Post some hardware porn

The hard drive in that basement PC will keep your photos safe for years. Whereas SSD's can fade. A bit in an SSD is just some charge injected onto a capacitor in the final analysis, and over time it can leak, there is no such thing as a perfect insulator. Flash is not fuse PROM. Magnetic disk is still the best thing available, apart from tape.
www.xda-developers.com

The unpowered SSDs in your drawer are slowly losing your data

SSDs aren't ideal for long-term data storage
www.xda-developers.com www.xda-developers.com
 
blackbird9 said:
Some slide rules.

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Top to bottom: Faber-Castell 57/88 'Rietz', Jakar No. 77 'Darmstadt', Faber-Castell 111/98 'Electro'.
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artillery mechanical calculator:

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drhowarddrfine said:
7400s, 74LS00s, 74S00s, and some 74AS00s (if i remember the advanced schottky's correctly.) Also various EEPROMs, Z80s, drams.
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I used to have the full TI TTL databook set in hardcopy. I've got all that stuff in pdf's nowadays. And any modern CAD software has them all in the library anyway. A lot of books I used to have in hardcopy I now have in pdfs. It takes up a lot less space! And now that 4K monitors are so cheap, reading them on the screen isn't so bad.
 
blackbird9 said:
I used to have the full TI TTL databook set in hardcopy.
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The TI rep for me, her brother, was one of the initial founders or investors in Sun back in the day. She filled my bookcase with TI data books and sample parts until management decided "we don't need no stinkin' color monitors!" Which meant we didn't need TIs stinkin' graphics chips which meant she was no longer my friend.
 
When I was at the university, I found I could phone just about any semiconductor company and get free databooks posted to me. I had shelves full of books from intel, hitachi, motorola, TI, nat semi, zilog, etc, etc. Speaking of zilog, they used to send me the 'captain zilog' comics they used to print. All I had to do was give them my 'goods inwardrs' address at the uni and they would all arrive in the post. I've still got some of that stuff in a box, but most of it has gone, just because it takees up so much space. Of course nowadays you can get it all on softcopy anyway so having printed databooks isn't so important. Yes, sample parts, I remember Dallas sent me a whole load of their realtime clock chips and DS5000 microcontrollers, and AMD sent me palasm and a free pal development kit, I seem to remember, and I got some of the early demo stuff from xilinx when they were just starting to come out with their field programmable gate arrays. Ha, those were the days 😂

There are some things I regret getting rid of, I had a nice Z80 development kit, it was from a US company but I can't remember the name, it had the hex keypad, breadboard, onboard monitor, alphanumeric display, all in one unit. I think I sold it to someone for a few pounds years ago, after it had sat on the shelf for years never being used. Once I got the PC, pretty much everything switched to the PC, right up to today.
 
blackbird9 said:
When I was at the university, I found...
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Yeah. Those were the days: You simply could ask for free samples on a semiconductor's webpage, and they shipped 3..5 parts to you for free: OpAmps, MOSFETs, small Microcontrollers,...(almost) anything. Built some device that way that went into series production. Since now (almost) every company is taken over by TI, it's over. When you are not a company with a name yourself TI does not even talk to you.
I remember who sent me free samples, and who don't. And guess which I prefer in my BOMs of new designs. You will not find much TI in it, if I can avoid it. But sure, 5k devices here, 50k there is nothing TI is interested in. :p
 
blackbird9 said:
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My stack of thinkpads and docking stations. Yeah, I know, I've "got a problem". 😂 Various different models, mostly classic series thinkpads. I can't be bothered to sell them for a few quid on ebay, they're not worth anything anyway, and you never know when they're going to come in useful. No company makes this kind of high quality hardware any more, including the modern lenovo thinkpads, so I'm hanging on to them; at least they don't take up very much space. And they all run freebsd!
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I thought I had a problem, but you've got it real bad! :)

I'm actually surprise at how many of mine have stopped working.
 
cracauer@ said:
I still have a Phenom II X6 in production. The board has a PCI slot for my RME 9652 sound card.
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I had the Phenom X3. The urban legend was that they were triple-core because they failed QA for quad-core. And Windows had to patch their OS so it could run on this processor.
 
