I think it's time for another retro thread.
Recently picked up one of these 90s personal organizers in the original plastic packaging with Windows 3.1 drivers for cheap from a thrift store. Decided to fuck around with it and got it working on my 486. It uses a DB9 connector to interface with the computer, so I just picked up a 9 to 25 pin adapter and it works like a charm. I can even send and receive address/phone number logs to and from it.
you know, lately i've been wanting to get a circa windows 95 era pc and not even hook it up to the internet, just have it for word processing tasks.
the feels
You can sometimes find them locally, e.g. thrift stores (although a lot of these are phasing out selling computers entirely and just scrapping them), dumpster diving, Craigslist or a local auction site, etc.
I have a few Windows 95 PCs here like this one. I found it on eBay for about $60. A lot of people usually hot rod these types of PCs, adding high end parts like 3dfx Voodoos, but I usually keep them original and restore them. I built specialized hot rod PCs for games anyways.
How strong of autism do you need to get into this shit?
Computer as fuck!
Too much time on your hands.
are you a phoneposter?
Have my dad's Amiga 500. (Bought new trapdoor ram and cleaned the fuck out of drive heads. Probably going to swap in a gotek soon.
Almost have e8400 + hd4870 + 4gb ram (last year before windows 7, when everyone stopped with XP) build running, just need PSU.
Having real trouble finding a p3 for 98/2000 era build or 486 for DOS system. Just a shitload of p4s, which as we all know, are fucking useless
No. Well, yes and no. I take pictures with my phone and transfer them to my computer.
>Have my dad's Amiga 500. (Bought new trapdoor ram and cleaned the fuck out of drive heads. Probably going to swap in a gotek soon.
Just get one of those amigakit.leamancomputing.com
Slightly more than a Gotek but way more useful
P2's and 3's are really common on eBay
If you can find the motherboard for it, p2 xeons are cheap as fuck, I got my 450mhz one for 5$ sealed in box
K6 I bought for $5, swapped out the EDO sticks for SDRAM DIMMs.
Now that I got the OS swapped out with DeLicate, I can't believe it's still able to run X and a featured web browser.
kek, cool
I'll remember that
Not really sure how to find P2/3 boards but I'll have another look. Its very before my time
p2/3 boards are generally hard to find compared to the processors because the things just dont last, theyre almost all liquid capacitor boards which die over time
xeon boards in particular are hard to find because theres just very few of them, you never dig those things out of garage sales or anything, theyre all old server equipment thats been broken down
the last time i saw a board for my xeon it was a dual slot 440lx board for like 190$, and i just cant justify that cost
its like buying old 771 xeons today, you can get the two processors for pocket change, but the motherboards are just insanely expensive
You can still recap the boards though.
...
Speaking of which, here is my L40SX.
Other vintaginzoinks and thingamajigs I have include:
>Apple
][e
>IBM
5140 Convertible
Thinkpads 760 and A21m
PS/2 8570
>Others
aftermarket 386 board
486 board with shitty Dallas RTC1287
I'm planning to hook up the latter to some case, but it uses those weird "button standoff" designs that are incompatible with my board.
My uncle is gonna give me his old Toshiba Satellite Windows 95 laptop as well as other goodies. What should I expect, a 486 or a Pentium?
Your pretty little Pentium seems to have a Zip Drive stuck in it
Know how it looks like? Google pic for Satellite models.
Most likely a Pentium 1, although it could have a late 486 in it (e.g. DX4-100, or even a 5x86)
Very nice little tower. Specs? I'd estimate a Pentium 133 or 166, maybe 32 or 64 MB RAM.
So older computers had mechanical keyboards. What color keys are comparatively equivalent in modern mechanicals to the old keyboards? I was way too young to know there was a difference in keyboards until I was typing on a membrane.
>I'd estimate a Pentium 133 or 166, maybe 32 or 64 MB RAM.
Depends on the keyboard.
They also had Alps and Cherry switches just like today.
A lot of the later 90s keyboards are just membrane crap, but a lot of the AT-era keyboards had buckling springs, or Alps, or Cherry switches.
Those things are thicc.
why did no one clone the Win 3.1 interface for X or Wayland?
I actually think there is something like it.
Just forgotten in the depths of time.
