/retro/

I love restoring old computers, do you?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/user/jpkiwigeek/videos
youtube.com/watch?v=OsDy-4L6-tQ
youtube.com/watch?v=6pAeWf3NPNU
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

>tfw I will never own a comfy SGI setup

it might be kind of amusing to restore the casing or something and replace the internals with more modern components, but i worry that like most gimmicky things i would get kind of tired of it a few weeks later and then i'd be stuck with a very obnoxious reminder of that thing i spent all those hours doing that wasn't research or thesis writing.

>replace the internals with more modern components

please don't ruin usable machines

That's my picture! Didn't hope to see it like that!

0/10

I really like the 8088 shitbox

Thanks

Oh wow that case. We still haven't reached that level in prosumer cases.

Well, Apple came out with a dumpster case.

"usable" is a term the individual applies to it. you must have already understood that if you're restoring old computers, but your comment seems to demand that reminder.

the lowest resource task i do these days is write latex papers. we could get into a discussion about how i accomplish this, but the gist is that the workflow i use ultimately requires access to software that i don't think any retro computer could run, or even access reasonably well.

i'm sure i'd be interested in what you use retro computers for, but it's important that you appreciate that some people might not see a "usable" purpose for computers from the 80s.

Can't restore for shit, but I enjoy watching the new demos and playing games.

They haven't degraded over time dipshit, they still run all their games and software like the did back then, nobody wants to browse Facebook or do 4k video editing on them.

Yeah that was pretty neat. I meant more cases for custom PC's though. There is that new NZXT mitx case with curved panels but it's a bit of an eyesore. And enormous.

I put a fan into my A600 yesterday, it's amazing what a little low speed fan can do, the thing is as cool as ice.

Just buy a broken one and do what you want with it. Even then it might be problematic as old cases usually have shit airflow.

> I

Was already on when I got it, felt it would be a shame to remove it.

Well, it fits with your C64c

dumping sgi stuff

Damn girl, that's hot

youtube.com/user/jpkiwigeek/videos

This guy has a few sgi videos

Specs?

Thank you! Got a breadbin, c128 and Amiga 500 but none of them fits on the desk. Cramped battlestation

Not my photo sadly, do a reverse search on it

SGI gear still sells for quite a bit so I can't really justify spending money on buying one yet

...

i'm pretty sure i couldn't run analyses on these machines, so i lowered the bar to just being a machine for writing papers in latex, and i explained that the stuff i use now exceeds the capabilities of these machines.

i realize that people used computers in the 60s to put men on the moon, but the workflow was painful and slow. i'm not keen on the proposition of going back to that workflow or even to the workflow i had in the 90s. i like old mechanical keyboards and i like the way these machines were designed - durable, purpose-built, with a very functional aesthetic - but i wouldn't want to compile a subfile of a latex document and have time to go make coffee. i lived that era and nostalgia has only tinted my view of the past, not blinded it.

so something striking the chord of all that nostalgia without bringing back to life all the obnoxious shit that defined life in the 80s and 90s would be the best of both worlds (assuming you're actually using these devices; if you're just restoring them to make your own computer museum, then i guess fidelity is the most important thing).

i imagine a newer computer could be okay since even fairly competent machines barely require very active airflow. if you consider that our smartphones (which are entirely passively cooled) are more powerful than the computer i had in 1995, you could probably throw a raspberry pi or something into the box, figure out wiring, and hook it up to the CRT (or if it's busted and you can't replace it, maybe put an LCD in there, but that would break the nostalgia for me).

but again, at some point i imagine my satisfaction with the project would subside and i'd be left with this obnoxiously large desktop that i use practically for novelty. i would have to be very, very careful to choose something to restore that, when i got tired of using it, would still look distinguished just sitting there.

>Bad Apple

That's nice! Scram a few more desks into your room like a maniac, that's what I did, kek.

>talking about bad apple
youtube.com/watch?v=OsDy-4L6-tQ

I would. but the room barley fits my bed and the desk. Filled with games and stuff too.

Oh reah, I have seen all the Bad Apple demos...

>I would. but the room barley fits my bed and the desk. Filled with games and stuff too.
Yeah, space is always a problem when collecting stuff

>collecting
More like hoarding

Kek, I live in my own house so I don't have a problem with hoarding old tech, got boxes full of shit.

Heh I've been cleansing my room for a month and still find crap I haven't used yet.

>so something striking the chord of all that nostalgia without bringing back to life all the obnoxious shit that defined life in the 80s and 90s would be the best of both worlds

Dunno, the real thing feels always better, emulators are even more headache than real hardware.

I could also take my new Land Rover to the racetrack, but it would not be the same as my old BMW coupe, the steering, suspension, almost inaudible engines sounds, the feeling is gone, even if it's a faster and more efficient car, it's just a car for driving, while the BMW coupe wasn't a car for everyone back then, like every computer is now, the raw connection between me and feeling the hardware is gone.

youtube.com/watch?v=6pAeWf3NPNU

...

