I just thought of another annoyance.

You know how some computers and video game consoles have a slot-loading optical drive? Well, what if some day the drive's eject mechanism dies out to the point where your only hope is forcing the disc to eject? You're fucked at that point without damaging the stuck disc. Just a few days ago, I inserted a Maxell DVD cleaner into my iMac G3, the disc was in the drive but not all the way in because it was acting like there was no disc in there, because the drive's eject mechanism died out I had to find a way to manually pull the disc out, it resulted in endless battling with tweezers and a flat-head screwdriver not fitting all the way in to the point where I had to restart the computer with it laying face down in hopes that the disc would loosen, it loosened enough to be removable with the tweezers and when I got it out, it was badly scratched on the area I pulled it from due to the endless battling with trying to use multiple tools to remove it. A real PITA. I'm lucky I didn't put something valuable in there because who knows what would've happened. 🤣

NEVER put valuable/rare discs in a slot-loading optical drive! (unless you wanna risk losing those discs)

If a slot-loading optical drive appears to have eject mechanism troubles, I would recommend pulling and disassembling the drive to extract your disk. At that point, you can either service the drive as needed to get it working again, give/sell it to someone who wants to repair it, or recycle it.

In general, those "lens cleaning" discs and slot-load optical drives don't end up well. Regardless, disassembling the drive if a disc gets stuck is indeed the way to go... even if having to dig through the PC surrounding it is a huge pain.

Sounds like it needs a touch of oil. Just be sure not to get any on the lens.

At KCompRoom2000; I think that's a general problem with iMac G3s (I have all too much experience with it). It's because Ives/Jobs thought a tray loading drive was "not elegant" and look over functionality won, just like it almost always does for Apple in the last 20 years.

brostenen wrote:

harddrivespin wrote:

Amiga... Keep that! They're nigh impossible to find for good prices save thrift shops or dumps.

Expensive?? True that... So far, I have spend some 320 US Dollars on my A600. And that is the machine it self, not counting in external drives, mouse and other stuff. It's the unit it self, making it run stock configuration. I bought it, and had to upgrade the kickrom, and it needed a complete recapped systemboard as well. For me to even have such a machine, then I had to sell off one K6-2 500 machine and a P-II-400 machine. Plus one of my AWE64-Gold's.

Yes.... They are not cheap at all.

Lol I remember spending € 100 on a replacement motherboard without battery acid damage for my A2000, somewhere in 2004/2005. Then I wanted to upgrade it with a hard disk controller and turbo card (which I did) but never got it working right (too complicated for me at the time). Glad I eventually got rid of that money pit 10 years ago. Amiga's only break down all the time. I don't like Workbench either, feels too outdated compared to Windows 3.x and very unintuitive. If I want to play a 16-bit game I rather use a SNES, pc or Atari ST. No Amiga for me. I will never understand why people pay big €€€ for them.

SpectriaForce wrote:

brostenen wrote:

harddrivespin wrote:

Amiga... Keep that! They're nigh impossible to find for good prices save thrift shops or dumps.

Expensive?? True that... So far, I have spend some 320 US Dollars on my A600. And that is the machine it self, not counting in external drives, mouse and other stuff. It's the unit it self, making it run stock configuration. I bought it, and had to upgrade the kickrom, and it needed a complete recapped systemboard as well. For me to even have such a machine, then I had to sell off one K6-2 500 machine and a P-II-400 machine. Plus one of my AWE64-Gold's.

Yes.... They are not cheap at all.

Lol I remember spending € 100 on a replacement motherboard without battery acid damage for my A2000, somewhere in 2004/2005. Then I wanted to upgrade it with a hard disk controller and turbo card (which I did) but never got it working right (too complicated for me at the time). Glad I eventually got rid of that money pit 10 years ago. Amiga's only break down all the time. I don't like Workbench either, feels too outdated compared to Windows 3.x and very unintuitive. If I want to play a 16-bit game I rather use a SNES, pc or Atari ST. No Amiga for me. I will never understand why people pay big €€€ for them.

I can only speak for my self, when I say that Amiga are dear and close to my heart. If it was not for the fact that Amiga's are rooted deep in me, I would never have bought that 600 I have now. I did however have two 1200's and two 600's back in 2003/05. I sold them back then, because I needed the money. Yeah... They are money pit's, yet when someone has them that deep rooted, it is pure nostalgia. It's like a 70 year old American man, getting that first car he owned, in a fully restored version.

Now... I am not here to smack down on vintage/retro pc's. PC's from 1992 to 1999 are equally deep rooted in me. It's just Commodore machines, that I have a tight love affair with. My C64 are just as important to me, than my Amiga600 are.

