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DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.
There's only a few thrift stores near me, but yeah in general their electronics are garbage. Mostly old Wii and PS2 Guitar Hero controllers, random 10-15 year old cable boxes and modems, and like 15" phat-as-hell LCD monitors with only VGA inputs.

There's ONE thrift place that has a decent electronics and computers section. it's a locally owned/operated place, not a chain like Salvation Army/Goodwill/ReStore. Similar name to the last ne, though. It's called ReSOURCE. They have a full computer repair/sales counter inside where they'll fix up donated ones to get decent working desktops and laptops.

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HKR
Jan 13, 2006

there is no universe where duke nukem would not be a trans ally



even in the paradise of seattle electronics thrift, you have to sift through a lot of garbage, and you have to go often if you're actively hunting for stuff because every ebay flipper looking to make a $300 NO LOWER I KNOW WHAT I HAVE on a used piece of gear are out there competing with you. The frequent trips mean you see a lot of the same things over and over and you can't help but making quips about it. Lots of stores holding onto garbage that should have been recycled and recycling treasures that should be in a museum type scenarios.

There's also the feeling of how the best days of electronics thrift are behind us. When I first moved to seattle 18 years ago and started hitting repc every week, there were a lot more interesting things on the floor. Most of that stuff has sold at this point, so instead of walking in and finding an entire table of neXTcubes (a real thing that happened to me), It's a table of old xenon workstations next to a table of recycled aliexpress sludge. That's not to say they don't get treasures in; that's why we're there multiple times a week, just the feeling of retro has shifted to stuff we still consider modern.

The goodwills here used to be really good up until about 2019 when there was a massive shift towards their online business. For a while it felt like the dream was completely dead because their electronics section shrunk to a quarter of its original size and was filled with literal garbage most of the time. It has gotten slightly better in the last year or so, hence feeling more comfortable with the idea of doing thrift videos again.

Over the last couple years I've tried to convince gravis to do a road trip thrift video; but we mostly come to the conclusion halfway through the trips that the only exciting finds are in major cities, if we're lucky. We did okay with the california trip but we shot it extremely poorly because we weren't even sure if we wanted to do it. If we ever do another trip like that again we'll be better prepared.

(there is another thrift video in the hopper, up on patreon now, should be released to the general public in the next week or so)

Desert Bus
May 9, 2004

Take 1 tablet by mouth daily.
I have a decent store by me that only does computer thrift and repairs and they've been open for years. The selection looks OK but I mostly use them for hard drive shredding/electronics recycling.

They'll shred the drives for free but they definitely love getting the laptop it used to be in too as a perk.

https://www.uniquegeek.us/

Desert Bus has a new favorite as of 21:25 on Jan 18, 2024

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

3D Megadoodoo posted:

The reason no-one outside of the "scene" gives two shits about demos is that about 100% of them are extremely uninteresting and/or bad as works of art. (Some might have good music. Many don't.)

Of course they're not works of art, they're masterpieces.
Even though I largely disagree with you (I would certainly agree a majority of all demos are totally uninteresting, even if you were there at the time they were released when they could have been technically impressive) I have to hand it to you for being the first person to use the word "masterpieces" literally, even if I am pretty sure the word still carries subtext of being not in fact bad as a work of art, even if usually used to mean "just goddamn spectacular bro"

Plus as a Demoscene tracker I freely admit it took a lot to impress me visually and I was mostly watching them for the audio anyway

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!

LimaBiker posted:

God yes, A Mind is Born is so amazing. The only thing i wish is that it was longer.

