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23w lol. I assume the DVD playback bit is just about an mpeg decoder?
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May 12, 2024 10:31
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You can't hardware device mpeg2 without a license, so yes. The first Rasberry pi even had an addon purchase to get the license!
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May 12, 2024 11:45
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alsv-v9o4yQ
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May 15, 2024 14:40
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Gonz posted:Never had any trackball control quite that large, but I did have one of these, which I got at a garage sale for like 10 bucks back in the day. I had this & used to wreck my friends in DOOM & Quake deathmatch
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May 16, 2024 05:37
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I have the modern successor of this and still use it for games
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May 16, 2024 10:14
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I used a ADB Kensington Turbo Mouse 4 button trackball with my mid 90's PowerMac 7100/80AV. Was kind of funny trying to find uses for the 3 other buttons on an OS that's designed around a single button mouse. I made a "right-click" of sorts by having the lower right button do a keypress on the Apple/cloverleaf mod key + click combo.
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May 16, 2024 16:21
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First mouse I ever saw was the clip-on trackball my dad got for his monochrome 386 laptop:
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May 16, 2024 16:55
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That is a thing of beauty
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May 16, 2024 19:00
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Speaking of things of beauty, I recently picked up a Sun Microsystems Sparcstation 5 in desperate need of some TLC. These are very important computers to me, as during my formative years of becoming a computer toucher, I had a high school job at a local business where all of the engineers and some of the IT staff used these Sun SS5 boxes. These were amazing computers to me. While the rest of us plodded away on Pentium 75's with Windows 95 and ball mice, the Sun-havers were living in the future with Solaris and these brand new optical mice that seemed straight out of science fiction. I really was enthralled by the Sun machines, they were extremely untouchable for me as a broke high school kid (and lets be honest, no one outside of the enterprise and education world actually purchased these). So now I have one, my second one, actually. That company eventually gave me a broken one after seeing how smitten I was with them, but I never got it working, and in a fit of being broke in college, I sold it, much to my regret. I am positive that 2024 me could get it running again. Anyway, I have another one, and its very dirty. It came from an auto shop, so it has basically spent its entire life inhaling shop dust. Its got some issues, its missing its left front panel piece, the model placard is pretty crusty, and in general the plastic is brittle as hell     So I'm embarking on the journey to restoring this thing. First things first, cleaning it up. I've fully disassembled it and bathed some parts in 99% ipa to get the crud off. The rest is getting hit with a wire wheel for rust and 120psi of air for the dust.
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May 16, 2024 19:09
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Beve Stuscemi posted:That is a thing of beauty
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May 16, 2024 22:23
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Beve Stuscemi posted:Speaking of things of beauty, I recently picked up a Sun Microsystems Sparcstation 5 in desperate need of some TLC. I’m curious… What kind of shop needs a Sparcstation? Was it used to 3D model a widget that went to a CNC or something?
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May 17, 2024 02:03
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Picturing someone hunt-and-pecking CUSTOMER STATES over and over into an xterm
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May 17, 2024 02:14
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namlosh posted:I’m curious… What kind of shop needs a Sparcstation? Given the other equipment that came out of there it was some extremely ancient inventory system that ran on green screen terminals. If the hard drive in the SS5 is still good (and if I can get the system powered on), maybe I can find out.
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May 17, 2024 03:21
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Well, it’s massively more clean now, and it powers on! I don’t have a 13w3 to vga adapter yet though, so I can’t tell if it’s booting yet  Unfortunately more brittle 90’s plastic succumbed to simply being disassembled, so I guess I have to make an eBay search for these front plates  
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May 17, 2024 05:10
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Do you have anything with a serial port? IIRC they are quite verbose over serial when booting.
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May 17, 2024 11:57
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I do love seeing nice old machines getting fixed up like that! Thanks for sharing
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May 17, 2024 13:05
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Computer viking posted:Do you have anything with a serial port? IIRC they are quite verbose over serial when booting. You'll need to find or make a little adapter for the serial port iirc. Order it at the same time as the display adapter!
