old computer

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > YOSPOS > old computer

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

~Coxy posted:

power button

programmers switch is a piece of plastic you clip on the side if you want one, it presses a microswitch inside the case through the air vent to generate an interrupt

wish we could generate an interrupt of your posting.

# ? Feb 13, 2016 02:45

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 07:50

Slow-Scan Shep: Jul 11, 2001

echinopsis posted:

IMO
this is why the Amiga never succeeded

amiga can read 720k pc disks (with the appropriate drivers of course), pcs can't read amiga disks at all without zany hardware

much better than the pre-fdhd macs, those cannot read pc disks at all

# ? Feb 14, 2016 02:01

echinopsis: Apr 13, 2004; by Fluffdaddy

all those 720k discs that were around

and what you mean is that they couldnt read amiga formatted disks, but the amiga could format as pc format and pcs could read em

BUT the fact was almost eveyr pc drive was 1.44 and so the amiga couldnt touch it

making interoperatbiltriyt inaskopat

# ? Feb 14, 2016 02:05

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

papa_november posted:

amiga can read 720k pc disks (with the appropriate drivers of course), pcs can't read amiga disks at all without zany hardware

much better than the pre-fdhd macs, those cannot read pc disks at all

floppy drives are analog devices. just about any floppy drive will read any floppy disc, it's just a matter of having a controller and software that can make sense of the signal.

catweasel and discferret are the most popular drive controllers for reading old-timey floppies with modern PCs

you will still need old PC floppy drives, but that's the easy part

# ? Feb 14, 2016 02:33

Hed: Mar 31, 2004; Fun Shoe

thread really makes me want to go through my parents' house. the c64 is there and there are some really weird business machines from the 80s like work touch screens to calculate pricing and control the truck fleet. don't really know what else I would do other than boot them up though

Prenton posted:

Usbourne have scanned in a load of their 1980s books so you can learn how to old computer

holy poo poo I remember these illustrations

# ? Feb 18, 2016 01:25

Slow-Scan Shep: Jul 11, 2001

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

catweasel

mother loving lol at this thing

i bought it (and it came out) just when the 64-bit transtition was happening. The drivers were poop from a butt, were nowhere near feature complete, and 64-bit versions were promised but turned out to be pure vaporware. i waited a year, then complained and jens fuckin' shonfeld said "well you're welcome to send it back"

no motherfucker i paid 180 funbux for your stupid product so it could work as intended, not so you could practice your jack tramiel impression

amiga reading/writing works, c64 reading/writing sort of works, mac reading works, but just about everything else that this thing is supposed to do that onmiflop cant is pure broken lol, including the hardware sid support out of which i got not one peep

# ? Feb 18, 2016 01:36

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

papa_november posted:

mother loving lol at this thing

i bought it (and it came out) just when the 64-bit transtition was happening. The drivers were poop from a butt, were nowhere near feature complete, and 64-bit versions were promised but turned out to be pure vaporware. i waited a year, then complained and jens fuckin' shonfeld said "well you're welcome to send it back"

no motherfucker i paid 180 funbux for your stupid product so it could work as intended, not so you could practice your jack tramiel impression

amiga reading/writing works, c64 reading/writing sort of works, mac reading works, but just about everything else that this thing is supposed to do that onmiflop cant is pure broken lol, including the hardware sid support out of which i got not one peep

"poop from a butt" aptly describes the windows material

the catweasel only really works under linux. even then there are like ten different kernel drivers written by different people

# ? Feb 21, 2016 08:13

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

"poop from a butt" aptly describes the windows material

the catweasel only really works under linux. even then there are like ten different kernel drivers written by different people

I remember compiling a iinux kernel. boy, did it suck.

# ? Feb 21, 2016 08:46

echinopsis: Apr 13, 2004; by Fluffdaddy

Hed posted:

holy poo poo I remember these illustrations

# ? Feb 21, 2016 09:32

You Am I: May 20, 2001; Me @ your poasting

Clearing out my dad's house as it will be going onto the market soon, and found my first computer in the roof space:

A Dick Smith VZ-300. Based off a VTech Laser 310, which is supposedly a clone of the Tandy TRS-80

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VTech_Laser_200

Still remember the disappointment I had when I got this in the mid 80s instead of a Commodore 64 which the rest of my friends and neighbours had.

# ? Feb 21, 2016 12:08

Silver Alicorn: Mar 30, 2008; 𝓪 𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓹𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪 𝓲𝓼 𝓪 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 𝓼𝓸𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓾𝓻𝓮

http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/rc1000/

# ? Feb 21, 2016 17:26

akadajet: Sep 14, 2003

Hed posted:

holy poo poo I remember these illustrations

i remember seeing a similar illustration in a book in elementary school. it didn't go much further than "0 and 1s" and i was frustrated it didn't tell me what it actually meant.

