The old computers thread

Zare

Zare

Instead of going off topic in some thread when the good old days are mentioned, let's have a place to bounce stuff here :)

Do you keep some old computers alive, work on them occasionally or even try to keep them up and running through daily routine?

Some consider old computer to be PDP-7, some consider a 64-bit laptop. Let's keep the thread inclusive ;)

I myself am a PC guy, started with an XT which I still have in perfect working condition (40th birthday near), and from there moved on to 486/Pentium so these are my primary 'concerns' about this retro topic. I have a stash of hardware that corresponds to those eras, and also keep a 14" and 17" CRT monitor nearby (would like to acquire a 15" one, 19" I don't have space for). I also sometimes run the 17 inch Syncmaster on the main rig to play some emulator games or just for the fun of it;

Code: 
        crt)
                xrandr --output DP-0 --off
                xrandr --output DP-3 --off
                xrandr --newmode "95Hz"   63.75  800 848 928 1056  600 603 607 637 -hsync +vsync
                xrandr --addmode HDMI-0 "95Hz"
                exec /usr/local/bin/wmaker
                ;;
 
I miss my first computer!! But live in my heart

-pc100 motherboard
-amd k6 micro
-16mb of ram
-dont remember the storage but 80gb more or less
-17crt monitor(still have it and works)

Remember start in the "computer" world with this, upgrade the amdK6 to amdK6-2 was the ultimate challenge..feels like a rocket

And tell my dad(he dont know anything about computers)
"I go to buy some ram to my pc..it will run faster"
 
Hey wolffnx, great that you still have the CRT it is the most important item and hardest to acquire now. Does it still have good picture?

Btw. You probably made a typo, extra zero - 80 GB is hdd from the future for that machine ;)
 
Yes,the monitor still works fine,is amazing

🤣 I say it,my memory is not so good,too many lost sectors in "my main" hard drive
If I remember well was a 80GB IDE of course
Maybe 40GB..that files in my brain was lost
 
Yeah I think they're lost, 40/80 GB drives are from 21st century, they went along Pentium 4 machines :D

I have the 40 GB HDD I had back then still, Maxtor but still looking like Quantum they bought at that point. But to be fair I don't cry over old moving drives, they were always problematic and the bottleneck of the computer, think about how much time you spent just looking at blinking leds listening to the drive noises waiting for OS or something bigger to load :)

One of the attractive things now is to remove the original moving drives from old PCs and put solid state storage in. CF cards can run on any PC, and the fast big ones are very performant even for P4, and up from there is SATA, for SSDs.
 
IBM 5155, PS/2 386, Philips NMS 8280 MSX. Lots of 8-bit consoles. Still have to make a Macintosh SE and Amstrad Joyce work with their broken SCSI disk and 3" floppy replaced with flash storage.

Using a large amount of FreeBSD utilities to make things work but there's nothing central on FreeBSD. A retro computing port for connectivity with old random hardware would be nice. I might contribute with what I know.
 
Zare said:
Instead of going off topic in some thread when the good old days are mentioned, let's have a place to bounce stuff here
Click to expand...

I did start a thread on this, I called it, "Retro Computing MegaThread." I was waiting for you to make the thread but you never did and it took a day or so for the message to get approved and become visible. Just as this message will take awhile to become visible. I haven't hit 10 days of being a user here, yet. I posted about the thread's creation here. You may wish to head back over to that other thread and add a link to here.

Oh well, thanks for making the thread! :) It's a quite enjoyable topic!
 
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I came across this and thought it might fit well in the old computers thread:

https://virtualosmuseum.org/
https://gitlab.com/virtualosmuseum/

It is called the Virtual OS Museum. The project provides a downloadable VM with a large collection of historical operating systems and emulated computer platforms. The full version is huge, but it supposedly includes over 1700 ready-to-run installations, covering 600+ OSes and 250+ platforms.

It looks like the intended setup is to run their Linux-based VM through VirtualBox, QEMU, or UTM. For FreeBSD, I don’t think the Linux AppImage launchers are useful, but the VirtualBox/QEMU pieces may be adaptable manually. On a FreeBSD desktop, I suspect the best path would be FreeBSD host -> VirtualBox -> Virtual OS Museum VM.

Could be a fun way to poke around old systems like Research Unix, early BSD/Unix variants, NeXTSTEP, BeOS, Xerox Alto/Smalltalk, etc.

