The [H]ardForum Perpetual Freebies Thread

More free stuff-

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Case for small motherboard, itx? No power supply and it has had some minor trimming.

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DSL modem, works fine.

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Still have a pile of PCI/AGP video boards and sound cards. Fastest is an original Geforce 2 GTS

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Still have the top three systems. Two high end P3 (933 and 1000 I think) and a Dell P4 with no power supply.

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Basket of fans.

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Hard drive ATA-66 and ATA-100 and SATA PCI boards, USB upgrade boards.

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Bunch of NIC and Modem boards.

All the power supplies, cd-drives have been discarded, called items from earlier posting (laptop, PDA's, cpu's, etc) have been shipped out and I'm trying to get the Shuttle SN45G system working rather than throw it out. Looks like the BIOS file posted on the Shuttle site is bad so I'm looking to lay hands on an earlier revision.

Gary

P.S. Could use a SATA drive or two for kids computer if you have one, might need 2 x 1 gig sticks of DDR2 ram too. Small drives are fine, less than 500 gig is more than enough. They are just using them for gaming.
 
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The model # is on the parallel port... it's quite likely an EPIA 5000 with a 500MHz VIA C3 CPU. I will say that I've had a VIA EPIA MII-10000 in the past (it's the one with the cardbus slot) -- I got rid of it because the 1GHz CPU onboard was noticeably slower than my Dell Latitude CPi with a 300MHz PII!
 
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starhawk said:
The model # is on the parallel port... it's quite likely an EPIA 5000 with a 500MHz VIA C3 CPU.
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Nope- I remember when I got it from a board member it was some sort of "hot rod" board as far as VIA stuff went. Pretty sure it was 900 or 933 rings a bell. C3 or C7 Tomato board if my memory is still functioning correct.

Edit- Hooked her up and she banged to life, the battery wasn't even dead. Log indicates last boot up was early 2012. Ran like a champ with Windows 2000 pro, never missed a beat.
 
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Found it just now -- it's a VIA EPIA-800. Specs here --> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813181018

VIA's CPUs have always been pretty bad... Cyrix's legacy, I suppose (they're descended from Cyrix's awful, awful offerings from the Pentium 1 and II days). I have two thin clients (I like to tinker with them) right now; one has a VIA Eden CPU (fanless version of the C3) and the other has a Geode in it from AMD. The Geode system beats the pants right off of that poor Eden. I mean, I can barely use the Eden box with Puppy Linux (a lightweight distro) -- I've installed XP SP3 on the Geode system as a temporary measure (needed to do some Windowsy things, and I run Puppy full time on something much better...) and it's about on par with an early Core Solo or so... or a really nice P4 system. (I have to say I was quite impressed by that.)

That board is going to be great for a DIY router system for a small home network, where even moderate amounts of processing power are not really necessary. I honestly wouldn't use it for anything more intensive than that... it just doesn't have the brainpower.
 
starhawk said:
Found it just now -- it's a VIA EPIA-800.
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scratches head/

It runs at 7 x 133, am I missing something?

Can't say about XP but under win2kpro it runs great. I'd not run Photoshop with it but for a torrent box running for days at a shot it never gave me any problems. I'm trying to think what else I could do with it.

Vic-20 case would be cool.
 
Interesting. If I had to guess, I'd say that either it was a prototype / limited-release board, or someone very clever and skilled, upgraded it to a C3 933T CPU. (I don't believe it's a socketed proc, and swapping BGA chips around is a delicate process indeed!) The EPIA-5000 and EPIA-800 were IIRC the first EPIA boards to be released... by default they would have been the first mITX boards as well -- VIA invented the spec.

There's lots to do with an old board like that... I'd possibly have it running DOS games or somesuch. Anything that really doesn't need much processing power (torrenting is in that category, as is the DIY router option I mentioned before).

If you do stuff it into an old computer, please make sure that the old computer has expired already (and not been made to, just to make room for your new creation). People still use and love old computers. I have an XT box, I've had a pair of Tandy systems (a Color Computer II and an MC-10) and one of my biggest regrets is selling the C64 setup I had for a while... one of my IRL friends is a true Commodore enthusiast, and he tells me that people are still finding new things to do with those systems! (He would know, believe me.)
 
I hate all 1st generation Thin Client type of hardware in general. Old WYSE, New WYSE/Dell and VIA are names that make me puke. I'm sure the Thin Client scene has dramatically changed due to the Intel Atom and Snapdragon type of chipsets. But early generation Thin Clients were horrendous, overpriced hunks of shit. How much did they want for those things back then? Like $500+? LOL fuck you.

