Re: Frys electronics is Closing.

Posted on Yesterday, 22:10

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by creepingnet

in Milliways

in Milliways

I came late to Fry's. When I moved to....dare I say it, Reno in 2018, part of the perk of living there was being able to visit Fry's on my way to and from our travels to see family in California. I've been to San Jose, I think Vacaville, and another one off of 680 somewhere. San Jose was my favorite …

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Re: poor advice on fixing things!

Posted on Yesterday, 21:34

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by creepingnet

in Milliways

in Milliways

To be honest people want a solution immediately and they don't want to bother with an extensive search about the problem. When they have to work for it they get frustrated. Most people can't even use Google Search properly. Just 30 years ago people actually had to visit libraries, purchase user …

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Re: Any others given up on the hobby?

Posted on Yesterday, 20:48

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by creepingnet

in Milliways

in Milliways

Reading this thread is like the collective echo chamber of thoughts in my head. I'm 38, and I've been messing with this stuff for over 20 years, I may even be one of the first if not the first PC compatible collectors around. On the subject of quitting, I'll never quit. I've quit twice already, both …

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Re: muti boot idea for windows 3.x

Posted on 2021-02-22, 16:35

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

For Windows 3.1 Memory issue prevention I've used a program called 1MBfort for about 2 going on 3 decades now. Seems to do the trick. I've got a Windows 3.1 installation right now that saw regular use for the past 5 years and I have yet to get a single "out of memory" error message in it, and I'm …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-02-19, 20:04

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finished editing a video I release on sunday going over the whole collection and the plans for this year for my YouTube channel. What's coming, what's going, what's getting fixed, and why....with my usual mild and casual confusion about everything mixed in.

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Re: Retro confessions. What are yours?

Posted on 2021-02-17, 18:15

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by creepingnet

in Milliways

in Milliways

I love researching things down to minute details, a lot. So that's kind of why I'm such an obsessee on a platform or genre or brand or model of machine for a long period of time. Right now I'm being highly intrigued by the less popular i486 based laptops so I'm wrapping up all the lose ends on the …

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Re: What modern activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-02-17, 18:04

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by creepingnet

in Milliways

in Milliways

Been doing more tuning/tweaking to my LInux boxes, decided to retire BeigeBeast as I'm having problems getting audio drivers in LInux Mint. So I moved back to my i5 based Dell - but put the video card from beigebeast in there, and the 1TB HDD with some "redneck engineering". Need as much power and …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-02-16, 04:14

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In between work and curing some kind of nasty stomach bug, figuring out how to fit my other two CRTs into the closet for the time being is on the menu. I picked up 2 more really nice Beige CRTs from a local shop for free on Saturday.

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2021-02-16, 04:11

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So on Saturday the wife sends me out to return a Dress she bought on Amazon. So I go to the UPS store and drop it off and see around the corner a place called "PC Service Center" - well, being as I sometimes find cool stuff in little hole-in-the-wall computer shops, I went inside and looked around, …

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Re: Preferred IDE and Floppy cables?

Posted on 2021-02-12, 22:48

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Whatever I can dig up really is what I use. I tend to prefer dual connector cables because I never know when I want to slap a slave drive in somewhere. I try to be neat but there's only so much you can do with a 40 or 80 conductor ribbon cable in an XT/AT chassis.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-02-12, 22:45

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Versa V is all done and setup other than the hinge and CMOS battery. Getting a CMOS battery tonight....but otherwise, I don't have anything else to do to it that does not involve ordering PCMCIA cards. I probably won't be doing much this weekend though since it's Valentine's Day and in two weeks - a …

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Re: Great collectors of Vogons! What's missing in your collections? :P

Posted on 2021-02-12, 22:41

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by creepingnet

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have like 15 different PCMCIA sound cards. But a lot of them are still missing in my collection. The most wanted are: - Media Vision PCMCIA - Panasonic VEW211/212 - IO Magic Tempo/Media Magic PCMCIA Your list is my next one.....I'm looking for the Panasonic or TDK cards for my non-sound Versas. …

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Re: Music / Midi Software for Win98SE

Posted on 2021-02-11, 18:14

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I use CakeWalk Pro Audio 5 on my Win9x setups, including a 486 I have (which it works for digital audio and MiDi). It works great. On the desktop with the AWE64, it sounds incredible on the MIDI side. Sometimes I use it to compose stuff for BandLab.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-02-11, 18:12

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Kicked off FreeDOS on the Versa V for the 3rd time this morning - forgot to throw E-Z BIOS on the drive leading to an unreadable boot sector (540MB Drive, BIOS tops at 528MB).

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Re: The Creeping Network (Creepingnet's) Retro PC Build Logs, Restorations, & Repairs

Posted on 2021-02-11, 01:56

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Today is back to format a bit more......just got the one I thought I was not going to get.......the Versa V/50. Paid about $30 for it incl. shipping. The Versa V was apparently bought from a surplus computer shop in New York as it had stickers on it that said "486 Untested" and another that looked …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-02-11, 01:45

by

by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, got the Versa V in just a few minutes ago, and it's running like a champ already off a 540MB HDD, which I'm now installing FreeDOS on. That means if I do get any more Versas, it's going to be the earliest one (UltraLite) - that all hinges on prices/availability/whether I can put the Humpty …

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Re: DOSBox vs PCem vs 86Box which do you prefer?

Posted on 2021-02-10, 21:32

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by creepingnet

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I tend to stick with DOSBox just because that's what I'm familiar with. I have my Linux installs setup to allow me to click on an EXE and run it in DOSBox if it's a known DOS Program. Which is a nice convenience when I'm auditing software that I store on my 1TB second HDD where all the DOS and early …

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Re: How to upgrade your (really) old computer to SSD

Posted on 2021-02-10, 20:11

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Actual SATA SSDs can also work on anything i486 and higher. I'm not done with my research but it seems if you have a higher-powered hard disk controller - like my PTI-255W VLB controller in my 486 Desktop - you can use a SATA to PATA adapter with a modern SSD using a DDO and get full capacity, or …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-02-10, 15:08

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by creepingnet

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My birthday yesterday became all about the Tandy 1000A. Started playing some of those DOS games from my downloader/hoarder years and deleting the ones that don't work or are no fun. Thinking about doing a YouTube serries around the ones that are not as much fun though. There's so much more out there …

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Re: What modern activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-02-08, 17:08

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by creepingnet

in Milliways

in Milliways

Took a break from the Versas for awhile (I have those tuned up greatly), forgot what a beast the ol InWin Desktop is. So I brought out my LInux machines this weekend...a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 road warrior, and the "BeigeBeast"......here's the quick specs.... IBM ThinkPad T61p - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.1GHz …

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