You can always reach out via email and we can organize something. I would love to meet people interested in retro hardware, share stories, and just have a good time!
Yes! I prefer to find items in a case. That means they most likely are in pristine condition and working. Plus, you sometimes get accessories like back plates for motherboards 😉
@@bitsundboltsI normally do too, I was lucky once though - a friend pulled my 386s motherboard from a huge container of scrap. It is an Asus with 40mhz DX CPU and runs beautifully .
@@communalnoodle1356 My recycler has a few towers but in alot of cases cards and boards are just stacked on top of each other. I've seen so many good looking cards that on closer inspection had cut traces, or worse yet, when graphics cards don't have heatsinks protecting the chips and the pins get bent or cut.
@PipBoy3k I hate when that happens - our most recent trip to a recycler most was the same though a few of us are able to repair so we saved what we could.
Oh, my goodness. Holy H3ll! So much potential in all those old cases, but just not enough time. I think maybe you found my personal purgatory. I felt a sense of dread, with a touch of depression, during the tour segment. Forced myself to click the thumbs up, no need to punish you for my response. That said, thank you for showing all of it! Should you show more, I will watch, at least until I think you are trolling, which I do not imagine you ever would actually do. Please enjoy your time away!
Thanks! Oh, there's definitely interesting stuff in those cases. I'll soon try to make a full video just roaming around without music. The problem I have is: I always forget to take videos! When I'm there, I just go through the stuff and enjoy my time there. What will I find when I open this case - or that case - or that case on the bottom with 20 other cases on top! Haha, it doesn't stop!
Same. Came here to say the same thing. As a lifelong IT nerd, it makes me sad seeing this much potential go to waste. So many good memories of all the good tech shown in the scrapyard portion.
I am blown away by the sheer volume of all that!!! I wouldn't know where to start! Danke! Thank you ❤️ 🇩🇪 as a kind of hobby I look for electronics in dumpsters and curbside stuff! 👍
Some of those boards are inside a case and completely covered in dust! I already cleaned the boards - and they look amazing! Can't wait to try them after I am back in Dubai.
I clicked for the scrapyard tour - wow! That Alaris board is really interesting. I think it's the "Cougar" model, so that's probably an IBM Blue Lightning at 75MHz under the heatsink.
I just posted the cleaned board on my Patreon - there is a free tier and the post is available to all members - including the free tier. I already checked the manual and can confirm that the FSB is set to 25 MHz. Which means, you could be absolutely right! There is a triple clocked blue lightning rated at 75 MHz under that silver heatsink!
@@bitsundbolts It's THE one and only 386 (with 486 instructions support slapped on it, that is) that can run Doom. Please do the video on it, it's rarely found outside of the PS/2 systems.
That first board is the famous Alaris Cougar. Very very cool board with a clock tripled IBM Blue Lightning 3 CPU, which is a proper licensed 486 with 16KB cache. But unlike other 486SX chips it can use a separate 387-compatible FPU.
Interesting! I will definitely read up on this board. So far, I have no idea what it is, but I am happy that I picked that case with this board inside. I usually ask to have a look at three or four cases because I need to reshuffle those towers of old PCs. Of course, the guys working there don't like that too much. However, this time, I got lucky with my picks.
@@mykolapliashechnykov8701 It's an odd duck for sure. As far as I know it is a further in-house development of IBM's 386SLC. But is a 386 with internal cache (which supports write back mode, and is double the size of that of the Intel 486 of the time) still a 386? The IBM CPU supports all 486 instructions, like the Cyrix 486DLC/DRX2 386-socket CPUs, but it is a lot faster clock for clock. From what I've read the 486BL2-50 is a tad faster than an actual Intel 486SX2-50, while at 66Mhz the IBM falls behind a bit. You tell me 😅
Oh man I wish I had access to a gunk-yard like that where I live in Australia. I'm looking forward to the refurbishment series, I have a board similar to your SOLTEK SL-56D1, mine is a SL-67FV1 Slot 1 with unresolved issues. I will keenly waiting your processes. Your videos are very informative, thank you so much for your time and sharing your knowledge with us ...I learned a lot from you ...keep up the great work.
Well, thanks! I'll try my best to make interesting content! The best part is that it isn't me who decides what videos I make. It all depends on what I find at the scrapyard - which makes it also a bit easier. Each item I find seems to have at least one story to tell! It's amazing and super interesting
Haha! I am in the same boat! I was able to negotiate with my wife however! I got a small storage room to put all this stuff in. Needless to say, I am running out of space.
Envy! Where and how do you guys find these places? I'm betting there's also a difference between countries. Where I live, "scrapyards" usually only break down cars. You can enter these and get spare parts (usually paying a small fee). There are separate places that "recycle" (read: package and send to China to throw into a river) electronics and computers, and these are more fortified than Fort Bloody Knox. They just don't allow anyone in - their explanation, when I asked, was that they'd get in trouble with the EPA and the insurance company... I can understand the insurance part, but the EPA getting pissy about someone SAVING a bunch of lead and toxic chemicals from being "recycled" (again: tossed into a river in China) to prolong its life seems...very counterproductive 🤣
@@h3llr4iser1 they prob don't want the epa knowing how they're storing the stuff. but i agree they'd prob make more money selling a few things to people like us than shipping it to china as bulk scrap
I just clicked the video, what made me click it was simple: 1, it was a video from Bits und Bolts. 2, It mentioned his famous scrapyard, a place I envy you for having, and getting the opportunity to pick and test and even put some of the old hardware back in service again. Even with so many of the old legends are there, like old Sound Blasters and the like is really tempting. The sticker made me ponder at first if you had travelled to the US and visited a scrapyard there for a moment, but that doesn't fit your narrative so to speak :D
👍I'll try to make longer episodes of my visits to the scrapyard - a proper tour. This video were just some clips from my last trip. It is always exciting - you never know what you'll find that day :)
I couldn't believe it when I saw the board! 99% of the slot type boards are Intel and Slot 1. If I find a Slot A, I definitely take it - even if it has a VIA chipset :)
@@bitsundbolts Back in the day I got an ASUS K7M, which was funny because it was initially sold in a white box. Later got an Epox 7KXA, where I desoldered the Voltage Regulator for the RAM and ran a wire to the ATX Connector (because the RAM Voltage is a bit low, IIRC something around 3,2V for SDR-SDRAM)
I think I've said it before but damn, just one trip to a scrapyard like this and I'd probably be set for life as far as my retro cravings are concerned. 😄 I'd be most interested in the 386 board, since it is very similar to my first 386! Also, sad to see all those discarded Back-UPS CS 500s! They're probably mostly fine, just need 1 or 2 caps replaced so that they don't prematurely complain about the battery needing replacement. I still have many of those in use at my clients (the 650VA version to be precise) and with a little TLC, they can last pretty much indefinitely. Thanks to the USB connection, they still do everything that is needed of them, too. I do see the charging circuitry fail on some of them now though, haven't been able to figure that issue out yet unfortunately.
Dude,that scrapyard is epic...I live in Poland, so I'm about to get on the train to Germany and look through all the scrapyards from Rostock to Munich...:D
I'm sorry to be a party pooper, but I do not live in Germany. I'm in the United Arab Emirates - Dubai. I'm not sure how things are in Germany, but I could imagine that you're also not allowed to enter scrapyards and take stuff - even if you offer to pay for the stuff you want to take.
Mr. Bios..! I used to love that stuff, it was generally VERY capable. It might not have as many BIOS options as Mr. Bios normally does because IBM loves to simplify the BIOS to be morelike the eventual PS/2 Model systems. Also, a lot of older motherboards had their models/info on stickers that were stuck to the sides of the ISA/card slots. Some do 'dry out and fall off' due to age, so maybe they could have been lost. That one sticker doesn't help much with identity. Searching a bit at random I found mentions of an IBM-made "Alaris 486 by IBM", which looks like maybe being this thing. It's actually a 486DLC-ish thing, with a full 32-bit bus but no coproc on the CPU, hence the Cyrix FasMath. The CPU socket MAY take full 486 chips, but it may be for a "Pentium Overdrive" variant that IBM also did on that board. If this is the same board, the caps are supposed to be very high quality, with few to no tantalum-bomb-caps to be found. Those cache chips look quite nice, though. If so, it was a "Blue Lightning" board, though I'm still trying to find proper model/FRU numbers! It may also be a "Cougar BL". I'll see if I can find more, but hopefully that helps. Man, "VESA local bus"...that's been a while. Also, I don't miss it. I miss MicroChannel, didn't miss EISA all that much, but actually like and enjoy the PCIe that we mostly use nowadays.
