/retro/

TT post retro-cool pics of old computers / data centres / whatever

Old thread:

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=Pr1XXvSaVUQ
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blit_(computer_terminal)
famicoman.com/HackInACan/BBS.html
youtube.com/watch?v=IztxeoHhoyM
youtube.com/watch?v=DL86aToFIPM
uniquecodeanddata.co.uk/teletext76/
toastytech.com/guis/index.html
books.google.com/books?id=V2588uIxmAQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=true
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

ITT*
derp

I think you mean ITT

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haven't seen this one before...

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Looking all smart, I bet he has no idea what he just pressed

16k of RAM

who's ever gonna need more than that

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I recently got myself a IIc, first ever Apple 8-bit machine I have owned.
Monochrome monitor, second floppy drive, manual, etc. It's a nice machine.

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bump

What machine is this?

looks like a Blit
youtube.com/watch?v=Pr1XXvSaVUQ
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blit_(computer_terminal)

Neato

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setup an old style bbs on the internet

famicoman.com/HackInACan/BBS.html

What happened to the user who was working on the Sup Forums bbs client?

I have some kind of fetish for these green phosphor vector displays. I don't know why they look so good to me. They remind me of those awesome aircraft HUDs, not sure if they use the same technology.

I wonder if that kind of minimalistic vector interface could work for modern software. Ace Combat 5, a playstation 2 game, used a vector interface for its menus. I thought it worked really well.

Anyone here know about Multics? Reading about it is almost surreal. This thing had features I didn't even know were possible such as online reconfiguration. You could add and remove hardware to the system without shutting it down.

prepare your dick

youtube.com/watch?v=IztxeoHhoyM

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awww yeahhhh

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Reflexively started to cringe at the trash80 keyboard but then was pleasantly surprised

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There any reason to have vintage computers outside of vidya? I have an old 5150 and I want to try doing stuff with it.

Get a serial cable and some software and use it as a dumb terminal

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youtube.com/watch?v=DL86aToFIPM

... which direction is the tape going?

Sure? It's a really vague question.

Are there any sites with big collections screenshots (or I guess for older systems, just photographs that focus on the monitor) from computers just in daily use?

Stuff sort of like this. (Mostly thinking around 90s era, since GUIs cram more on screen, give you desktops and such, but really anything is fine.)

uniquecodeanddata.co.uk/teletext76/
Online archive of teletext, digitised.

Has some typos, etc, since it used OCR to convert the pages, but fun to explore and find old news.

toastytech.com/guis/index.html

idk, I'm just not creative I guess

really the best way is to just surf winworld and fetusware and see if anything interests you

most stuff other than games you'll find for a PC that early are office workhorse shit like 1-2-3, wordperfect, dbase and the like, and it'll still run those fine, though you'd probably want a printer, bridge box or an XTIDE hidden away in it to maximize the utility you can get out of it if you're serious about putting it to work

a database would probably be my most immediate go-to for a dual floppy system since you can make use of it without having to export the data as much, but spreadsheets are great for working out all kinds of problems and you can use word processing software to keep a journal or record other stuff nobody else should see/read but yourself

the other guy's suggestion of using it as a terminal to another system is fine too, obviously not as fun since you wouldn't actually be using the computer for anything beyond running Procomm to connect to it but it would look nice while it did it

also plenty of options for shit like compilers and editors if you want to play with writing simple programs on it, the borland IDEs are pretty nice

>fetusware
I bet you meant vetusware but damn that made me chuckle

how much did that run you?

I find WinWorld to be better than Vetusware. Doesn't Vetusware have a download cap?

Also, if you can get in, BetaArchive is really good too. It's not just betas, lots of commercial software as well.