I too love playing with old computers - especially old IBM Thinkpad T23, T30, T40 laptops. Thinkpads are just bullet proof for some reason. I even have an old Compaq EVO n610c that I mess around with. I run a make shift security system with a very small flexible "gooseneck" type of webcam routed to the outside of my front door. Even old Pentium III 1Ghz CPU's can get the job done recording w/ motion detection using little power. I just bought a Kingspec IDE SSD off eBay since IDE SSD's have dropped to $1/gig or less. I LOVE IDE SSD's - very fun to play with on that old ass system.

If you want something old and cheap for low processor demands, just look into an old IBM Thinkpad laptop. I MIGHT have an old T23 (P3 1Ghz) ready to give away soon, but it has no screen and is designed to just run headless and accessed remotely once initially setup using an external monitor. I have run it with an uptime of 600+ days until something cut the power, and it ran continuously with scheduled reboots for 4 years after that. It was running at nearly 100% CPU utilization as webcam software is pretty intensive.

A good and affordable low speed platform would be anything from the Pentium M/Intel Centrino generation. Affordable as in, something people could give away at this point.
 
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starhawk said:
There's lots to do with an old board like that... I'd possibly have it running DOS games or somesuch.
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So far all the old DOS games I have around here (which is rather large) run great on DOSBox.

So far I have worked my way through Hioctane and Dark Forces and I'm working on Skynet and Chasm. Just in case, I have more than a few systems running DOS 6.22 and Win95.
 
@MooCow -- I have a Neoware CA19 that I got from eBay. I've upgraded it considerably. It has better ram and actual active heatsink/fan assemblies (also from eBay; there's an unpopulated fan header place on the motherboard... thanks Neoware!). That's the VIA system. Eden 400MHz CPU... might as well have called it the VIA Nope -- because that's what it says to any real computational efforts!

The other, is a much nicer Fujitsu Siemens Futro S400. I forget who I got that from but it was someone [H]ere. It's the Geode box. I had a Wyse S90 briefly (I gave it to a friend fairly rapidly) and calling that thing 'pure shit' is insulting to shit ;) but at some point I decided to give Geode a second chance (I'm not sure what came over me but I'm glad it did) -- I have no regrets. The skt462 Geodes are lightyears ahead of what's in those horrible Wyse things. My only complaint with the Fujitsu is that it doesn't want to recognize a full gig of RAM (it won't go over 512megs :( ) and Fujitsu gave me the runaround (why was I surprised) when I asked them for help.

@gdonovan -- same here, pretty much. I'm more a Day of the Tentacle type ;) (check out OpenTyrian, though, for some classic scroller action, it rocks!) but I've a 386 that runs beautifully, and I'm looking forward to getting that XT box working properly (bad HDD, I'm actually building the fix... an ISA CF adapter of all things!) so that I can see if the copy of Win1.01 I found somewhere long ago actually works :p
 
starhawk said:
Interesting. If I had to guess, I'd say that either it was a prototype / limited-release board, or someone very clever and skilled, upgraded it to a C3 933T CPU.
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No. They were actually pretty common.
 
Well, then it's an early release I haven't heard about :eek: which is entirely possible...

Since you're familiar with them, what's the *correct* model #? It doesn't look like an M- or V- series board, at least to me...
 
starhawk said:
Well, then it's an early release I haven't heard about :eek: which is entirely possible...

Since you're familiar with them, what's the *correct* model #? It doesn't look like an M- or V- series board, at least to me...
Click to expand...

I'll fire it up again tomorrow and get some info via Everest.
 
buschman31 said:
freebie pc games for the cost of postage. Prefer they all go to one person.

xblades
spiderman3
flashpoint-cold war crisis
avatar the game-sleeve envelope only
split second
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Package arrived, thanks! Both the kids already eyeballing the Flashpoint game.
 
Didn't you tell me you worked for them? :confused:

For the record, I have no issues with Neoware. VIA, however, can best be represented in my mind by the sound of a flush toilet when you hit the lever ;) Their CPUs are essentially vestigial.
 
starhawk said:
Didn't you tell me you worked for them? :confused:

For the record, I have no issues with Neoware. VIA, however, can best be represented in my mind by the sound of a flush toilet when you hit the lever ;) Their CPUs are essentially vestigial.
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Yeah, that was the joke.
 
