Re: Any Thinkpad lovers here?

Posted on 2018-05-24, 10:05

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My old 600X was made up of parts from 3 damaged ones I found, but that doesn't really count as a frankenpad. If I find the right LCD for the right price I'd do it. 1024 x 768 is the worst part of daily driving the T60.

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Re: Any Thinkpad lovers here?

Posted on 2018-05-23, 10:45

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My daily drivers have always been old thinkpads. I was still using a 560X running Win98 up until around 2005 - by then I'd upgraded it to 96MB ram, but it was still on its original battery and 4GB hard disk. Next was a 600X that started with Win98, but ended up with Win2000 for better Wi-Fi support …

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Re: Can you play something on Classic Macintosh ?

Posted on 2018-05-20, 11:46

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Spectre VR should run smoothly on the IIci and is worth playing if you haven't already played it on PC. As for Mac exclusives - Crystal Quest?

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Re: Will ever be Powerbook G4 collectible ? Should I get one ?

Posted on 2018-05-15, 11:25

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I still kind of regret not bidding on a top of the line 17" Powerbook G4 (2005 model, 1.67GHz, 1680x1050 display) that turned up at local (not online) auction I was at a couple of years ago. At the time I didn't bid because I'd been at the auction before and they'd never let anything with an apple …

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Re: Fidelity TransCD 8x external LPT CD-ROM driver and pwr adapter

Posted on 2018-05-14, 10:02

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If the power connector has 3 pins it is likely they are +5V, +12V and ground. It would be easy enough to find which is which by probing the molex power connector for the CD-ROM drive.

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Re: Why are 3Com NICs regarded in such high regard?

Posted on 2018-05-10, 10:42

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For ISA I found that generic NE2000s were hit and miss. Sometimes they worked. Sometimes they're wouldn't be detected. Sometimes they would show up in device manager as okay, but wouldn't connect to the switch. The 3com cards always worked for me. By the time I was using PCI I wasn't finding as many …

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Re: Identify video capture (?) card

Posted on 2018-05-06, 11:24

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It looks like an MPEG1 decoder card for playing VCD movies.

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Re: Looking for 286 CPU upgrade "kit"

Posted on 2018-04-20, 11:44

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to run the 1060 XT bridgeboard on my Amiga 1000 back in the day. The emulated CGA does makes me wonder now if anyone ever thought of upgrading the software to do Tandy 16 color graphics. It never occurred to me at the time - Why would I want to play PC games when Amiga games were cleary …

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Re: Looking for 286 CPU upgrade "kit"

Posted on 2018-04-18, 11:53

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It looks like the A2286 has a daughter board containing the BIOS and RAM that sits over top of the CPU socket. I doubt there be enough clearance between the boards to install anything without modification. I guess you could raise the daughter board with stacked socket pins. Crazy idea that might …

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Re: Looking for 286 CPU upgrade "kit"

Posted on 2018-04-17, 12:09

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've got one buried somewhere. Hypertec made a lot of them. Theirs were intended for IBM PS/2 model 50/60 and have a 386SX-25 on them. They also made made 386 -> 486 upgrade boards for PS/2 model 70/80. I used to see them a lot in ex government surplus systems - under policies of the time fitting an …

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Re: If you had $5.000 dollars to buy retro hardware, what would you buy?

Posted on 2018-04-12, 11:42

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd probably go for a really odd build: - IBM 5160 because to me that's the most beautiful and iconic retro PC ever made. It looks like 5150, but it has 8 expansion slots (more on in a minute); https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/Ibm_px_xt_color.jpg/1200px-Ibm_px_xt_color.jpg …

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Re: Socket 7 Sleeper

Posted on 2018-03-28, 10:08

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I wonder if this is thing with auto shops? When cleaning out an auto shop I found a flip top baby AT desktop case that other than the presence of a CDROM and 3.5" floppy drive I would have expected it to be an XT or 286 system. It turned out to be a Pentium 75 with 32MB ram and a 1GB HDD running …

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Re: Hot damn! A curiously upgraded Sawtooth (SMP content inside)

Posted on 2018-03-11, 10:38

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

In my case the sawtooth would not power up without modifying the card. At first I tapped the pins, but found that sometimes the machine would either not power up or power up, but not boot (fans and hdd spinning, no startup chime, no other signs of life). Once I cut the traces it was stable. I was …

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Re: Hot damn! A curiously upgraded Sawtooth (SMP content inside)

Posted on 2018-03-10, 12:11

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I ran a flashed and modded GF4 Ti4600 in my sawtooth for a while (where it was seriously bottlenecked as I didn't have your CPU upgrade) until I moved it into a 1.25GHz MDD. I also used the ROM and guide from TheMacElite. For those that don't know Apple reused some pins on the AGP connector for …

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Re: Macintosh instead of PC for retro gaming?

Posted on 2018-03-10, 11:52

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you want the DOS PC experience, no Macintosh with or without a PC card is really going to cut it. I'm not bashing old macs here, I've owned them - it's simply a different experience. If you want to play with old mac stuff on OS 9 grab the G3 you've been offered - for $25 its a decent deal (at …

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Re: Hot damn! A curiously upgraded Sawtooth (SMP content inside)

Posted on 2018-03-05, 10:40

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Flashed and pin modded PC GeForce 4 Ti4600?

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Re: Remove BIOS password from IBM 570

Posted on 2018-01-24, 09:14

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've removed a bios password from a either a 600E or a 600X (it's been a while) by shorting a jumper pad on the board that was accessible from the ram expansion cover. Perhaps there is a chance that the 570 also predates the enhanced security that requires the serial cable method?

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Re: just picked up an IBM PS/2 model 30 (8086 version), having display issues

Posted on 2018-01-17, 11:20

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I vaguely remember these and other other early VGA machines using a couple of pins on the VGA connector to identify the type of monitor connected and set the display mode appropriately. Back in the day this problem could show up as the PC being stuck in B&W mode on a color monitor because the cable …

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Re: Old hardware you didn't take or buy... but might still want?

Posted on 2017-12-29, 11:30

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I found a massive NCR dual Pentium (socket 5) server on the side of the road put out for garbage collection. This would have the be the biggest (in physical size) PC I have ever seen. Full height SCSI hard drives, MCA bus, loads of strange cards, RAM and CPU cards as big as many motherboards. There …

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Re: Apple PowerMac G3/400 help needed

Posted on 2017-12-27, 10:33

by

by dr.ido

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Your mac may have limited built in support for a GeForce 2MX in the system ROM - some PC cards will work without flashing at least enough to check that the rest of the system works. I have flashed a PC card with Mac ROM from the site mentioned above. I did use NVflash on the PC to do the flashing. …

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