In the UK, we had ZX spectrums and Horace goes skiing or some Chess game o.0. UK schools gave a good introduction to computing due to the "BBC Computer Literacy Project" which started back in 1982 (the BBC Master, ModelA, ModelB etc... its where the RPi got it's naming convention). As a result you would have been hard pressed to find a school in the UK which didn't have at least 10 BBC's and at least one valliant roamer, meaning pretty much every student between a certain age was exposed to computers.

Who from the UK remembers this guy?

By 1990 the BBC's were piled up in the corner a replaced by Acorn Archimedes, which were as good if not better in some respects than the Amiga (which a lot of people had at home, including myself). In fact there were a lot of games which came out on both Archimedes and Amiga in the UK (psyclapse/psygnosis), and tbh the Archimedes version were always pretty good (loads of colours, they were fast responsive machines for the time).... The Amiga was the exotic gaming platform with a plethora of titles available and a massive PD (Public Domain) library... it was the home computer to have late 80's/early 90's for gaming. Apple was the uber exotic 'business machine' and not common place at all (ime). [EDIT: A bit of trivia relevant to this site... it was Douglas Adams who lays claim to being the first Apple computer owner in the UK 😀].

The Acorn lives on in ARM (Acorn Risc Machine 😀)...

I think it was about 1995 that I started to see PC's appear in schools (PS/2), and usually only one or two which weren't actually used by students (expensive... and IT teachers who grew up with Acorn Electrons/Atoms obviously know much more about IBM computers than students o.0).. Windows 3x (probably WFW) was still found on many computers in school even in 1998 (i-defo-rcc on that).

Bought what looks to be an ASUS V8200 GeForce 3 (non-Ti 200/500). I already have a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 64MB, which has a lot of overlap with this card performance wise, but I figure it's good for a period correct 2001 build. Plus, I've never owned a GF3 before. 😁 I couldn't resist for $8.50 shipped.

Seller's photo attached.

OldCat wrote:

Just snagged Toshiba Libretto 50CDT. So happy - have been searching for one in decent state AND in decent price. It's making its way through snowy Poland right now, so seller's photo atm, will update with real one when it arrives.

My Toshiba Libretto 50CDT has finally arrived and it is in perfect condition. This thing is absolutely lovely! Even my wife said that it's the cutest old laptop I have ever bought.

That's an amazing laptop, man.

I like my Palmax PD-1000 more, which is almost a replica of the Libretto, but which much better hardware (touchscreen, USB 1.1 etc.) 😁

Kinda looks like a Nintendo DS

Whoever said 'when you get involved with retro ..it hurts your wallet' ..was right ..
🤣
where do you stop ..?
😁
shopping on ebay for something entirely different I stumbled accross these..
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IBM-40G1890-PC-Car … 2-/290761892415
Well ..the temptation was just too much ..
So I just had to have one didn't I
😉

A few of nice items showed up today.

First An Orchid Righteous 3D Voodoo GFX card. Been after one for a while and snagged this for a nice bargain price.

Secondly a, Nvidia GF2 Ultra. I think I have all the cards in the range now (Pro, GTS,Ti & Ultra)

And finally a boxed Techworks Vortex 2 Super Quad.

appiah4 wrote:

Amiga was the future. What we are living today is a lie.

😢

So sad.

🤣!

appiah4 wrote:

Amiga was the future. What we are living today is a lie.

😢

So sad.

I think if Amigas were still being produced, the Amigas of the alternate timeline would be very similar to the PCs of today, because they would have to do the same things and modern Intel/AMD PCs are pretty good at doing those things. They'd probably even be using x86-64 processors just like Apple does, for the same reasons that Apple switched. Personally I'm glad to live in a world where you can mix and match components to build your own custom PC from the ground up instead of ordering a proprietary unit from Commodore. The Amiga had three major problems IMO: the first was that its multimedia capabilities weren't really all that usable without any way to get the multimedia into your computer--diskettes were good enough for games but not much else. The second was that business customers hated video games and considered any video game capabilities a way for employees to slack off, so they stuck with the IBM PC throughout the '80s. The third was Doom, which kicked off a tidal wave of 3D games made for 486 PCs which used the raw brute force of the 486DX and DX2 to render 3D, smoothly and attractively, in software. Classic Commodore Amigas weren't going to handle Doom and they certainly weren't going to handle Descent or Terminal Velocity. Once 1994 came around, nobody wanted a Nintendo-style PPU anymore--just look at what happened to the Sega Saturn. By the time the internet and CD drives made multimedia actually practical, the Amiga was competing against 486 machines that were selling for little more than $1000 or even being thrown away by businesses and taken home by employees for free, and it lost.

