Beige tech

Any oldfags nostalgic for the weird, boxy, beige designs of hardware in the 80s and 90s? I wish I could get a modern laptop or even ATX tower case that resembles these computers from my childhood. All of the "sleek" Mac-inspired designs of today are generic garbage.

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openbsd.org/sparc.html
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What exactly is preventing you from buying an ATX case from the 90's and putting a modern board in it?

Or did you just realize that you will never actually do this so you came here to make a post about it instead?

kek
\thread

yeah i miss the pizzabox case design putting a CRT on top of your computer just felt so comfy. the nostalgia goggles aren't completely deluding me because oh man i remember all the bad shit about computers. figuring out IRQs, sound card settings, video card settings, getting kicked off the internet when someone tried to call you multiple times, and windows 95 constantly fucking crashing. but i like remembering it, even with the bad stuff. it helps me remember being younger. all you young faggots who constantly berate us oldfags for the nostalgia.....it's going to happen to you too, trust me.

The expansion slots don't line up.

if it really is standard ATX then a modern board will fit in it. The cooling will be shitty, some of these things didn't even have read fans, but the slot spacing and mounting holes have stayed the same.

A lot of desktop cases were LPX or NLX in the 90s, though, which were semi-proprietary and never well supported by third-party component makers. You could ptobably hack something together with a dremel and riser cards if you really wanted a sleeper system, though.

I love that shit, I'm actually working on making a modern repro case based on the old Amiga seen here

>generic garbage
And you're praising designs that were the very definition of generic in an era when almost all hardware looked the same.

Although this was about aesthetics, there's a niche for that kind of desktop design since modern "desktops" are usually bulky towers designed to sit on the floor out of reach.

Then get some tools and cut openings where you need them. It shouldn't require much modification in most cases.

I've done a few sketches regarding airflow and whatnot, and am wondering if Pizzabox form factor wasn't actually right all along

absolutely nothing other than shit airflow and maybe not being a dick if you're eyeing a non-shitbox working system
you're retarded

tell that to anyone who's used a multi-processor SPARCstation

Not exactly 'beige' (that's only what happens to white after sun fucks with it), more like white and sometimes very slightly off white, but I wouldn't call it outright beige.

I got two retro-white computers - a Pentium !!! for dicking around with OSes; and my main computer for which I found an actual new case in "beige" (actually white) the other day.

Getting white 5.25 shit is tricky but doable. For example, my DVD drive's SATA model came only in black, but the IDE version had a white option. I got a busted white one for next to nothing and swapped the panels.

Use power tools man

Maybe one could even mod a CRT case with a LCD panel

It's not the sun that does it although it accelerates the cause, which is a cheaper plastic mix/blend.

vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/189

No, but I love SGI.

>what is ATX standard

you rang?

I love sleepers

>tfw no modern equivalent to the macintosh
why even live?

>sacrificing functionality for nostalgia and "retro" design
kill yourself

Thats like security today :
nmap -6 nuclearsecurity.dns.army

Starting Nmap 7.01 ( nmap.org ) at 2017-01-13 13:43 UTC
Nmap scan report for nuclearsecurity.dns.army (2a02:8071:2e8f:6400:20c:29ff:fe1d:9167)
Host is up (0.000022s latency).
Not shown: 982 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
21/tcp open ftp
22/tcp open ssh
23/tcp open telnet
42/tcp open nameserver
80/tcp open http
135/tcp open msrpc
443/tcp open https
445/tcp open microsoft-ds
1025/tcp open NFS-or-IIS
1433/tcp open ms-sql-s
1723/tcp open pptp
1900/tcp open upnp
3306/tcp open mysql
5060/tcp open sip
5061/tcp open sip-tls
8080/tcp open http-proxy
8081/tcp open blackice-icecap
9200/tcp open wap-wsp

Thin meme is less functional you stupid macfag.

Fun fact: Computers from this era weren't actually beige when they were new. The plastic contains flame retardants which leach out and discolor the plastic over time. Soaking the plastic in hydrogen peroxide for 24-48 hours will de-yellow it and restore it to it's original white color.