I was going to write some C to talk to a Renix ECU via RS232.

they do, but they also sometimes have software that WinWorld doesn't which is why it's sometimes necessary to use both

as far as BA goes I'm just not autistic enough to get access, every time I decide to give it a try I either find absolutely no conversations that interest me enough to warrant posting in or some circlejerking twats that just rub me the wrong way, maybe I could power through it if I had a better idea of what they have to offer though, I need a good source of enterprise(TM) software for NT and various unices in particular to give my workstations some purpose

that sounds like a pretty cool/creative idea to me and you've got plenty of compiler/editor options to do that, though I think most of the ANSI-compliant options are a little on the heavy side so you might need to find a good mass storage solution to set up with it

do you have a CGA or MDA system?

I was going to use a Toshiba T3100 but I passed it up, slapped myself, went back and it was gone.

BA is fairly easy to get access to. They dropped the minimum post requirement to get FTP access. Now all you have to do is upload something they don't have. Anything they don't have. As long as it's a rip of the original disks, and it's a commercially released piece of software. Here's steps:

>1. Download their portable version of Alcohol 120% (or use your own if you own it).
>2. Rip CDs
>3. Scan CD and any documentation/box (you don't have to scan entire manuals, just the cover and back
>4. RAR it up
>5. Upload to public FTP site

I just uploaded IBM VisualAge C++ for AIX, though it's still getting checked in. They've got AIX, Solaris, etc. StarOffice (SPARC), but not a ton of Unix stuff. That's my jam though, so I'm hoping to help fillout that part of the site.

shit happens, all you can do is remind yourself that even if it doesn't come up as often, in the end all this shit was made in the millions and it's still new enough that it's lurking out there somewhere

I decided to google the software in the picture I posted and totally forgot to mention that all the copies of PC magazine/infoworld/etc can offer some cool ideas for what you can look around for too, especially the early copies from before the clone takeover that were pretty much exclusively focused on PC accessories and software
books.google.com/books?id=V2588uIxmAQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=true

wonder if they'd be interested in some IBM-branded VisiCalc images, might go try it just for a chance at hoarding some AIX software for an eventual RS/6000 I may or may not purchase in the future

They might. The mod has a link to a list of everything on the server in his signature. So you can see if you're interested in what is there. It looks like they only have 3 uploads of VisiCalc currently. Yours is likely different. Just behave. The FTP mod is a bit cranky.

On the RS/6000 front, I've got a Model 7011. I'd stay away from those, even though they're cheap. Go for a CHRP model. The older MCA based machines can only run AIX, and only 5.1 and below (and the 7011 can't even run that well).

Pro tip: Bull (the French computer maker) has an AIX freeware site up, with binary builds of open source software. They support AIX 4.3.3 and up.

I had this happen with a SGI Octane recently. Had manuals and software install media, even. On eBay. Only went for $300 in the end. Decently under market value for a dual-CPU Octane. Feels bad man.

The T3100 was $15.

Yeah... that's a shitty one.

It booted straight to DOS 3.2 and only had four lines across the screen. I shouldn't have let that one slip.

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if I don't have to post to get in I think I'll be good, though it seems you still have to post if you don't want to get automatically pruned, or is that just for accounts that haven't even attempted FTP access either?

desu I've felt kind of averted to CHRP gear simply because I liked the look of earlier systems better, think I might have already asked you about the 250's usefulness as a terminal server a few threads ago

but there's some black 43Ps up right now for about $150-$200ish which seems... okay, so maybe when I have my shit in order I might consider one of those instead

do you know if there are any copies of Catia or some other big-name CAD for AIX or really any Unix out in the wild? if I go for a workstation model it seems that would be the go-to use for it along with software development and text mode email checking, fuck I'd love to just find some of that for Windows at this point

there's really no point in killing yourself over it since it's over and done

if it makes you feel any better I unironically had the chance of acquiring a twin-rack SGI power series similar to pic related for $5 but it would have needed actual restoration work and I was 14 so I had no idea what it actually was at the time

also passed up on a dual 800/4GB AlphaServer ES40 that just needed some new drives because it was so huge I wasn't sure if I'd be able to afford it with by-the-pound rates so I pulled the CPUs and RAM instead (it was straight crusher bound anyway)

should have convinced my dad to let me stuff it in the garage

This is the guts to a Siemens dot termanal, been Frankensteining this together with two others, used as a controller to a gamma camera

Another pic

>if I don't have to post to get in I think I'll be good, though it seems you still have to post if you don't want to get automatically pruned, or is that just for accounts that haven't even attempted FTP access either?