Ah. Well... I guess if you worked for them you'd know :p

I have to say, I've got a healthy bit of respect for my CA19. It's a little slow on the mental end of things, but that's because (again) VIA stuff stinks so much. Of course, a fan on top of that heatsink in the factory would've meant they could've used a C7 CPU instead of the Eden low(er) power derivative, which would've been nice... oh well.

I should send you some photos of my Neoware. It's got some nice mods to it. Need to re-repaint the case, though, I really botched it on the first go round.
 
starhawk said:
I have to say, I've got a healthy bit of respect for my CA19. It's a little slow on the mental end of things, but that's because (again) VIA stuff stinks so much.
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It all depends on its intended use, not everything has to run at 4 ghz. The little VIA box did its job so well I'm going to think up another use for it.
 
I know what you mean -- I'm rocking a Core2Duo right now... Mom has a Core2Duo laptop and her desktop (for watching streaming video) is an Atom system.

I also muck around with retro stuff... a pity nobody codes tightly anymore. The problem with terabyte hard drives is that you can afford to make bloated, sloppy code, which goes full-circle fast and means that you /need/ that terabyte hard drive! It's a mess...
 
starhawk said:
I also muck around with retro stuff... a pity nobody codes tightly anymore..
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I'm astounded by specs for upcoming games- Quad core minimum spec?

WTF, just reeks of poor coding.

Half-Life was not one of the most awesome games ever because it had pretty graphics.
 
Actually, I believe the game that caused the whole "graphics craze" was a little thing called MYST. I have a CD version, for PC (the game was originally for Mac -- done in Hypercard, actually) that dates from the mid-90s.

From the insert, Minimum System Requirements --

Win 3.1 or Win 95
386DX 33MHz
4MB RAM for Win 3.1 (8MB for Win95)
SVGA display (which they then define incorrectly as 640x480 @ 256 colors, which is VGA not SVGA)
Sound device
CD-ROM drive

I bet with good coding skills, that game you're thinking of could run on a dual core system. Maybe even single core.

Keep in mind that the Atari 2600 video game console, which was basically the video game console that made it all happen, had 128 bytes of RAM and a CPU running at 1.19MHz. It was originally intended to be far more of a "Pong on a cartridge" system -- but it wound up being an extraordinarily popular console with tons and tons of games.
 
Still have a zalman cnps7700cu with socket 775 bracket and 2 adaptec 4 port nics.
 
So I have a good number of *sleeved purple* extensions I can give out for free. Asking for $5 to ship all of them or $6 if shipping priority.

They look like this:
http://i.imgur.com/WFFqite.jpg

Also I want to know if anyone has an extra iPod cable, the old one or even a lighting cable! Thanks.
 
Last call before it ends up at the local recycle center-

DSCN7335.JPG


DSL modem, works fine.

DSCN7336.JPG


Still have a pile of PCI/AGP video boards and sound cards. Fastest is an original Geforce 2 GTS

DSCN7305.JPG


Still have the top three systems. Two high end P3 (933 and 1000 I think) and a Dell P4 with no power supply.

DSCN7308.JPG


Basket of fans.

DSCN7310.JPG


Hard drive ATA-66 and ATA-100 and SATA PCI boards, USB upgrade boards.

DSCN7313.JPG


Bunch of NIC and Modem boards.

All the power supplies, cd-drives have been discarded, called items from earlier posting (case, laptop, PDA's, cpu's, etc) have been shipped out and I'm trying to get the Shuttle SN45G system working rather than throw it out. Looks like the BIOS file posted on the Shuttle site is bad so I'm looking to lay hands on an earlier revision.

Gary

P.S. Could use a SATA drive or two for kids computer if you have one, might need 2 x 1 gig sticks of DDR2 ram too. Small drives are fine, less than 500 gig is more than enough. They are just using them for gaming.
 
I'm looking for a nice PCI graphics card for a project I'm slowly working up to... also, what's the ISA-8 card under the box of fans?

If you can hang on till 'round the tenth of next month, I can cover shipping for a couple cards. I'm flat out for now, though.
 
starhawk said:
I'm looking for a nice PCI graphics card for a project I'm slowly working up to... also, what's the ISA-8 card under the box of fans?

If you can hang on till 'round the tenth of next month, I can cover shipping for a couple cards. I'm flat out for now, though.
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The ISA board is a Quantum3D JAMMA interface module for a PC->Arcade cabinet.
 
Oh. Not useful to me... I was hoping it was an IDE card somehow. I actually have a use for ISA-8 drive cards -- floppy and IDE. (Yes, I know that ISA-8 IDE cards are very very rare.)
 
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