Car Boot Sale Flea Market Retro PC Finds : Sometimes I find Some Strange Computers!

29 thoughts on “Car Boot Sale Flea Market Retro PC Finds : Sometimes I find Some Strange Computers!”

• The Hercules video card looks nice but it's one of those odd-ball chips that never caught on so it's essentially useless. It uses a Power VR based chip called Kyro made by STMicroelectronics. In terms of graphics it's about the same as a Geforce2 but it's not well supported by games so basically none of the stuff it could really do was ever exploited. Power VR was used in the Sega Dreamcast so it's that kind of level of graphical power but obviously Dreamcast games were written to support only that video chip and used its capabilities well. To a collector it might be worth something but for general PC retro gaming it has poor support so it's not as good as it looks.

• The PC fan blades are delicate parts – the bigger blades can withstand compressed air better. Compressed air bottles have that liquid inside so better not shake them or tilt them when in use so as not to damage PC parts with cold liquid or blades with too strong an airflow. Short squirts, holding the blade with a finger. A vacuum might work. Also removing the sticker and oiling plus putting capstan tape back.

• P3

• Spot on with the Caps IMHO and yeah fix the fans how hard can it be ? (we will see I hope) I'm glad you cleared that RAM stuff up that confused me but now I know ….cheers.

• Ophcrack linux can crack xp and vista passwords.

• I'd bet money both fans can be saved. Like an old watch or clock dust is an enemy as it collects in the moist bearing recesses and mixes to form a paste.

  Heat and a solvent designed to clean circuit boards such as an ultrasonic cleaner tank with a heater will loosen the old grease and then compressed air to blow the warm solvent out of the bearings.

  To replace the bearing grease you might then take the board to your local watchmaker repair shop and have them lube the bearings for you.

  They have very light oils and greases for clocks and watches along with long stemmed oilers to apply these lubricants in tight spaces.

  Too much oil is as bad as too little oil and these dip oilers apply a specific amount each dip.

  You can purchase the oilers cheaply but the oils and greases have a 6 year shelf life and are extremely expensive.

  With no watchmaker in the area there's always the cheapskate approach; get a light sewing machine oil and apply it using a toothpick.

• Love these videos. Just great on a friday evening with a proper beer. Very relaxing. Cheers!

• About the RAM, what you are talking about is called "rank" and noted as "1R" or "2R" on the stick (or even "4R" on registered modules). A rank is a set of ICs that constitute a full 64-bit data bus. So, in a single rank, you can have 4 ICs with 16-bit data bus (noted "x16"), 8 ICs with 8-bit data bus (noted "x8") or 16 ICs with 4-bit data bus (noted "x4").
  A channel has a 64-bit wide data bus (on PC hardware since Pentium, although DDR5 groups 2× 32-bit channels together), but you can have multiple ranks per channel, and multiple channels per memory controller.
  The memory controller can can indeed have limitations on how ranks can be arranged, as well as the density (here in terms of addressing, so number of column and row address bits in a rank).
  "Banks" are part of the internal organization of a single IC and can be seen as the number of 2D arrays of memory cells in the IC.

• The 3d prophet 4000 and 4500 used the power vr kyro graphics chips and they are really nice cards that can perform really well in late 90s games but i wouldnt try running vista on one.
  When it comes to the little fans in those round chip coolers spinning slow all it usually takes to revive them is a drop of oil in the bearing from the back i repaired multiple that way and they still work today

• I maybe wrong but you could spam the "pause" key to be able to read initial messages?

• In my experience with shot fans replacing them is the best option. Although I can imagine a limited scenario where they actually can be serviced and brought back. Late manufactured fans aren't made to be easily serviceable though. Really old fans were held together with E clips and you could pull them apart. Then they switched to a molded and pressed design where the blades are permanently affixed to the armature. So those front bearings are inaccessible unless you go digging in the plastic to get to them. I've dug to them using a burr in a rotary Dremel like tool. But if a fan has squealed you're not fixing that. You can make it stop squealing for a while with oil. But as soon as that oil film runs out it'll squeal again. That squeal is caused by metal on metal contact. It scores the bearing when it happens. More oil can mask it but it won't fix it. I get maybe 6 months on scored bearing lube jobs? Which is not nothing. But you'll be constantly going back at regular intervals to relube them.

• Yea, if they are that sticky, I'd replace them. Oil can disperse micro particles onto the board which you don't want.

• I still have my Hercules 3D Prophet 4500 64MB KyroII in my living room on display. It was such a great card as it used tile based rendering. Performance wise it should be between a Geforce 2 MX and Geforce 2 GTS. I think the 4000 version used an older Kyro I Chip and thus is slower. The Kyro chips were designed by Imagination technologies and produced by ST Microelectronics. Unfortunatly there was no successor as ST Microelectronic pulled out of the market of producing Graphics chips :/.

• The RAM is probably dual rank and not dual bank. The banks reside inside the RAM chips, so we can't determine number of banks.

• 2 bad capissitors in the second system lol

• yessss i was right woohoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

• LOL i think you got an AMD in there 🤣

• Pcb of morherboard can have 7 layers -my first job was in a factory (office used computers)

• The AGP-PRO slot had extra power pins allowing it to supply up to 110W. I remember seeing a few boards with that slot but never seen a matching graphics card. I expect the extra power was supplied through the molex connector on the motherboard.

  I don't imagine it was really worthwhile for the graphics card manufacturers when they could just as easily put a molex connector on the card, and I have seen plenty of those.

• Hi Richard from Sydney Australia. I would use compressed air into the small fans and use isopropyl alcohol spray.
  Brush .
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• What does that black 4pin molex do in IT??

• i there are only chips on on side of a memory stick its single rank, if it has chips on both sides its dual rank

• You can oil the fans from the back if you pull off the sticker. It will revive most sticky fans.

• You were right, it is a Geforce 2 and there is no Geforce 2 MX 440. It is a Geforce 2 MX400 as the sticker on the back suggests.

• Wow, you found a kryo!!!

• Hey! the first computer obviously been updated cause the pentium 4 was a piece of crap so they did go to AMD with was way better in that time. the motherboard is interesting cause of the AGP pro with is really not common so if the person who buy that have a graphic card compatible it's a really rare motherboard. the CPU is not the best but was pretty good . on the second PC well there is the matsonic motherboard that is the most valuable part. Matsonic never been known for making motherboard that was great but they was working and not failing so at least it's reliable but the value of that is probably 30£ max the CPU is a 1.7ghz pentium 4 with is a total junk i will not put more than 3£ on that! and the graphic card is really common low cost of that time it was good for make a low cost PC not surprising it's with a matsonic board and such a bad CPU

• Hi, thanks for the video and nice Retro machines you got there, especially that Gigabyte which contains AMD 760 northbridge chip and that also is very rare motherboard.
  I have 3 different AGP-Pro motherboards, one is Soltek SL75-KAV, Asus A7V133-C and A7V266 motherboards.

• If memory serves, I think I remember having an Abit motherboard that had one of those AGP-pro slots. As far as I remember the AGP-pro was supposed to be for future generation or AGP-pro GPU's but with the rise of PCI-E it never took off.

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