Hello! What you do with all these repaired parts, it's always worth value wise or part of the value is the entertainment and knoweledge you gain from the diagnosis and repair?
Depends, but mostly both actually! I also tend to give boards to other people if they need them, or sometimes cheap/uninteresting ones I sell for cheap :) I get a lot of satisfaction from fixing even weird cheap boards and other components, so that makes it worth it. Value wise, some of them aren't technically worth it. But objectively speaking I never come out of scrap deals with a "net loss" :D For example, that ECS K7VZA was definitely *not* worth investing the time in. But it was a lot of fun anyway! But the worth of the whole scrap set is offset by the MSI ALI board and the Slot A stuff (which doesn't fully work yet sadly)
Biggest respect for replacing those slots. I did that once with a corroded PCI slot and ot took me hours. Btw, personally I would prefer no distracting background music while you're talking. But maybe that's just signs of me aging ;-)
The BIOS is generally more locked down and it's harder to overclock them and do granular adjustments of timings for obtaining the best performance. Occasionally they will also be physically handicapped, often missing things like AGP or ISA slots that are populated on their otherwise identical counterparts. Usually to save a few cents on component cost and to prevent an upgrade path that allows the machine to be useful for a longer period. (planned obsolescence)
For those who's wondering, ROM has 8.6MB size. It's more than Pier Solar and Demons of Asteborg. Maybe it's the reason why developers didn't use these effects
At now 40 years old, I'm repairing one of these. Idler tyre needs replacement due to take-up reel issues, along with pretty much all the electrolytic caps that are leaking. Who knows what else! Very high end for 84.
I'm so endlessly sad those days have gone... one of the best times of my life, still very young. Just happiness, fun, great music, great friends, difficult to describe, I miss those times so badly.