Not actually sure. I've posted enough I don't have to worry. I wouldn't see why they'd want to prune people who have gotten FTP access though. Anyone who has contributed uploads is a value to the community.

>I've felt kind of averted to CHRP gear simply because I liked the look of earlier systems better, think

By all means, get the earlier stuff if you prefer it. I do as well, actually. Just not sure a machine that has almost no software available for it was the best choice for my first RS/6000.

>I might have already asked you about the 250's usefulness as a terminal server a few threads ago

You did, though I wasn't the one who answered you. I had gone to bed by then (and to be honest, that what I should be doing currently, hmm...)

>do you know if there are any copies of Catia or some other big-name CAD for AIX or really any Unix out in the wild

On IRIX, I would think so. I know I've seen pictures of people's collections on NekoChan that certainly include that kind of stuff. None on the BA FTP that I'm aware of. Lots of compilers, not much else for UNIX.

Wish Siemens' UNIX systems were a thing you could find in the US. I'd quite like to have one.

Dat MIPS

feeling a little tired to offer any real discussion on this but it deserves a (You) because it's nice
yeah I figured I would build most of the software I needed like Alpine and other text-mode clients from source but it's probably more trouble than it's worth, the 250 seemed most interesting because it was compact and kind of had that mini-big iron look to it so it seemed like a good candidate to pair with my other IBM gear, but a 43P could do that too I guess and also run a new enough AIX version that I wouldn't have to worry as much about binaries for free packages and could mess with IBM development tools instead of GCC without gimping myself

maybe with BA I can just lurk a little and see if there's any discussions that I feel I can get involved in, I just really can't do non-anonymous communities anymore because this place has really conditioned me to post without thinking and not take anything on the internet seriously

but for now I should also go to bed, it was fun

they definitely have a really nice machine-like design to them, even their low-end shitboxes looked nice

>could mess with IBM development tools instead of GCC without gimping myself

Just so you know VisualAge works on AIX 4.1.5 and up. Supposedly 4.3.3 runs reasonably well on the 250, so that may be doable.

I have a matching printer for the damn thing too lel.

I need to get it over to my new place and check it out first though, just trying to get a feel for what to look into first.

That screenshot gave me "A 'PUTER 4 CRISTMASS"

Why not an ethernet card?

There's no definitive site, you have to bookmark them all because none of them are complete.

200 yuro moneys

Yesss... 80s hi-end electronics and Colombian cocaine.

The earlier RS/6000 are fine machines, nothing wrong with running old AIX like 3.2 - 5.1, you can still port a lot of software yourself.

Deals like that come and go, it's not really under market value, it's just that you are used to the market being inflated.

There used to be this guy at my local flea market that had mountains of every kind of vintage computer imaginable, and he was selling them for next to nothing.

Commodore, Apple, IBM, Tandy, and everything in between.

Too bad I was too young to buy much from him.

We all have memories like that.
I would have been hoarding like a fuck if I knew how it would be today, obviously you knew that this shit will be harder to come by in the future but just in my ignorance I thought that I still have time.

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NO BEIG.... oh wait

What the things with the orange/red numbers. What are those?

Really fancy kitchen timers

nixie tubes

Beige isn't the only way

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That's so sexy, wish it was a MSX 2 system

>all that magic smoke
that's what you get for not recapping

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Muh dik!

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>automatic record player
Cool

It is, it's also comfy as fuck.

That vector axedude has some sick dance moves

>that face
was the Tandy 1000 really such a bad computer?

Thank you user, here is a (you) for your troubles.

bump

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