Only kids too young to remember thinks computers used to be beige.

How would you explain beige painted metal parts and original product photos?

The paint also turn yellow due to UV exposure and age. Product photos also turn yellow, most of them were digitized a decade or more after the print was new.

Product TV ads?
Magazine photos?

>Computers from this era weren't actually beige when they were new.

Bullshit. There were plenty of beige computers. There were also off-white.

And as the other guy says, in 99% of cases (heh), the faceplate of a computer case would be plastic, while the top and sides would be painted. The only computers I can think of that had plastic sides would be an all-in-one like the Commodore VIC-20, 64, 128, and the Amiga 500, or weird things like the Compaq 'luggable' computer (it had an insanely complex, bolted together aluminum frame, with a plastic, luggage-like exterior).

>Product TV ads?

Chroma subsampling

>Magazine photos?

Photooxidation of the pigments and ph changes in the lignin. Happens to all prints wth age unless they are printed on acid free paper and treated with fixatives.

>Bullshit. There were plenty of beige computers. There were also off-white.

You have to be an adult to post on this board, kid.

>while the top and sides would be painted

>The alkyd chemicals in the oil begin to age/break down due to their curing mechanism.
>Exposure to sunlight and gas heat increases the yellowing.
>Oil-based paints are more susceptible to mildew.
>Tobacco staining from smoking leads to a premature aging-effect.

Pages are crystal white in my old glossy magazines.

>Pages are crystal white in my old glossy magazines.

Then in those magazines, the lignin is still intact. The pigments however, degrade at different rates.

This has nothing to do with the expansion slots, this is your typical nostalgia shit purposefully making up some psuedo reason why he can't get what he wants.

Seen this a thousand times
>Oh I want this old stuff it was so cool!
>Well, here it is.
>No this won't work I just want to pine for memories I won't ever let myself experience because I don't want to admit they're shit

You might as well say "well the boxamatron won't supply the right energy voltage-amperage-a-bobber-dealio ehhh fuck off"

Literally one step away from those shits who want an old games console on a new TV, won't buy a converter, then complain that there's no way for them to "experience" it again except for having an also old TV and then purposefully never trying to find one.

this is my first pc from 1991
she is a qt and still works

How cute!

You have to be 18. It's still possible to miss out on all this stuff.

Do you leave your old magazines out in the sun, making sure to turn the page each day so each page gets slammed with UV?

If not then they would be white. So would an old computer if you sealed it in the dark.

My magazines are in a basement drawer and computers displayed on their pages look beige.

>1991
>486DX2
did you upgrade it?

CRTs are shitty

I'm assuming people are memeing, but they really were sold beige. It was the style of the time.

You're wrong though, look at this picture

source on picture
looks kind of too clean, could be staged to only look old

Heck yeah! But don't do case swaps, keep'em original.

yeah the last time i even thought about it though was in 2001
turned it on for this thread and not im having a nostalgia trip playing old dos games

This photo was taken in 1963. Looks even cleaner than the one you're replying to.

Posting IBMan from Defcon

...

This. It is UV specifically that causes the degradation of the plastic, and no, the sun is not the only emitter of UV. You may be familiar with flouro lights, as used in offices everywhere. Great sources of UV, especially 15+ years ago when no one had any fucks to give about such things.

Pic related, a 34 year old Osborne 2 with zero yellowing under this cover plate, which evidently, was never opened, thus never exposing the plastic to UV sources. I also have 486 which spent it's life in the guts of a giant blood analysis machine (reads, in the dark) who's plastics are as fresh as they were the day they left the factory.

Some things were, not all.

The shitty camera and shitty fashion is enough to convince me, not to mention the fucking printer, no hipster trying to take a cool "retro" photo would go that deep.

You can also always check out old magazines, there's a lot of beige.

>tfw I wanted to dump this whole article but it's xbox huge

shit's a little yellow washed in this one though but the three I have are pretty beige and were closeted most of their lives

I love those tiny little diskless RS/6es, do you use it for anything? I saw one at a hole in the wall computer shop a while back and sometimes I think about dropping by and asking the guy if he'll part with it. Feels like finding software for it would be a bitch though, even just a fucking compiler.

