Do you own any PC components that are obscure/interesting?I have an ageia physx card, which is totally useless outside of a few tech demos and games from 2006/7 as nvidia bought the tech and instantly stopped supporting them.
Remember when computers used to beep at you? I still use this.
>>109049872Do they even still put headers for these on motherboards? I've never checked.
>>109049880They still do! Got it on my B650E which is a PCIE5 board.
got one of those dvi to hdmi dongles that still work. radeon hd 4870 gpu has no modern driver support and no hdmi port but windows 11 ltsc minimuim is a "dx10 capable gpu" which this is.
>>109049865PhysX is still a thing but it runs on your GPU. If you have more than one Nvidia GPU you can choose which PhysX stuff runs on.
>>109049936I know PhysX is still a thing>>109049904Nice
>>109049880I still do, I found it quite useful when one of my ram sticks kicked the bucket
>>109049865An internal LS120 drive, so I could read floppies on my PC without worrying about USB introducing compatibility errors or keeping an older PC hooked up. Also, a pair of the red/blue Nvidia 3D glasses, which worked okay for Metro 2033
>>109049865this paired with a dual sli was quite the flex back in the day
>>109050014Were the red/blue glasses an earlier thing? From what I remember 3d vision needed active shutter glasses.
>>109050067Would be very cool if I could find a 7900GX2 to pair it with
>>109050072Red/blue was the cheap option back when they introduced the active shutter glasses. The old cardboard ones they gave out at oldschool 3D movies before the newer polarized ones, work too, just the Nvidia ones were hard plastic. I have a pair of them too but idk if the drivers still support anagyph 3D.I've also heard of people making homemade glasses-free 3D using the same technology as the Nintendo 3DS - just printing a 50% black vertical stripe pattern on transparency sheets with exactly the same stripe width as the pixels on the monitor. Idk if there was any success in making GPUs output even-odd-pixel 3D for it, or if it was all pre-processed images and videos.
>>109050072Not my video, but this is about them:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvFvoWkjZnE&t=297s
>>109050126remember when ATI had crossfire to compete with sli? damn i sure do
>>109050138>Idk if there was any success in making GPUs output even-odd-pixel 3D for itI wonder if you could force it using something like reshade
>>109049865i've got one of them coral ai accelerator thingsit doesn't do the trendy kind of ai, it just is a very power efficient way to identify dogs and birds for my camerasit's basically an m2 drive form factor but i'm interfacing it via usb
>>109050210The few times I've tried crossfire had insane microstutter
>>109050072I actually have an iz3d monitor but the ribbon cable inside of it shit the bed one day. I haven't been able to find a replacement for it so it sits idly in my closet.I've since moved onto using helix vision and a vr headset but I HEAVILY preferred the polarized iz3d
>>109049865I have a few rare-ish old GPUs. My favorite is probably my VideoLogic Vivid! XS, which is a very uncommon version of the PowerVR Kyro II. You mostly just see the Hercules 3d Prophet version and occasionally a reference board. Works perfectly too and is a decent card for a Windows 98 build.
>>109049936I believe they actually removed it a few generations ago. I've seen people running second GPUs like a 750 or 660 alongside their 4080 just for physx.
>>109050210Crossfire was nice because it worked on every card, even ones without a bridge, through the PCI-E slot and would even work with the iGPU. Stutter was acceptable if you were a poorfag that needed just ten extra frames to make that one new game playable.
>>109050558I didn't even realize there was an alternative to the hercules card
>>109049880Surprisingly yes, they do, though a lot of motherboard manuals don't seem to have the beep code table even though the boards most certainly beep if you have a speaker connected. I think speaker beeps are superseded by a proper POST code display, but these for some reason seem to be "high end" features that only pop up on expensive boards, as if 2 fucking 7-seg LED displays aren't cheap as fuck.>>109049865I don't have anything super rare, I don't think. I have 2 graphics cards with PCIe 1x slots, they're kind of curiosities I guess. I use one in my home server in a PCIe 1x slot because the main slots are occupied with more important shit.
