Not today, but yesterday - I pulled out my IBM ThinkPad T23 for the first time in two years and set it up with Windows 2000 and Office 2003, stripped down the main user account by hand, and made the admin password obnoxiously long and complex; all with the intention of making it an offline typing machine... I don't know if I will actually end up using it, but the intent is there.

brostenen wrote on 2026-06-15, 14:42:

RetroLizard wrote on 2026-06-14, 22:52:

Installed Mac OS X 10.5 on a Mac Mini A1176 via USB. It seems to be missing apps like iMovie and Garageband, though.

Wondering what software to get for it.

Is it the one with nVidia? If so, then outrun 2006 C2C.
I have it on my Mini.

It's got an Intel GMA chipset.

Successfully overclocked a Mac mini by removing a bunch of resistors. My main Mini has a bad Firewire port, so I found another board to use, it just needed to be brought from 1.25Ghz to 1.5Ghz. Curiously, I have a later board too, when I do the same modification, it shoots up to 2.08Ghz and crashes constantly. I can't find any guides on this board revision either.

Made myself one of these;

For fun, I soldered one of the level converters in upside down and spent the rest of the day reflowing everything trying to find out what I'd done wrong until I spotted it...

ArbysTPossum wrote on Yesterday, 14:11:

Successfully overclocked a Mac mini by removing a bunch of resistors. My main Mini has a bad Firewire port, so I found another board to use, it just needed to be brought from 1.25Ghz to 1.5Ghz. Curiously, I have a later board too, when I do the same modification, it shoots up to 2.08Ghz and crashes constantly. I can't find any guides on this board revision either.

https://thehouseofmoth.com/ppc-overclocking-station/

Hope it can help.

Finally built my retro rig... I might've installed the BIOS battery wrong (I think it had some plastic on the bottom maybe), and I wasn't able to plug the CF card reader into power yet since I got the wrong sketchy adaptor from Amazon, aand the incredibly cheap case I got turned out to be an utter nightmare to build with too...
It was too small for my ATX PSU to fit nicely with a DVD drive in. I still managed to get it to somewhat fit, though the drive juts out slightly, and worst was that the PCI slot panels at the back of the case were the kind you have to pop out.
(The bottom one also didn't want to pop out at all, it looked like it wasn't made right, go figure. I'll just get a USB network adaptor instead, make use of that USB 3.0 expansion card instead. Cut my finger trying to get it out too.)

At the very least, I know that it posts. the 3.06 GHz CPU worked fine in the motherboard, the 7600 GS works (at least, it posts and can give video out), the builtin memtest worked on the 3GB of DDR, even the DVD drive that I salvaged from the original PC makes DVD drive noises that I, assume are probably okay.
Not looking forward to getting the new adaptor to power the CF card reader so that I can actually install an OS, the cables are not even slightly managed, but I guess at least it's something.

Good going. Yeah some optical drive footprints are a short almost 4:3 ratio and some are "widescreen" long ones and they are always a pain in the butt in cases that are short back to front and cramp the PSU wires.

Well, I just gave it a try just to at least see if the Plop boot manager works and- oh. The DVD drive doesn't open.
no clue if it's just that I can't open it (it does a click noise when I try to) or that it's completely toast, but I'll have to get a replacement drive regardless.

Either that, or this weird drive really wants both a 4pin molex and a weird thingy with what looks like a female 4pin floppy connector that goes to some... weird, other, 4pin thingy that's on the drive.
(or maybe it doesn't like being the only drive on an ide bus, or my forgetting to set up the jumpers or anything messed it up... But the BIOS recognises the drive just fine, so I think either it doesn't have enough power or more likely it's just a broken motor or gears or something.)

Also another weird thing is that sometimes it sets the CPU speed to only 2.5 GHz and says it's a 2533 GHz Pentium 4 (or something), and other times it correctly identifies it as a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4?
Honestly the first time I saw it I was really worried I'd wasted my money on a CPU that it didn't actually support, but I'm just... confused.
(And when it correctly identifies the CPU, it also lets me choose the speed in the BIOS instead of forcing it at 2533, and in that case it........ lets me choose between 2.3 GHz and 3.06 GHz? So 2.5 GHz isn't even an option???? What-)

VanillaFairy wrote on Today, 14:08:

Well, I just gave it a try just to at least see if the Plop boot manager works and- oh. The DVD drive doesn't open. no clue if i […]
Show full quote

Well, I just gave it a try just to at least see if the Plop boot manager works and- oh. The DVD drive doesn't open.
no clue if it's just that I can't open it (it does a click noise when I try to) or that it's completely toast, but I'll have to get a replacement drive regardless.

Either that, or this weird drive really wants both a 4pin molex and a weird thingy with what looks like a female 4pin floppy connector that goes to some... weird, other, 4pin thingy that's on the drive.
(or maybe it doesn't like being the only drive on an ide bus, or my forgetting to set up the jumpers or anything messed it up... But the BIOS recognises the drive just fine, so I think either it doesn't have enough power or more likely it's just a broken motor or gears or something.)

Also another weird thing is that sometimes it sets the CPU speed to only 2.5 GHz and says it's a 2533 GHz Pentium 4 (or something), and other times it correctly identifies it as a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4?
Honestly the first time I saw it I was really worried I'd wasted my money on a CPU that it didn't actually support, but I'm just... confused.
(And when it correctly identifies the CPU, it also lets me choose the speed in the BIOS instead of forcing it at 2533, and in that case it........ lets me choose between 2.3 GHz and 3.06 GHz? So 2.5 GHz isn't even an option???? What-)

Many optical drives use a belt for the tray mechanism and those belts degrade over time. I've temporarily revived them by scrubbing off the hard layer of rubber that builds up with age using a scotchbrite pad, but the real answer is to replace the belt. You can get by with force opening the tray with a paper clip pushed through the pin hole, which will often get it to open and close normally for a time.

