This post is playing catch-up with some stuff I've gotten in the past few months. Most of this is PC related (hope that's still at all interesting!) but I've also gotten one new old Mac...
...which is this LC III!
It's in VERY nice shape cosmetically, with very little yellowing or scratches. I recapped the logic board, although it did work beforehand. Caps hadn't leaked that much and the board is (or was, managed to break a few solder pads...) in great shape. It does have an annoying issue though, there before and after the recap. After running for a while, it won't chime or start at all. Chips get warm, PSU is fine, won't POST. Not sure why, but it doesn't affect me too much so I'm not going to lose much sleep over it.
PSU caps are still original, but it's the Astec supply which is more reliably than the ELNA-filled TDK unit from all I've heard. If it gives me trouble I'll take care of it too.
Even the original unserviced floppy drive works fine.
On the PC side of things, I've continued to fuel my vintage laptop addict--- hobby with the following pickups:
From first to last:
1. Nan Tan FMA8100 - a gigantic luggable 386 "laptop" from 1990. It's got a couple issues (dead hard drive mainly) but is otherwise working great.
2. Compaq LTE Elite 4/75CX - a pretty darn great and reliable 486 laptop for DOS gaming. No sound card, but ticks all the other boxes. Mine even briefly ran for a few minutes off of the aftermarket battery that it came with, before said battery promptly kicked the can and no longer charges.
3. WinBook FX - a pretty nice Pentium 1 laptop. Mine has a snapped hinge (metal failure, not plastic...) and may have a dead sound card though. Still troubleshooting the sound as I write this. This was the most recent pickup of the bunch.
4. WinBook XL - a VERY good DOS gaming laptop. Has an actual Yamaha OPL3 in it. It comes with the compromise of awful build quality, but ah well.
5. Dell Latitude C400 - late-PIII-era subnotebook. Quite a nice system.
6. IBM ThinkPad T43 - the last of the fully IBM-made T Series ThinkPads. Mine's in excellent shape and fully working. Quite a well made laptop, shame they're unreliable due to poor southbridge cooling and bad solder.
I've also worked on a couple of early 2010s laptops, upgrading and repairing them to make some nice systems that are still usable today.
First, I did an IPS display mod and a classic keyboard mod on the T430 ThinkPad from the swap meet haul. This is currently my daily-use laptop for when I'm on the go. I absolutely love this thing.
I also dipped into Dell systems from this same era with a Latitude E6420 repair project. Combined two bad units and a couple other small parts into one pretty nice one. It still needs an SSD though, and I'd like to find a way to mod a 1080p IPS panel into it like I've done with my T430. The stock 1600x900 one is fine in resolution and brightness, but has awful viewing angles.
And that's a summary of some of my recent finds and projects from the past few months since the swap meet. I've also done other work on many of the swap meet systems, fixing issues, upgrading things, etc.
Apologies for some of the low-res photos - I grabbed them real quick off the collection pages on my website (see signature).