There's a website that details how it works and it features a snippet of hex code. I thought, ok let's see what this bit does. But no, that tiny screenshot is the whole thing.

e: to add https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/index.php and:

Gromit has a new favorite as of 14:29 on Jan 19, 2024

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Dr. Quarex posted:

Even though I largely disagree with you (I would certainly agree a majority of all demos are totally uninteresting, even if you were there at the time they were released when they could have been technically impressive) I have to hand it to you for being the first person to use the word "masterpieces" literally, even if I am pretty sure the word still carries subtext of being not in fact bad as a work of art, even if usually used to mean "just goddamn spectacular bro"

Plus as a Demoscene tracker I freely admit it took a lot to impress me visually and I was mostly watching them for the audio anyway

A masterpiece can be art, but a lot of them are just a bunch of krumelure for practical reasons.

Sweevo
Nov 8, 2007

i sometimes throw cables away

i mean straight into the bin without spending 10+ years in the box of might-come-in-handy-someday first

im a fucking monster

The demoscene largely got obsessed with technical skill and forgot to be entertaining. You see the same rotating zooms and plasma effects 1000 times, and sure it's impressive that they got it to work on a crap computer like an Amstrad or whatever, but it's not actually fun to watch.

Sweevo has a new favorite as of 16:35 on Jan 19, 2024

Sentient Data
Aug 31, 2011

My molecule scrambler ray will disintegrate your armor with one blow!
Same with gdq, nearly all of their featured speed runs have just turned into 30 minutes of walking through out of bounds areas

Sentient Data
Aug 31, 2011

My molecule scrambler ray will disintegrate your armor with one blow!
Quote is still not edit, I just checked

lobsterminator
Oct 16, 2012




Sweevo posted:

The demoscene largely got obsessed with technical skill and forgot to be entertaining. You see the same rotating zooms and plasma effects 1000 times, and sure it's impressive that they go it to work on a crap computer like an Amstrad or whatever, but it's not actually fun to watch.

It's a mix. There's always been a mix of technical wankery, creative/story demos and pure poo poo. But I've followed the scene semi-regularly for 30 years now and I don't think the ratio of content has changed. Except in the early 80s days they were purely boring wankery or poo poo. The more creative demos really arrived in the 90s.

Like just this example from last year. That's far from just doing pure effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKn_UcLwKCY

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.

DrBouvenstein posted:

There's only a few thrift stores near me, but yeah in general their electronics are garbage. Mostly old Wii and PS2 Guitar Hero controllers, random 10-15 year old cable boxes and modems, and like 15" phat-as-hell LCD monitors with only VGA inputs.

There's ONE thrift place that has a decent electronics and computers section. it's a locally owned/operated place, not a chain like Salvation Army/Goodwill/ReStore. Similar name to the last ne, though. It's called ReSOURCE. They have a full computer repair/sales counter inside where they'll fix up donated ones to get decent working desktops and laptops.

Well I got myself curious after my post and went to that store last night. Nothing amazing, but a nice Charlie Kelly-esque tape recorder for all your Serpico needs:


Although $8 is too much for an untested tape recorder that is also kinda filthy.


And a mixing board from the "24 pin iPod connector accessory" era. SURELY Apple will never abandon this standard or form factor, right? I guess you could still have it work with a modern iPhone with a 24 pin to Lightning adapter, but the phone wouldn't dock in that so it would just be all loosey goosey.

Negostrike
Aug 15, 2015


Sweevo posted:

The demoscene largely got obsessed with technical skill and forgot to be entertaining. You see the same rotating zooms and plasma effects 1000 times, and sure it's impressive that they got it to work on a crap computer like an Amstrad or whatever, but it's not actually fun to watch.

LOL? It was always like that

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

DrBouvenstein posted:


And a mixing board from the "24 pin iPod connector accessory" era. SURELY Apple will never abandon this standard or form factor, right? I guess you could still have it work with a modern iPhone with a 24 pin to Lightning adapter, but the phone wouldn't dock in that so it would just be all loosey goosey.

"a modern iphone" apple is now moving to usb-c.

ymgve
Jan 2, 2004


:dukedog:
Offensive Clock

Sweevo posted:

The demoscene largely got obsessed with technical skill and forgot to be entertaining. You see the same rotating zooms and plasma effects 1000 times, and sure it's impressive that they got it to work on a crap computer like an Amstrad or whatever, but it's not actually fun to watch.