Annnd...yes, I would spend a whole weekend in that scrapyard. I would have no space in my house by the end, I bet...but so many nifty things! I saw storage arrays, I saw one thing that looked like a mains-input UPS there (though getting 480V stuff to work reliably is a TINY bit scary!), and...yeah, I'd lose a lot of time and money AND space to go there. :) It would be great.
Really interesting to see where you get your stuff from. Please do more videos like this. My only option for retro gear is eBay. In my state, anything electrical cannot be sold at recycle centers and must be destroyed. Local authorities are worried people are going to hurt themselves when powering on old equipment. So much good stuff is lost. You are very very lucky.
That is very sad :( Maybe some of this stuff ends up here at my scrapyard. Apparently, there are ships coming from all over the world to UAE - then it continues to other parts of this world (e.g. Malaysia). Very odd to have a rule like this - as if you couldn't hurt yourself by anything else like a knife, scissors, or BBQ equipment.
Something similar here in Canada. You can't even pick up something someone has dumped there, because it would be considered has theft. From what I've heard, they remove some components and melt the rest in a foundry. Recycling is important, but reuse is much better.
Same here in the UK really. Some recycling centres have got a small building where stuff that's obviously got nothing wrong with it is saved and checked and you can basically buy it for a donation sort of thing. Most haven't though, and you're not allowed to take anything as "health and safety" laws won't allow it. Most centres use big "bins" the size of 20 foot containers with an open top that you chuck stuff into from above, so you couldn't go climbing about in those anyway! There's only a few that you can walk into such as the one for old TV's.
Most of the stuff is demolished and then separated into plastics, metal, and electronics. Sometimes, they cut chips out of motherboards - o guess it's faster than desoldering them. I hear many traders mentioning that things are then shipped to Malaysia (maybe also a good place for scrapyards).
Clicked because at least the local car boot sale here has almost equally interesting gems pop up every now and then. Latest gem saved from there was a Epox EP-51MVP3E-M. Super Socket 7, ATX format, MVP3 chipset and 1MB cache. Perfect board to drop a K6-II+ or a III+ onto, alongside either a S3 Savage 4+Voodoo 2 combo or Voodoo Banshee.
Wow.. some of those piles look like a big avalanche risk. 😲 I think the problem with a lot of them is that they are upside down and all of the electrons have fallen out. 😁
It is a very interesting place! No idea why all this stuff comes to the United Arab Emirates, but old electronics arrive by ships multiple times per month. Every two weeks, the place changes. The new stuff comes in, old stuff goes somewhere else in Asia.
Yes, well - I got used to seeing 486 boards (socket 2/3) with VLB, only later I understood that this is having a blue lightning CPU under that heatsink. Looking forward to testing that board!
I had one of these computers, I made a video about it. I also have such a motherboard (I may have sold it) and an IBM Blue Lightning that uses a similar CPU - basically a 386 at 100 MHz :D
Your scrapyard is really awesome. I wish we had stuff like that in Florida, USA. Unfortunately, all our stuff just goes into the dump, where it's crushed under more trash. I've tried contacting them about obtaining old computer equipment and that isn't something that is possible.
Very sad because it wouldn't be that difficult to just set aside a few old cases for you to check. I mean, I understand that they might not want people to run around their scrapyard, but having a dedicated area where nobody can get hurt wouldn't be so bad. Additionally, they could raise some money. Luckily, at my scrapyard, it's not restricted. As long as you're friendly to the people working there, you'll have no difficulty to look through the stuff they have there.
I'm thinking about it. I do have a space problem and I would like to bring those items to people who want to experience their childhood again. That is what brought me to this hobby. I just decided to also make videos about it. The scrapyard was an amazing coincidence that might help make this work. I'm still thinking about it, but this is what I want to do anyway. I have way too much old hardware including duplicates!
Every time i go to the scrap yard i see old computers and i want to take them but in Australia the scrap yards/dumps dont let you take them anymore it sucks cause iv seen so many
It's like you are getting these from some ancient Egyptian pyramid the dust is so thick! I see a case iMac clone case I had my PC in back in the late 90s. I wish I could share photos in the comments!
I still wonder how one makes money with recycling considering all the logistics. Scrap electronics are collected all over the world, then shipped to a place like the UAE just for disassembly, and then they continue to Asia. I just feel like there's so much overhead and logistics involved.
Some really nice finds again! Wish there was a place like that where I am in the UK but alas, I'm not sure if there's hardly anywhere like that, certainly not locally to me anyway. Probably just as well anyway, i'd be in there filling my Transit van as full as I could get with crt monitors and old PCs with nowhere to store it - and i've already got a load old arcade and computer stuff in storage! 🤣. Speaking of arcade machines, if those TV sets in boxes are 4:3 and not 16:9, i'd definitely have tried to buy them as they'd almost certainly have perfect crts in them for replacements in 29" arcade monitors. 😃
Those CRTs looked like new. I mean, who keeps so many boxes with plastic and packaging material. Even the "Circle" boxes were full of PC cases - never used. Crazy to think of how unused stock will end up as scrap metal one day.
@@bitsundbolts Indeed! I'd bet probably at least 50% (or likely even more) of the stuff in many of these sorts of places has got absolutely nothing wrong with it! I sometimes look in the big "bins" in my local tip when I go there (not that you're allowed to take anything unfortunately!), in the one where old tv's get put and the one for electronics, there's probably most of the time nothing wrong with most of what's in there, it's just been thrown away because people have "upgraded". I managed to pick up some of those "rack" pc's last year from someone I know where they were going to be scrapped. At least some stuff gets saved and ends up on eBay and the like, but then it is pretty expensive most of the time! Bought a basic 386 pc a few years ago (just the base unit, no monitor or anything), cost me something like £100-£150 if I remember correctly, which actually probably isn't that bad these days!
@@bitsundbolts Just remembered actually, i've had quite a bit of really good electronics and arcade equipment from some arcade operators over the years - I picked up some decent vintage pc stuff similar to your stuff a couple of years ago from a local op as some arcade machines and quiz machines normally used standard pcs with special i/o boards to connect them into the cabinet controls, coin slot, monitor etc., I know I picked up maybe a couple of P2 boards, perhaps some AMD K6/2 ones and I do have a couple of old Bartops with what I think are 286, 386, or 486s in them but not sure which as I can't remember!
Wow, i wished i have a scrapyard like this one at my place! Nowadays these vintage S775 boards (1st gen) are getting more expensive by the year, and i happened to get one with a very low price. Also, i grew up with one of the super socket 7 boards too. MVP3 chipset, MSI 5184. Sadly i got rid of when i was younger because i didnt know better that time! If your videos exists back then, i would have saved the vintage systems. Oh well i hope i can get more chances to preserve one or two more of these. 😄
IT's a common story, I've been rebuilding my own collection as well. I had a couple of boxes of parts ranging spanning about 20 years from the 486 era to the Pentium IV / Athlon XP days. Had at least 3/4 different Socket 3 boards, some Slot Is and a plethora of Socket 7s, plus a couple of Socket 478 and Socket A. Threw everything out about 15 years ago because my mother was giving out about them EVERY TIME I visited 🤣 Morale: If you're parents, and your 20 or 30-something son or daughter has old technology stashed at your place, don't force them to throw it out...bring it to the attic or the garage...or tell'em to get some storage space 🤣
Same here - I got rid of most old PCs. I still have my very first 486 case and board though. One day, I will do a full restoration of that PC. And there is an Athlon XP 3200+ Barton. Of course, now with the scrapyard nearby, I have a lot more than I ever could imagine back then 😅
Hi @bitsundbolts, thanks for sharing your story. Appreciate that adventures you have posted in TH-cam for us to see.☺️ Nowadays I collect vintage motherboards for a lower prices if I can chance upon them. Ebay's motherboards are too expensive and shipping could cost even more, so I skipped that one. Also, I specially aim for motherboards with SiS or VIA chipsets - they are extremely unique, and these are very worth doing a research on. Unfortunately back in the earlier days (2004-2009) these are very stigmatized in tech forums, and people are advised to "get rid of it" very often. Unfortunately I bought into these pieces of information and acted upon it, which I admit it was embarrassing. At least now I got an old S775 board with a VIA chipset and I'll be writing a report on the usage in my github. 😄
Ok, that is what I heard as well. And I see myself ignoring motherboards with sis or via chipsets. Please share the details once you add this information publicly. I'm ready to have my mind changed regarding those boards and chipsets!