# ? Feb 21, 2016 17:47

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

Silver Alicorn posted:

http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/rc1000/

that must have been the loving worst to reverse engineer

he notes you can't read anything off the watch. the serial port has no tx pin. you can only write. ugh

# ? Feb 21, 2016 19:14

eschaton: Mar 7, 2007; Don't you just hate when you wind up in a store with people who are in a socioeconomic class that is pretty obviously about two levels lower than your own?

Notorious b.s.d. posted:

that must have been the loving worst to reverse engineer

he notes you can't read anything off the watch. the serial port has no tx pin. you can only write. ugh

run the ancient software in a VM/emulator, routing its serial port via the USB serial and also capturing to a file

I can ask rob if that's how he did it

# ? Feb 21, 2016 19:24

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

You Am I posted:

Dick Smith

Lol

# ? Feb 21, 2016 19:34

CUNT AND PASTE: Aug 15, 2004; ~see my amazon wishlistu~

hi nerds i got very concerned about FTP sites the other day and went and checked and sure enough almost all the sites I remember have vanished so I made a bash script that will download and archive an FTP site for you (not claiming credit -- i improved someone else's script)

code:

#!/bin/bash

# grab-ftp.sh
# download entire FTP with wget, then package in tar

target="$1"

wget -r -l 0 -np -nc "$target"

if [[ "$target" =~ ^[url]ftp://.*[/url]$ ]]
    then
    target="$(echo "$target" | cut -d '/' -f 3)"
    echo "ftp"
    echo "$target"
fi

# create archive
tar cJvf $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz "$target" --remove-files

# create file list
tar tvf $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz > $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz.txt

# create sha256 sum so you can validate the archive later
sha256sum $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz > $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz.sha256

adapted from stuff listed here:
http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=FTP

here are some FTP sites that have already been archived:
https://archive.org/details/ftpsites

CUNT AND PASTE fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Feb 22, 2016

# ? Feb 22, 2016 01:29

CUNT AND PASTE: Aug 15, 2004; ~see my amazon wishlistu~

for example i was very concerned about simtel.net so i went looking and found three different mirrors in various stages of completeness. does anyone know of a good deduplication tool?

# ? Feb 22, 2016 01:32

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

oval office AND PASTE posted:

hi nerds i got very concerned about FTP sites the other day and went and checked and sure enough almost all the sites I remember have vanished so I made a bash script that will download and archive an FTP site for you (not claiming credit -- i improved someone else's script)
code:
#!/bin/bash

# grab-ftp.sh
# download entire FTP with wget, then package in tar

target="$1"

wget -r -l 0 -np -nc "$target"

if [[ "$target" =~ ^[url]ftp://.*[/url]$ ]]
    then
    target="$(echo "$target" | cut -d '/' -f 3)"
    echo "ftp"
    echo "$target"
fi

# create archive, file list and sha256 sum
tar cJvf $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz "$target" --remove-files

# create file list
tar tvf $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz > $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz.txt

# create sha256 sum so you can validate the archive later
sha256sum $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz > $(date +%Y).$(date +%m).$(date +%d)."$target".tar.xz.sha256
adapted from stuff listed here:
http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=FTP

here are some FTP sites that have already been archived:
https://archive.org/details/ftpsites

A while back I did a search for a review on some classic D&D module and I found an FTP site with bunch of pirated PDFs of D&D stuff, thanks to wget I now have so much gaming poo poo it's ridiculous.

# ? Feb 22, 2016 01:32

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

The apple II archive there is 25g compressed. I have a hard time believing that every piece of Apple II software ever made comes out to that.

# ? Feb 22, 2016 01:35

Silver Alicorn: Mar 30, 2008; 𝓪 𝓻𝓮𝓭 𝓹𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪 𝓲𝓼 𝓪 𝓬𝓾𝓻𝓲𝓸𝓾𝓼 𝓼𝓸𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓬𝓻𝓮𝓪𝓽𝓾𝓻𝓮

o yea I should dig out my archive of Atari software

# ? Feb 22, 2016 01:37

Dolomite: Jul 26, 2000; Cars & Legs

oval office AND PASTE posted:

here are some FTP sites that have already been archived:
https://archive.org/details/ftpsites

not in that list, but hobbes is still alive :unsmith:

# ? Feb 22, 2016 01:46

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Silver Alicorn posted:

o yea I should dig out my archive of Atari software

I have ~2850 MS DOS games here and they come out to about 8.7g all said.

