Compaq Deskpro boards/hard drives from the late 1990s

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 21 Jul 2021 at 18:00, Grant Taylor via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>
> I suspect there are more people restoring ISA systems than PCI systems.
> But that's probably a matter of time.

True. What I was thinking of was the relatively narrow gap between PCI
systems starting to appear and most of them gaining built-in NICs.

> I doubt it's likely, but (traditional) WORM drives are not out of the
> question.  (I'm not counting CDs / DVDs in the /traditional/ WORM mix,
> despite many early writable drives being exactly that.)

Fair point. I'd expect SCSI but it's certainly possible.

> Sadly, that might not be enough to discern things.  I've seen similar
> cases used for a lot of different internal components.

No, I meant holding a NIC in one's hand and looking at it.

Fat contact strips: probably ISA.
2 sets, with thin parts interleaving 2 sets at different levels on the
edge connector: EISA
Narrow contact strips: PCI. Which variant, of course, has a bigger
option... PCI, 64-bit PCI, PCI-X, PCI-E, etc.

>   The OP (or
> someone else on their behalf) is almost certainly going to need to get
> more details to share with would be buyers.

Strongly agreed.

> Um ... that's not true.  I just purchased 10Base? cards specifically for
> the AUI ports to connect to my 10Base5 / "Thicknet" segment.  Depending
> on price, I'd probably walk away from a swap meet with more too.
>

(!)

OK. Few people will want? ;-)

> It depends.  I've talked with a handful of people wanting some sort of
> CD-ROM or their retro computers.  They prefer the faster IDE drives.
> But they would rather have the slower IDE drives than nothing.  So I
> believe that there is a reasonable chance that CD-ROMs sill have some value.

OK.

> I still see some value in 2D cards.  I'd lay down a $5 bill for a PCI 2D
> card like I had years ago.  --  If I'm willing to do it, I assume that
> there are others that are willing to do it too.

OK, fair enough.

> It depends on the capacity and price.  And /known/ status of the drive.
> "For parts"?  Probably not much value at all.  Maybe for in a lot for
> someone else to test.  "Known working / passed SpinRite Level 4" much
> more likely.

Yes, true. Known good, recently tested, will be worth much more.

> They aren't IDE, but I suspect that drives in IBM PS/2s that were known
> to be working would be worth more than the smaller IDE drives.  I think
> that mostly means ESDI and SCSI.

Oh, yes, those are like hen's teeth.


> Though it sounds like the OP wasn't interested in doing this.  As such,
> I suspect that the OP is probably looking for someone to acquire (large
> portions of) the lot and let that buyer test / resell things with
> details and shipping to lots of places.

Well yes.

Someone in the 2600 mag FB group recently posted a few pics of a
collection, including multiple _boxed_ IBM PS/2s, and said they wanted
rid of them all as one lot.

In parts, it was 100% definitely thousands of dollars' worth.

As a job lot? Lucky to find someone, I suspect.

-- 
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