Hey dude! How's the telnet server?!

Hey, still going, just had an awful week at work, been absolutely knackered.

Ouch, well Godspeed

Widescreen? How old is this?

bumping interesting thread

>Cup
>Keyboard
You're Swedish

holy shit where did you buy a fallout4 terminal?

That joke is so fucking old it's not even funny anymore...

Is that your hobby or something?

...

it's a really slow day at work i'm sorry

haven't been on Sup Forums in a minute

Well börk börk you know my secret!

>it's a really slow day at work i'm sorry
Np

>haven't been on Sup Forums in a minute
What?

That's a really good disguise, wow, took me a while to notice that it's not a deer, the glasses gave it away!

...

Demmit it's a moose hät!

My bro's workplace had SGI workstations in that era, and I was so fucking jealous even back then, when my rig was a shitty beige box.

Man, I really want a NeXT computer, more than an SGI.

Are there any good resources on 80s/90s PC builds? I usually keep my old crap, but most of my 90s-era computer stuff is long gone, and what's left doesn't work. Do I have to stalk shitty garage sales and salvation army stores to get parts nowadays?

>Do I have to stalk shitty garage sales and salvation army stores to get parts nowadays?
Want them cheap? Yes.

Local online ads are the place where I get my stuff from, there's no competition of retro collectors or resellers where I live.
Else you just have to lurk thrift stores, garage sales and if you don't care about money, eBay or retro forums.

You have that IBM, then a A1200 and a C64 at work, right? Anything more awesome?

SGI Indy in storage, a Vextrex, ZX Spectrum+, 3 Toshiba Libretto UMPC's and a stack of ThinkPads.

im really glad i started these retro threads

>stack of ThinkPads
Saying it like it's the most casual thing in the world

Retro threads have been on /vr/ and Sup Forums for years?

;^)

I wish I had an O2. Someone on Nekochan was selling a decent one for 140 bucks, but he was in California.

Sexy

Is that a default SGI wallpaper or something? I keep seeing it, pretty sure I used it on my MacBook.

...

Useless hobby. Why even bother.

>dat IBM datacenter wallpaper

Someone locally was selling the same unit (Pentium with CD rom) but I missed it.

R10000/R12000, going to guess full 1GB of RAM, video capture card. That's a fairly high end machine.

70's and 80's keyboards are the fucking best

It's probably one of the more useful hobbies, what are you talking about? This isn't scrapbooking.

Yeah, looked it up already. Amazing machines for the time.

Oh yeah, Godly to type on.

Eh, they were the low end. They replaced the Indy. Now the Octane2, that was a beast.

Nice Pic. I didn't notice the mouse till now. Is it like pic related?

Agree

Man that's sexy, I just want to violate it

This.

Anyone wants to have a guess what pic related is?

Copy protection dongle that plugs into a serial/parallel port?

Warm, but nothing to do with copy protection.

SCSI Terminator.

Cold, nothing to do with SCSI, first guess had the port right.

isn't that just a male DB-25 connector?

>male DB-25 connector
Yes, but more than just a connector

>TIP: It has lots of same type components inside, just they have different properties

dac

like this
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

>DING DING DING DING DING
Here are your shekels!

Yeah, a self made resistor ladder DAC.

I can actually play MOD files on a 4.7MHz 8088 at 7kHz with it

Whats the thing under the right monitor?

Amiga mods had 4 8-bit channels, right?
Can you play mods of the same 'complexity'? How does the sound quality compare to an amiga? What tolerance are the resistors? Is it just the ladder or do you have filtering/amplification?

There was a gap though. They only recently became a constant fixture again with the current OP, presumably from that one thread where some dude was retrobriting his old hardware.

Yes, Amiga mods are 4 channel and 8-bit, that's what the 8088 can play too, max 4 channels.
Complexity? As long as they have 4 channels at 8-bits they will play fine. Quality is way worse at 7kHZ then Amiga at 8kHz, partly probably because I didn't fine check the resistors, the tolerance is 15K and 7.5K resistors. No amplification or filtering, just a 3.5mm jack to the end of the ladder.

Oh yeah, I remember that thread

Forgot to add, the only other limitation is that they have to be less than 450KB in file size, because I only have 512KB of RAM.

Fuels weren't really low-end, but they weren't the greatest. SGI was too busy riding the Itanium hype train straight to hell to bother with anything further than rehashing the R10K over and over again for ten years straight, VPro supposedly was pretty lackluster as well.

Standard on every version of IRIX since at least 5.3

Nobody is restoring these to use as their main computers my dude, they're repairing it for trips back to the past or very specific tasks, mostly for playing old games or play with old software tho.

Other actually productive uses might be to compose chip-tune music. Or maybe someone prefers the way a reallly old version of some program.

10 internets for you kind sir