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What is this? Post Photos of Mystery Items Here (vintage computers only)

Ill guess PII-233, 32mb ram, S3 Virge+, SB Live value and a Western Digital 4gb hdd. If lucky a dvd accelerator.
 
When I see a computer like that at the surplus center I take a look at the back or take the case off. I usually spend the $20 just for the fun of it. I picked up a 486-DX4 100 for $25. If that's a P-II or Celeron I would prefer to spend $10 or $15 but you're right. $20 doesn't seem much of a risk.

Seaken
 
Looking at the back "good news" tips:
-more than 1 VGA connector
-any audio outputs
-a "game port" joystick connector
-generally lots of the available slots used instead of blanked
-determine the year: lack of any USB port usually means older than PII era, lack of small PS/2 ports as well makes it "old" as in 386/486 to my limited experience.

Looking inside is always more handy. But either way as said most will be good enough (or a good basis for) for some kind of interesting DOS system as many of these will be either truly DOS era or W95/98 era which is also suitable.
 
rengwarr said:
Asus P3V4X
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This is a Pentium II? If my Google is correct that's kind of an odd motherboard to have paired with a PII. (It says it's based on the Apollo Pro 133A, that's very much a Pentium III-era chipset.)

Small warning sign: it looks like the heat sink is popping off the video card.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
This is a Pentium II? If my Google is correct that's kind of an odd motherboard to have paired with a PII.
Click to expand...
That's what I also found when I searched - odd huh?
Eudimorphodon said:
Small warning sign: it looks like the heat sink is popping off the video card.
Click to expand...
And yes I did get around to popping it back in, although it isn't powering on just yet. I will replace the CMOS battery first and go from there :) Quite happy with the price, even if it's just for the parts. I will be going to where I got this one from again (E-Waste Recycler) as they mentioned having plenty more old computers!
 
Chuck(G) said:
Points to a dealer saving money, to my eye, anyway.
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Could also be an exercise in slapping together hand-me-downs from other systems. Lord knows I've had plenty of those.

The labeling on the CD-ROM drive (IE, the whole 52x/32x/16x thing) and the fact that it's a "combo" DVD/CD-RW drive also feels like an anachronism for a Pentium II. Maybe it was a replacement for an older drive that kicked the bucket, but it also *maybe* suggests this system was originally built as a Pentium III sometime around early 2001, was partially gutted for parts at some point later, and then ended up with the Pentium II in it because it was the only Slot II CPU the person had lying around.

What kind of video card is it? The fact that it doesn't have a fan on that heatsink suggests to me something like a Radeon VE/7000... which is also a 2001-ish vintage card. (Something older/more PII-correct like a Rage/Mach 64 is of course also a possibility.)
 
That was actually par for the course in pricing. Witness the other ads in the magazine cited. Sub-£1000 systems with disk drives were very uncommon back then.
 
Chuck(G) said:
The photos are confusing. But I'd assume that the VDU RJ45 on the rear panel is the way to forward.
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I don't see anything that looks like a CRTC or whatever on the board, so I would guess the "VDU" in question was a serial terminal. This thing reeks of being analogous to machines like the Xerox 820-II, that superficially look similar to an IBM PC-style system, IE, a three-piece system unit-keyboard-monitor computer, but are actually a computer-diskdrive unit+terminal-with-detached-keyboard.
 
The 4 pin does certainly point to a hookup to a serial terminal. I've not seen a jack with the latch on the side, but perhaps someone recognizes it.
It would be useful to get a high-resolution photo of the whole board to see what's feeding that jack.
 
Looks an awful lot like just how we did it here with RJ11, someone recycled the UK's standard for a telephone jack and socket, BS6312.
 
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