# ? Feb 22, 2016 01:48

Elder Postsman: Aug 30, 2000; i used hot bot to search for "teens"

Citizen Tayne posted:

The apple II archive there is 25g compressed. I have a hard time believing that every piece of Apple II software ever made comes out to that.

holy poo poo. that's like 70000 5.25" floppies. gotta be a lot of duplicated poo poo in there

I still have two boxes of Apple II floppies with various things on them in a box in the basement. idk why.

# ? Feb 22, 2016 01:58

Elder Postsman: Aug 30, 2000; i used hot bot to search for "teens"

we found this in my wife's moms house. I got it out tonight to see if it still worked but I can't hook it up to a tv because it's got that goofy old connector with the two wire u gotta screw on. the power light turns on at least.

# ? Feb 22, 2016 03:47

minivanmegafun: Jul 27, 2004

the ti-99/4a's video output is dead simple. hack off the Video Modulator and solder on a pair of RCA connectors and you'll get composite video and mono audio in no time.

https://www.99er.net/TIvideoadapter.htm

e: post teddy

# ? Feb 22, 2016 03:58

Beve Stuscemi: Jun 6, 2001

rf is the most shameful video connection method, always replace it asap

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:05

Elder Postsman: Aug 30, 2000; i used hot bot to search for "teens"

minivanmegafun posted:

the ti-99/4a's video output is dead simple. hack off the Video Modulator and solder on a pair of RCA connectors and you'll get composite video and mono audio in no time.

https://www.99er.net/TIvideoadapter.htm

e: post teddy

oh daaaamn thanks

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:09

Panty Saluter: Jan 17, 2004; Making learning fun!

the

version is a 300 -> 75 ohm balun

ive always wondered why rf is so bad. after all the signal delivered over an antenna can be really good, so i guess it's just cheap nasty noise filled modulators in the console/computer?

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:16

Jerry Bindle: May 16, 2003

i remember popping open the rf modulator of my atari 2600 and seeing loosely curled blue-wire acting as the inductors, so yeah my bet is that they are just made with crappy components

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:18

Notorious b.s.d.: Jan 25, 2003; by Reene

Panty Saluter posted:

ive always wondered why rf is so bad. after all the signal delivered over an antenna can be really good, so i guess it's just cheap nasty noise filled modulators in the console/computer?

you typically send full motion video over an antenna, not text or pixelated graphics

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:22

Jonny 290: May 5, 2005; [ASK] me about OS/2 Warp

all the modulators and demodulators and IF stages and detectors add electronic noise, which is barely visible when looking at motion video stuff like bsd said, but when crisp graphics are trying to go through the noise of the components adds up and you get the blurry edges and spots and such

basically, run some abstract poetry through google translate and back, then run a technical reference manual through it and back, see which one gets worse

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:23

minivanmegafun: Jul 27, 2004

the 2600 is kind of an interesting case because it puked RF output instead of composite

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:23

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud: Apr 7, 2003

Elder Postsman posted:

we found this in my wife's moms house. I got it out tonight to see if it still worked but I can't hook it up to a tv because it's got that goofy old connector with the two wire u gotta screw on. the power light turns on at least.

After my recent experience, I'd kill to have floorboards that thin. christ.

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:29

Panty Saluter: Jan 17, 2004; Making learning fun!

Jonny 290 posted:

all the modulators and demodulators and IF stages and detectors add electronic noise, which is barely visible when looking at motion video stuff like bsd said, but when crisp graphics are trying to go through the noise of the components adds up and you get the blurry edges and spots and such

basically, run some abstract poetry through google translate and back, then run a technical reference manual through it and back, see which one gets worse

atari 2600 graphics = poetry

i can dig it

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:31

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Jonny 290 posted:

basically, run some abstract poetry through google translate and back, then run a technical reference manual through it and back, see which one gets worse

lol they'd both get worse because they both rely on precision, nerd

# ? Feb 22, 2016 04:33

eschaton: Mar 7, 2007; Don't you just hate when you wind up in a store with people who are in a socioeconomic class that is pretty obviously about two levels lower than your own?

i figure others here may appreciate this

# ? Feb 22, 2016 05:08

Jimmy Carter: Nov 3, 2005; THIS MOTHERDUCKER
FLIES IN STYLE

this is a less 'olde computer' but there's a guy over in Hong Kong who is upgrading clamshell iBooks by stuffing MacBook Air logic boards into them, swapping out the LCD, and modifying the output voltage of the power adapter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSn-ygKBZXI

# ? Feb 22, 2016 05:31