@@bitsundbolts Talking about these SiS and VIA chipsets, I spent a large amount of time with them since my younger days. From my history of owning PCs, my first PC (486 DX-33) was a SiS 85C "Single Chip" something chipset bought in late 1994, with the Varta battery soldered on it. Unfortunately, it did not aged well (you know these batteries well than I did) and got severely damaged and disposed of later. It worked normally like the other computers, and it is limited to accepting only up to DX2-66, and the P24T. I did not see much software/hardware incompatibilities or instabilities throughout the 6 years of usage. We had to retire the PC because it was difficult to upgrade as it doesn't have any PCI slots. My second PC was received in the New Year day of 2000. This motherboard was an MSI-5184 (Super Socket 7 VIA MVP3), and it also spent a good 4 years with me playing games such as Counter-Strike and even drawing maps for the game (and practised learning C++ too!) And, the thing rarely crashes (only BSODs when it was running poorly written apps) and the drivers installed did not have any problems with Win98 SE. However, it didn't work well with WinXP (a lot of IRQL_NOT_LESS_EQUAL BSODs) due to the installed EDO RAM (board accepts EDO and SDRAM) inside, so this is the only problem I had seen so far. My third PC was an Athlon XP ThroughBred 2400+ with a KM400 chipset bought in April 2004 (I don't remember the exact motherboard anymore!). Due to the poorly installed heatsink, it kept reporting "VPU recovers" and thought it was all the chipset or incompatibility issues (the root cause is the inadequate cooling!). As I started frequenting some Tech forums, members over there chanting "Get rid of it!", "Poor performance, not a real computer", "Intel processor must fit with Intel chipset" and such. Unfortunately, I acted on the information due to my own carelessness and I disposed of it immediately once I got a S775 unit. There was nothing wrong with the Athlon XP, or the VIA chipset there. So far I had worked with a larger number of motherboards with SiS and VIA chipsets and they do not do what these "tech forums elites" complained. Even if they break down, it is mostly user error, or a minor driver incompatibility. This is from a viewpoint of a general PC user. As mentioned, recently I got hold of a very old VIA P4M900 chipset board, it is still running okay on WinXP. It did crash a few times due to running an incompatible app, but all the drivers did deployed okay. Further testing will be done on the weekend too.
Du Glückspilz! Ich würde mehrere Tage die Sachen untersuchen und mein ganzes Auto vollladen, wenn ich könnte. Das sind garantiert noch viele Schätze wie Cyrix und IDT Prozessoren sowie alte Mobos verbuddelt.
Absolut! Man kann dort Stunden verbringen und immer wieder was neues finden! Und alle zwei Wochen sieht der Schrottplatz anders aus - neue Sachen sind hinzugekommen, alte sind verschwunden. Die Frage ist halt wie lange das anhält!
That would definitely help! Sometimes, it takes me 10 minutes to rearrange the towers of old cases - only to find boring hardware and empty CPU sockets.
I read the title and clicked. My heart beats for e-waste! (and I probably have e-waste and soldering related particles in my blood, which isn't too healthy)
Every two weeks, there is new stuff arriving. The scrapyard changes as there is a constant turnaround. Ships bring old scrap electronics from all over the world, then it mostly seems to be separated here in the United Arab Emirates and then it continues to places like Malaysia.
I'd probably lose my mind if I had access to such a heavenly place. How do you manage to walk out without taking the whole load? I know I would have a hard time to resist.
@bitsundbolts See. I'm reading this and all I'm thinking is how to cheat that rule. Ok, only what I can carry, but that doesn't stipulate how many trips I can make 😂
😂 I am certain that many would want to spend an entire weekend at this place - and fill the trunk or pickup or 40 ton truck. How about a 40 foot container?
Looks like it! I added a post on my Patreon - available to the free tier as well! The board is cleaned and I added more details about what I found out so far. For instance, the jumpers configure the board to run at an FSB of 25MHz 👀
@bitsundbolts 100% - they are very good boards, and great for overclocking. I have two K6-2 570s modified to K6-3+ running in MVP3 based boards, one at 600mhz and another at 630Mhz (though I took that one back to 600mhz for safety since I had to increase the voltage a little)
I also have a few K6-2+ 570 - one is already modded for 256K L2. I never tried to get past 600 MHz on those CPUs - due to lack of a board that can push the FSB past 100. Well, now I got one :) Let's hope it works!
Hi ! many treasures in the scrapyard 🤠 - I ´m a soltek user. I have one in socket A(75JV). Durable & stable, but bad capacitors (I replaced them and is still working). i had some issue years ago with the junpers. Cant´s set de correct FSB!!. I fix it setting the FSB from bios setup - I have a GA-7IXE REV 1.1. Some problems with the boot bios, always stop in the bios shadow other time only beeps and black screen in the first years, after a bios flash complety fix the issues and is till working. The flash was made with a external programmer tool, not under DOS. Greetings from Spain !
I have the same, or very aimilar, slot A motherboard, it was paired with an athlon 800, 512 MB of ram, and at some point got a geforce 4 ti 4400! The temperature sensor got lost, if you can figure out what it is to find a spare it would be awesome! 😁
I think it is a regular thermistor. I think they are still used for 3D printers. What I've seen in the past is that most common values are 10K and 100K thermistors. I might be able to test this when I get to the board - I just hope I won't forget to test it.
10:40 wow some ewaste ptsd right there. When I worked in ewaste we where not allowed to try and fix the macs, they where worth more in scrap Al then the money spend on labor to fix one. the few kg of scrap Al was just worth that much and easier to do then skilled labor..
I go there now since almost 18 months. You make friends with the guys working there. It is quite a large area with people working in groups of 3-5 people. You ask politely if you can check their items - I rarely get a "No". Treat everyone with respect and you will be treated the same way. Once you see something you are interested, you negotiate the price. Most of the time it is per item - rarely per weight. And, it is not cheap. On average, a board will cost 10-20 USD, depending what board it is and how well you can negotiate.
@@bitsundbolts Oh, wow! That's not cheap. Over here, we can take e-waste back and easily get it calculated into the bill as long as we get rid of more than we bring back home. So still a net sale to them. In such cases, we pay by weight. But no assembled items, so only motherboards, drives, processors and the likes *separately*. I'm darn close to the right time to find a new CPU that's newer than my current system, so I'm on top of this. Edit: E-waste goes at €100/metric ton, which comes to 1 cent per kilo.
Wow - that is really cheap. Well, for me, this is literally the only way to get access to old hardware at a "reasonable" price. Shipping to UAE will easily cost 20 USD from other countries and I would be limited to items found on eBay or similar. Even though it isn't super cheap, I prefer the current setup! Also because the scrapyard dictates what content I make :)
Haha, you mean like a cup holder? Regarding the tea: every hour or so, a guy on a bicycle and chai (tea) in a huge flask comes by and serves those cups. Quite an interesting culture. Most people I met at the scrapyard are very very welcoming!
Oh my gosh, that scrap yard is amazing. Treasures, such treasures, hidden amongst the dross. If only I could reach out . . . . . . . pleaseeeeee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The board with the blue socket and the USA flag and Dr BIOS would be the one to explore first. A wash certainly but agree protect the stickers and the history they represent. I wonder what is under that heatsink next to the FPU????
You can always reach out! I read all comments and sometimes I show a banner with contact details in my videos. I will work on the blue socket board very soon. Most probably, there is a BL3 (IBM Blue lightning 386 + 486 instructions and 16KB cache) with 75 MHz. I already cleaned the board. You can go to my Patreon where you will see a picture of the clean board and more details that I could find out. The post is available to all tiers - even the free one!
I wish we had scrapyards like that here in the US. Aside from places like the west coast, you're shit out of luck with finding decent e-waste places minus a few here and there in the largest cities. Otherwise all you'll find is generic recyclers that have petty rules saying you can't buy or even look through their stuff.
Re: clicking on thumbnails: I've had a harder time with youtube presenting multiple thumbnails on videos, and creators being encouraged to create clickbaitier ones, that I went and installed a browser plugin on desktop and enabled a setting on my hacked android client that replaces creator's thumbnails with community sourced ones (in the form of a timestamp of the video, not original images) So I didn't see whatever thumbnail you selected. Sucks that I have to do this for creators who don't abuse this feature, but there are enough who do that I have to take action.
