Compaq Deskpro boards/hard drives from the late 1990s

[Grant Taylor]

On 7/21/21 3:20 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> I _think_ ISA ones are in more demand these days.

I suspect there are more people restoring ISA systems than PCI systems. 
But that's probably a matter of time.

> CD, or CDRW, or DVD, or DVDRW?

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.)

> You can't tell?! They don't even look similar. Google will give you 
> pics in seconds.

Sadly, that might not be enough to discern things.  I've seen similar 
cases used for a lot of different internal components.  The OP (or 
someone else on their behalf) is almost certainly going to need to get 
more details to share with would be buyers.

> You will need to identify this stuff much more specifically. Makes, 
> models, capacities, speeds, etc.

Yep.

> E.g. nobody wants 10base-2 or Thick Ethernet cards much any more. UTP, 
> slightly more so: 10base-T, not much, 100base-T somewhat yes.

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.

> Plain old CD? Probably not. DVDRW? You might find takers.

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.

> Graphics: depends what. Early 3D cards are somewhat wanted.

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.

> Tiny IDE hard disks, probably not. CF-card is cheaper, faster and 
> more reliable.

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.

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.

> It's not worth a lot.
> 
> OTOH, those unique Compaq combined 5.25" + 3.5" floppy drives are 
> quite sought-after.

#truth

> SCSI drives are quite desirable.
> 
> It's probably not worth a _lot_ but maybe a few hundred bucks if 
> you are specific and ship anywhere. Remember a lot of collectors are 
> in countries where this stuff is very hard to come by, and will pay 
> top dollar.
> 
> But you need to be willing to be specific, list exact model numbers, 
> take photos showing ID labels, and ideally, to _test it_.

Yep.

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.



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die