Panther was riddled with bugs. IIRC, there was also a bug when using long passwords and a bug with the CUPS printer system.

Hey, no true disrespect. I just used USB and 56k for a long, long, long time. Never ran across Firewire until it was dead and gone. In my area top spead dial-up is still a top-end option for some unfortunate peoples.

I've actually become a heavy user of FW only now that it's dying. Drobos are the reason. I have several of the older models and FW800 is the only way to get decent speed from them, since they don't support USB 3.0 or gigabit Ethernet.

I got some Firewire drives just for older G4 Macs (notebooks mostly).

Anyone still using fiberchannel drives?

They're still used on HP 3PAR products.

Of all the stuff I have amassed over the years, dial up modems are the most useless. I keep them around to harvest small caps and other parts off of.. but I haven't actually used an internal modem ANYWHERE since maybe 2001.

I'm starting to also think that parallel cables with centronics connectors on one end are nearly useless as well, because as I find more and more vintage gear, I find more cables and nothing to use them on. I can't even remember the last time I saw a parallel printer... probably because consumer printers have been garbage for probably 20 years and everyone threw them away. The only parallel device I have owned in the past 15 years is a Linksys SCSI to Parallel adapter that came with an external 1x SCSI CDROM drive that takes caddies... and that adapter just uses a standard 25 pin connection, not a centronics.

To make it worse, they tend to be extremely bulky. I have one with a cord that is nearly 3/4 inch in diameter, and the cable is only like 5 feet long.... WHY?

Old Matrox multi-monitor cards. I have a bunch of these I can't imagine ever using for their intended purpose.

Never used any firewire drives, as I have never had any.
If HD-Loader on a Ps2 system, were FW compatible, I would have used that on my Ps2 fatt.

SRQ wrote:

Is there any use, outside of nostalgia or "this is a weird system' for the first-generation Pentium 4s? RDRAM is rare, runs hot, and is slower than DDR which came shortly after. Never scaled well against a Pentium III, and has worse DOS compat and older software compat to boot. Pentium 4 in general has always been a dead area for me but these in specific seem utterly useless.

E: Also I always have a TV tuner in at least one of my oldsystems so I can play the PS2 through it. With a good monitor it works great.
Really wish I could find a Win98/2K or even XP compat one with component in.

I like RD-Ram.... I really do. It's not a racehorse, by far.
What I like about it, is that combined with Intel-820 chipset, P3-500 and 256mb RD-Ram makes a quite stable system.
Mine has never had any issues at all. Yeah it is slow. It is just stable and a part of history.

Errius wrote:

Old Matrox multi-monitor cards. I have a bunch of these I can't imagine ever using for their intended purpose.

Multi monitor cards, such as a Matrox G400 and G400-max are really good Win98 cards.
I love my 32mb G400 dual head. I value it as high as I value my V3-3500 (Compaq edition) and my 32mb TNT2-Ultra.

Anyone ever bothered with Creative 3D Blaster VLB?

brostenen wrote:

I like RD-Ram.... I really do. It's not a racehorse, by far.
What I like about it, is that combined with Intel-820 chipset, P3-500 and 256mb RD-Ram makes a quite stable system.
Mine has never had any issues at all. Yeah it is slow. It is just stable and a part of history.

My first P4 system ever was a Socket 423 wirh RDRAM... in 2016. Yeah, just built that last month. I had skipped all the P4 generation at the time. Went from P3 to Athlon XP and have been with AMD for my main desktop since (except for a short flirt with Sandy (Bridge 😀))
I like the S423 build a lot. Makes for a very good late DOS gaming machine. Haven't found yet anything that won't run on it.

brostenen wrote:

Errius wrote:

Old Matrox multi-monitor cards. I have a bunch of these I can't imagine ever using for their intended purpose.

Multi monitor cards, such as a Matrox G400 and G400-max are really good Win98 cards.
I love my 32mb G400 dual head. I value it as high as I value my V3-3500 (Compaq edition) and my 32mb TNT2-Ultra.

Those are good cards, along with the G450. However the ones I'm thinking of are G100/G200 cards that are good for nothing but corporate multi-monitor setups. They're useless for gaming.

stamasd wrote:

Zup wrote:

Why not using a null modem cable? Simpler, cheaper and faster than using two modems.

Because some systems have a modem, but not a serial or parallel port (and one of the systems may not be a PC but a console, e.g. Dreamcast)

Some DOS games only have modem support, but no support for null modem cable. What will happen if you try those with a null modem connection? The game will try to dial and wait for an answer, won't it?

Zup wrote:

That also applies to LS-120, superdisks and other drives. Although LS-120 was a great idea back in time, I wouldn't get it. I haven't any disk and getting disk will be expensive, so it would be sitting on a corner getting dust.

LS-120 is supposed to read normal floppy disk faster than actual floppy drives, it is also supposed to be better at reading bad disks. Also it is connected to IDE which would enable you to have more than two floppy drives.

I have a ls-120 drive in my PC, I'm never going to use a fdd drive again.

It is funny, how one consideres something crap, and another seeks for it like hell. For example, I can't find 9 to 25 serial port adapter, internal SCSI 50-pin cable, ZIP disks and SCSI ZIP drive, LS-120 drive and media, Bernoulli Box with media, big SCSI and MFM drives etc... It is just unreal to find it these days, at least here.

Oh gosh I just remembered, aren't LS-120 drives said to be reliable floppy disk readers as well? I intended to get some but completely forgot about it...

idspispopd wrote:

LS-120 is supposed to read normal floppy disk faster than actual floppy drives, it is also supposed to be better at reading bad disks. Also it is connected to IDE which would enable you to have more than two floppy drives.

All true:

Re: Read/Write speeds for floppy alternatives.

Windows vista disc's

Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

Windows vista disc's

If we're getting into media, how about AOL CDs. 😁