It's been turning around the last decade because the modern PC scene has all the power one could ever ask for and therefore is more interested in style than record breaking numbers. A bit of the same with the retro platforms, where you can't just chain some effects together and expect everyone to be wowed anymore.

SubNat
Nov 27, 2008

ymgve posted:

It's been turning around the last decade because the modern PC scene has all the power one could ever ask for and therefore is more interested in style than record breaking numbers. A bit of the same with the retro platforms, where you can't just chain some effects together and expect everyone to be wowed anymore.

I do find some cases of transplanting 'modern' tech into retro systems incredibly impressive, but that's very fair.
(Technical demo, not demoscene demo, though.)

A huge part of graphics programming is often discovering very clever ways to stretch resources, like id's Megatextures (UE calls them streaming virtual textures), where textures get batched together in a virtual atlas, and then the gpu streams out tiny individual pieces of it on demand (based on how visible it is onscreen).
On modern systems it makes texture streaming faster, and reduces vram usage.

On old systems like the n64 it allows it to massively increase the effective texture resolution. (Done by the same insane guy who ported portal to the n64.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plh9OGel-lM
(Video captured on an actual n64)

kefkafloyd
Jun 8, 2006

What really knocked me out
Was her cheap sunglasses
Found a Garmin iQue PalmOS device with integrated GPS at the thrift. Replaced the battery and it’s working perfectly off the charger. It was the first PDA with integrated GPS, apparently. Nice to have a color Palm in my collection. I switched from my grayscale Visor Platinum to a color PocketPC around the time color Palms came out. So I missed these entirely.

CaptainSarcastic
Jul 6, 2013



I have a Goodwill in my town with a not-terrible tech area - I'll go by there if I need a cheap keyboard, mouse, USB cable, stuff like that. Sometimes they have decent stuff in there, so it doesn't hurt to look at other stuff.

I also used to work for a local recycle/refurbish place and did computer service there, and some cool stuff used to show up as donations. Ancient Bigfoot 5.25" HDDs, ISA cards, Zip drives, and so on. And also newer stuff that nobody knew what it was, so you could grab it for cheap - like those PCI cards that had 4 slots for RAM, which then functioned as a DIY SSD. I got to play with all sorts of neat stuff working there, and snipe stuff before it hit the floor if I wanted to.

The Sausages
Sep 30, 2012

What do you want to do? Who do you want to be?

Gromit posted:

There's a website that details how it works and it features a snippet of hex code. I thought, ok let's see what this bit does. But no, that tiny screenshot is the whole thing.

e: to add https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/index.php and:



Goddamn this actually made me laugh out loud

Here's the demo that blew our tiny minds growing up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cORWZuSJqtk

Ofc we had no appreciation for the technical side of the demoscene, shamefully our Amiga was just a games machine to us.

Gromit
Aug 15, 2000

I am an oppressed White Male, Asian women wont serve me! Save me Campbell Newman!!!!!!!
It feels wrong to post them here, with that other demoscene thread running perfectly well, but the two Amiga demos that meant a lot to me were the DOC demo and Hardwired.
DOC was one of the first I saw, and Hardwired has just the most amazing music using sounds I hadn't heard before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tSI8gw_yUQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZTnR3FpUEA

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


Techmoan got a new video on a audio+ slides media system

His exclamation of "Arse!" when he ran into a play speed issue had me laughing

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Oh I thought I imagined that.

Last Chance
Dec 31, 2004

kefkafloyd posted:

Found a Garmin iQue PalmOS device with integrated GPS at the thrift. Replaced the battery and it’s working perfectly off the charger. It was the first PDA with integrated GPS, apparently. Nice to have a color Palm in my collection. I switched from my grayscale Visor Platinum to a color PocketPC around the time color Palms came out. So I missed these entirely.



