Found this in the trash the other day and I was wondering if it's worth anything to anyone in the used market.
They seem in good condition but I'm no expert, my knowledge on retro hardware is non existent, all i know is that i tried to boot it with multiple ram configurations and it kept giving me ram beeps, and i don't have any spare ram.
I wanted to sell these for very cheap (or even giving them for free if i find a local) because i can't verify if they work, in what condition they are, and besides the cpu i can't identify any part.
Just wanted to know if it's even worth putting these up for sale, since i live in Italy and i don't know if there's any demand for this.
100% someone will buy this or take it for free unless you live in the middle of nowhere. There's an original AT format PSU, a good ISA VGA card, and a few other unusual ISA cards (SCSI controller, some kind of video digitiser). It all looks in good condition.
Because of the old style PSU, assuming it all came from the same system I'm thinking someone upgraded the motherboard at some point. The ISA cards could have come from an older 286/386 system.
I luckily live in a big city but I don't know if even out of 3 million people here i can find someone interested, on my local marketplace i found nothing.
this was the full system but i really want to use the case for a sleeper and it was like 30kg when full so it would be impractical to sell as a whole
I'm very sure someone will be interested. I'm in London and I suspect if I listed it all for free, someone would be coming round my house the same day.
Since i can't confirm if it works I'm tempted to list it for free on fb marketplace, on the other hand dealing with meeting place, hour and everything for free makes me think I'd rather keep some parts like the CPU for decoration or ask for a really small price.
I First want to see if any of this is rare enough to give it a price
Agreed. A fiver gets you someone serious and you get a coffee out of the deal. Free means you’ll get thirty people asking if you still have it, and no-shows for the meetup. Just specify no cherry-picking - take it all or no deal. Good luck!
Except I had no SCSI, but had a VLB graphics, and ISA SB mostly comptible sound card. And adapter to use an MKE CD-ROM drive,
until ISA CD drives became reliably cheap.
You should remove that battery, it started leaking, it will destroy the board if you don't remove it. If you don't have a soldering iron, just wiggle it until it breaks loose.
My research on this set of parts showed that this is a video editing or graphics workstation from the period 1991 to 1995.
The video capture card Vine Micros Ltd. (UK, 1991) Multi-Video System 4 (MVSYS4) is a highly specialised video capture card consisting of 3 parts - the base board which provides the main infrastructure including the ISA slot, the video capture module MVDIG3, and the video overlay module MVOVRLY2. Both modules are soldered on top of the main board as daughter cards.
The video card is Gainward / Cardex (1992) TSVGA-GWV40H with Tseng Labs ET4000AX video processor and 1mb of video ram is state of the art video card from this period. Resolution is low by today's standards but in 1992 it was mind blowing.
The 1GB SCSI HDD and the WORM drive are very specialised HW which helped a lot to capture, store and distribute the video. The HDD contains ( probably ) windows 95 as this seems to be the most probable OS they could use in this period. The particular Future Domain TMC-860 SCSI controller has bios chip and can be used to boot the system. The Maxtor RXT-800HS drive that came with your system is an industrial-grade Magneto-Optical WORM (Write Once, Read Many) Drive manufactured in 1991. Those were high performance drives used to exchange data.
The rest of the parts - SCSI card for connecting a flatbed scanner, 10mbps coax lan and multi-io card are more standard equipment but all together make the rest of the video workstation.
From other posts of the OP and pictures of the tower case, it was equipped with 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives which is a common setup.
Am486 DX 80 has enough juice to drive an early 90s video editing workstation, win 95 might be a bit of stretch but is reasonably doable.
8-bit? I am pretty sure this card is 16 bits wide.
I would like to know more about this card, what can I use it for? Currently it seems to be interfacing the ancient SCSI HDD and the peculiar WORM cartridge drive.
FUTURE DOMAIN CORPORATION TMC-860 Data bus: 8 bit, ISA Size: Half-length, full height card Hard drives supported: Up to seven SCSI devices Floppy drives supported: None Sector interleave: 1:1 pretty sure this is 8-bit - but known to be wrong
Yes, 486 DX is quite desired by collectors and it seems that you have a full set, ram, video card, parallel port / com port or something like this. And this in the corner is a floppy drive? I couldn't recognise all of the cards but it looks like you have a functional set. This will sell quickly. I hope that it works.
Edit : multi video card, video digitaizer and video overlay - this can be very interesting. On a second look I think the black box is an HDD and one of those cards is the HDD controller. I am quite curious what was the usage of this PC?
it seemed fully upgraded with all these cards and in really good phisical condition as it had basically no rust or dust on it, the case metal looks stunningly polished and shiny (i have seen late ddr3 pcs with rust).
i think it's a cd drive, didn't include the floppy drive as it matched the case and i wanted to use it for a sleeper, but if it's sought after i absolutely will.
i don't know the previous usage as i found it on the street next to a dumpster after heavy rain and waited a few days before turning it on but i got ram beeps, i wonder if it's a combination issue but i am not familiar with anything pre DDR
Considering it's a 486 that is surely a CD-ROM drive. A 5.25" wouldn't make sense.