>>109050664>I have 2 graphics cards with PCIe 1x slotsWhat cards? I don't think I've actually seen those before.
>>109050744One's a GT710 and the other a GT730 IIRC, both Asus.
>>109050870damn cool
>>109050876Pic related is the GT730
>>109050884still have a GT710 but it's pcie x16
>>109050870>>109050884neat
>>109050569PhysX was still there as of 1080 Ti. I have a 1080 Ti and a 960 I had got for console output under Linux when using the 1080 Ti in a VM. When booted into Windows though the drivers let me choose either for PhysX.
>>109049865I've got one of the first mini ITX motherboards with an Intel CPU, the D201GLY. I also have the second version of it (D201GLY2) which is passively cooled, has SATA ports and a slightly newer CPU.
>>109051929The odd thing about it is that it used a chipset from SIS rather than Intel despite being made by Intel. The onboard audio and graphics are fully compatible with Windows 98/ME, 2000 and NT4.
>>109049865i have a ruler
My friend works in grocery and he gives me these pallet trackers they use to monitor shipments. They contain a cellular modem (usually Quectel) for GNSS positioning and other basic communication. I harvest their SIM cards (Vodafone IoT). One board in particular I've been trying to reverse-engineer for a while now; it has tons of exposed test pads and 3 4-pin through-holes which I've all soldered onto, but no matter what, I cannot seem to get any coherent signals or data.
>>109049865>dedicated physx card>"obscure"Begone zoomer retard.
>>109049865>Do you own any PC components that are obscure/interesting?7800GS, one of the best AGP cards, no cooler on it or a board to put it in...
>>109052095A fucking weather balloon landed on my balcony a while back, last year maybe. Still have its board somewhere.
>>109052317i saw the thread (or, there was a thread for the exact same topic)still havent found a use for it?
>>109049865i bought a server with two powerxcell 8i CPUsfirst, gcc removed support for cell spu in 2020 with gcc 10, then the linux kernel also dropped support for ibm cell blades in early 2025 with linux 6.15
>>109049865Got one of these with the original triangular box, driver cd and demo/game cd
>>109050558PCI Righteous Voodoo 3DFX video card with a VGA passthrough from a 2D video card
>>109052317You were supposed to mail it back.
>>109052802iirc the anon called the number on it and got back with the reply 'keep it or throw away'
These things are probably the most obscure hardware I own because nothing like this with what was essentially physical hyperthreading has been made since.
>>109052880Even more obscure are the carrizo chips that were based on the final version of the architecture. AMD finally made it decent but only released laptop hardware and a terrible desktop chip based on it with barely any cache and a memory controller that barely works.
>>109050884>>109050870it is really neat
>>109049872You can get really crusty PCM audio through this piece of shit btwYou basically just bit-bang the I/O port it's on
I still use a Creative Xfi in my Windrows 10 PC that I original bought for the use with Windows XP.
>>109049872I was thinking of getting one myself.
>>109049872>>109049880My computers are older (one is AM4, another is DDR3 but I forget the socket/chipset) and both have the headers. I have them installed on both, which is nice to know if the headless server reboots
I own an optane drive
>>109054051Sound Blaster Audigy Rx that I use for EAX retro gaming on XP
>>109054285fuck meant for OP
>>109049865not really a pc component but more of a peripheralslow resolution spectrometer with a source light that cannot emit uv (which has implications for printed stuff)can be used for monitor calibration/profiling too
>>109054321probably the most obscure device i own that i use regularly at the same time
>>109050664>I have 2 graphics cards with PCIe 1x slotsI made my own once.
>>109054354It still works, I take it? I know the entire PCIe connector isn't required for baseline functionality in general, but when you chop bits off of a PCB like that it's possible to short internal traces or copper layers and render the card inoperable if that happens.
>>109049872I remember when games made sounds with it.
>>109054372Worked fine.ALl you need are the first 7 pins
>>109053673They're really handy if you just need some super basic video output and nothing more. I have one in my home server, the proper graphics card is passed through to a VM and I needed something for host video output (CLI, used only in emergencies). It has no iGPU so I needed a real card for this.
