Advanced Card Sorting

Some cards from the sorting room should come into the advanced testing area for an advanced card sort. Here are basic instructions of how to do the advanced sort:

AGP Video

Look for the ones that have either two notches or or the back notch only. Set these aside for special usage. Where do they go?

Sort out cards with rare connectors, for example: DVI, Coax (cable), SVideo.

We should also be looking at an amount of video memory on cards for build. Perhaps <32, with 32+ going to the store. Nvidia and ATI cards with 64+ MB may be ebayable (depends on model). Cards with 128MB+ _are_ ebayable, anywhere from $20-$300 depending on the model.

The rest need to get received and go to the build area.

PCI video

Look for the ones that have 8MB of RAM or more. Set these aside for special usage. The rest go to recycling. (No need for data entry.)

PCI Marked '100' NIC

Look for:

• ones that support network boot
• Intel 82558B
• Intel 82559
• All 3com

Set these aside for special usage. The rest need to get received and go to build.

PCI not marked '100' NIC

If we are short on 100Bt NICs, check these for ones capable of 100Bt. Treat those ones as above. The rest go to recycling. (No need for data entry.)

PCI Sound

These need to get received and go to build.

PCI Modem

Look for:

• Hardware modems
• Winmodems with free linux support
• Winmodems with proprietary linux support
• Unsupported winmodems

(See Aaron's PCI Modem comments for more info.)

ISA Modem

Test in modem testing. Those that pass need to be received and then they go to build.

Everything else - PCI

Look for:

• USB cards
  • USB 1 cards aren't worth the time of day, but USB 2 cards should be saved and sold specially in the store, as they're almost $10 on ebay.
• Firewire cards
• IDE cards
  • Promise 66 cards go the store.
  • Promise 100 and 133 cards have been kept in the Tardis, intended for infrastructure. It's not clear if we have any use for them in Infrastructure, they're not worth the time to ebay, and it's not clear if they sell in the store.

• SCSI cards (version from card sorting folks):
  • we want Wide cards, which means the 68-pin D-shaped connectors, female on the card (as opposed to Narrow, which has 50-pin connectors that strongly resemble IDE connectors). Wide cards can be separated into:
    • UW, which can go to the store
      • (The store especially likes Adaptec 2940s)
    • U2W which can go to the store or ebay
    • U160 which should be tested and ebayed
• SCSI cards (store version):
  • SCSI cards to eliminate:
    • Really old ISA cards with the beefy connector port
    • BusLogic on chipset
    • Missing faceplate/somthing's broken
  • SCSI cards to keep:
    • Everything else - Adaptec cards are
    • Especially good cards: Adaptec "AHA-2940" cards. These should probably be priced a little higher. They're widely-used and last a long time.

See Also

• What to do with sorted cards