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rndmnmbr posted:What with the price spike on retrocomputing stuff, there's a mountain of hardware I wish I hadn't disposed of. Piles of 486s, DX2s, DX4s, AMD 5x86s, Pentium Overdrives in both 63 mHz and 83 mHz flavors, every imaginable stepping of Pentiums from 75 mHz to 266 mHz, K5's, K6's, motherboards and memory to fit all of it, Trident and S3 and ATI Rage cards of every flavor, and so. many. damned. soundcards of every possible make. SCSI cards by the bucket, and every bit of network gear I had that wasn't 100baseTX. So much stuff that's apparently worth money now. And the good SB16 it came with, and the first-gen AWE32 I upgraded to, and the first-gen Gravis Ultrasound... now I guess they're way too pricey 
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Mar 11, 2022 10:52
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*deep breath*rndmnmbr posted:Let me live my life unburdened by sheer stuff. *exhale* There are bits and pieces that would have been neat to keep to build my own retrocomputing project, but otherwise good riddance to the lot. It isn't worth that much, and the effort involved in testing, ebaying, and shipping it would be far more work than I would want to do. All for a temporary value increase spurred by retrocomputing Youtube channels that themselves will fade away for the next big Youtube fad hype all too soon.
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Mar 11, 2022 11:08
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I had stacks of sun microsystems stuff, IBM PS/2’s of all flavors, including one that had all Procomm gear in it that I imagine is pretty drat rare today. I had tons of old computers, mostly curb picked from back in the day when you could just put a computer on a curb. I learned how to diagnose and fix PC’s that way, they got me into a career in IT, and then into my current career in e-waste. I eventually returned them to the curb when my parents wanted to clean the basement after I left for college. I get it, most of the stuff was next to worthless in the early 2000’s, but still. 
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Mar 11, 2022 14:18
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About 10 years ago I bought a couple of Voodoo2s on eBay from some guy who had a crate of them intended for OEMs. $15 a piece. I should have bought a ton of them.
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Mar 11, 2022 14:46
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:I had stacks of sun microsystems stuff, IBM PS/2’s of all flavors, including one that had all Procomm gear in it that I imagine is pretty drat rare today. Man, you could've formed an extremely gimmicky electronic Sunn O))) cover band with all that gear.
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Mar 11, 2022 14:47
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The real question is, would the explosion in retro prices have still occurred if 95% of the stuff had not been thrown away for being worthless 20 years ago
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Mar 11, 2022 15:42
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Dr. Quarex posted:The real question is, would the explosion in retro prices have still occurred if 95% of the stuff had not been thrown away for being worthless 20 years ago No. But it also probably wouldn't have been so pronounced if we didn't just spend a year where every nerd had nothing better to do than watch LGR. E: anyone want some iMacs (1999) (this is a joke, but only because I don't want to ship them)
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Mar 11, 2022 19:17
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both my g3 imacs have serious issues, one has an arcing flyback transformer and the other whines like it's about to die any minute from what i've seen most of them have really bad capacitor plague issues on the analog and power supply boards, and all those caps are a lot fiddlier to replace than your typical motherboard caps since you need so many different sizes and values
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Mar 11, 2022 19:25
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r u ready to WALK posted:both my g3 imacs have serious issues, one has an arcing flyback transformer and the other whines like it's about to die any minute It's been many years, but I seem to recall some issues with their GPUs and/or the power regulation on some of those. At the time I complained about what a pain in the rear end they were to work on, then I started having to service iLamps, eMacs, and G5 iMacs and I grew nostalgic for how easy the G3 iMacs were to work on.
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Mar 11, 2022 20:33
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There's a whole generation of iMacs that are dead forever because widespread assembly issues with early BGA chips killed their ATI GPUs. I've got one sitting in my closet just looking pretty being dead, and the only thing I can think to do with it is get one of those display driver boards and put completely different guts in it.