>tfw no modern cases with "turbo button"

nice 96k computer

you know sitting here i may upgrade her into a modern day PC
may even try to get her to (((gaymer specs)))

Picked up this P3 shitbox from the side of the road last week. Lots of fun

why even bother when you can just buy another beige minitower case and not have to hack up what you've already got and keep it as it was

sleepers are shit anyway, old cases have terrible airflow and the past should stay as it is

I've only got to the step of installing AIX. It had 3.x on it when I got it, but I didn't know the root password. I've installed 4.3.3 which is the newest it'll run.

>Feels like finding software for it would be a bitch though, even just a fucking compiler.

It is a pain in the ass to get the install media for AIX. 5L is fairly easy to find, but it took me forever to find 4.3.3

Compilers shouldn't be too bad. Supposedly there was a build of gcc for it. Somebody is selling IBM's C++ compiler on eBay right now, but it's the first copy I've seen. Can't figure out if I can justify the $50 for it though.

I hated the beige in the 90s

I do however have this keyboard though
pckeyboard.com/page/product/40PSA

Yeah, $50 sounds a little steep, maybe $30 might be worth it if you have a steady disposable income just so you can image it and throw it up on the internet archive.

Don't know if I'd want to run GCC on a mothballed system like that, that shit was ass compared to the OEM stuff in the '90s, not that it's really meaningful for small projects I guess, but still.

Where did you end up finding 4.3.3?

eBay sadly. I tend to buy hardware on NekoChan (that's where I got my SPARCclassic), but they don't typically let you sell software due to licensing issues.

You can run OpenBSD on 2 of those (pre 5.9)
openbsd.org/sparc.html

True, but I prefer to run the original OS on these types of machines. SunOS on the SPARCclassic, and Solaris on the Ultra 1. That's the idea anyway. My SPARCclassic doesn't work. The Ultra 1 has Solaris 8 on it.

I hate Nekochan for that shit, I get why they do it but fuck me they hoard every goddamn piece of useful software for those things under the sun and don't give out dick unless you can figure out how to word your posts in a way that strongly implies you'll blow someone in a dark alley for whatever it is you're looking for, I don't really like a lot of the regulars either.

If you ever get bored it would be cool if you could figure out how to get that shit up on the net somewhere, getting into those systems is hard unless you have connections. I really want one of those little things now myself, seems like it has potential for oldschool networking.

I've got a friend with an old sparc32 lunchbox and even NetBSD runs like hot garbage on them, unless you really need security or a modern development environment it's a better deal to stick with slowlaris really, no point in running something so different if you're going to ultimately get the same experience as you can on anything else but slower, plus there's still a little bit of commercial software floating around on them and trying something new and different from the PC space is half the fun.

No reason not to run SunOS on a lunchbox system, DESU. More BSD than SysV, but preferable to the earlier versions of Solaris.

Why does "to be honest" auto-correct to desu?

Yeah, SunOS is more fitting. Is it reasonably available online? I've never really looked around for it.

Hiro's filtered it for about a year now, fuck maybe two, I can't even remember, it was a long time ago.

You can find SunOS at winworldpc.com along with a lot of other "abandonware". Can't speak to the quality of any of those particular install images, but I know I've grabbed lots of other OSs there (SCO UNIX, XENIX, OS/2, etc). All worked fine.

Never even noticed they had it, fuck they've even got the 386i images too.

Guess I've got something to do when I get around to ordering a new NVRAM battery for my SS2.

Speaking of SCO, here is the OS equivalent of a beige box.

>tfw born too late to be comf

>all computers were the same color

Apple's stuff was "platinum-gray" which was off white but nothing like today's discolored plastics. If you want to see what an old Mac looked like out of the box you have to treat the plastics to restore the original color.

PCs were all over the place in terms of shades of white, gray, or beige.

I should clarify that before 1987 some Apple stuff was beige.