Vintage computer bargain hunting on Koninginnedag (Queen's Day in the Netherlands)

[digger]

For those of you who don't know about Koninginnedag, or Queen's Day: it's an Dutch national holiday, on April 30th each year, when we celebrate the birthday of the previous Queen of the Netherlands.

(The current Queen's birthday is in February, when the weather in our country is generally about as bad as it can get, so when she became Queen, it was wisely decided to continue celebrating Queen's Day on April 30th.)

Anyway, one of the traditions of Queen's Day is the Vrijmarkt ("Freemarket"), which is when everyone, young and old, is allowed to sell suff outside on the streets, without a permit. In the days leading to this yearly event, people claim and mark their own spots on the sidewalk with tape or crayons, on which they typically place a blanket on the day itself. A lot of old stuff from attics, garages, tool sheds, and former children's rooms is laid out and offered for sale to the many people passing by and enjoying the holiday.

Basically, our entire country turns into a huge garage sale on this day.

This is of course good news for vintage computer collectors in the Netherlands (or close enough to travel there), because one can often spot some rare finds, if one doesn't wait too long of course. The early bird catches the worm, and that definitely applies on Queen's Day.

Anyway, what I basically wanted to ask is if anyone found any valuable vintage gems at Koninginnedag this year. I was attending the many festivities (stages and live performances throughout the city) which also typically take place on this day, along with some friends from Germany, so I didn't get around to scrounging the Vrijmarkt this year.

Any of you here that did? What did you buy? Show us screenshots!

 

[Tetrium]

I went to visit Amsterdam on Queensday. I didn't find any real vintage hardware (My primary target was AT cases) but I did get quite a lot of interesting items for bargain prices.
First I saw someone selling a super 7 ATX motherboard, it was just laying there, with 4 network cards in it's PCI slots. They had no idea what they were selling though, the seller didn't even know the difference between a motherboard and a router
Anyway I offered €5 and they accepted. A little later I saw someone selling 2 old Packard Hells, one of which looked as if it might contain another Super 7 board. He let me open the case and it was in very good condition, all the hardware was still in there. He wanted €15 for it and at first I doubted, then I bought it. Sis 530 board
Also bought one single LS-120 disk for 50 cents. One seller had a whole bunch of ZIP disks 250MB NOS!. I offered €0.50 each and bought 20 of him. I only had one old 250MB ZIP disk before so I was happy with this find. He gave me 23 disks in total
So now I finally got 250MB ZIP disks to go with the 250MB ZIP drives that I already own.

Then the last seller had all kinds of hardware in antistatic bags. He looked he was a student. In the end I bought a lot of items from him including a Soundblaster Live with a strange doughterboard for €2, 2 unknown graphics cards for €2 and €4 (later the €4 card turned out to be a Geforce 6800 128MB, the other some MX4 8x), a couple harddrives, a lil SDRAM and some other small stuff. In the end he gave me some 30p SIMM's and a Voodoo 3 AGP (which according to him was dead) and 2 ISA soundcards for free.

I had gotten up realy early to find the realy neat stuff. Got up at 5am, got back at 11:30 and slept for most of the rest of the day.

Edit:I'll take some pictures later

 

[Raven]

One seller had a whole bunch of ZIP disks 250MB NOS!. I offered €0.50 each and bought 20 of him. I only had one old 250MB ZIP disk before so I was happy with this find. He gave me 23 disks in total
So now I finally got 250MB ZIP disks to go with the 250MB ZIP drives that I already own.

Lucky bastard, lol! That's a ridiculously good deal. I was hunting around on eBay for a pile of ZIP disks and the best prices I could find were $4-5 per disk.

 

[Tetrium]

Yep...Queensday! :D

I was told he had over 200 250MB ZIP disks, all NOS in the package. I have no idea if he sold out that day though. He seemed eager to get rid of them and I didn't have any more money with me at that time.

 

[Tetrium]

Here are the pics

 

[digger]

Nice score indeed.

By the way, I think I know what that "weird daughterboard" connected to that Sound Blaster Live! is. It's an S/PDIF (digital audio) input/output backplate. Apparently, the Sound Blaster supported S/PDIF, but Creative decided once again to annoy their customers by not placing proper standard S/PDIF digital audio connectors (RCA or TOSLINK) on the card. The OEM and basic additions never came with such a backplate. Creative only provided this in the deluxe package.

