Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-03-15, 20:27

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Had a bit of fun on eBay and these will be turning up over the next few days. Always need more RAM. All sorts here including cache modules. s-l1600.jpg Compaq Contura 3/25 Laptop - seller says it boots but the screen is very dark so this should be fun to play with. s-l1600 (1).jpg An Amiga 600 - got …

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Re: My collections of Matrox video cards

Posted on 2021-03-15, 20:15

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What an amazing collection. I thought I had too many - I have maybe ten! Covered them in a video I made a couple years ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa08lCtqtzc I used to be quite involved over on the Matrox Users Resource Centre (MURC) forums and was picked along with 3 or 4 others to beta …

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

Posted on 2021-02-15, 14:04

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got an old original Mac Pro 1,1 up to running El Capitan, put in a Radeon HD 6450 1GB, a 500GB WD Velociraptor 10k drive and took the system RAM up to 16GB - I just KNEW one day old HP server RAM would come in useful!! :D Getting the firmware updated and supporting the latest (unsupported) OS and …

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

Posted on 2021-02-13, 00:37

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got an old original Mac Pro 1,1 up to running El Capitan, put in a Radeon HD 6450 1GB, a 500GB WD Velociraptor 10k drive and took the system RAM up to 16GB - I just KNEW one day old HP server RAM would come in useful!! :D Getting the firmware updated and supporting the latest (unsupported) OS and …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-12, 20:19

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That apple Mac Pro bench is great! haha Probably the best use for them 😀

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-12, 15:41

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well it works! Now to do some firmware hacking and see what OS I can get on it (I had a Snow Leopard handy so that's what's there now)

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-12, 14:28

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just won this on eBay for 99p. Mac Pro "Quad core" 2.66GHz (Dual Xeon 5150) CPU with what appears to be a 4GB upgrade, and the original Nvidia 7300GT video card. No hard drives but that's soon fixed. The brackets were included. No idea if it works but I assume it does. Now how to work out how to …

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Re: Question about how Windows 3.1 runs DOS programs.

Posted on 2021-02-11, 20:41

by

by SteveC

in Milliways

in Milliways

gerry wrote on 2021-02-11, 10:58: Jo22 wrote on 2021-02-10, 07:54: I think it depends on the mode of Windows 3.1.. Windows 3.1 has Standard-Mode and 386 Enhanced-Mode. ... just a note of appreciation for you comprehensive answer, I 'kind of' knew - but was good to read through and bolster that …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-07, 15:31

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ha just look how big that external tower is for just seven drives! I used a good few ProLiant 1600 servers back in the day and was a fan - they look pretty similar.

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Toshiba Portege black screen on boot

Posted on 2021-02-06, 21:07

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi, I recently got a couple Toshiba Portege 3110CT laptops - one needed a new hard drive and that machine is running absolutely fine, and the other had an almost blank drive that needed wiping and Windows 98 reinstalling. This second one worked for a while, but at one point during loading software I …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-04, 12:11

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I now have three gamepads and a joystick. I need to get a USB to gameport adapter though now so I can use this on a modern machine, and my retro laptops (assuming these USB gameport adapters work in Windows 98).

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-03, 23:29

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I love/hate seeing things like that screen that I clearly remember throwing out at work as we upgraded!

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-02, 23:17

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, that's a common affliction of old subnotebooks - they generally do not boot off USB1.1 - not that USB1 is great for booting ISOs anyways. If you got a Toshiba external drive + cable, it might use the TEAC FFC26 interface. If it does, you can mod yourself a nice little mini-Gotek for those …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-02, 11:46

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just bought a pair of Toshiba Portege laptops to make a 2 player Win98 gaming setup :) Both working just need hard drives according to the seller, easily sorted. Don't think £34 delivered for the pair was too bad. So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-01, 22:20

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just bought a pair of Toshiba Portege laptops to make a 2 player Win98 gaming setup :) Both working just need hard drives according to the seller, easily sorted. Don't think £34 delivered for the pair was too bad. So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-02-01, 18:18

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just bought a pair of Toshiba Portege laptops to make a 2 player Win98 gaming setup :) Both working just need hard drives according to the seller, easily sorted. Don't think £34 delivered for the pair was too bad. So these turned up today and both work but have failed hard drives. So annoying …

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

Posted on 2021-02-01, 10:19

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd probably keep the Zip100 drive in - I was a beta tester for the Zip 250 and even though we all told Iomega they were awful they released them anyway! I found the drives and media unreliable. If you have a working Zip250 I'd treasure it and not wear it out using Zip100 disks :) Also I think …

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

Posted on 2021-01-31, 22:04

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ah SIS 6326! I remember going to a LAN game round some kinda friend's house and I had an SiS 6326 graphics card - I think my first AGP card - and I was absolutely destroyed by all the proper 3D cards in the house 😁

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Converting an old IBM terminal to be useful

Posted on 2021-01-31, 17:50

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi all, I have an old AS/400 I can't get working, one big reason is I don't have the keyboard to the InfoWindow terminal and don't want to pay £100 for one just to find out something else doesn't work with it. So I was wondering can the monitor be converted to CGA/EGA or even VGA? It works in that I …

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Re: Reasons to keep a late 2012 iMac?

Posted on 2021-01-30, 23:52

by

by SteveC

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A few months back I actually picked up an early 2008 20" iMac (2.4GHz Core2Duo, 6GB RAM, 256GB SSD) on which I've forced High Sierra on and it's used every day. My main PC desk screen/kb/mouse are for working at home during the week (then used for main PC at evenings/weekends), but this iMac sits …

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