Does the gps still work well?

LifeSunDeath
Jan 4, 2007

still gay rights and smoke weed every day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CFUYtLKBfI

JnnyThndrs
May 29, 2001

HERE ARE THE FUCKING TOWELS

kefkafloyd posted:


Speaking of relics I recently made a video about an old boat anchor I bought because I was working on a different video. I’ll get right to installing OS/2 on it, I swear!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFZeSaMBnZw

Cool! I bought one of these about 20 years ago and it’s still on my ‘to do’ list to get it running. I periodically thought about gutting it and putting a modern mobo in it, but never had the heart to destroy such a tank of a machine.

kefkafloyd
Jun 8, 2006

What really knocked me out
Was her cheap sunglasses

Last Chance posted:

Does the gps still work well?

Yup, I tested it in the field today. The latest firmware (dated from 2007) apparently fixes the 2019 clock rollover problem. It takes a minute to get a lock, which is to be expected without data assist, but once locked it works fine.

Garmin’s built-in software works really well; much better than any add-on Palm OS GPS I’ve used in the past. This thing would actually still be useful for navigation if it had up-to-date maps. So long as you’re OK with its basic framerate and mid-aughts voice directions.

JnnyThndrs posted:

Cool! I bought one of these about 20 years ago and it’s still on my ‘to do’ list to get it running. I periodically thought about gutting it and putting a modern mobo in it, but never had the heart to destroy such a tank of a machine.

Thanks! It’s best to keep these vintage, there’s only so many left. They’re not THAT hard to get going, so long as you have a working floppy drive and a fresh CMOS battery. But you need to do your research and follow instructions and keep your expectations of what a MCA machine can do in check.

kefkafloyd has a new favorite as of 21:03 on Jan 20, 2024

CaptainSarcastic
Jul 6, 2013



kefkafloyd posted:

Speaking of relics I recently made a video about an old boat anchor I bought because I was working on a different video. I’ll get right to installing OS/2 on it, I swear!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFZeSaMBnZw

I had to open the video to check what it was, because when I hear "boat anchor" I think iMac G3, and the "installing OS/2 on it" confused me.

kefkafloyd
Jun 8, 2006

What really knocked me out
Was her cheap sunglasses

CaptainSarcastic posted:

I had to open the video to check what it was, because when I hear "boat anchor" I think iMac G3, and the "installing OS/2 on it" confused me.

I’m so used to awful.app showing the video thumbnails that I’ve forgotten that the forum doesn’t do that by default. Whoops. I updated that post to mention that it’s a video about a deep dive into the PS/2 Model 80.

Kazinsal
Dec 13, 2011


Apparently last night I got drunk enough to buy a mostly-working IBM PS/2 Model 50 off eBay.

So I guess there's a weird MCA-based 286 machine in my posting-in-this-thread future.

c0burn
Sep 2, 2003

The KKKing


Finally have room to have a couple of retro systems up and running at a time

DrBouvenstein
Feb 28, 2007

I think I'm a doctor, but that doesn't make me a doctor. This fancy avatar does.
The same store I visited had a couple retro PCs out, one for early 2000's/XP stuff, and this bad boy:

Even came with a custom keyboard:

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



$100 and the fuckin floppy drive doesn't even work

By popular demand
Jul 17, 2007

IT *BZZT* WASP ME--
IT WASP ME ALL *BZZT* ALONG!


Pity that button is just a glued on plastic nub, from what I remember about the win95 experience it could have benefitted from a custom button that plays something like wtfbomb.mp3 (must work even when computer crashes)

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
Another round of Instagram-sourced ads:









Doccers
Aug 15, 2000


Patron Saint of Chickencheese
Since I'm not going to be at a PC tomorrow, I figured I'd get my "40th Anniversary" post out of the way.