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May 17, 2024 13:18
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Beve Stuscemi posted:Well, it’s massively more clean now, and it powers on! I don’t have a 13w3 to vga adapter yet though, so I can’t tell if it’s booting yet Do those suffer from the leaky capacitors that kill older Macs? Speaking of old graphics systems, this thread might be able to clear something up for me: Was there a dedicated, pre Macintosh/photoshop graphics workstation from the early 80's? I'm sure I remember reading about such a system, very high end and only used by large design houses (for whatever reason I associate it with Hipgnosis, but that might be a red herring). yaffle has a new favorite as of 14:13 on May 17, 2024 |
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May 17, 2024 13:48
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It sounds like you're talking about Psygnosis and Amiga (maybe Video Toaster)?
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May 17, 2024 14:11
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Data Graham posted:It sounds like you're talking about Psygnosis and Amiga (maybe Video Toaster)? I don't think so, this was for (at the time, I guess) high end image manipulation and graphic design work. Thinking about it more I may just be mis-remembering an 80's article about photoshop. 
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May 17, 2024 14:18
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yaffle posted:I don't think so, this was for (at the time, I guess) high end image manipulation and graphic design work. Thinking about it more I may just be mis-remembering an 80's article about photoshop. Amiga with a Video Toaster and Silicon Graphics workstations were the cool kids' toys.
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May 17, 2024 14:26
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yaffle posted:Speaking of old graphics systems, this thread might be able to clear something up for me: Was there a dedicated, pre Macintosh/photoshop graphics workstation from the early 80's? I'm sure I remember reading about such a system, very high end and only used by large design houses (for whatever reason I associate it with Hipgnosis, but that might be a red herring).
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May 17, 2024 14:50
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Computer viking posted:Do you have anything with a serial port? IIRC they are quite verbose over serial when booting. That and you’ll need to dremel out and mod the epoxied NVRAM battery or get a replacement. These machines work but are generally unhappy without proper NVRAM. yaffle posted:I don't think so, this was for (at the time, I guess) high end image manipulation and graphic design work. Thinking about it more I may just be mis-remembering an 80's article about photoshop. You may be thinking of Scitex machines (which did various things like imposition, rasterizing, et cetera). kefkafloyd has a new favorite as of 15:36 on May 17, 2024 |
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May 17, 2024 15:33
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yaffle posted:Do those suffer from the leaky capacitors that kill older Macs? You might be thinking of the Mindset: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcmwa0xCSnU
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May 17, 2024 17:48
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dobbymoodge posted:You'll need to find or make a little adapter for the serial port iirc. Order it at the same time as the display adapter! Coincidentally I just got an "untested" Sparcstation 5 from eBay with very few pictures, because I have strong nostalgia for them having used them a lot at university. Mine isn't as grubby (by far) and looks like it's been dropped on one corner (it's a bit bent!) but thankfully boots and works fine except the NVRAM battery switch is of course toast. Just stick a null modem cable on the 25-pin serial port A and connect at 9600 8n1 and it shows boot messages etc and goes into OpenPROM  Also, mine has the max 256MB of RAM in it, which presumably would have cost several arms and legs back when this was new :o (And a disk with a web server and mysql database with someone's data in it I guess...) I'm looking forward to seeing how much of my actual work I can do on a 70Mhz single core machine!
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May 17, 2024 19:53
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Oooh, nice! I'll hook mine up to serial tonight and see what it says. What are you doing for an NVRAM replacement? Hacking the existing one apart, or getting a new one? I think mine has just 32MB of RAM, which is still fine for the time it was made, but I believe it has the 170mhz processor in it. Are you going to run solaris on it, or some form of *nix?