@3:05 Adaptec SCSI controller and there is a 50 pin IDC header for hard drives near the 40 pin IDE and 34 pin floppy headers. EDIT: seems only 40 pin header, soo.....
Oh ein neues Video von mein liebsten TH-camr, der Abend ist gerettet! Bitte mach einfach genau so weiter, bester Content. Man kann so schön in Erinnerungen schwelgen.
Are those beige things scanners? Look for HP ScanJet II Cx units. Worth a fortune if working. One of the original few to have an ADF, and SCSI interface. In general though, I am absolutely foaming at the mouth. I wouldn't be able to leave. Seriously... I'd be trapped there. HP Netserver LMs and LH's, tape backup drives, old servers with full height SCSI hard disks... Ugggh... get me a towel.
If they are in a case, then chances are really high that they work. Boards that have been taken out of cases have issues (scratches, bent pins, etc.) Most of the physical damage can be fixed. My success rate of fixing broken stuff is also quite high.
@@bitsundbolts There are no scrapyards in my city, but i love restoring old electronics and computers. They usually do not die,unless they are abused or exposed to high voltages, heat, liquids, elements etc...
Don't mind the brown stuff covered across the motherboard: its just cocoa powder. 😋 In al seriousness, I love scrapyards such as this...its like a neverending treasure hunt of goodies. 😊
Haha - yeah. I usually stay there for two to three hours. But I am sure you would be able find things for days - and then you can start over because things are changing weekly.
@@bitsundbolts Oh yeah...ended up recovering a gateway destination 2000 as an open box within a box. Had a voodoo 2 alongside with a pentium ii processor. My holy grail is one no-one talks about: Alienware's UFO Desktop Towers of the 90s. 😖😖
Around here stuff is rained on, rusts and is the crushed/shredded and shipped over seas for recycling. Electrics are not sold as they say they need to be safety tested first and it costs too much. 😢
Strange that the sticker says "made in the US" - while the chip underneath it is marked "Biotech" - which would normally imply that the board was from Biostar and hence made in Taiwan.
Yes - initially I thought it's a 486 board. Boy was I surprised when I read up on that board and it might be an IBM blue lightning CPU under that silver heatsink. Which makes this entire board really interesting.
Ah, yeah. Tony (Tony359 on TH-cam) told me stories about UK scrapyards. Most won't allow you to take stuff - or simply won't let you even enter for safety reasons 😔.
Did you grab that Apple Tsunami board? That is from a 9500 or a 9600. The top end workstation from the sort of 1996 era. They did dual processor versions, could take 1.5GB RAM and might be interesting as a project. Be warned the power connector is weird.
Unfortunately, no. The board was already out of the case and it was bad in one corner. I think it would not work and I don't have any experience with old Apple machines.
@@bitsundbolts Shame, those ones are one of the best machines for running PPC BeOS. Not having much experience sounds like the perfect reason to have a play. They do say that learning is fun 😆 If you ever do decide to experiment with a beige era Mac, feel free to reach out. I have a fair amount of experience doing hardware repairs on them, including one of those boards that someone had kept in a pile and knocked a load of bits off! Looking back at the video I suspect that specific one is the 9500 variant. To be certain I'd need to see the power molex better. They're effectively the same though.
I never tried any MR BIOS, but they seem to be amazing and bring extra features sometimes. Let's hope it works because there isn't any BIOS for this board on The Retro Web.
I wanna see the 486 board with both intel and cyrix processors compared with the math coprocessor i wonder if it make a difference also wonder if a dx system would use it at all i would test for myself but not willing to spend the money on components. The hobby has gotten to expensive in recent years.
@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse I'm just really curious I never had the opportunity to try something like this. I even wonder how a cyrix sx cpu will perform with it. Will it rival a dx equivalent or still under perform those math chips were beyond my families financial capabilities in that time period.
Oh, I have to read up on that - I have no idea how this board will perform and what combinations are possible! I'm looking forward to it and hope I can get that video out before year-end!
Man I would have spent weeks trying to find whatever interesting and valuable tech buried in that place. A true heaven for dumpster divers.
I'll make more videos about my trips.
@@bitsundbolts You definitely should make paid tours to old hardware scrapyards for your MENA community. I will be the first one in the line.
You can always reach out via email and we can organize something. I would love to meet people interested in retro hardware, share stories, and just have a good time!
The scrapyard tour is the best part, the fact that the pc cases are intact makes the components more likely to be in one piece.
Yes! I prefer to find items in a case. That means they most likely are in pristine condition and working. Plus, you sometimes get accessories like back plates for motherboards 😉
@@bitsundboltsI normally do too, I was lucky once though - a friend pulled my 386s motherboard from a huge container of scrap. It is an Asus with 40mhz DX CPU and runs beautifully .
@@communalnoodle1356 My recycler has a few towers but in alot of cases cards and boards are just stacked on top of each other. I've seen so many good looking cards that on closer inspection had cut traces, or worse yet, when graphics cards don't have heatsinks protecting the chips and the pins get bent or cut.
@PipBoy3k I hate when that happens - our most recent trip to a recycler most was the same though a few of us are able to repair so we saved what we could.
Clicked to see what the dusty motherboard looks like
And? What do you think? This board was in a cast btw!
Same
@@bitsundbolts That motherboard was DEFINITELY dusty, no question there! :D
that looks like heaven and I would need a storage unit
This is the holy grail of scrap yards
Oh, my goodness. Holy H3ll! So much potential in all those old cases, but just not enough time. I think maybe you found my personal purgatory. I felt a sense of dread, with a touch of depression, during the tour segment. Forced myself to click the thumbs up, no need to punish you for my response. That said, thank you for showing all of it! Should you show more, I will watch, at least until I think you are trolling, which I do not imagine you ever would actually do.
Please enjoy your time away!
Thanks! Oh, there's definitely interesting stuff in those cases. I'll soon try to make a full video just roaming around without music.
The problem I have is: I always forget to take videos! When I'm there, I just go through the stuff and enjoy my time there. What will I find when I open this case - or that case - or that case on the bottom with 20 other cases on top! Haha, it doesn't stop!
Same. Came here to say the same thing. As a lifelong IT nerd, it makes me sad seeing this much potential go to waste. So many good memories of all the good tech shown in the scrapyard portion.
I am blown away by the sheer volume of all that!!! I wouldn't know where to start! Danke! Thank you ❤️ 🇩🇪
as a kind of hobby I look for electronics in dumpsters and curbside stuff! 👍
Haha I love the intro - the subtle "both candidates are inadequate, let's move on" insinuation. Right you are!
😂 Yeah, there isn't any place for politics with so many other things to talk about!
Hard to believe that all those rusty, dirty and dusty old computers were all shiny and brand new once.
Oh my god, i can feel and smell all that dust through the video; the power of the mind! 🤯
Some of those boards are inside a case and completely covered in dust! I already cleaned the boards - and they look amazing! Can't wait to try them after I am back in Dubai.
I felt so much pain during that tour on the scrapyard.... so much lost stuff ...
I clicked for the scrapyard tour - wow! That Alaris board is really interesting. I think it's the "Cougar" model, so that's probably an IBM Blue Lightning at 75MHz under the heatsink.
I just posted the cleaned board on my Patreon - there is a free tier and the post is available to all members - including the free tier.
I already checked the manual and can confirm that the FSB is set to 25 MHz. Which means, you could be absolutely right! There is a triple clocked blue lightning rated at 75 MHz under that silver heatsink!
@@bitsundbolts It's THE one and only 386 (with 486 instructions support slapped on it, that is) that can run Doom. Please do the video on it, it's rarely found outside of the PS/2 systems.
That first board is the famous Alaris Cougar. Very very cool board with a clock tripled IBM Blue Lightning 3 CPU, which is a proper licensed 486 with 16KB cache. But unlike other 486SX chips it can use a separate 387-compatible FPU.
Interesting! I will definitely read up on this board. So far, I have no idea what it is, but I am happy that I picked that case with this board inside. I usually ask to have a look at three or four cases because I need to reshuffle those towers of old PCs. Of course, the guys working there don't like that too much. However, this time, I got lucky with my picks.
I was always amazed by the FPUs not conforming to a single standard. Late 80s FPUs are like GPUs today.
I've always thought the BL was more of a 386 with high clocks and large cache. Did it really have an actual 486 core?