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Mar 11, 2022 22:17
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Fantastic Foreskin posted:No. But it also probably wouldn't have been so pronounced if we didn't just spend a year where every nerd had nothing better to do than watch LGR. Also be careful what you offer; I have zero post-Apple-II nostalgia but would totally drive cross-country on a whim for a sufficiently insane offer of free tech (despite what I just said about wanting to get rid of it; truly, a sickness)
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Mar 11, 2022 23:15
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snorch posted:There's a whole generation of iMacs that are dead forever because widespread assembly issues with early BGA chips killed their ATI GPUs. I've got one sitting in my closet just looking pretty being dead, and the only thing I can think to do with it is get one of those display driver boards and put completely different guts in it. You can cook the poo poo out of the GPU with a heat gun to fix them, generally. I have one uselessly sitting on a shelf that I resuscitated that way
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Mar 11, 2022 23:21
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e: my post was based on a misinterpretation. sorry.
Winty has a new favorite as of 04:05 on Mar 12, 2022 |
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Mar 12, 2022 01:27
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:You can cook the poo poo out of the GPU with a heat gun to fix them, generally. I have one uselessly sitting on a shelf that I resuscitated that way Actually I did try baking it to bring it back to life. It worked for about a week then failed again. I read that it's because the flip-chip bonds would eventually crack and fail during thermal expansion, and can't actually be reflowed.
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Mar 12, 2022 09:14
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Audio really makes it: https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1498853060990226433
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Mar 12, 2022 16:25
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Really didn't expect this to be the way I found out whatever happened to King Kong Bundy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhDmYhopMgA
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Mar 12, 2022 20:03
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Trabant posted:Audio really makes it:
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Mar 12, 2022 23:26
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Is there an easy way (i.e. adapter cable) to convert from CGA/EGA to VGA (or composite even)? I rescued a Leading Edge Model D, an ancient 8088 machine from the shredder today, and I'd like to get it going again, but it only outputs video over a 9-pin cable that I have to assume is CGA/EGA. So I’m trying to resurrect the Model D. This weekend I cleaned the mouse poo poo and grime out of it, which was gross but I still don’t have a way to connect to cga/ega, so I’m trying to get a VGA card going. I have a radius XGA-2, that I have no idea if it works or not, but my real question is can you use an ISA card that is double length in a single length slot like so?  
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Mar 14, 2022 14:41
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Depends on the card, but graphics cards work most of the time (with a speed penalty as they are now working as an 8-bit card rather than 16-bit). Can the onboard graphics be disabled? If so then you should disable them and use the VGA card instead. If not then the VGA card will only display the mono text mode and you might need to set a switch or jumper on the motherboard to set mono mode as the default output. Sweevo has a new favorite as of 14:57 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 14:52
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Still waiting on my MZ-R50 to make this image more purely 1998 but in the meantime, a friend of mine loaned me his MZ-1, the first MiniDisc player/recorder released. This thing is massive.
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Mar 14, 2022 16:42
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Sweevo posted:Depends on the card, but graphics cards work most of the time (with a speed penalty as they are now working as an 8-bit card rather than 16-bit). I have found the manual for the computer and it looks like it has a jumper for onboard/external video. Now I need to find the dip switch and jumper settings for the Radius XGA-2, which are all set in the same position currently, and thats probably not right. It seems like the manual and dip switch settings are nowhere to be found online
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Mar 14, 2022 17:13
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhfwR6PwDA Crosspost from the PYF buildings thread In the 1960s to 1980s the dutch technology company Philips (Norelco for the USA people) had a futuristic tech museum called the Evoluon. They had all kinds of demonstrations of display technology (such as a giant 2m tall nixie tube), physics demonstrations, and even a very early speech synthesizer. One could generate a single sound, the other could say the word 'Coffee' in several ways (as a question, a statement or as an answer) In the video above you can see how people play around with it.
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Mar 14, 2022 17:56
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:I have found the manual for the computer and it looks like it has a jumper for onboard/external video. Now I need to find the dip switch and jumper settings for the Radius XGA-2, which are all set in the same position currently, and thats probably not right. http://ohlandl.ipv7.net/video/Radius_XGA2.html
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Mar 14, 2022 19:31
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Reminds of doing binary in my head every time I had to set SCSI jumpers.
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Mar 14, 2022 19:46
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"NOTE: SW1 and SW2 were made by different manufacturers. UP, OPEN, and OFF are used interchangeably." Did this happen a lot?