Repo Man11 wrote on Today, 14:28:

VanillaFairy wrote on Today, 14:08:

Well, I just gave it a try just to at least see if the Plop boot manager works and- oh. The DVD drive doesn't open. no clue if i […]
Show full quote

Well, I just gave it a try just to at least see if the Plop boot manager works and- oh. The DVD drive doesn't open.
no clue if it's just that I can't open it (it does a click noise when I try to) or that it's completely toast, but I'll have to get a replacement drive regardless.

Either that, or this weird drive really wants both a 4pin molex and a weird thingy with what looks like a female 4pin floppy connector that goes to some... weird, other, 4pin thingy that's on the drive.
(or maybe it doesn't like being the only drive on an ide bus, or my forgetting to set up the jumpers or anything messed it up... But the BIOS recognises the drive just fine, so I think either it doesn't have enough power or more likely it's just a broken motor or gears or something.)

Also another weird thing is that sometimes it sets the CPU speed to only 2.5 GHz and says it's a 2533 GHz Pentium 4 (or something), and other times it correctly identifies it as a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4?
Honestly the first time I saw it I was really worried I'd wasted my money on a CPU that it didn't actually support, but I'm just... confused.
(And when it correctly identifies the CPU, it also lets me choose the speed in the BIOS instead of forcing it at 2533, and in that case it........ lets me choose between 2.3 GHz and 3.06 GHz? So 2.5 GHz isn't even an option???? What-)

Many optical drives use a belt for the tray mechanism and those belts degrade over time. I've temporarily revived them by scrubbing off the hard layer of rubber that builds up with age using a scotchbrite pad, but the real answer is to replace the belt. You can get by with force opening the tray with a paper clip pushed through the pin hole, which will often get it to open and close normally for a time.

Yeah I think it's a stiction kinda thing sometimes, where they've been sitting round for years and opening with a paperclip "fixes" them for a bit, belts are always on the way out eventually though. Sometimes you can just "flip" the belt, so the shiny side is out.

The extra connectors on the drive. You may have analog audio and possibly digital audio headers. There's also frequently a jumper block of 2x4, 6 or 8 pins. For M/S or CS cable select, and sometimes a single drive setting. If you have analog audio on an optical drive, it is advisable to connect it to your soundcard with a "CD audio cable" if your CPU is slower than 300Mhz, or you want CD audio in DOS, Win3x, Win95, with a more powerful CPU and Win98 up it does direct from digital decoding on the CPU.

VanillaFairy wrote on Today, 14:08:

Also another weird thing is that sometimes it sets the CPU speed to only 2.5 GHz and says it's a 2533 GHz Pentium 4 (or something), and other times it correctly identifies it as a 3.06 GHz Pentium 4?
Honestly the first time I saw it I was really worried I'd wasted my money on a CPU that it didn't actually support, but I'm just... confused.
(And when it correctly identifies the CPU, it also lets me choose the speed in the BIOS instead of forcing it at 2533, and in that case it........ lets me choose between 2.3 GHz and 3.06 GHz? So 2.5 GHz isn't even an option???? What-)

That's really weird, AFAIK it shouldn't be unlocked, thus only having 2.3 and 3.06 as options, just like your BIOS says. Is it actually an engineering sample?

Repo Man11 wrote on Today, 14:28:

Many optical drives use a belt for the tray mechanism and those belts degrade over time. I've temporarily revived them by scrubbing off the hard layer of rubber that builds up with age using a scotchbrite pad, but the real answer is to replace the belt. You can get by with force opening the tray with a paper clip pushed through the pin hole, which will often get it to open and close normally for a time.

Tried this just, unfortunately it doesn't even seem to try to boot the disk. Maybe I've got some jumpers set wrong or something, and maybe that's why half the time the BIOS is screaming at me that some hardware issues were found, to check the power tab, and then.... it doesn't show anything wrong at all?
(And usually that's when the CPU frequency is all wonky too)

BitWrangler wrote on Today, 15:02:

The extra connectors on the drive. You may have analog audio and possibly digital audio headers. There's also frequently a jumper block of 2x4, 6 or 8 pins. For M/S or CS cable select, and sometimes a single drive setting. If you have analog audio on an optical drive, it is advisable to connect it to your soundcard with a "CD audio cable" if your CPU is slower than 300Mhz, or you want CD audio in DOS, Win3x, Win95, with a more powerful CPU and Win98 up it does direct from digital decoding on the CPU.

......huh. Wonder if I have the ports for that on this motherboard.... not sure it'd be worth it considering the drive might be dead anyway, and since this computer is going to be running either Vista, XP or maybe some form of Linux.

H3nrik V! wrote on Today, 15:33:

That's really weird, AFAIK it shouldn't be unlocked, thus only having 2.3 and 3.06 as options, just like your BIOS says. Is it actually an engineering sample?

It was a cheaper purchase on eBay that popped up for only around 30 quid, an SL6PG 3.06GHz P4 (labelled as being from (manufactured in?) Costa Rica), so I don't think?? that it's an engineering sample?
Honestly I have no clue though what would signify that it is...