On January 24th, 1984, Apple unveiled the Macintosh. While it wasn't the first computer with a GUI (or even the first Apple with a GUI - Hello Lisa!) it was probably the first successful commercially sold computer with a GUI that wasn't a later addition/application, with the GUI at the very core of the computer.

The Macintosh was powered by a Motorola 68000 CPU, and 128kb of RAM.
As of yet, I do not have a 128k, and quite honestly, with as limited as it is to use, will likely not pick one up unless I can get a particularly good deal on one. The 512k was much more usable, however the Macintosh really hit it's stride (in my opinion) with the 1mb capable Plus.


Hello there!

The plus, like the original 128k and 512k "Fat Mac" that followed it, did not come with a built in hard disk drive. They were intended to be run from floppy diskette. As you can see, I have a commonly found external HDD, which was built to fit the form factor of these compact Macintosh all-in-one computers. Sadly, I'm still fighting with a termination issue with this setup and haven't been able to get the hard drive to initialize properly, (even with Lido), so for now, enjoy some floppy-based Lode Runner.


Oh yeah. Thats the good stuff.


Keep on runnin', little dude.


The year after the Plus was released, in 1987, Apple released the Macintosh II.

A full color, GUI based machine, which was hilariously expensive (US$5,498 - equivalent to $14,160 in 2022, and this was bare-bones with a single floppy drive, no keyboard, and no monitor), but featured NUBUS expansion slots. This was the machine that Avid chose to develop and release their Digital Video Editing hardware and software package for. I'm still trying to track down a full NUBUS system of the original Avid system, but that is proving .... difficult.
Along with color graphics, and the ability to reach 8mb of RAM*, this is the first Macintosh to use a chip other than the 68000, by stepping up to the 68020.
(* Technically 128mb is possible, *IF* you had the updated ROMs that fixed an addressing issue, additionally, Apple had to "Guess" as to what memory standards for SIMMS larger than 1mb would be, and they guessed ...wrong. As a result, you need to have SIMMS with specialty PAL logic that could answer the memory calls that the Macintosh II made that were nonstandard. This was corrected with the IIx, IIcx, IIci, and other 68030 models. I have not found any such SIMMS yet, so mine remains equipped with 8mb.)

Apple realized that the Macintosh II was hilariously expensive, and so a few years later followed it up with a RIDICULOUSLY expensive verison, the "Wicked Fast" Macintosh IIfx, utilizing a 40mhz 68030 CPU. (US$8,969 -equivalent to $20,090 in 2022 - also no monitor, no hard drive, no keyboard, mouse, etc. Common configurations could exceed $14,000 in 1990 dollars)
Mine is currently on the bench for some servicing, but that gives me a chance to show what the inside of one of these looks like.

You can see the slots for Six NUBUS cards, as well as the dual floppy drives, and a space for a 5 1/4" internal hard drive, currently occupied by a small SCSI2SD device in a doesn't-quite-mount-right 3d printed bracket. (will be modifying and reprinting later on).

So what type of Cards can you slap into one of these? This one is presently utilizing a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sound/midi/game controller card (the original II series, including the IIfx, did NOT have an audio input option! If you wanted to record anything, you needed a card such as this. The ability to do Midi is a huge plus as well, for hooking up Midi keyboards and other devices), A high-resolution Radius Paintboard (I think) graphics card, and a 10baseT network card.


Furthermore, this bad boy is maxed out with 128mb of RAM.


A funny thing about the IIfx, is that it used oddball 64pin SIMMS, which I've only ever seen in LaserWriter printers otherwise. Finding these is very difficult, as it used a "special" latched memory write/read due to the "high speed" of the 40mhz CPU (which was very fast in 1990). <-- this is from memory so if someone wants to correct me, please feel free to do so!

That IIfx has been on my desk as my "daily retro driver" for the last year now. So why is it on the bench today?