@@mykolapliashechnykov8701 It's an odd duck for sure. As far as I know it is a further in-house development of IBM's 386SLC. But is a 386 with internal cache (which supports write back mode, and is double the size of that of the Intel 486 of the time) still a 386? The IBM CPU supports all 486 instructions, like the Cyrix 486DLC/DRX2 386-socket CPUs, but it is a lot faster clock for clock. From what I've read the 486BL2-50 is a tad faster than an actual Intel 486SX2-50, while at 66Mhz the IBM falls behind a bit. You tell me 😅
That scrapyard looks amazing to dig through. The video alone is enough to trigger that 'clean, sort, save' impulse.
Haha, yes! And something I want to add - every two weeks or so, that scrapyard looks totally different. It is a constant flow of old electronics!
Wow that’s quite a scrap yard. I’ll never see anything like that where I live. Thanks for sharing!
There will be more of it in the future!
I would be interested in the first mobo. It deserves a restoration.
Oh man I wish I had access to a gunk-yard like that where I live in Australia. I'm looking forward to the refurbishment series, I have a board similar to your SOLTEK SL-56D1, mine is a SL-67FV1 Slot 1 with unresolved issues. I will keenly waiting your processes. Your videos are very informative, thank you so much for your time and sharing your knowledge with us ...I learned a lot from you ...keep up the great work.
That's nice to hear! I'll make the videos about those boards as soon as possible!
Very cool finds!
I would love to visit a scrapyard like that, but it would make me very sad and anxious to be unable to rescue EVERYTHING :(.
What that showed me, is how much potential this channel has. So many amazing projects in the future ❤. Possibly an infinite amount
Well, thanks! I'll try my best to make interesting content! The best part is that it isn't me who decides what videos I make. It all depends on what I find at the scrapyard - which makes it also a bit easier. Each item I find seems to have at least one story to tell! It's amazing and super interesting
Awesome place. My wife wouldn't let me go to that kind of place.
Why wouldn't she let you go? I think I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you :)
@bitsundbolts My treasure is junk in her eyes and space eater. Living in flat has some limitations.
Haha! I am in the same boat! I was able to negotiate with my wife however! I got a small storage room to put all this stuff in. Needless to say, I am running out of space.
Envy! Where and how do you guys find these places? I'm betting there's also a difference between countries. Where I live, "scrapyards" usually only break down cars. You can enter these and get spare parts (usually paying a small fee). There are separate places that "recycle" (read: package and send to China to throw into a river) electronics and computers, and these are more fortified than Fort Bloody Knox. They just don't allow anyone in - their explanation, when I asked, was that they'd get in trouble with the EPA and the insurance company...
I can understand the insurance part, but the EPA getting pissy about someone SAVING a bunch of lead and toxic chemicals from being "recycled" (again: tossed into a river in China) to prolong its life seems...very counterproductive 🤣
@@h3llr4iser1 they prob don't want the epa knowing how they're storing the stuff. but i agree they'd prob make more money selling a few things to people like us than shipping it to china as bulk scrap
Nice. That dusty board has a 386 and VLB. Very nice.
Yes, and I saved the VLB VGA card that came with it as well - I just didn't show in the video :)
I just clicked the video, what made me click it was simple:
1, it was a video from Bits und Bolts.
2, It mentioned his famous scrapyard, a place I envy you for having, and getting the opportunity to pick and test and even put some of the old hardware back in service again.
Even with so many of the old legends are there, like old Sound Blasters and the like is really tempting.
The sticker made me ponder at first if you had travelled to the US and visited a scrapyard there for a moment, but that doesn't fit your narrative so to speak :D
👍I'll try to make longer episodes of my visits to the scrapyard - a proper tour. This video were just some clips from my last trip. It is always exciting - you never know what you'll find that day :)
DAMN, an AMD750 Board with an AMD Southbridge and not the VIA 686A.
Nice find!
I couldn't believe it when I saw the board! 99% of the slot type boards are Intel and Slot 1. If I find a Slot A, I definitely take it - even if it has a VIA chipset :)
@@bitsundbolts Back in the day I got an ASUS K7M, which was funny because it was initially sold in a white box. Later got an Epox 7KXA, where I desoldered the Voltage Regulator for the RAM and ran a wire to the ATX Connector (because the RAM Voltage is a bit low, IIRC something around 3,2V for SDR-SDRAM)
I think I've said it before but damn, just one trip to a scrapyard like this and I'd probably be set for life as far as my retro cravings are concerned. 😄 I'd be most interested in the 386 board, since it is very similar to my first 386!
Also, sad to see all those discarded Back-UPS CS 500s! They're probably mostly fine, just need 1 or 2 caps replaced so that they don't prematurely complain about the battery needing replacement. I still have many of those in use at my clients (the 650VA version to be precise) and with a little TLC, they can last pretty much indefinitely. Thanks to the USB connection, they still do everything that is needed of them, too. I do see the charging circuitry fail on some of them now though, haven't been able to figure that issue out yet unfortunately.
A few still in box 29" CRT TVs. 🤯
Yep, i'd definitely have saved those if I could!
Yeah, sometimes there are unused items from decades ago. No idea how they survived that long, who stored them and why!
Dude,that scrapyard is epic...I live in Poland, so I'm about to get on the train to Germany and look through all the scrapyards from Rostock to Munich...:D
I'm sorry to be a party pooper, but I do not live in Germany. I'm in the United Arab Emirates - Dubai. I'm not sure how things are in Germany, but I could imagine that you're also not allowed to enter scrapyards and take stuff - even if you offer to pay for the stuff you want to take.
@bitsundbolts
Damn, I don't know why I thought you were from Germany... never mind, congratulations on your finds and good luck in your further search
I'm from Germany, but I left over 20 years ago.
Clicked on because I wanted to see scrap yard find 😀
It looks like you and Fedor Sumkin go to the same places. He is also interested in old it-technology.
He's the one who took me there. You are right.
Great saves looking forward to seeing these boards cleaned up and working
Same here!
Mr. Bios..! I used to love that stuff, it was generally VERY capable. It might not have as many BIOS options as Mr. Bios normally does because IBM loves to simplify the BIOS to be morelike the eventual PS/2 Model systems. Also, a lot of older motherboards had their models/info on stickers that were stuck to the sides of the ISA/card slots. Some do 'dry out and fall off' due to age, so maybe they could have been lost. That one sticker doesn't help much with identity. Searching a bit at random I found mentions of an IBM-made "Alaris 486 by IBM", which looks like maybe being this thing. It's actually a 486DLC-ish thing, with a full 32-bit bus but no coproc on the CPU, hence the Cyrix FasMath. The CPU socket MAY take full 486 chips, but it may be for a "Pentium Overdrive" variant that IBM also did on that board. If this is the same board, the caps are supposed to be very high quality, with few to no tantalum-bomb-caps to be found. Those cache chips look quite nice, though.
If so, it was a "Blue Lightning" board, though I'm still trying to find proper model/FRU numbers! It may also be a "Cougar BL". I'll see if I can find more, but hopefully that helps.
Man, "VESA local bus"...that's been a while. Also, I don't miss it. I miss MicroChannel, didn't miss EISA all that much, but actually like and enjoy the PCIe that we mostly use nowadays.
Annnd...yes, I would spend a whole weekend in that scrapyard. I would have no space in my house by the end, I bet...but so many nifty things! I saw storage arrays, I saw one thing that looked like a mains-input UPS there (though getting 480V stuff to work reliably is a TINY bit scary!), and...yeah, I'd lose a lot of time and money AND space to go there. :) It would be great.
Scrap yard looks like a grave yard also gold mine, so much good stuff can be saved
Yes... I'll share more of that place in future videos.
Really interesting to see where you get your stuff from. Please do more videos like this. My only option for retro gear is eBay. In my state, anything electrical cannot be sold at recycle centers and must be destroyed. Local authorities are worried people are going to hurt themselves when powering on old equipment. So much good stuff is lost. You are very very lucky.
That is very sad :( Maybe some of this stuff ends up here at my scrapyard. Apparently, there are ships coming from all over the world to UAE - then it continues to other parts of this world (e.g. Malaysia). Very odd to have a rule like this - as if you couldn't hurt yourself by anything else like a knife, scissors, or BBQ equipment.
Something similar here in Canada. You can't even pick up something someone has dumped there, because it would be considered has theft. From what I've heard, they remove some components and melt the rest in a foundry. Recycling is important, but reuse is much better.