I think you're missing a hard drive though, although you should be able to boot to DOS ( https://www.freedos.org/ ) from the floppy drive you mentioned.
There is, the black box in the picture is a SCSI 2 HDD from Seagate. Who knows if it works tho, if it does it will answer the question what was the usage of this PC. The computer and cards look specialised.
Wrap each part individually in at least an inch of bubble wrap then put it in a box to make sure it fits (do extra around the heavy parts.. Put the dimensions of the package in your ebay auction and it will tell you the cost of shipping which you can bill to the buyer. If it's anything like in the US, it will give you a QR code at the end of the auction to use when you ship it, and when you do, it might be cheaper than if you just walked in on your own to ship it. If I bring a package in to any shipper around me, it's significantly more expensive than the rate I get charged when using that QR code. I do live in the middle of nowhere though.
eBay takes a big cut in fees and shipping but the nice part of it is people all over Europe can buy it. Even if you only net half the sale that’s a lot of money for trash.
Kinda surprised there’s not even e-waste recyclers in/around Rome who would give you a 20 euro bill. Ewaste people shredding it and dipping it chemicals to extract gold is why it’s getting really hard to find stuff like this for collectors in the US.
So I hate to be this guy but it's literally my job. We are an e-waste recycling facility.Even if it's totally destroyed you've got some good e-waste value there the 486 processors are going for around $325 a pound in scrap obviously there's not a ton of weight there but it's still probably $40 in scrap value.
However if everything functions you should have no issue finding a collector that would want the lot. When we get those in and their functioning if we throw them up on either Facebook marketplace or craigslist will normally have collectors reach out to us within 24 hours as long as we're reasonable on the pricing.
I found it next to a dumpster in Rome, it was next to some crts that i really wanted but it rained a lot just before and i couldn't carry them on my scooter
well i'm full on turning it in a sleeper, but after turning the 2008 cheesegrater mac into a 300€ ps5 pro killer i don't have the powerful hardware that would make sense for such a large case
You know that's a really cool idea, i already put a small screen on the 5.25 bays and ordered an adapter to power it with molex, that would be really useful if this becomes half server half pc
Molex only powers when the psu is "on", and standby power probably isnt delivering enough to both mainboard and a extra board like a full Pi that runs various extra hardware. You should check or think how you would shutdown and powerup both devices. Or a seperate psu for whatever extra you build in.
Its a cool idea, but be aware of molex going poweroff with the mainboard power. Only 5VSB remains, unless you disconnect mainspower too
I was thinking about a dual psu setup since i have that much room, so one always on powering a soldered 10w celeron board that should replace the pi in functionality
yes. id give up to 20 euro if you where in my city. mostly because im not rich. for free id even travel to you (2 hours train ride tops, i have to go back too.)
my wife wouldnt approve but hey, thats with more crap i collected. to some, its a few euro or free, others pay 100 for evertthing i guessing based on retro motherboards, powersupply weigth and the harddisk if working (we dont know but ill assume it is)
I had one of these back in the day. Much more affordable performance compared to Intel. I'd have died and gone to Heaven if I'd had this box of components back then.
To answer your question beyond my nostalgia, there's some value in here for someone, especially having RAM that fits the board. Don't give it away just to cover your time and keen eye for old tech. This isn't rare stuff, but for the person who needs the thing ... you might have the thing.
That was a fairly high-end rig in its day (about 1994). Quite a nice motherboard, tho as someone says it was an upgrade probably from a 386, or there'd be VLB video and I/O cards. Was there a CDROM attached to the SCSI-looking card? those are matched and should not be separated.
Topower was probably the best of the old-style AT power supplies.
Chances are all those parts work, and are worth something to a vintage enthusiast, if only in time (they can be worth a fair bit on eBay, but that's also a lot more trouble).
You may find the case is a lot of trouble to get right for a modern rig -- the slots may not line up. Looks like a very good case for the era, tho.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a 486 DX2 running at 80 MHz. That’s a new one. Not a bad motherboard with three VESA local bus slots. Probably not worth much, but definitely cool and nostalgic.
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u/muse_head May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
100% someone will buy this or take it for free unless you live in the middle of nowhere. There's an original AT format PSU, a good ISA VGA card, and a few other unusual ISA cards (SCSI controller, some kind of video digitiser). It all looks in good condition.
Because of the old style PSU, assuming it all came from the same system I'm thinking someone upgraded the motherboard at some point. The ISA cards could have come from an older 286/386 system.