The backplate was also available separately, and not only from Creative. There were some compatible aftermarket solutions sold by other companies as well. Yours appears to be an original Creative backplate, judging from the CTxxxx code printed on the upper right of the board, but I'm not sure. It appears to have digital inputs as well as outputs, both RCA and TOSLINK. Nice.

 

[Tetrium]

Thanks

I'm fairly sure the daughterboard, or backplate thingy, is original Creative Labs. Typical Creative part number, same PCB color, same overall 'look'.
I haven't actually tested any of this stuff btw, I also have lots of stuff coming in from Ebay and am kinda waiting for it all to arrive so I can do one single hardware test marathon.
I'm not realy technical when it comes to sound hardware. Heck, I don't even know what RCA and TOSLINK is lol!

The speakers were just cheap and I've actually been using speakers I found while dumpsterdiving years ago!
I was surprised to see how flat they were, they came in the original box which wasn't showing that.

The 2 mainboards were a nice find, especially the Sis530 one. It looks less impressive but after some browsing on the net I found it was actually made by Gigabyte
It may even work with the K6+ out of the box, without the need to reflash the BIOS.

Pretty good considering it's the board that I pulled from the Compaq I bought on Queensday.

It's also kinda the only interesting thing that emerged from that Compaq.
I was hoping the harddrive to be 20+ gigs, but it turned out to be a 4.3GB one, made in 99!
On the other hand, this is one of the fastest 4.3GB (single platter) harddrives around, it'll be perfect in one of my 486 builds


And about Creative...they turned out to be the M$ of the world of sound; Crushing or buying out their competitors. They even rebadged some soundcards so they appeared like newer products. Not to mention their crippled Audigy drivers for Vista...
And everybody loves them. I sure do, but I haven't bought a brand new creative soundcard in almost 10 years now!
But on the other hand, you gotta admire them for still having virtually ALL the drivers to their older products still up for download. From that respect, they are imo an example of how it should be


This year was definately a succesfull Queensday for me

 

[Tetrium]

Good news!

Most people here probably know that all over Europe 5 may is Liberation day. In The Netherlands this also means theres a couple freemarkets. So I was visiting my mother when she wanted to have a look on a local freemarket and I voluntered to tag along...and guess what?

I found the same person selling the same ZIP disks again! And I got his phone number!

Raven, if you're still interested in buying NOS ZIP 250 disks, please contact me, I'm sure we can we can both benefit from this
It's no hurry though, he wanted to visit another freemarket which he told me was on the 14th or 15th but my guess is he's not selling too many.
He also has tons of LS-120 disks which I might be interested in as all I have are 8 disks or so, most second hand.

He also told me he had a couple kilograms (Zaiks!!!) ZIP 100 drives recycled! Along with a whole bunch of LS-120 drives.

 

[Jorg]

I recently got a 4 pack ZIP250 disks on ebay that were not too expensive (5€), but I could use 5 or 10 more (I have 2 ZIP250's, one with USB, and one with parallel connected to my 5162- great storage).

The 250 won't work with PalmZIP though, so even a ZIP100 parallel would be nice (although then the question for disks comes in again )

 

[Tetrium]

I still have a bunch of ZIP 100 disks laying around, I'm sure I could spare you a couple (will need to check the data on it first though) now that I finally got more then just that 1 old ZIP 250 disk.
Once those 1.44M parallel drives arrive at my place I still need to send you a package anyway .
Can't help you with the drive though, but it seems like ZIP drives are being recycled en-masse.

Edit:spelling

 

[Tetrium]

I did some mass testing today. I mentioned earlier most, if not all, of the parts I bought were untested.

I tested that Soltek board I got for €5, it boots fine! The voodoo3 at first try gave a black screen, but the keyboard was flashing as if a normal boot. I reseated the card and sure enough, it booted. Voodoo3 3000
That MX card booted at 1st try, nothing special. For the 6800 I had to test with an A7V board (tested the others on a Chaintech 6BTM). Gave me a black screen, but I wasn't about to give up. I decided to switch my standard 300W HEC power supply with an AOpen (=FSP) 400W...dammid, the 24 pin ATX connector got blocked by a capacitor. So I tried a 350W FSP, and it booted .

So far I've been lucky that everything worked, even the Voodoo3 that was supposed to be dead.

I also bought 2 more older computers on the 5th. One was somekind of thin client and the other was a clone case with unknown stuff inside. Both for €7,50 total. The thin client had a P2-350, one harddrive, a laptop cdrom drive and 1 bar of SDRAM.
The other, which also is by far the most ugliest case I now own (probably not for too long), turned out to have an ECS socket A board with about 10 leaking caps. It had 2 harddrives mounted in the 5 1/4 drive bays by ONE screw each!
The PSU was an AOpen 300W PSU with unfortunately also a leaking cap inside it (bummers...).
Also had 2 bars of SDRAM, one 256MB and the other unknown. And an unidentified 4x AGP card, unknown specs.