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May 17, 2024 20:02
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Beve Stuscemi posted:Oooh, nice! I'll hook mine up to serial tonight and see what it says. What are you doing for an NVRAM replacement? Hacking the existing one apart, or getting a new one? Not sure on the NVRAM yet - I think it's harder to get working replacements now than a few years ago, as the similar chips which are still made and fit aren't 100% compatible? I need to investigate this more but the chip-hat-chopping doesn't look too awful to do  Was thinking of getting a ZuluSCSI or BlueSCSI V2 (very similar, but easier to get the latter in the UK where I am) and then trying out various OSes! NextSTEP will work on most SS5s but not the 170Mhz TurboSPARC you have, as that's a newer SPARC model (and the fastest Sparc 5!) So hopefully I'll try out SunOS/Solaris older versions, NextSTEP, NetBSD, whatever else it will run really! (Definitely not Linux, I have enough boxes which can run that much better than this)
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May 17, 2024 20:44
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Beve Stuscemi posted:Oooh, nice! I'll hook mine up to serial tonight and see what it says. What are you doing for an NVRAM replacement? Hacking the existing one apart, or getting a new one? Double posting, but forgot to say that the serial side of things only happens by default if there isn't a keyboard plugged in. Oh and the 13w3 adapters are different for SGI and Sun, just to confuse things. There are cables you can buy in the US with a bunch of DIP switches to set the wiring of pins so they'll work to convert the various flavours of 13w3 to VGA though.
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May 17, 2024 22:05
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I bought this one, which people in the reviews are talking about working with Sun machines https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007TZG526
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May 17, 2024 22:15
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For refurbishing the Sun NVRAMs I recommend this Tindie kit. https://www.tindie.com/products/glitchwrks/gw-48t08-1-repair-board-module/ If you don’t want to DIY it, Glitchworks will refurbish modules for you if you mail them in.
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May 17, 2024 22:26
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yaffle posted:Speaking of old graphics systems, this thread might be able to clear something up for me: Was there a dedicated, pre Macintosh/photoshop graphics workstation from the early 80's? I'm sure I remember reading about such a system, very high end and only used by large design houses (for whatever reason I associate it with Hipgnosis, but that might be a red herring). It was for the television industry, but something like the Quantel Paintbox? To quote the wikipedia page: "Quantel invested heavily in art, employing a hundred digital artists by the late 1980s to improve and demonstrate the Paintbox features. Graphic Paintbox was used to create the poster for The Silence of the Lambs, JFK, The Doors, and record covers for Nirvana's Nevermind, and the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. The Miracle, rock band Queen's studio album, was designed by Richard Gray and created by Richard Baker."
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May 17, 2024 22:38
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Gromit posted:It was for the television industry, but something like the Quantel Paintbox? It was this! I remember the Queen Album from the thing I saw about it. Thanks.
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May 17, 2024 23:27
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I got nothing on the serial output from the Sun, but apparently I need a null modem cable? I think I’m using just a straight through serial cable. I guess we’ll find out when the adapter arrives tomorrow
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May 18, 2024 00:27
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I've seen this and do not know why in the picture the d-pad and c-buttons are in the opposite positions. Was that an earlier version of the controller?
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May 18, 2024 09:02
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you broke my grill posted:I've seen this and do not know why in the picture the d-pad and c-buttons are in the opposite positions. Was that an earlier version of the controller? The footage was likely mirrored. 
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May 18, 2024 09:07
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Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder
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May 18, 2024 09:15
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Beve Stuscemi posted:I got nothing on the serial output from the Sun, but apparently I need a null modem cable? I think I’m using just a straight through serial cable. I guess we’ll find out when the adapter arrives tomorrow
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May 18, 2024 11:18
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Is there any fun software that only runs on old Solaris? I have a Sun Blade 100 in the basement and while it's nice that it uses standard VGA and USB I really struggle to find any reason to power it up and play with it. After having to sysadmin ancient HPUX and Solaris servers for work I think it would cause more trauma than nostalgia  https://unixhq.com/systems/sun-blade-100/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFdwHLMkiQ8
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May 18, 2024 11:27
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r u ready to WALK posted:Is there any fun software that only runs on old Solaris? Does it run Doom?
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May 18, 2024 17:15
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evobatman posted:Does it run Doom? It can! https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Solaris
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May 18, 2024 17:25
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