Cool all right. I have Cherry MX blues. I kind of wanted an authentic old computer feel to maybe either rekindle old memories or just try to get some sort of experience for the past. My mom won an Apple 2 in a raffle in college that I used to play Math and Word Munchers on but I don't remember what the keyboard was like.
A lot of Apple II's used Alps
Mother Soyo 5EHM, AMD K6-2 500Mhz
256Mb ram
Geforce TNT2 32Mb
Sound Blaster 16
3Com 10/100 PCI Ethernet Adapter Network
10Gb Seagate hard river
Windows 98/se
A LOT of retro games
I was way off, kek.
What sort of games? The regulars like Half-Life, Doom, Quake, etc? Or more obscure ones?
yes, and others old shooters classics like Blood, DukeNukem 1,2,3D, ShadowWarrior, Rampage, Killing Time, Terminator.
Noice
90's...¿what did you expect faggi?
>Seagate hard river
>P/MMX sticker
>AMD K6
Awesome.
I dig the PS/2 style!
Pardón, currently has a Pentium, the psu is a time bomb when i put the amd.
Nice Windows 98 SE edition
What benefits does it have?
Basically an extension of a library of drivers and increased ram memory
>increased ram memory
What did your dad do together with De Niro again?
I expected more Jazz
That's a cute little thing. Looks like they can be found on eBay for $85 plus shipping.
Together with a sound card, a nice cheapo retro DOS rig
What is that IDE thing on the screen? An ancient version of MS Access?
Can it run WINE?
Summerfag as fuck!
Nope, the software shipped with the organizer. Probably gonna image the floppies and archive them somewhere.
Perhaps, with the right version and the right compiler (this has gcc 3.4)
For shits and giggles, I'm also planning to shove 64MB into my 486 and run Delicate Linux on that too. Triple the slowness!
And it looks like as I posted that, the seller presumably saw the LGR video and raised the price to $95.
Goddamnit
At least he didn't raise it to $150. But still, $10 isn't gonna hurt anything.
>gcc 3.4
oh wow
I love my L40, they're real weak-ass shit but somewhat historically significant as IBM's first real laptop, well built and still good enough for a lot of stuff.
have this shit of a fuck coming in the mail in a week or two
supposedly it doesn't power on, but since it was so complete I couldn't help myself and figured I'd risk it and see if it was revivable, at least it will look nice with the Jornadas
any other handheldfags ITT with experience with CE 1.x/2.x devices? wondering if it's just got a backup battery/other easy power issue, otherwise I'll just wait around for a parts donor to show up I guess, hopefully it's not battery corrosion or something cap-related
It's almost hard to believe that IBM made it at all. Asides from the proprietary floppy drive pinout, they finally use an 2.5" IDE drive for once, after the disaster known as ESDI.
well, it's not like that was really a big deal when these systems were still protected by warranties, support agreements and plentiful supplies of spare parts, it's just a problem now because we're working with them 25-30 years after the fact on a low budget to boot, same deal with ESDI, which wasn't too uncommon in the high end before SCSI usurped it, it was just expensive as fuck
not to mention the whole point of the PS/2 was to introduce entirely new standards in the first place, so shitting on it for being highly "proprietary" is kind of silly
Anyone know of some interesting projects to use with a terminal with a built in modem?
build a phone line simulator
>too young to have experienced computing in the 80s and early 90s
feelsbadman.png
I had the same case back in the '97... the feels.
you missed when mtv actually had music too, tv in general was way better then
I stopped watching tv years ago. FTA is just pure garbage and paid tv is way too expensive and lower quality now. Thank fuck for cheaper options like Netflix that actually give generally decent content.
they want you to pay for all of the premium shit all the movie channels sports etc then youre paying 200+ a month just for tv. basic cable is so fucking shit now its just infotainment crap designed to make white people that got lost in life took up meth and show them they can do something instead of get high like do car work or cut trees down or drive a truck because the red states had to dumb education so fucking much tv basically has to teach adults what to do with their lives
desu I've pretty much stopped watching OTA tv since the switchover in '09, other than the occasional late night MeTV reruns
My DOS machine for fucking around with is currently an AT P133 with a chipset that happens to be PS/2-capable. PS/2 mouse is available via an existing motherboard header with no documentation and nonstandard pinout (had to measure the pins and rewire an old PS/2 rear bracket made for some Compaq). The AT and PS/2 keyboard traces occupy the same footprint, so only one connector can be installed on the board. Decided to keep the AT connector and run wires from the PS/2 through holes under the board around to a new hotglued header, then drilled and added a second PS/2 connector to the bracket for it. Mainly happy about the mouse so I can use optical instead of running a ball mouse over serial. Useless trivia: PS/2 and AT keyboards can both be connected and work simultaneously.