This guy. The Macintosh was somewhat unique in that it utilized a powered auto-injest/auto-eject floppy disk drive, rather than a physical button you'd press to eject a disk, you would eject it from a menu command. When it worked. With these drives going on 40 years, a lot of them are in need of ... service.
For whatever reason, when Sony built these drives, they made one of the gears in the mechanism out of cheese.


I swear to god this goddamn cheese gear just shreds itself and loses teeth on every drat drive.
The white one on the left is from the same drive mechanism, but made out of plastic instead of cheese.


the mechanism in question.


40 years of caked on dirt, dust, crud, and dried up grease doesn't help with operation.


Just a little bit of cleaning...


that's a little better...


Apply some new grease, good as new.
(the second drive is also in need of cleaning/cheese gear replacement, but I ran out of time tonight, so the IIfx remains coverless, in the cold of my lab. Poor thing.)

Well, after the $14,000 price tag of the IIfx, Apple then decided next year "Hey, maybe we should release something a little more affordable". So they released the Macintosh Classic, which was basically a reworked Plus, including stepping back to a Motorola 68000 CPU, but with the option of a built in hard drive. Due to aggressive pricing discounts, these found their way into the Education market in droves, usually paired with a simplified, locked down and protected shell for the GUI, called "At-Ease". If you were in school in the early 90's, allow me to dust off a few neurons for you:



Along with the Classic, Apple also released an inexpensive version of the color Macintosh II - the LC (Lowcost Color!). The only other Macintosh other than the II that utilized the 68020. These also found their way into the education market due to discounts, but Apple also realized that since schools already had a sizable investment in Apple II software, it might be good to be able to run that on the newer Macintosh line as well. So they built a special card you could drop into the LC, which would allow you to run Apple II software.

The amusing thing with this card is, while you could run Apple II software from 3.5" floppies that fit into the Macintosh drive, most software was on 5 1/4 inch floppies, so, they made a breakout cable where you could plug in Apple 5 1/4" floppy drives. The results can look... kinda silly.


(Please excuse my crowded bench).

This was the year Apple also decided to re-enter the portable computer market, with the legendary P-P-P-P-P-Powerbook. (we can talk about the ill-fated 1989 Macintosh Portable another day.)


As far as I can determine, this was the first portable laptop that combines all of the hallmarks we still expect in a modern laptop - a clamshell design, with the keyboard situated behind a trackball (later trackpad), setting the standard for the next 30 years. Not bad, you little brittle bastard. (The hinges in these have not aged well, and the plastic is largely disintegrating...)

Like, really.
3d printing to the rescue...



PRO loving TIP if you ever 3d print a bracket and need to reinstall brass screw anchors- Use a soldering iron to push the anchors into place! Oh my god that was so easy it was like cheating compared to trying to press/turn them in.

Apple then upgraded to the Quadra series, and it's 68040 CPU. (I just acquired one of these, but no photos of it running yet.)

Time rolls on, and with the advent of the Pentium, Apple realized they needed to upgrade their own CPU's, and chose the IBM/Motorola PowerPC chip. These were very good, but also very expensive, and Apple still had an issue where most businesses and consumers had a lot of Dos and Windows software. One answer to this, was to release a computer that could do both!


The inside of a Power Macintosh 6100/60, the first PowerPC equipped Macintosh! ... with a special little card hiding in the upper left corner there...


Looks like a Mac, Walks like a Mac, Quacks like a Mac...


... but why the gently caress does it have a DOS prompt?!?!



They never released this for the Mac...

Oh wait! It's the PC Compatiblity Card! Which is actually a System-on-a-board card, consisting of a 486DX2/66, with an optional SoundBlaster daughter card. :3

It actually runs both systems simultaneously, and you can switch back and forth with Apple-Enter. Kinda fun!

The desk where this is currently set up, is where I had the IIfx until the floppy drive cheese gear crapped out. I decided to give myself an "upgrade" for 2024, so am now playing around with the PowerPC, and things like Photoshop 3, with a WACOM tablet. It's a neat dive back into the mid 90's.