I have the first IBM PC sound card ever made, the TrueSound True Sound Card. It came out before anything else, and it's more of an integrated hard drive based recording and playback solution than it is a traditional sound card. There is ZERO information about these cards on the Internet, and I have only been able to piece together information about them by searching old magazines.
Working radeon 3850 agp.
>>109049872i remember when the pc speaker was an actual speaker and not a little piezo-electric beeperhttps://youtu.be/hKz5HJ7WU1Q
>>109054354What did you use to cut it? I plan on cutting a riser to x4 so I can use a video card on a thin mini ITX board but I'm not sure what tools to use.
>>109053700It can also be used as a notification alert like how phones do "buzz buzz" when they get a text
>>109055214psycho pinball flashbacks
>>109055193Not for long. Install heatsink on PCIe-to-AGP chip. Not sure if that can help, but for some reason that exact part always dies first. I had
>>109054051Smug bastard. I remember how I refused to buy because pricing. Fairly recently, right before price hikes. Funny how today that price would actually make sense.
>>109056084It's burning hot to the touch even on desktop, can still make a chipset heatsink warm, funnily enough they always put a thermal pad around it but not on the chip itself. I had a 4650 AGP.
>>109052095man that shit is so enticingim kind of clueless on hardware debugging beyond>P200 and P201 are probably UART 0 and 1 and P300 is probably JTAGand i didn't even manage to get into a PY32 I found in vape a while ago but gosh does this make me want to try again even though it is much more likely than not that i will result in a weekend up>huh? maybe... hmm, noand a minor headache
>>109056084I've actually done that but it's a pain in the ass to attach a largeish heatsink without glue of some sorts (I used clamps). The card is PCI, and that tiny chip is the magic that translates it to AGP. I still don't understand why it's on the wrong side and why there aren't any holes there for a proper heatsink mounting.
>>109054285Didn't know they made them with pcie.
>>109054285This is the last one, often called Audigy 5, that has hw acceleration, I find it pretty neat
>>109050884These things suck so bad. It's slower than even Intel integrated graphics, so removing it from your computer is an upgrade. At least that's the faster GDDR5 variant. There's also a DDR3 version that's even worse.The only legitimate use for a GT730 or GT710 is if you need more display outputs to play video or have Excel sheets or stock charts on.
>>109059190>slower than iGPUnot an issue, no one that uses these cards care about their performance, in fact these are used because the CPU doesn't have integrated graphics so anything that fits the PCI-e x1 and has a framebuffer works
>>109055386A sharp pair of cutting pliers.
I have a Pentium 3 Tualatin build with a Geforce 4 Ti4200 but it's not exactly rare. I tried to stick heatsinks on the GPU memory modules but they fell off so I need to find a new solution
>>109061677solder that tualatin into a modded og xbox and that's gonna be rare hw
I still have a pinnacle TV tuner/capture card. I should sell it. I sold my VCR last year.
>>109049865I have a Power Mac G5 Quad with Kona 3 capture card and a fibre channel card. Been wanting to see if theres a way to flash the firmware on an x1950xtx to support it and well as patch the bios to properly support 32gb of ram. People did manage to get 10.6.8 on it finally so maybe someday.
I have an LS-120, unfortunately not the LS-240 which can format normal floppies with 32mb capacity
I used to own one of these. It cost about $180 and just made my internet slow. I'm sure I fucked something up but I thought it would reduce my lag in CS:S because its a network card with a super awesome "K" for "Killer" on it
I have the first Mac Mini, G4 with maxed out RAM at 2GB, OSX 10.4 Tiger
>>109065166How the fuck you get 2gb of ram on it?
>>109065299according to docs it's 1GB but i swear to god ive seen 2gb, will check these days
>>109054051A man of taste and education. I have 5x 900/5p’s and a p5800x.
>>109054354Eh why didn’t you just cut a slot in the back of the pcie-e slot?
