" but really, it was pretty much rebadged SEG, Anitech, Tensai, Interbuy or any other similar VCR with this particular design & mechanical deck. It might not seem like there's much to it, and the name "Funai" would normally repel most ppl nowdays, but these things are very durable, back from the time & era when Funai actually made high quality stuff!

Also worth pointing out is the rubber bumper, which is even pointed out in the pic above. This thing engages and disengages the brakes, so if it gets soft and/or falls off, the entire deck will be locked (or at least partially locked) and will have problems with basic operations. Something to keep in mind, but that's pretty simple to fix even if you don't happen to have a replacement part in stock. Usually a piece of phone cable insulation does the trick...

 

[Bungz]

Can see you are one step ahead lol

Good luck with it

 

[Trekkie4]

Well, I first have to actually get it, I'm still negotiating with the seller but thanks If I actually DO end up buying this thing, I'll definitely upload more pics & info I'm curious though, are you also in the same "area", of fixing tape decks & VCRs?

 

[PHaS3]

Server nostalgia!

Picked this up today for what amounts to about $16 (USD).

HP DL380 G4
2x Xeon 3.2GHz (800MHz fsb, http://ark.intel.com/products/27083/64-bit-Intel-Xeon-Processor-3_20E-GHz-2M-Cache-800-MHz-FSB)
6GB DDR2 ECC RAM
6x 72.8GB 10K RPM SCSI U320 Drives
QLogic Fiber Channel PCI X Card

Fully working, installed Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS on it this morning. Noisy swine, though :|

 

[Keullo-e]

Got a new mb to my 2500K platform, finally I can OC that little bastard..

Pics tomorrow.


edit: I need to sober up before I picture that. Also HD6970 coming for that PC.

 

[Bungz]

Well, I first have to actually get it, I'm still negotiating with the seller but thanks If I actually DO end up buying this thing, I'll definitely upload more pics & info I'm curious though, are you also in the same "area", of fixing tape decks & VCRs?

Just a tinkerer really, fixed up a tape deck for my old man last year, nothing fancy but he was happy to be able to play his tapes.

Have seen some teardowns of the early VHS units, so many belts and all impossible to get to

 

[Trekkie4]

Oh man, I've been messing around with tape decks the other day, I hate these things. Used to love them back in a day, but unfortunately due to the lack of replacement parts & belts they're slowly becoming a nightmare to maintain. The biggest issue is the belt tension which slows the motor, transmission resulting with noticeable wow & flutter, sometimes even tape damage. VCRs on the other hand are more tolerant to these things, probably due to more powerful motors & larger design. Nevertheless, these things are slowly fading away from the history, so it's worth every effort IMHO

Edit
Here's several pics of that new old VCR I mentioned yesterday. Pics are not mine, they've been downloaded from the online listing, which the seller uploaded & advertised. But I've been in touch with this guy, so assuming this isn't a scam I'll be getting the VCR some time next week, probably around Monday or Tuesday The asking price was around 53USD, but we managed to make a deal (trade) in the end for a cheap Android-powered smartphone.

 

[Bungz]

Something very cool about retro stuff that has been sat patiently in its box since new.

Finding a old crt 32" to go with it in it's box might be more of a challenge

Oh and I eventually found one of these

 

[Athlonite]

Faw an Abit NF7S I had one of those blew anything else outta the water

 

[Red_Machine]

I used nForce chipset motherboards up until nVIDIA stopped making the chipsets. Still got my old 980a SLI board in a drawer under my bed.

 

[stinger608]

Yep, I still have this board from when I started this thread.

 

[Apocalypsee]

My cousin gave his ancient Digidesign MBox to me, the one he uses back in early 2000's for recording and stuff. It's not nostalgic to all you folks but I did one time asking wanted to have this back in 2006 but he still uses it. Can't believe I have it now.

I quite worried I won't find any driver to use for Windows 10, and I am right the driver stopped at Windows XP and beta Windows 7 but a quick Googling I found a driver that worked with Windows 10, with ASIO and all that.

Surprisingly it still work despite it's age which I estimate at least 15-17 years old! The headphone amp drives my Sennheiser HD 555 beautifully and a couple of TRS to RCA adapter it works with my current speaker as well. It's only max 16-bit 48kHz but the sound it spits out is great. I'm going to disassemble it to see what's the DAC and USB input is.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Two DFI Lanparty X58 t3eh8 (2009)

Both currently running Xeon W3520 @ 4.0 Ghz (2009)

 

[uuuaaaaaa]

Two DFI Lanparty X58 t3eh8 (2009)

Both currently running Xeon W3520 @ 4.0 Ghz (2009)

I miss DFI and Abit!

 

[GreiverBlade]

I miss DFI and Abit!

so do i ... i am glad i could fetch, albeit being a problematic one, a DFI LanParty NF4-UT for my collection ....

now Abit.... that's another story .... i never saw one either in retail or second hand in my country .... i wonder why

 

[Athlonite]

YEAH Lan Party gear was the bomb I still like their color scheme to this day