Yeah I reckon so too, it's very Pip-boy! 😜

Went to the thrift store and got lucky.

Bought a PICKIT2 Starter kit ($55 new) for $5
Bought a Socket 7 AT motherboard for $5 (can't test it because I am missing a spare working AT supply now)
Bought a bag of old motors for $1
Bought a 1960 transistor radio for $5
Bought a Sony Mavica Fd-71 (I collect them)

Now to find a place for all this junk...

brostenen wrote:

Even better..... https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/13450020/MP400.zip 😁
Not shure if the drivers are working correctly, I just included those who I found online.
When you have downloaded the file, then I will erase it from my dropbox. (too big a file)

Two spreads, ii-iii and 1-4 1-5 are missing from the manual. Drivers uploaded, check it out: http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=654

brostenen wrote:

Just finished rebuilding my FIC retro rig...

New case, changed gfx card from TNT2 M64 to Rage-128, got rid of the SB-Live, installed AWE32, added a Innovision Voodoo1 and a 120mm fan. Hope this new setup will serve med better than the priveous one, build on this Motherboard.

The cleanliness of your case makes me sick 😵

Went through all the PowerVR games and tried to find demos for them. Those I could find online I downloaded and tested on my Super Socket 7 rig with AMD K6-III 500, 128MB RAM, Matrox Mystique 220 and a Matrox M3D PowerVR card. I used the Mystique so I easily could see if the game was running in Direct3D mode (the Mystique is missing features like bilinear filtering).

Found a couple of demos that had PowerVR SGL support and made a list of them here:
Re: 3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)

I just spent more hours than I care to remember struggling with a Polaroid Sprint Scan 35 Plus SCSI.
The customer brought it in with a very poorly looking PC (pictured), which he said still worked, but didn't.
Anyhow, XP wouldn't find it on the Adaptec 2940W, but it did using Vuescan which was a no go as the customer wouldn't pay for that and I couldn't blame him.
So, back to Win 98 and Polar Scan (?) and all becomes a bit hit and miss, illegal operations, doubts about the scsi card and I finally make it to the scan/preview screen only to discover calibration errors with the scanner.
So I cleaned the scanner, which hadn't been used for two years and still got the errors, but at least the PC is talking to the scanner.
Very frustrating.

The customer is very attached to the scanner and has about 20,000 slides to process. I told him to think about buying a new one, which didn't go down very well.

Actually, this is another reason for keeping old computers around: to run old hardware that isn't compatible with newer OSes. Why should you trade a reliable piece of equipment for something unknown just because Microsoft says so?

Agreed and it's not just a case of sentimentality.

This wasn't exactly retro, but today I stripped out a Vaio with a broken LCD panel. It's destined for the recycling bin. The i7 is destined to eBay or something, the SSD is going to go in a half-built AMD machine.

This does lower the average age of my computing devices by quite a bit. 😀

I also spent another long session trying to get the floppy drives on my Pentium II box going. Intel's fancy phantom disk drive thing makes it utterly impossible to figure out.

2fort5r wrote:

Actually, this is another reason for keeping old computers around: to run old hardware that isn't compatible with newer OSes. Why should you trade a reliable piece of equipment for something unknown just because Microsoft says so?

In the end, having spent so much time faffing around with the scanner, I persuaded the customer to buy the PC I'd prepared with Win98SE (a Celeron), take it all back home with him and see how he got on.
He reported back to say that he had success and only another 29,999 slides more to scan.😀

Splinter wrote:

2fort5r wrote:

Actually, this is another reason for keeping old computers around: to run old hardware that isn't compatible with newer OSes. Why should you trade a reliable piece of equipment for something unknown just because Microsoft says so?

In the end, having spent so much time faffing around with the scanner, I persuaded the customer to buy the PC I'd prepared with Win98SE (a Celeron), take it all back home with him and see how he got on.
He reported back to say that he had success and only another 29,999 slides more to scan.😀

The problem is M$ keeps screwing with the driver interfaces so old drivers for previous versions stop working.
Combine this with the fact that many manufacturers stopped supporting their products after XP at best (Why doesn't Vista/7 use XP drivers??)

Hmm, Something retro? Wasn't today but two days ago I was throwing a bunch of fixpack's onto OS/2 Warp 3. I know that they are cumulative, but going straight to 40 left it unbootable. Started trying out a bunch of things that didn't work before. Kinda got USB working, and kinda got Ethernet working 😁

Sadly USB only recognizes, but won't access. Will continue in the quest to make it work.

smeezekitty wrote:

Combine this with the fact that many manufacturers stopped supporting their products after XP at best (Why doesn't Vista/7 use XP drivers??)

Seriously? It's because an old product still-in-use is a competing product with the one you need to sell right now.

Brand-loyalty and Brand-reputation are handy decorations at times, but the core driver of income is the churn in the mass-market for your mass-produced items.

mwenek wrote:

The cleanliness of your case makes me sick 😵

It's ready to recieve some filth again..... 🤣

Today I layed the final touches on my two main retro-rigs....
My Win98 retro-rig had the Voodoo1 installed, and the MS-Dos machine lost its Voodoo1 and received the GUS-ACE.
This is the best combo, of the two worlds I can get up with, using what hardware I have.

Finally, I finished restoring the old 1999/2001 G4 mac. (just needed some cleaning, new HDD and new software)

The Dos machine, is my Fic board, alongside 198mb ram, K6-3-400 and now 3 soundcards.
Why 3? Well! SB16+SBLive+GUS-ACE to do whatever type of sound I can get going in games.
The only standard missing is the old pre-sb16 standard's. Well not quite, as ADLIB is still there.
The GFX is an TNT2-M64 passive cooled, sporting 8 megabyte of memory, which is plenty for dos games.
The CPU cooler is an Athlon/Sempron cooler, which happens to fit and running really quiet.

The second machine. My Win98se machine is absolutely finished too.
It has a P4 Socket 478 and running at 3,0 GhZ.
The GFX is an Radeon 9600 AGP, from Asus with 256mb Ram.
The Mobo is an Asrock, with some cap's replaced.
It has my Innovision V1 card installed and has a SBLive Value Edition.
There is 1 gigabyte DDR1 and the CPU cooler is a quiet and efficient North-Q all copper.
This combo of hardware is running Win98se REALLY stable and fast.

And now for something completely different.... My retro-lunch.... Chicken N'bacon burger.

Fried bananas & bacon in there!! Yowza!

Brought an IBM ValuePoint upstairs to test a SB16 & SCD-10 I brought from the EU. I will play some SimCity and Pirates! Gold on it the next few weeks. My oldest son will enjoy Lotus. 😀

brostenen wrote:

And now for something completely different.... My retro-lunch.... Chicken N'bacon burger.

Yum 🤣

tincup wrote:

Fried bananas & bacon in there!! Yowza!

No fried banana in my burgers. Only salad, fresh tomato, pickled cucumbers, bacon, fried chicken, ketchup, mayo and burger dressing.
It's just bad light and my shitty Galaxy S3 Mini that adds more "power" to the colours in every picture I take.

PeterLI wrote:

Brought an IBM ValuePoint upstairs to test a SB16 & SCD-10 I brought from the EU. I will play some SimCity and Pirates! Gold on it the next few weeks. My oldest son will enjoy Lotus. 😀

I really like those old IBM design's. Completely industrial design. 😜