Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2020-07-07, 19:55

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Mostly house maintenance. Ceiling repairs, wall painting etc. Not exactly today, rather the last 5 days. It was built in the early 70's, so I guess it counts 🤣 Also played a few DS games.

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-07-02, 16:05

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It was never my thing to try to go as period correct as possible, but I have always wanted to at least build systems that would pass as contemporary. Many people would upgrade their systems along the way so to me adding parts together which are like 2 years apart is perfectly fine. I just never …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2020-07-02, 10:49

by

by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-07-02, 08:43: Trying to figure out the 386 motherboard here. Apparently, the clock won't stay in sync and after a while, it loses the settings. Not sure if the RTC chip is acting strange or if the battery connections are bad. Is it a Dallas?

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-07-02, 08:55

by

by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

speaking of scalpers and people buying up stock, when I look for Amiga machines on the local classifieds I find like 3 sellers that each sell multiple machines, some 10 or more... sure feels like they bought up every Amiga they could find and are now reselling them at a high markup, because why …

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Re: FIC PDA-2000 Socket 7 Cache Problem

Posted on 2020-07-01, 13:03

by

by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Can you provide an unobstructed close-up of the SRAM chip?

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-07-01, 12:50

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As for Voodoo cards, I thought I would need a V5 to fully enjoy games from that time. Turns out, a V3 does the trick just fine, along with a 1.2GHz Tualeron (originally 400MHz P2, then 500MHz P3, then 800MHz P3 with a different M/B). Going strictly period-correct seems like a foolish concept to me. …

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-07-01, 11:42

by

by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

But this has basically always been the case so that in itself is no reason why the prices have gone up the last couple years. I'm not claiming that's the reason for the prices. Just pointing out that it's not always hobbyists who want this hardware. Some otherwise worthless and obsolete hardware ( …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2020-06-30, 20:23

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things: The plastics are EXTREMELY brittle. The area around the fan has already broken off and the screen fascia is crack on both sides. Also, it somehow holds 1.5 hours charge on its 25 year old battery. What …

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-06-30, 20:15

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My guess is that adding people who are not even retro computer hobbyists to the pool of people who want to get these parts (and even more so to sell at a higher price later) are the worst reason why this is getting so expensive now. Sometimes this hardware is actually needed for ships, medical or …

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Re: 486 Motherboard does not POST at all.

Posted on 2020-06-30, 19:12

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's a weird board. It's new enough to have a 72-pin SIMM slot, yet it only has ISA, and nothing else. Did you press Caps Lock or Num Lock to see if the LEDs on your KB respond? Another thing would be to check the Capacitors with a multimeter.

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-06-30, 17:25

by

by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Freaking scalpers... That's why I keep my stuff even if I don't want it, because I would much rather just give it to a close friend and fellow nerd for free, than see it sold for an abysmal price mere minutes after having sold it myself for a reasonable price. I found out "abysmal" was the exact …

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Re: Anyone here that has worked on old or weird hardware for a job?

Posted on 2020-06-30, 12:15

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remembered another. Not really old, but definitely weird. Some middle-aged man brought his ASUS laptop for a service and a diagnostic check-up (it was starting to get slow). Pretty expensive in its time, and well-specced (also thick and heavy): Intel Core i7-3820QM 8GB RAM Some Nvidia GPU that I …

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Re: finally found a 17" CRT Monitor! what a blast from the past

Posted on 2020-06-30, 11:43

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

chinny22 wrote on 2020-06-30, 09:18: Blue is attempting word dominance over Red/Green at times. You need another VGA cable. I hope it's easily replaceable and not directly a part of the monitor.

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Re: Windows 98SE and DVD RAM

Posted on 2020-06-30, 08:20

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by TechieDude

in Windows

in Windows

What flavour of linux would you recomend for a computer that can only run Windows 98SE has 512MB RAM and an Asus P4P800 as notherboard and how would I test DVD RAM drive in linux? Interesting thing will be to boot linux from this drive as it has problems reading CDs :) Just for the tests, you could …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2020-06-30, 08:11

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-06-29, 23:33: Currently running 5.00 on the 203MB Maxtor drive. Try 6.22 on the bigger HDD.

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-06-29, 12:19

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

When people buy things from 'cheap' sellers and put it up for sale again for a much higher price. Last month I sold my IBM 5170 with working IBM hard drive, memory expansion, several other cards and a working IBM CGA monitor. I wanted to sell it because I was not really using it, ever. This …

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Re: Sound Blaster 16 Clones

Posted on 2020-06-29, 12:13

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Having collected over 100 sound cards in my search for the Bestestest sound card I can clearly tell you that genıuine OPL3 is the most overrated ISA card feature. I would rather have that clear Crysatl PCM audio and CrystalFM over most OPL3 card's shitty noise floors. I don't think it's because of …

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2020-06-29, 12:06

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by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

T4600C wrote on 2020-06-29, 09:33: Found Voodoo3 2000 16mb at thriftstore! Lucky find, works too. Nice in a 200-400Mhz p1/2? Definitely. In fact, even that would benefit from the faster P2.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2020-06-29, 12:00

by

by TechieDude

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Currently working on the 386 system I acquired on Thursday and it works! The biggest con is the hard drive is a bit too tall and when I attempt to install the CD-ROM drive, there's a gap between the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive up front, which isn't good. The system only boots from the hard drive …

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Re: Retro-case ... or not ?

Posted on 2020-06-29, 11:13

by

by TechieDude

in Milliways

in Milliways

I would love to see that. When I find an AT case, I hang on to it for dear life because they're quite a bit rare in my area 🤣

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