I haven’t fully tested it yet on FreeBSD, but it looks interesting enough to share here in case anyone else enjoys retro OS history or wants to experiment with it.
 
mvee said:
I came across this and thought it might fit well in the old computers thread:

https://virtualosmuseum.org/
https://gitlab.com/virtualosmuseum/

It is called the Virtual OS Museum. The project provides a downloadable VM with a large collection of historical operating systems and emulated computer platforms. The full version is huge, but it supposedly includes over 1700 ready-to-run installations, covering 600+ OSes and 250+ platforms.

It looks like the intended setup is to run their Linux-based VM through VirtualBox, QEMU, or UTM. For FreeBSD, I don’t think the Linux AppImage launchers are useful, but the VirtualBox/QEMU pieces may be adaptable manually. On a FreeBSD desktop, I suspect the best path would be FreeBSD host -> VirtualBox -> Virtual OS Museum VM.

Could be a fun way to poke around old systems like Research Unix, early BSD/Unix variants, NeXTSTEP, BeOS, Xerox Alto/Smalltalk, etc.

I haven’t fully tested it yet on FreeBSD, but it looks interesting enough to share here in case anyone else enjoys retro OS history or wants to experiment with it.
Click to expand...
Sorry..I dont read your post,about a minute I post that link in my state
Very fun
 
I've my Atari 130XE. I use sio2usb to remove the only annoying thing I remember about it - time it took to load a game. Showed some games to my kids too.
 
I have 20 CRT displays. 5 of them are VGA computer monitors. The others are televisions ranging from 5"-21".

I think the oldest chip I have is an AMD chip from the late 90s. I've got bunches of graphic accelerators, predating the term GPU. But they all live in boxes at the moment. 😃

The oldest case I have is a horizontal AT form factor from the 80s but I've modded it to fit ITX. I like to collect tech that is no longer produced.

I've also got an assortment of pcmcia cards, USB, wifi expansion cards.

And I my oldest laptop is a beautiful Dell from the year 2000 running a pentium at 733MHZ 128MB of ram with an ATI Rage 8MB card. Just a beauty. I've also got the dock, superdisk, zip 250 drive, DVD burner/writer, fd drive, and extra hard drive bay module as well.

I got too much stuff to remember. I should sell most of it. It just lives in boxes sadly.
 
MG said:
You have a 5 inch tube? :cool:
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I actually have two of them. I have a Sears model 401.50250550 AM/FM/TV that is 12V power or 8 C battery powered. I also have a Bass Pro Shops emergency flashlight weather radio / TV. They're both black and white. I got the Sears brand TV/Radio at an antique store and the Bass Pro Shops TV/Light/Weather Radio at a garage sale. hahaha I see an old Tube and I'm like...yeah..I'll have that.
 
LibreQuest said:
I actually have two of them. I have a Sears model 401.50250550 AM/FM/TV that is 12V power or 8 C battery powered. I also have a Bass Pro Shops emergency flashlight weather radio / TV. They're both black and white. I got the Sears brand TV/Radio at an antique store and the Bass Pro Shops TV/Light/Weather Radio at a garage sale. hahaha I see an old Tube and I'm like...yeah..I'll have that.
Click to expand...
It's extremely rare. I paid for a 6 inch Aristona TV-radio and 7 inch security BNC display but I was scammed. He sent me a payment request on his ex-wife bank account who blocked everything that had to do with him. Still no idea how that worked. I never received anything. 🥺
 
MG said:
It's extremely rare. I paid for a 6 inch Aristona TV-radio and 7 inch security BNC display but I was scammed. He sent me a payment request on his ex-wife bank account who blocked everything that had to do with him. Still no idea how that worked. I never received anything. 🥺
Click to expand...
That's unfortunate. I live in Oklahoma. People here don't value old electronics and they are plentiful. I go to garage sales here and there are old computers and tvs all over the place. I went to one and there was a beautiful 1980s Sony woodgrain 13" TV with a handwritten sign that said "free tv" so naturally I took it home and cleaned it and treated the plastic with a plastic conditioner and it is a fantastic color TV.

But most old things here end up in the trash, it's very wasteful and sad.
 
My random list so far:
  • Some fairly cool devkits. One that I am most fond of is for the N64 (the cheaper SGI Indy one, not the 250k SGI Onyx one ;)). Looks a little like this (not my photo) and (also not my photo).

  • PS1 devkit. Unfortunately not the fancy, prosumer Net Yaroze but the DTL-H2000 series (ISA cards). At some point I need to track down a suitable PC for this. For now, just cluttering my garage. No idea how to use it.

  • SGI Octane that I still fiddle about with. I find the early SGI graphics APIs quite cool.