Well, I gambled...atleast I got 3 harddrives and some memory out of this. And this strange thin client thingy


I already know what I'll be doing next year on the 30th of April :D

 

[digger]

The 250 won't work with PalmZIP though...

Have you reported this to the PalmZIP developer? I bought a PalmZIP license from him not too long ago, so he might still be interested in fixing it.

 

[Jorg]

Have you reported this to the PalmZIP developer? I bought a PalmZIP license from him not too long ago, so he might still be interested in fixing it.

Hmm. Good point.. as the original target Palm/palmtops are long gone, I expected that he wouldn't be active anymore.
I'll give it a try!

From his site:
"Iomega ZIP-100-drive, parallel port version. The ZIPplus-drive and late ZIP-100-drives are NOT supported. "

 

[digger]

@Tetrium: Just curious: where do you keep all that stuff, anyway? As an apartment dweller, it just never ceases to amaze me how much stuff some people manage to hoard in their homes.

@Jorg: By the way, how was your Queen's Day? Did you go hunting, like Tetrium?

 

[Jorg]

@Tetrium: Just curious: where do you keep all that stuff, anyway? As an apartment dweller, it just never ceases to amaze me how much stuff some people manage to hoard in their homes.

@Jorg: By the way, how was your Queen's Day? Did you go hunting, like Tetrium?

No, I didn't, partly because I'm no where close to Amsterdam and try to keep it that way even when its not Queensday, but mainly because of the point before.. I already got too much stuff...

Which is why I am looking for a new house :D
Well, not really the reason but it certainly cannot have less space than this one...
And where I keep it, well, I have a 8x10 meters attic that is not really used besides storing stuff.

 

[Raven]

It had 2 harddrives mounted in the 5 1/4 drive bays by ONE screw each!

One time I hung a 2.5" hdd w/ adapter from twist-ties to the bundle of wires in the middle of the case.. I had filled up every other crevice with HDDs to the point where I actually managed to overload my 600W PSU and make it not boot.. I need to build a box explicitly to hold most of my HDDs, no big GPUs, etc..

 

[Tetrium]

@Tetrium: Just curious: where do you keep all that stuff, anyway? As an apartment dweller, it just never ceases to amaze me how much stuff some people manage to hoard in their homes. .....

I've basically crammed most of my stuff in my somewhat smaller attic. I posted some pics on Vogons in the "Post pics of your computer area" thread, my attic is mostly storage and test-bench.
It makes SOOO much difference having 1 dedicated area for all your computer stuff, I can wholeheartilly recommend it!. Before I moved about 1 1/2 years ago, I also lived in an appartment. It had 4 rooms but everything was chaotically devided throughout my entire home. It really made my home seem a lot smaller then it really was. Thats why I decided that upon moving (my appartment was a temporary appartment in an area where all buildings were going to be knocked down) I'd create one single area to store most of my stuff and only take down stuff into the rest of my house when I was actually going to use it.

digger, if you don't already have an account on Vogons, I'd suggest that you create one

 

[digger]

digger, if you don't already have an account on Vogons, I'd suggest that you create one

Actually, I had already created an account on Vogons, not too long ago. I go by the name of digger there as well.

Wait, in case you don't believe me, let me post something in your topic, then...

 

[Tetrium]

81 t/m 90

TX486DLC/E-40GA

Actually, I had already created an account on Vogons, not too long ago. I go by the name of digger there as well.

Wait, in case you don't believe me, let me post something in your topic, then...

I did saw someone with the name "digger" post something on vogons but I'm still not satisfied, he may be an impersonator.

...just kidding!!

Anyway, I've now tested all the graphics cards I bought on Queensday and all seem to be in working condition!
I reckon this year's been the best 'hardware Queensday' ever
Even the Soltek board that was lying there in the sun, unprotected, seems to be working just fine!
I still got much to test but haven't yet had the time to do so. Particularly the harddrives I bought could prove very usefull if they are all in working order.

 

[digger]

I did saw someone with the name "digger" post something on vogons but I'm still not satisfied, he may be an impersonator.

...just kidding!!

Hey, you're right! And he stole my avatar, too! He even posted in that exact same topic just before I had the chance, just to spite me! The bastard!