I'll try and do more effort-post later in more depth for a couple of these systems (The LC with the Apple II card for certain - I thought I had photos of it running, but I do not - and it's out in the lab, and it's raining. Yeah yeah, excuses..)

I also have....


... more, I could write on. But that will need to wait for another day.

Happy birthday, Macintosh!



(Little personal history here - the Macintosh LC was the first computer I ever bought. I saved up money for two years, wanting a color Macintosh, due to a IIcx I saw at school. I was expecting to have to save for many more years, when Apple released the affordable LC, and I was hooked. The GUI just fascinated me, and I considered it the future of what using a computer would be like. I kept using that thing well into the 486 era, when I finally went to the dark side and bought a 486 DX2/66 so I could run a multi-line VBBS bulletin board, and while I enjoyed seeing and using the early PowerPC Macintoshes, the colorful G3 iMacs and the follow-ons to that just made me lose interest. It wasn't until years later when I stumbled onto an old beige PowerMac 7600 sitting unloved in a "Trash" pile at a local thrift store, that I started getting nostalgic. Re-learning what I knew, and then going past that, playing with machines I could only dream of owning in 1991 - like the IIfx - has been a hell of a lot of fun, and brought back a lot of good memories. Let me know if anyone has any questions about these things, and thanks for the read!)

ynohtna
Feb 16, 2007

backwoods compatible
Illegal Hen
No - thank you for the read and your restoration purposes.

:five:

Star Man
Jun 1, 2008

There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow
Part of me wants a retro gaming computer that dual boots Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows XP, but I would probably hate the restoration process, finding a place for all that crap, and so on.

But it would be sweet to have an IBM Aptiva again.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

(Semi-cross-posting)

You remember Osborne computers? Well I just bid 19€ on this beauty:

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



Lmao loving At Ease.


My rich friend's parents had a IIfx set up in their carpeted conversation pit with a giant plate glass window that looked out over the valley. I played MS Flight Simulator endlessly on that thing while he pretended to be a bird and ran around outside on the hillside flapping his arms. (He eventually made enormous electronic gliders and designed novel wing profiles and ended up going into aerospace at MIT)

They also had a Lisa secreted away in the mom's dress design studio. Man what was up with that family

lobsterminator
Oct 16, 2012




3D Megadoodoo posted:

(Semi-cross-posting)

You remember Osborne computers? Well I just bid 19€ on this beauty:



Osborne became a niche Finnish brand after the 80s.

"Commercial rights for the Osborne brand name were later acquired by the Finnish clone PC maker Mikrolog Ltd which sold its server and desktop PCs domestically under the previously world famous name until 2021, when Mikrolog went bankrupt."

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TheMadMilkman
Dec 10, 2007

Doccers posted:

Time rolls on, and with the advent of the Pentium, Apple realized they needed to upgrade their own CPU's, and chose the IBM/Motorola PowerPC chip. These were very good, but also very expensive, and Apple still had an issue where most businesses and consumers had a lot of Dos and Windows software. One answer to this, was to release a computer that could do both!


The inside of a Power Macintosh 6100/60, the first PowerPC equipped Macintosh! ... with a special little card hiding in the upper left corner there...


Looks like a Mac, Walks like a Mac, Quacks like a Mac...


... but why the gently caress does it have a DOS prompt?!?!



They never released this for the Mac...

Oh wait! It's the PC Compatiblity Card! Which is actually a System-on-a-board card, consisting of a 486DX2/66, with an optional SoundBlaster daughter card. :3

It actually runs both systems simultaneously, and you can switch back and forth with Apple-Enter. Kinda fun!

My family’s first computer was a 512Ke, which got upgraded to a Plus. We used that until 1994, when my parents gave me a Performa 6115CD. I loved that machine and have been looking for a replacement for a long time now. I used it until 2003, when I bought a used blue and white G3 tower from my university’s surplus store.

Anyway, I love your collection and please continue to post about it.

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