  • Mac Plus that I essentially use to prop up my oscilloscope. Its likely broken so it would be good to find a new home for it.

  • ZX81

  • Loads of old Sun servers (i.e classic SunFire v100). I guess these are "retro" now?
 
msplsh said:
An AT, a weird frequency 486, a NeXT slab, an O2, a Coppermine, and a G4. I want an Apple II though.
Click to expand...
Someone messed with the front panel Mhz digits? I had a Pemtium that displayed "lol". It was an optional "1" and 2 real digits. They all had jumper wire pins. You can make an impossible CPU like 117 Mhz. 😆
 
msplsh said:
An AT, a weird frequency 486, a NeXT slab, an O2, a Coppermine, and a G4. I want an Apple II though.
Click to expand...
I forgot that I have an Apple 512k and an iMac G3. I still don't have a boot disk for the 512k. I've seen them on ebay but just haven't ever ordered one.
 
Old computers?
  • C64 the old breadbox model
  • C64c the 'new' model
  • SX-64 "portable" C64
  • C128D
  • ZX Spectrum
  • Amiga 500 + 590 (20MB HD + 2 MB memory)
  • Amiga 1200
  • Amiga 4000 (Merlin RTG; 8 MB memory; 1 GB HD)
  • Apple ][gs
I think that's it.
 
I acquired cheaply from ebay an Olivetti M290 system. It is a 286 12 MHz running from the SBC board on a backplane in AT compliant factor.
Unfortunately, the upgrade I meant to do, replace SBC with Advantech 486 card, won't work because the 486 card is 1 cm taller than case clearance - obviously not AT standard but for ATish midi tower cases and industrial backplane cases.

I have some stash of spare parts around, from XT age to Pentium 4 and beyond. So I can muster up some computer at any time, but this is list what I consider when somebody asks me what old computers do I have;

- Olivetti M19, 1986 XT small form factor with monochrome monitor. 4.77 MHz. My childhood computer, now upgraded to V20 7.2 MHz, EMS card, network card. The original storage is Rodime 20 MB over SCSI, a top notch thing for PC of its age, now replaced with CF card.

- Atari 1040STe, got it as compensation for ICT work back around Y2K. German TOS, 1 MB, SM146 mono monitor. I upgraded it back then to 4 MB via stash of leftover simms from 286/386 repair works. In last decade I got few accessories for it, a SD card interface, PS/2 mouse converter, upscaler, video cables, diagnostic cart

- Olivetti Modulo M-233, I used to have a M-200 back in mid 2000s as secondary, balcony computer. It is a standard workplace desktop machine with MMX processor and integrated ATI Rage card. I've used it to run Win95 and DOS games back then, but unfortunately it was lost somehow in movings, probably thrown. In last decade I got M-233 from ebay. I have one 14" matching Olivetti monitor and matching PS/2 keybs and mouse.

- Olivetti PCS5130, I bought this one from ebay before I could get my hands back on Modulo. It's a Pentium 100 slim desktop system. It used to be my main retro rig, but unfortunately I botched it with a BIOS update, and didn't save its BIOS. Guess what, there is no BIOS to be found, even via my Olivetti users contacts...too bad, hell of a machine, BIOS is so fast to POST, with 8 MB from power button click to disk boot it's like 3 seconds, the CRT doesn't even come up in time to show POST banner. For this computer matching gear is same as Modulo.

- Olivetti M290, new acqusition, have a matching 1988 Olivetti VGA monitor and keyboard (came with bought PC, cable needs a bit of restoration). It

- Bootleg Olivetti Xana system; this is my current main retro rig for DOS and early Windows. It runs a MSI board for Olivetti Xana Pentium II system from Silverstone FLP01 retro desktop case. The entire system is cooled via one case fan, CPU is brought down from 450 to 350 MHz. This system runs Geforce 2 card, 3Com 3C905-TX NIC and I really can't count how much "sound cards" are in there by virtue of integrated card, one PCI interface and 2 ISA cards. It is not a dump for old cards but a rather costly picked setup to cover almost anything from DOS and early Windows sound standards. I will make a write up about this computer once.

The most important factor for me is coolness, running cool, so they can run silent. I debated replacing the AT supply from M290 for picoPSU but I chose just replacing the vent for a silent one. I love old computers - but I don't feel nostalgic for the noise. All my computers are silent.
 
Here is photo of today with M290 and M19, M290 side by side

1789053130859.png


1789053162983.png


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9JdlE3p-zM
a video of M19 in action playing a 4 track MOD
 
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