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Lots of 90s desktops and towers UK

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woodchips

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This is a query about a pile, several dozen, 90s desktops and towers I have just bought. I need to shift them, and only have a car, so the question is, are all of them worth the effort to keep in order to sell on, or are they just scrap so any damage doesn't matter? The tin cases take up space, what about the PSUs?

Seem to be mostly Viglen or Dell, odd other one as well.

No idea if they work, no hard discs, might even have been relieved of their CPUs etc, the joys of buying at auction!
 
If they're just generic tower cases then I wouldn't worry about them. I struggled to give them away when I had a big clearout a few years back. The only ones that seem to be worth it are cases with LED speed displays, or the flat desktop cases were the monitor stands on the top.

AT PSUs are getting harder to find in the UK now, so I'd hang on to a couple as spares and sell the rest.
 
How much did you pay for the lot?

There could be quite a lot of money in there depending on what you have and if you were able to make them functional.
 
From what I have seen on eBay.co.uk and AmiBay.com there is lower demand for vintage / retro / antique / classic PCs in the UK than in other markets like the US / DE / NL so prices are lower. When you have mostly OEM desktops/towers I would salvage CPUs, RAM, CD-ROM, FDD, HDD and expansion cards (VGA/sound). Even those, unless something special is contained, usually have very low value. PSUs, when OEM, also have very low value usually.
 
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It depends. 386, 486 can in some cases fetch fairly high prices. And you should check them for any rare cards
Pentium 1 and in some cases even P2/P3 can have a little value.

Anything P4 should go right to the junk heap
 
OEM desktops are usually not that much in demand because they are not flexible when it comes to custom upgrades that people like to do.
 
Not necessarily, some of the earlier power supplies had a special pin-out to mate with certain motherboards, dell was notorious for this....

PeterLI said:
From what I have seen on eBay.co.uk and AmiBay.com there is lower demand for vintage / retro / antique / classic PCs in the UK than in other markets like the US / DE / NL so prices are lower. When you have mostly OEM desktops/towers I would salvage CPUs, RAM, CD-ROM, FDD, HDD and expansion cards (VGA/sound). Even those, unless something special is contained, usually have very low value. PSUs, when OEM, also have very low value usually.
Click to expand...
 
PeterLI said:
OEM desktops are usually not that much in demand because they are not flexible when it comes to custom upgrades that people like to do.
Click to expand...
That's not to say they are unusable and can/do make nice "retro" boxes. Most slimline OEM machines have at least three expansion slot,so nic(with the capability of Bois extensions such as the XTIDE bios being added), sound card are covered and one other for what ever one wants-better video card etc. Video/Parallel/serial ports as well FDD/HDD controllers are built-in o no need for a multi i/o card at all. Some with built-in vlb video and hdd controllers. Quite a few have the ability to add a faster processor as well.
 
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What to do is just inspect them all one by one. Collect what is worth of collecting and pack the rest for scrap. I'd be rather glad to do this myself if I was anywhere around. I'm looking for such piles here, so that I can handpick anything worthy but I've had no luck so far. It seems that most of the vintage hardware is recycled already. I should have looked into it a couple of years back.
 
Trust me: the market is flooded with OEM desktops and between testing / fixing / packaging and the cost of shipping / fees it is not worth the trouble to clear $10/20 per box for hours of work.

I actually love OEM boxes for this reason: stackable, stable, cheap, well documented and usually cool design compared to generic clone mini towers.
 
Well, collected them, whole day driving and shifting boxes.

Lots of Viglen Contender ATX P5/120, so far one each of EX 486DX66, Genie PCi P5/100, Genie P3 700 and several Dell Dimension 3000 with P3. An odd Tiny and Opus box, no other identification.

The Dell 3000 are missing their RAM, also a plastic case so off for scrap. The Viglens have steel desktop case, not bad. None have hard discs, all run from coax ethernet.

Have about 1/3 at home, had to borrow a garage to store the rest but all looked very similar, lots of Viglens and Dell 3000.

What now? Any one want a tin desktop case and PSU? With or without motherboard? Going to cost about £12 to post in mainland UK so might not be worth it.
 

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Well... beowulf cluster? :p
I bet you'd get some decent horsepower from that load! I'd love to pick up one or two for parts, too bad i'm in Italy...
 
Sorted, just looking at the motherboards before their trip to China. Does anyone collect these things? Or make a record of all the different types? The technology used is really pretty stunning, just admiring the size of the tracks and the density of connections under the chips. Seems such a waste.

I seemed to miss the development of CPUs during the 90s. Will a Pentium fit in a 486 socket? What is the difference between socket 3, 4 and 7, what happened to all the others? Why is the only MB with a cache using socket 4? do none of the others support it? The slot based CPUs I assume had the cache on board.

What is the slot that looks like a PCI but slightly higher contact density? Always seems to have a video board in it. Set about 1" further back in the MB than a PCI. Are MB with the VLB bus of any particular rarity? Likewise with EISA slots? The MB are not worth much as scrap, 2-3GBP per kg, so might hang on to a selection just for interest but knowing a little more about the slots and technology would be nice. Is there a PC MB information web site? I know about the various CPU sites, which are useful, but I seem to be starting the knowledge from scratch again.
 
There were a few Pentium derivatives designed to fit into a 486 socket. Not worth it.
Socket 3 is for late fast 486 and variants.
Socket 4 is for the early Pentium which are dreadful chips.
Socket 5 is the later Pentium socket which with slight changes became Socket 7 that supported higher end Pentiums and many of the Pentium clones. With an extra ring of connectors, this became Super Socket 7 which was used by some fast AMD chips and people with steady hands could instead put Socket 7 chips into the center of the socket. Lifetime supply of jumpers because of how many different options.

Slot CPUs had cache on the card except for the original Intel Celeron which were a horrid evil design. Socket 4 was the very, very expensive early Pentiums so high end boards with cache. Most Socket 3, 5, and 7 boards I have include cache; I guess these were low end motherboards. 486 and Pentium era systems need at least some cache to perform decently.

The almost PCI slot is an AGP slot.
VLB slots are somewhat rare. Great for video performance at the time but tough to make stable.
EISA was very rare but other than SCSI and LAN cards not much used it. I love EISA boards because they were solid. I hate that EISA needs configuration disks which I can never find when reassembling a system.
 
Super stuff, thanks. Amazing how you forget it all.

Just one board had a Pentium with the pins at 90 degrees, Socket 3? All the others had pins at 45 degrees, these were P3, MMX etc? The latest chips didn't use pins but a sort of ball grid array. Need to have another look before they go.

Looks like it is worth keeping the Socket 4 board, also the EISA board but was the setup disc only to run EISA or would ISA just work as is?

Have a couple of MB with a disc controller in the VLB slot, are these rare to be worth keeping?

Yes, the AGP slot, couldn't remember what it was called. On my PCs many had an AGP video board, are these of any interest to keep? At the moment what I don't keep will be off in a couple of weeks for gold recycling, only way to cover the costs of buying these things at auction. Got my fingers badly burnt with about 100 mid 2000s servers, but still cheaper than a drinking habit!
 
Have you checked ebay completed auctions / sales, Trouble is here in the UK there seems to be less of a demand for this sort of stuff and though you might sell a bit it may take a long while, If you got some nice half decent examples in that lot it might be worth getting them cleaned up and working to either keep or try your luck on ebay.
 
When you sell on eBay make sure you sell smaller items (VGA / NIC / IO / sound / RAM / MOBO) and ship internationally. That will help boost sales. Anything generic and heavy: put it in recycling. Just my experience.
 
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