balanga said:
I'm actually surprise at how many of mine have stopped working.
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If they won't boot... try the usual trick to defeat latch-up. Take battery out, hold power button down for about 2 minutes, then put battery back in. Or if battery is discharged, just power it from mains adapter only. Then press power button to see if it will boot.
 
blackbird9 said:
If they won't boot... try the usual trick to defeat latch-up. Take battery out, hold power button down for about 2 minutes, then put battery back in. Or if battery is discharged, just power it from mains adapter only. Then press power button to see if it will boot.
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I've tried various things. but haven't thrown any out yet just in case I find a magic formula.
 
balanga said:
My first laptop. Unfortunately it isn't working currently, and probably hasn't been for over 35 years. But I keep telling myself I will get it fixed.
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Oha! Many will really envy you for this little piece of genuine hardware!
But if I may give you an advice: Keep it (in a dry and dustless space), and just keep it as it is.
Point is: When you actually get it fixed, and make it run again someday, you will spend two or three hours with it, and then realize: there is nothing useful you can do with it anymore. It's just memories. Don't spoil them.
At least I had this experience with my old Amiga.
 
Maturin said:
Oha! Many will really envy you for this little piece of genuine hardware!
But if I may you give you an advice: Keep it (in a dry and dustless space), and just keep it as it is.
Point is: When you actually get it fixed, and make it run again someday, you will spend two or three hours with it, and then realize: there is nothing useful you can do with it anymore. It's just memories. Don't spoil them.
At least I had this experience with my old Amiga.
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Well it got me exposed to DOS 2.0 which was embedded. I had my first experience with BBS's at a superfast connection speed of 1200 BAUD (or could it have been 300).

I'll donate it to some computer club if it gets fixed. As you say, it is pretty useless, but it helped along the way with learning about PCs.
 
balanga said:
at a superfast connection speed of 1200 BAUD (or could it have been 300).
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Doesn't matter. Before there had been 150 Baud acoustic couplers (I think 300 was max what those things could do; anything above >=1200 already were modems [words from the trenches, almost nobody knows anymore 😁] For their times they were fast enough - well, most of the times. "Aaargh. 1 Megabyte tar. *sigh* Yeah, well, another whole night to download."
Downside was, the telephone line was blocked for hours, and sometimes, when somebody called, this broke the connection. And the other person wondered why one was so pissed when finally the phone was picked up. 😂

balanga said:
I'll donate it to some computer club
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...or a museum. Good idea. So you know it's in good hands.

balanga said:
but it helped along the way with learning about PCs.
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Yeah. I wish I started my computering back then with one of those.
 
balanga said:
My first laptop. Unfortunately it isn't working currently, and probably hasn't been for over 35 years. But I keep telling myself I will get it fixed.
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Theres probably not much wrong, toshiba kit of that period usually had very good build quality, I remember my T3200 was built like a tank. You just need a friendly local electronics repair man to have a look at it. It might be something as simple as a blown fuse. I wouldn't chuck it out.

I pulled a nice Pace Linnet 33 k modem out of a skip at work once where it had been thrown out... took it home, opened her up and found all that was wrong was a blown cartridge fuse on the mainboard. I put a new fuse in ... and all working! Much of the time it turns out the fix isn't too difficult.
 
I have a 030 PowerBook $SOMEWHERE (most likely parents basement). It booted last time and I played the world map puzzle on OS9 (?)
 
We need some latest hot hardware porn too, the latest hot stuff, not just all this old stuff. Unfortunately I don't have anything on hand I can take a photo of. Well, I bought a 4K monitor recently, but it's not very exciting, and it's hardly 'hot'!

Who has an nvidia blackwell sitting on their desk?
 
Vintage stuff below 🤓

First picture is some well-known microcontroller oldies (68HC11F1, 80C32, PIC16F). Second is a vintage Japanese EPROM programmer controlled via LPT port. Third is a quick and dirty wiring (digital + power) I made to troubleshoot a forestry machine.

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