Same here in the UK really. Some recycling centres have got a small building where stuff that's obviously got nothing wrong with it is saved and checked and you can basically buy it for a donation sort of thing. Most haven't though, and you're not allowed to take anything as "health and safety" laws won't allow it. Most centres use big "bins" the size of 20 foot containers with an open top that you chuck stuff into from above, so you couldn't go climbing about in those anyway! There's only a few that you can walk into such as the one for old TV's.
That scrapyard is a retro nerd wet dream... I've got into a couple of yard here in Portugal but nothing to that extend!!!
Well, I am definitely blessed with having such a place nearby - who would have known to find something like this in the middle of the desert!
Can you share location of this scrapyard? I’m currently on vacation in Dubai, maybe I could check in to see what’s going on there )) thanks!
For how many days will you be in Dubai? Please contact me via email if you can.
Fascinating tour. What happens to all of the ewaste?
Most of the stuff is demolished and then separated into plastics, metal, and electronics. Sometimes, they cut chips out of motherboards - o guess it's faster than desoldering them.
I hear many traders mentioning that things are then shipped to Malaysia (maybe also a good place for scrapyards).
could you please make a video on how you organise and store your collection of parts please?
I can do that after I move - at the moment it's not well organized.
Super cool! Where is it?
United Arab Emirates
amazing!
Clicked because at least the local car boot sale here has almost equally interesting gems pop up every now and then. Latest gem saved from there was a Epox EP-51MVP3E-M. Super Socket 7, ATX format, MVP3 chipset and 1MB cache. Perfect board to drop a K6-II+ or a III+ onto, alongside either a S3 Savage 4+Voodoo 2 combo or Voodoo Banshee.
Very nice! I am looking forward to some more Super Socket 7 goodness!
3:23 lol that clock chip is as old as me 😅
Wow.. some of those piles look like a big avalanche risk. 😲 I think the problem with a lot of them is that they are upside down and all of the electrons have fallen out. 😁
Awesome video!!
Great find!
Yes! I'm looking forward to testing all those boards.
First mobo looks very interesting
Check my Patreon (free tier) for more details and a cleaned board!
Well chosen miniature
Wow never saw a socket like that before
The made in USA made me look as I don't think I've seen any chips like that made here. But I had to skip to the scrapyard just to see and wow! How?
It is a very interesting place! No idea why all this stuff comes to the United Arab Emirates, but old electronics arrive by ships multiple times per month. Every two weeks, the place changes. The new stuff comes in, old stuff goes somewhere else in Asia.
2:15 nope, not only ISA. It is a Vesa Localbus board!
Yes, well - I got used to seeing 486 boards (socket 2/3) with VLB, only later I understood that this is having a blue lightning CPU under that heatsink. Looking forward to testing that board!
holy crap this makes those computer reset videos I saw look tiny in comparison.
I had one of these computers, I made a video about it. I also have such a motherboard (I may have sold it) and an IBM Blue Lightning that uses a similar CPU - basically a 386 at 100 MHz :D
niiice! very interesting repair videos come they will, as Yoda used to say
an amazing pile of computers. I would spend hours there, my heart would be very pleased, what gems are hidden there ♥
You literally can spend a full day there! It would be a nice adventure!
@@bitsundbolts I wish I could be there with you, I'm sure you'll find real treasures there 🤩
Well if you ever plan a vacation, consider Dubai / UAE. We can go there and spend a full day hunting for treasures 😉
@@bitsundbolts normally I'm thinking about it :D
Your scrapyard is really awesome. I wish we had stuff like that in Florida, USA. Unfortunately, all our stuff just goes into the dump, where it's crushed under more trash. I've tried contacting them about obtaining old computer equipment and that isn't something that is possible.
Very sad because it wouldn't be that difficult to just set aside a few old cases for you to check. I mean, I understand that they might not want people to run around their scrapyard, but having a dedicated area where nobody can get hurt wouldn't be so bad. Additionally, they could raise some money.
Luckily, at my scrapyard, it's not restricted. As long as you're friendly to the people working there, you'll have no difficulty to look through the stuff they have there.
You could start a whole business model selling and shipping vintage electronics to people like us lol
I'm thinking about it. I do have a space problem and I would like to bring those items to people who want to experience their childhood again. That is what brought me to this hobby. I just decided to also make videos about it. The scrapyard was an amazing coincidence that might help make this work. I'm still thinking about it, but this is what I want to do anyway. I have way too much old hardware including duplicates!
Every time i go to the scrap yard i see old computers and i want to take them but in Australia the scrap yards/dumps dont let you take them anymore it sucks cause iv seen so many
That's really sad :(
I guess it's hard to make friends there if you can't even enter the scrapyards. What about a voluntary day or an internship 😅
Crazy or maybe even insane amount of interesting stuff. 😮
And that was just one trip - the stuff there changes every two weeks. Sometimes weekly.
It's like you are getting these from some ancient Egyptian pyramid the dust is so thick! I see a case iMac clone case I had my PC in back in the late 90s. I wish I could share photos in the comments!
I have seen that blue socket on IBM 486 pc
You're correct! It is an IBM as it seems! Under that silver heatsink is a blue lightning CPU.
i love old hardware thats the reason why i did open the video
Life is unfair! I should be the one who has access to such a heavenly place....
I'm sorry. I know many would love to have access to a scrapyard like this. Maybe your next vacation should be scheduled for Dubai?
I want to start a computer recycling place in Australia.
I still wonder how one makes money with recycling considering all the logistics. Scrap electronics are collected all over the world, then shipped to a place like the UAE just for disassembly, and then they continue to Asia. I just feel like there's so much overhead and logistics involved.
I wish we had a ewaste scrap yard near here
Some really nice finds again! Wish there was a place like that where I am in the UK but alas, I'm not sure if there's hardly anywhere like that, certainly not locally to me anyway. Probably just as well anyway, i'd be in there filling my Transit van as full as I could get with crt monitors and old PCs with nowhere to store it - and i've already got a load old arcade and computer stuff in storage! 🤣. Speaking of arcade machines, if those TV sets in boxes are 4:3 and not 16:9, i'd definitely have tried to buy them as they'd almost certainly have perfect crts in them for replacements in 29" arcade monitors. 😃
Those CRTs looked like new. I mean, who keeps so many boxes with plastic and packaging material. Even the "Circle" boxes were full of PC cases - never used. Crazy to think of how unused stock will end up as scrap metal one day.
@@bitsundbolts Indeed! I'd bet probably at least 50% (or likely even more) of the stuff in many of these sorts of places has got absolutely nothing wrong with it! I sometimes look in the big "bins" in my local tip when I go there (not that you're allowed to take anything unfortunately!), in the one where old tv's get put and the one for electronics, there's probably most of the time nothing wrong with most of what's in there, it's just been thrown away because people have "upgraded". I managed to pick up some of those "rack" pc's last year from someone I know where they were going to be scrapped. At least some stuff gets saved and ends up on eBay and the like, but then it is pretty expensive most of the time! Bought a basic 386 pc a few years ago (just the base unit, no monitor or anything), cost me something like £100-£150 if I remember correctly, which actually probably isn't that bad these days!
@@bitsundbolts Just remembered actually, i've had quite a bit of really good electronics and arcade equipment from some arcade operators over the years - I picked up some decent vintage pc stuff similar to your stuff a couple of years ago from a local op as some arcade machines and quiz machines normally used standard pcs with special i/o boards to connect them into the cabinet controls, coin slot, monitor etc., I know I picked up maybe a couple of P2 boards, perhaps some AMD K6/2 ones and I do have a couple of old Bartops with what I think are 286, 386, or 486s in them but not sure which as I can't remember!
Wow, i wished i have a scrapyard like this one at my place!
Nowadays these vintage S775 boards (1st gen) are getting more expensive by the year, and i happened to get one with a very low price.
Also, i grew up with one of the super socket 7 boards too. MVP3 chipset, MSI 5184. Sadly i got rid of when i was younger because i didnt know better that time!
If your videos exists back then, i would have saved the vintage systems. Oh well i hope i can get more chances to preserve one or two more of these. 😄
IT's a common story, I've been rebuilding my own collection as well. I had a couple of boxes of parts ranging spanning about 20 years from the 486 era to the Pentium IV / Athlon XP days. Had at least 3/4 different Socket 3 boards, some Slot Is and a plethora of Socket 7s, plus a couple of Socket 478 and Socket A. Threw everything out about 15 years ago because my mother was giving out about them EVERY TIME I visited 🤣
Morale: If you're parents, and your 20 or 30-something son or daughter has old technology stashed at your place, don't force them to throw it out...bring it to the attic or the garage...or tell'em to get some storage space 🤣
Same here - I got rid of most old PCs. I still have my very first 486 case and board though. One day, I will do a full restoration of that PC. And there is an Athlon XP 3200+ Barton.