Also, P3 Glide rig.
you know what i just realized? no matter what we do, getting old computers up and running....using a dial-up modem to try to painfully surf the modern web, we won't ever get that experience ever again of using those computers to surf the internet like how it used to be. because most of the old web is gone. makes me kind of sad. the closest thing we have left is all the geocities websites archived on archive.org
Let's build a new old internet. No normies, only Netscape!
i plan on calling people using my old dial up modem and blasting them with the modem noises but i cant recall if the modem will know and wont do the noises or wont and will do the noises
oh and i remember having software thatd make the modem answer a call and i had it where a mp3 would play thatll be fun too
Do you guys know much about mainframes?
I think it'd be pretty fucking cool to have an old mainframe. To do what, I don't fucking know. Not much, since my RPI will probably have more power.
But it'd be cool. I'm not experienced in that world, nor really anything retro. My first pc was a box that had w7 preinstalled. Voodoos, barracudas, sound cards; all things I never experienced.
cool, let us know if you got it fixed once you have it
>Useless trivia: PS/2 and AT keyboards can both be connected and work simultaneously.
Kek! Great for split-screen gaming.
it wants a handshake first
the handshake is the best sounding part, actual data isnt as much, but you can get a modem that requires you to dial and does not handshake
>so shitting on it for being highly "proprietary" is kind of silly
Those "new" standards might have been portrayed as "new" back then, but later on they were portrayed as "proprietary" as AT clone manufacturers couldn't make new cards or license the standards.
I'm still mad they decided to combine power and data into one floppy interface. That design was highly unsuccessful as with the rest of their choices, and now any of the floppy drives produced are now worth worthless amount of big bucks everywhere.
But hey, it's supply and demand...
>AT clone manufacturers couldn't make new cards or license the standards.
Thats the point, you think IBM liked the clone manufacturers?
...
I too, like Dick Kickem
bump
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Neat, love the C64
fucking hell. I had one of them fag little PDA pieces of shit when I was a lad - slower than pencil and paper, insecure, nerd / geek level garbage. God damn I wish I wasn't such a retarded kid.
8/10 level autism lord
When I was a kid, still in high school I worked part time at a large firm. I remember having to upgrade some FAT cats psion pda.
>polaroid
>80s/90s nerd glasses
Fuck, LGR really went all out on that one.
Kinda rare to see him showing his true powerlevel
>tfw still having my second ever PC
>80286 machine, 10MHz, 1MB ram, 40MB HDD, EGA graphics, MS DOS 3.???
>last time I turned it on was in 2004 or something
Guys, I'm kinda scared of if it will still turn on, or if it will go up in smoke or something else happens.
I wonder if I should take it apart first and check the caps for bloating or something.
The problem is that the PSU is proprietary so if it's fucked I kinda have a problem since a standard AT PSU wouldn't fit into the case I guess and some more tinkering will be necessary.
I'd turn it on but keep a fire extinguisher ready, those tantalum caps can catch fire.
Take it apart.
Clean it.
Eye check.
If everything looks OK, turn it on.
If it worked in 2004 it will likely work now.
Switching power supplies, no other way to know. Disconnect from the mainboard and probe it if you want to be sure.
I've had shit that had been in storage for 30 years and worked fine.
arrgh right into my nostalgia ...
bump
Are old IDE hard drives worth keeping?
Yes, to keep old computers that need them running.
I also saw some faggots selling or rather TRYING to sell them for a lot but I don't think any of these $400 300MB IDE drives got sold
I've been opening them up for the magnets and then junking them. I assumed no one would want them, and anyway can't they just emulate old hard drives now, like how they emulate floppies using SD cards? The prices for old hard drives on ebay are insane but nobody seems to be buying
This looks like a bunch of garbage