Anyway.
Another frustrating part of old computers, are as others have mentioned here, bad/leaking batteries and capacitors. Worn down Floppy drives, dead 5.25 and 3.5 inch Floppy disks. Dying and dead harddrives and finally dying/dead optical drives. Finally it is dead and noisy cooling fan's.

I grew up with pc's, so it's kind of logical for me to prefer a pc over an Amiga. But still, I have had many different systems, and not one system had so many problems as Amiga (owned several A500, A500+, A600, A2000, A1200). From defective disk drives to bad power supplies and many issues in between. On the other hand most C64's I owned worked fine without any repairs (over 10 years ago, might be different now..), same applies to Atari ST's, most old pc's, even most Macintoshes hold up pretty well (especially the SE series). I'm convinced quality went down the toilet when Commodore introduced the Amiga.

I recall that taking out a card expansion plate and hap-hazardly/sloppily aligning the new expansion card with your fingers through the back of a poor-quality case often resulted in fingers being cut on the jagged, razor sharp edges of metal.

That and plugging in the LED/switches to the motherboard when no labels existed, particularly the Turbo and Power LED. Recently on my 486, I wired it so that when TURBO was pressed in, it was actually in non-TURBO mode but the LED was controlled by the seven segment display readout. So I was playing DOOM @50 MHz instead of 66 MHz. I only discovered it when I was running a diagnostic.

To be fully honest I avoid plugging in LEDs generally with old computers, too much hassle.

harddrivespin wrote:

To be fully honest I avoid plugging in LEDs generally with old computers, too much hassle.

No way. The LEDS on those cases is what makes it. Worth the hassle IMO just for the good looks.

SpectriaForce wrote:

I grew up with pc's, so it's kind of logical for me to prefer a pc over an Amiga. But still, I have had many different systems, and not one system had so many problems as Amiga (owned several A500, A500+, A600, A2000, A1200). From defective disk drives to bad power supplies and many issues in between. On the other hand most C64's I owned worked fine without any repairs (over 10 years ago, might be different now..), same applies to Atari ST's, most old pc's, even most Macintoshes hold up pretty well (especially the SE series). I'm convinced quality went down the toilet when Commodore introduced the Amiga.

The issue is that the Amiga was light years ahead of all the other PCs you name, and required more individual ICs than any other, so a higher failure rate is inevitable when there are so many more parts prone to it.

Getting a code error 12 after installing the Intel Chipset drivers in Windows 98SE for no reason whatsoever.

I thing I've fond another severely irritating thing when working on old PC's - Windows 98 reinstalling the driver(s) and asking for a Win 98 CD every @!#%% time you put a different card in the PC(and place the 'old' one back afterwards) or even just by moving it from one slot to another.

martin939 wrote:

I thing I've fond another severely irritating thing when working on old PC's - Windows 98 reinstalling the driver(s) and asking for a Win 98 CD every @!#%% time you put a different card in the PC(and place the 'old' one back afterwards) or even just by moving it from one slot to another.

With the advantage of using much larger hard drives these days, I will typically fdisk/format a system drive, boot off floppy with CD support, make a directory called "C:\Win98" and then launch setup from that. Creates a Windows 98 install with an immediately available location for the "disc" should it need files.

Bad power supplies
Battery chip failure with an AMI BIOS (Biostar MB1433 with a dead, soldered battery chip, BIOS does not allow booting due to battery low error)
Cheap AT cases with grounding problems
Reinstalling the OS (and drivers)
Plug and Pray with sound cards

CkRtech wrote:

martin939 wrote:

I thing I've fond another severely irritating thing when working on old PC's - Windows 98 reinstalling the driver(s) and asking for a Win 98 CD every @!#%% time you put a different card in the PC(and place the 'old' one back afterwards) or even just by moving it from one slot to another.

With the advantage of using much larger hard drives these days, I will typically fdisk/format a system drive, boot off floppy with CD support, make a directory called "C:\Win98" and then launch setup from that. Creates a Windows 98 install with an immediately available location for the "disc" should it need files.

That was annoyed me, too. Now I just copy the \WIN98 folder from the CD to some place on my hard drive.

Another thing I remember struggling with last year: compatible hardware and drivers for OS/2 Warp 😀

I find it annoying when a perfectly fine win98 .iso file reports certain important networking files missing...

When they start to occasionally blue screen and you're not sure why.
It's very depressing when a system you like isn't stable.

That sinking feeling when you realize the item you just bought and have been coveting for years is actually broken..