Bancho wrote:

Secondly a, Nvidia GF2 Ultra. I think I have all the cards in the range now (Pro, GTS,Ti & Ultra)

Nice one, GF2 Ultra is not very common and yours even has DVI which makes even better. 😀

Anyway, new stuff here as well. i845 based board was on my to-buy-list for a long time... now this task is finally complete. 🤣
Asus P4B533-E + P4 2.0A

Picked up this lot yesterday... It's gonna take me a while to get through all these!

Dang, man. Some of those look almost identical (amount of external bays and closer to dimensions), more brighter than others (mainly because of UV exposure or tobacco).

MMaximus wrote:

Picked up this lot yesterday... It's gonna take me a while to get through all these!

these are kinder surprise boxes, you never know what cool expansions they might hide inside! 🤣

keropi wrote:

MMaximus wrote:

Picked up this lot yesterday... It's gonna take me a while to get through all these!

these are kinder surprise boxes, you never know what cool expansions they might hide inside! 🤣

I know, that's part of the fun! 🤣

Actually I bought five machines from the same guy a while ago... but didn't have time to open them until now. Last week I finally opened one of them and found a Cirrus Logic Eagle II card in it. 😁 So I thought, I'll go and buy the remaining machines now, maybe some other Eagles made their nest in them 🤣

bjwil1991 wrote:

Dang, man. Some of those look almost identical (amount of external bays and closer to dimensions), more brighter than others (mainly because of UV exposure or tobacco).

They are indeed identical, 5 of them are the same model of 286 (one having been upgraded with a 386 motherboard). These cases are nice because they seem quite immune from yellowing... as opposed to the Gateway and that other desktop case 😵

MMaximus wrote:

Picked up this lot yesterday... It's gonna take me a while to get through all these!

[.img]http://i.imgur.com/fPZ9QFpl.jpg[/img]

The tower to the left is the same case as my second computer. Still have it around today, though not in active duty. Would love to see what's in yours 😀

It's not hardware, but this arrived with my drop shipper yesterday. I have been looking for the May 1986 copy and associated code for over 10 years. Found the code last year. I'm mostly interested in seeing their code for BWE (BIOS Window Extensions), but there are a couple of interesting articles. I'm writing code for testing some of my collection.

Bought some cpus today:

- Cyrix 5x86-120
- Cyrix 486DRx2 20/40
- IIT X2 487DLX25/50

and some a few weeks ago:

- ULSI Math Co DX2 66MHz
- Ti486SXL-40 (386 pinout)

+ some 20 others... will post photos once I get them 😉

Slowly finishing my wanted list 😁

Bancho wrote:

A few of nice items showed up today. […]
Show full quote

A few of nice items showed up today.

First An Orchid Righteous 3D Voodoo GFX card. Been after one for a while and snagged this for a nice bargain price.

[...]

And finally a boxed Techworks Vortex 2 Super Quad.

[...]

I really love this V1 model, the click noise when the card switches in 3D mode is so satisfying. Boxed Vortex 2 makes me quite jealous, too.

Anyway, this has arrived for me yesterday (after 1 ½ month of waiting and no repsonding by the seller...): An Acer/Aopen AP43 486 motherboard. Another candidate in the quest to find the best 486 motherboard for maximum performance with the Cyrix 5x86. I like the layout, especially that you can use 4 long 16 bit ISA cards, the BIOS is good too, more stuff to change than any of my other 486 PCI boards. Only downside seems to be the performance so far, after some quick testing with a Cyrix 5x86 @ 120MHz and somewhat optimized BIOS settings I get 54.84 in speedsys, which is less than my LS486e which gets 54.96 and also less than my PC Chips M919 which gets 56.52 even without working L2. Also couldn't figure out jumper settings for higher FSB (yet) or find a datasheet for the PLL. Oh well. The quest continues. And the testing too.

MMaximus wrote:

Picked up this lot yesterday... It's gonna take me a while to get through all these! […]
Show full quote

Picked up this lot yesterday... It's gonna take me a while to get through all these!

I have also found gems like CT1320's or ATI VGA Wonders, etc. in generic system like these. Hopefully yours will have some good stuff in there.