Of course, now with the scrapyard nearby, I have a lot more than I ever could imagine back then 😅
Hi @bitsundbolts, thanks for sharing your story. Appreciate that adventures you have posted in TH-cam for us to see.☺️
Nowadays I collect vintage motherboards for a lower prices if I can chance upon them. Ebay's motherboards are too expensive and shipping could cost even more, so I skipped that one.
Also, I specially aim for motherboards with SiS or VIA chipsets - they are extremely unique, and these are very worth doing a research on. Unfortunately back in the earlier days (2004-2009) these are very stigmatized in tech forums, and people are advised to "get rid of it" very often. Unfortunately I bought into these pieces of information and acted upon it, which I admit it was embarrassing.
At least now I got an old S775 board with a VIA chipset and I'll be writing a report on the usage in my github. 😄
Ok, that is what I heard as well. And I see myself ignoring motherboards with sis or via chipsets. Please share the details once you add this information publicly. I'm ready to have my mind changed regarding those boards and chipsets!
@@bitsundbolts
Talking about these SiS and VIA chipsets, I spent a large amount of time with them since my younger days.
From my history of owning PCs, my first PC (486 DX-33) was a SiS 85C "Single Chip" something chipset bought in late 1994, with the Varta battery soldered on it. Unfortunately, it did not aged well (you know these batteries well than I did) and got severely damaged and disposed of later. It worked normally like the other computers, and it is limited to accepting only up to DX2-66, and the P24T. I did not see much software/hardware incompatibilities or instabilities throughout the 6 years of usage. We had to retire the PC because it was difficult to upgrade as it doesn't have any PCI slots.
My second PC was received in the New Year day of 2000. This motherboard was an MSI-5184 (Super Socket 7 VIA MVP3), and it also spent a good 4 years with me playing games such as Counter-Strike and even drawing maps for the game (and practised learning C++ too!) And, the thing rarely crashes (only BSODs when it was running poorly written apps) and the drivers installed did not have any problems with Win98 SE. However, it didn't work well with WinXP (a lot of IRQL_NOT_LESS_EQUAL BSODs) due to the installed EDO RAM (board accepts EDO and SDRAM) inside, so this is the only problem I had seen so far.
My third PC was an Athlon XP ThroughBred 2400+ with a KM400 chipset bought in April 2004 (I don't remember the exact motherboard anymore!). Due to the poorly installed heatsink, it kept reporting "VPU recovers" and thought it was all the chipset or incompatibility issues (the root cause is the inadequate cooling!). As I started frequenting some Tech forums, members over there chanting "Get rid of it!", "Poor performance, not a real computer", "Intel processor must fit with Intel chipset" and such. Unfortunately, I acted on the information due to my own carelessness and I disposed of it immediately once I got a S775 unit. There was nothing wrong with the Athlon XP, or the VIA chipset there.
So far I had worked with a larger number of motherboards with SiS and VIA chipsets and they do not do what these "tech forums elites" complained. Even if they break down, it is mostly user error, or a minor driver incompatibility. This is from a viewpoint of a general PC user.
As mentioned, recently I got hold of a very old VIA P4M900 chipset board, it is still running okay on WinXP. It did crash a few times due to running an incompatible app, but all the drivers did deployed okay. Further testing will be done on the weekend too.
386 with 72pin RAM and VLB? That's why!
Dump the bios! Amazing!
I will definitely save the BIOS. I just hope it is intact.
Du Glückspilz! Ich würde mehrere Tage die Sachen untersuchen und mein ganzes Auto vollladen, wenn ich könnte. Das sind garantiert noch viele Schätze wie Cyrix und IDT Prozessoren sowie alte Mobos verbuddelt.
Absolut! Man kann dort Stunden verbringen und immer wieder was neues finden! Und alle zwei Wochen sieht der Schrottplatz anders aus - neue Sachen sind hinzugekommen, alte sind verschwunden. Die Frage ist halt wie lange das anhält!
You need an endoscope for your phone so you can stick it in a stacked PC and see what's inside without pulling the whole stack - lol -.
That would definitely help! Sometimes, it takes me 10 minutes to rearrange the towers of old cases - only to find boring hardware and empty CPU sockets.
I read the title and clicked. My heart beats for e-waste! (and I probably have e-waste and soldering related particles in my blood, which isn't too healthy)
Haha! Well, there are shiploads of e-waste!
@@bitsundbolts Where?
*furiously turns head everywhere* :-D
Every two weeks, there is new stuff arriving. The scrapyard changes as there is a constant turnaround. Ships bring old scrap electronics from all over the world, then it mostly seems to be separated here in the United Arab Emirates and then it continues to places like Malaysia.
I'd probably lose my mind if I had access to such a heavenly place. How do you manage to walk out without taking the whole load? I know I would have a hard time to resist.
My rule: only what I can carry 😂
Sometimes, I find a lot, sometimes not so much. If I had enough space, I wouldn't mind getting a pickup truck 😅
@bitsundbolts See. I'm reading this and all I'm thinking is how to cheat that rule.
Ok, only what I can carry, but that doesn't stipulate how many trips I can make 😂
😂 I am certain that many would want to spend an entire weekend at this place - and fill the trunk or pickup or 40 ton truck. How about a 40 foot container?
Wow, where is that scrapyard?
It's in the United Arab Emirates.
That first board is an IBM Blue Lighting
Looks like it! I added a post on my Patreon - available to the free tier as well!
The board is cleaned and I added more details about what I found out so far. For instance, the jumpers configure the board to run at an FSB of 25MHz 👀
ATX MVP3 based Super Socket boards are rare and very good boards
Good that I took it then :) I think I only have one or two other ATX Super Socket 7 boards. Perfect for a nice AMD K6-2+ build.
@bitsundbolts 100% - they are very good boards, and great for overclocking.
I have two K6-2 570s modified to K6-3+ running in MVP3 based boards, one at 600mhz and another at 630Mhz (though I took that one back to 600mhz for safety since I had to increase the voltage a little)
I also have a few K6-2+ 570 - one is already modded for 256K L2. I never tried to get past 600 MHz on those CPUs - due to lack of a board that can push the FSB past 100. Well, now I got one :) Let's hope it works!
Just remember that those chipsets didn’t play nice with ATi vga cards back then 😁
@@bitsundboltsIts fun believe me :-)
Hi !
many treasures in the scrapyard 🤠
- I ´m a soltek user. I have one in socket A(75JV). Durable & stable, but bad capacitors (I replaced them and is still working). i had some issue years ago with the junpers. Cant´s set de correct FSB!!. I fix it setting the FSB from bios setup
- I have a GA-7IXE REV 1.1. Some problems with the boot bios, always stop in the bios shadow other time only beeps and black screen in the first years, after a bios flash complety fix the issues and is till working. The flash was made with a external programmer tool, not under DOS.
Greetings from Spain !
Thanks for this information! I hope I'll remember when I get to those boards and I run into trouble. 🙏
Das ist ja wirklich mal ein Schmuckstück
I have the same, or very aimilar, slot A motherboard, it was paired with an athlon 800, 512 MB of ram, and at some point got a geforce 4 ti 4400!
The temperature sensor got lost, if you can figure out what it is to find a spare it would be awesome! 😁
I think it is a regular thermistor. I think they are still used for 3D printers. What I've seen in the past is that most common values are 10K and 100K thermistors. I might be able to test this when I get to the board - I just hope I won't forget to test it.
10:40 wow some ewaste ptsd right there. When I worked in ewaste we where not allowed to try and fix the macs, they where worth more in scrap Al then the money spend on labor to fix one. the few kg of scrap Al was just worth that much and easier to do then skilled labor..
Most people working at the scrapyard will not know the value of the items they scrap - but that's understandable - you're there for the raw materials.
yep those CPU latches were the standard
Hi! How the scrapyard works? You took home anything you want? Pay by weight? Yo could open any case you want to explore the inner boards? Thanks!
I go there now since almost 18 months. You make friends with the guys working there. It is quite a large area with people working in groups of 3-5 people. You ask politely if you can check their items - I rarely get a "No". Treat everyone with respect and you will be treated the same way. Once you see something you are interested, you negotiate the price. Most of the time it is per item - rarely per weight. And, it is not cheap. On average, a board will cost 10-20 USD, depending what board it is and how well you can negotiate.