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Mar 14, 2022 19:57
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Awesome! Thank you, I couldnt for the life of me find anything on that
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Mar 14, 2022 22:30
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I googled the model and nothing came up, so I switched to image search and saw the diagram from that link and realised it matched the layout of your card. That's a very weird card btw. I don't know why it has settings for IRQ and DMA, when graphics cards don't generally use either. Not that it matters here because the IRQ and DMA setting available will only work if the card is plugged into a 16-bit slot. Sweevo has a new favorite as of 11:55 on Mar 15, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 23:34
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Thread-appropriate purchase: got this for $5 (+ $20 shipping  ): I think I'll turn it into... something. Build a base for it which will house a Pi + keyboard, using the TV's external antenna jack so it can act as a display. Details TBD.
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Mar 15, 2022 02:58
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Take any and all Zoom calls on it with the handset to your head the entire time.
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Mar 15, 2022 08:29
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spookykid posted:Take any and all Zoom calls on it with the handset to your head the entire time. gently caress you could absolutely make that into a video phone
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Mar 15, 2022 09:03
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Here’s a good tech relic: A while ago now I picked up an old Texas Instruments 486 laptop without really inspecting it, in a group of other stuff from a thrift shop. When I got it home it was in rough shape, the screen bezel was missing, there is a top cover on the palmrest missing, and the battery is MIA. I didn’t mess with it much and just stuck it on the shelf  Last night I decided to check it out, and lo and behold it does work! Pretty well actually, and the screen is actually very nice given the condition of the laptop and the era that the screen is from. Poking around the hard drive it’s mostly generic business applications, but there is one folder, C:\X, that just has 10 different .TXT files in it. A quick trip into edit.com and……….  ITS VINTAGE PORN!! what a hilarious find on someone’s work laptop. It even has the details of the newsgroup where they downloaded it from. Gross, but hilarious.
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Mar 15, 2022 13:59
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Porn about my wife If that isn't a tech relic, god drat
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Mar 15, 2022 14:48
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spookykid posted:Take any and all Zoom calls on it with the handset to your head the entire time. Hell yeah, I love that idea!
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Mar 15, 2022 14:52
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Data Graham posted:Porn about my wife Could very well turn into cuckold porn on the next page, in which case it was the harbinger of things to come
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Mar 15, 2022 14:55
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Trabant posted:Thread-appropriate purchase: got this for $5 (+ $20 shipping I can't even figure out how many things it is. a phone alarm clock television radio? am I missing anything?
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Mar 15, 2022 15:10
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No, I think you got them all. It really embodies that 80s maximalism. It's just missing a fax machine to complete the Voltron.
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Mar 15, 2022 16:04
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Today I learned you can still get new (well, new old stock I’m sure) Zip disks on Amazon.  Also just right now I learned that iOS auto-capitalizes the Z in Zip disk, amazingly
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Mar 16, 2022 19:59
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Today I learned you can still get new (well, new old stock I’m sure) Zip disks on Amazon. used a zip drive a few times, once to back up some mp3s, and then the second time the drive failed and I could not recover said mp3s. never used it again.
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Mar 16, 2022 20:15
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I’ve had good luck with them, oddly (now I just jinxed the 5 pack sitting on my desk). I was in college right at the prime time for ZIP disks. Floppies were old, slow and limiting enough to be annoying, albeit still the defacto portable data standard, and thumb drives just didn’t exist in the early years of my college career and did exist, but were expensive towards the end. CDR was a thing but taking a document to the lab, working on it and then either needing to burn a new cdr or write a new session was obnoxious. Most people I knew treated CDRs as if they were write-once media. My schools computer labs switched over to PC’s and Macs with both floppy and Zip in them, my school bookstore sold Zip disks and drives at a discount, so I was hooked. I used them a lot and backed up MP3’s to them frequently. Never had issues other than the slow parallel speeds. I eventually got an IDE Zip drive to fix that. Nowadays my problem is that I have a whole bunch of old computers, floppies are the one data storage option they have in common (except ones with 5.25 drives) and floppies are still limiting and annoying for moving data. The other thing they have in common is parallel ports, so the Zip seems like a natural fit. It’s 100mb capacity is more than some of the hard drives in my older machines, and they all run some flavor of DOS or MacOS That’s my weirdly long zip story. Beve Stuscemi has a new favorite as of 20:38 on Mar 16, 2022 |
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Mar 16, 2022 20:36
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We used zip disks in our acad class in high school. They worked fine as far as I could tell. Some guy had a zip drive at home, and loaded snes emulators and roms onto the disk.
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Mar 16, 2022 21:10
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