@@bitsundbolts Oh, wow! That's not cheap. Over here, we can take e-waste back and easily get it calculated into the bill as long as we get rid of more than we bring back home. So still a net sale to them. In such cases, we pay by weight. But no assembled items, so only motherboards, drives, processors and the likes *separately*.
I'm darn close to the right time to find a new CPU that's newer than my current system, so I'm on top of this.
Edit: E-waste goes at €100/metric ton, which comes to 1 cent per kilo.
Wow - that is really cheap. Well, for me, this is literally the only way to get access to old hardware at a "reasonable" price. Shipping to UAE will easily cost 20 USD from other countries and I would be limited to items found on eBay or similar. Even though it isn't super cheap, I prefer the current setup! Also because the scrapyard dictates what content I make :)
It's funny that in the scrapyard part of the video there's like 3 coffee cups inside of the computers, but none in any of the CD drivers.
Haha, you mean like a cup holder? Regarding the tea: every hour or so, a guy on a bicycle and chai (tea) in a huge flask comes by and serves those cups. Quite an interesting culture. Most people I met at the scrapyard are very very welcoming!
@bitsundbolts like a cup holder Indeed 😉
Where is this scrapyard?? I want to go there!!
United Arab Emirates
3:00 "wtf" written on the dust =]
Haha true! I didn't see that - but that must have happened when I took the board out of the case or transported home. 😂
Oh my gosh, that scrap yard is amazing. Treasures, such treasures, hidden amongst the dross. If only I could reach out . . . . . . . pleaseeeeee . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The board with the blue socket and the USA flag and Dr BIOS would be the one to explore first. A wash certainly but agree protect the stickers and the history they represent. I wonder what is under that heatsink next to the FPU????
You can always reach out! I read all comments and sometimes I show a banner with contact details in my videos.
I will work on the blue socket board very soon. Most probably, there is a BL3 (IBM Blue lightning 386 + 486 instructions and 16KB cache) with 75 MHz.
I already cleaned the board. You can go to my Patreon where you will see a picture of the clean board and more details that I could find out.
The post is available to all tiers - even the free one!
I wish we had scrapyards like that here in the US. Aside from places like the west coast, you're shit out of luck with finding decent e-waste places minus a few here and there in the largest cities. Otherwise all you'll find is generic recyclers that have petty rules saying you can't buy or even look through their stuff.
Re: clicking on thumbnails: I've had a harder time with youtube presenting multiple thumbnails on videos, and creators being encouraged to create clickbaitier ones, that I went and installed a browser plugin on desktop and enabled a setting on my hacked android client that replaces creator's thumbnails with community sourced ones (in the form of a timestamp of the video, not original images)
So I didn't see whatever thumbnail you selected. Sucks that I have to do this for creators who don't abuse this feature, but there are enough who do that I have to take action.
@3:05 Adaptec SCSI controller and there is a 50 pin IDC header for hard drives near the 40 pin IDE and 34 pin floppy headers.
EDIT: seems only 40 pin header, soo.....
I washed the board now - it looks amazing! can't wait to look up some documentation and figure things out.
Oh ein neues Video von mein liebsten TH-camr, der Abend ist gerettet! Bitte mach einfach genau so weiter, bester Content. Man kann so schön in Erinnerungen schwelgen.
Danke dir!
Are those beige things scanners? Look for HP ScanJet II Cx units. Worth a fortune if working. One of the original few to have an ADF, and SCSI interface. In general though, I am absolutely foaming at the mouth. I wouldn't be able to leave. Seriously... I'd be trapped there. HP Netserver LMs and LH's, tape backup drives, old servers with full height SCSI hard disks... Ugggh... get me a towel.
There are so many things! I am not even looking for scanners or LCD monitors (which most of the beige things probably were). It is a magical place!
@@bitsundbolts Now I'm depressed. I like magical places!
Ahh, I certainly didn't want this to happen!
I click before you upload the video
I am sure most of those electronic devices work or are recoverable. They do not deserve that amount of hatred and abandonment.🙂
I read "elections devices" first...😂 Oh my god, it's finally over
If they are in a case, then chances are really high that they work. Boards that have been taken out of cases have issues (scratches, bent pins, etc.) Most of the physical damage can be fixed. My success rate of fixing broken stuff is also quite high.
@@bitsundbolts There are no scrapyards in my city, but i love restoring old electronics and computers. They usually do not die,unless they are abused or exposed to high voltages, heat, liquids, elements etc...
Don't mind the brown stuff covered across the motherboard: its just cocoa powder. 😋
In al seriousness, I love scrapyards such as this...its like a neverending treasure hunt of goodies. 😊
Haha - yeah. I usually stay there for two to three hours. But I am sure you would be able find things for days - and then you can start over because things are changing weekly.
@@bitsundbolts Oh yeah...ended up recovering a gateway destination 2000 as an open box within a box. Had a voodoo 2 alongside with a pentium ii processor.
My holy grail is one no-one talks about:
Alienware's UFO Desktop Towers of the 90s. 😖😖
Around here stuff is rained on, rusts and is the crushed/shredded and shipped over seas for recycling. Electrics are not sold as they say they need to be safety tested first and it costs too much. 😢
Very unfortunate. Here in UAE, it rarely rains - the stuff just get dusty. Once you wash off the dust, most boards look like new.
nice crust of dust
Haha, yes! I already cleaned the boards - they look amazing :)
Zero Insertion force latch
for me it's a real gold mine :D ...or rather silicon !
Imagine a heaven like that scrapyard but it never ends and you can't actually leave and take anything out. Heaven or hell?
You know, when I go there, I have one backpack. The amount of stuff I have to leave behind feels bad. Bitter sweet!
Strange that the sticker says "made in the US" - while the chip underneath it is marked "Biotech" - which would normally imply that the board was from Biostar and hence made in Taiwan.
Uh, I am not sure I follow. Those are two different boards - I never took off the "made in the US" sticker. Did you skip over some parts in the video?
@@bitsundbolts Ah, I must have missed that bit
You say it is “only is a slots”, but it clearly has two vesa local bus slots.
Yes - initially I thought it's a 486 board. Boy was I surprised when I read up on that board and it might be an IBM blue lightning CPU under that silver heatsink. Which makes this entire board really interesting.
It's not fair - why isn't there anything like that anywhere near to where I live!?
I'm sorry. Where do you live?
@ I'm in the UK
Ah, yeah. Tony (Tony359 on TH-cam) told me stories about UK scrapyards. Most won't allow you to take stuff - or simply won't let you even enter for safety reasons 😔.
Did you grab that Apple Tsunami board? That is from a 9500 or a 9600. The top end workstation from the sort of 1996 era. They did dual processor versions, could take 1.5GB RAM and might be interesting as a project. Be warned the power connector is weird.
Unfortunately, no. The board was already out of the case and it was bad in one corner. I think it would not work and I don't have any experience with old Apple machines.
@@bitsundbolts Shame, those ones are one of the best machines for running PPC BeOS. Not having much experience sounds like the perfect reason to have a play. They do say that learning is fun 😆 If you ever do decide to experiment with a beige era Mac, feel free to reach out. I have a fair amount of experience doing hardware repairs on them, including one of those boards that someone had kept in a pile and knocked a load of bits off! Looking back at the video I suspect that specific one is the 9500 variant. To be certain I'd need to see the power molex better. They're effectively the same though.
Makes me sad to see all those old, yet still potentially functional computers at the end just rotting away.
lol mr bios.......is that like mr fusion? Does it run on 1.21 jiggawatts? lol
I never tried any MR BIOS, but they seem to be amazing and bring extra features sometimes. Let's hope it works because there isn't any BIOS for this board on The Retro Web.
I wanna see the 486 board with both intel and cyrix processors compared with the math coprocessor i wonder if it make a difference also wonder if a dx system would use it at all i would test for myself but not willing to spend the money on components. The hobby has gotten to expensive in recent years.
I'm not sure a DX would even boot with a co-processor installed. They'd occupy the same spot on the bus.
@AnnaVannieuwenhuyse I'm just really curious I never had the opportunity to try something like this. I even wonder how a cyrix sx cpu will perform with it. Will it rival a dx equivalent or still under perform those math chips were beyond my families financial capabilities in that time period.
Oh, I have to read up on that - I have no idea how this board will perform and what combinations are possible! I'm looking forward to it and hope I can get that video out before year-end!