Re: Diskworld Rincewind
Posted on 2022-02-15, 18:13
Re: any hard core Thinkpad fans amongst the ranks?
Posted on 2022-02-15, 18:11
Got a couple, X20 and T41. The X20 is really showing its age and needs a new HDD and the RTC battery is flat, but it still runs despite the odd CLANK (or is it CLUNK?) from the slowly dying HDD. The T41 on the other hand is still going strong apart from the main battery which has succumbed to age …
Re: New 'No bootable device error', cant boot from startup disk
Posted on 2022-01-15, 23:21
My Ambra (a Sprinta 1) also has a dead CMOS battery (scrub that, it has no CMOS battery after I yanked it when it started leaking) but boots just fine after I update the BIOS settings when its powered up. Actually, might be a good idea to check yours to make sure that battery isn't in the process of …
Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread
Posted on 2021-11-04, 17:41
Anyone else familiar with these Ambra computers? This one is in its original configuration with 486SX 25MHz, 4MB RAM and 210MB Harddrive. I Added Sound Blaster 16 and 3COM networking card since the onboard controller does not seem to like CF adapters paired with a hard drive. Yeah I got one but its …
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2021-10-13, 23:01
First thing I would do is crack that Mac open and make sure the half AA battery hasn't done anything unspeakable to the motherboard.
Re: Anyone got an Ambra Sprinta 386 Motherboard Manual?
Posted on 2021-09-14, 22:35
Aw well that sucks, its probably repairable if your lucky. Mine just had a few messed up vias in the battery area I still need to bodge wire my way around. With some fumbling of the jumpers I did manage to get mine to fire up with an ISA graphics card but it fails all diagnostics I ran on it. They …
Re: Newbie wants to say "Hi!" :)
Posted on 2021-09-08, 22:27
Re: Linux or DOS in an Altair 8800 or Imsai 8080 ?
Posted on 2021-08-21, 23:29
Something like this you mean ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALgxTCEgqqw
Re: Disabling dos drive A and B
Posted on 2021-08-14, 13:47
Have you tried a different emulator like VirtualBox for instance? Might give you the environment you are looking for and access to many other OS in the future for further experimentation.
Re: What game are you playing now?
Posted on 2021-08-08, 17:16
Just finished Star Trek Armada, not fun at all sadly. Found it to be very buggy and unstable even with the latest patch installed (running on Me (shut up, its the closest contemporary OS I had immediately to hand)). Had it tank multiple times to the desktop even when running in its own safe mode and …
Re: Your least used complete vintage system
Posted on 2021-08-04, 22:52
My G3 iMac, simply can't find anything useful to do with it. Support (as in access to old updates) and software availability is nigh on non-existent from what I can tell (running Jaguar) unless I'm looking in all the wrong places (quite probably tbh). Most action its got of late is getting dusted …
Re: AMSTRAD PC 5086 - Floppy Drive Problems
Posted on 2021-08-02, 17:27
I've got a 4386, when I get a chance this week I'll try and get a list of the output voltages for you. Thank you very much GCA, in the meanwhile i made further test and i got a boot screen when connecting pin 4 to a 3.3V or 5V but, strangely, only if i connect it with a delay of 1 or 2 seconds... …
Re: AMSTRAD PC 5086 - Floppy Drive Problems
Posted on 2021-08-01, 21:07
Hello. Regarding the PC5286, I had one unit that died after a likely capacitor exploding in the PSU. While I was powering it after a long storage period , and you see... this is the usual outcome. Do you know or are able to test voltages at the motherboar PSU connectors?.. people says in the forums …
Re: [repair advice] Gigabyte 5AA Rev 2.2
Posted on 2021-07-02, 23:39
Never had trouble with W2K on the rev 1.0 of this board (mine is currently dual booting XP SP3 and DOS) but I guess it does depend on what cards you have inserted. Are you running the latest BIOS version?
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Posted on 2021-06-19, 20:33
Finally found the driver for a stubborn Unknown device on my ThinkPad X20. Managed to drag the hardware ID out of it at last and found it was the PCMCIA Fast Eject driver. Never anticipated a PCMCIA issue because its been working perfectly.
Re: The worst motherboards you have had to work with
Posted on 2021-06-07, 22:08
Trigem Cognac, for some bizarre reason installing anything newer than Windows 2000 causes one hell of a headache until you change the Computer driver to Standard PC rather than ACPI (or whatever the default is called, I forget). If you don't do that then any optical drive access just results in a …
Re: Weird problem with CRT monitor
Posted on 2021-04-20, 22:55
Maybe the display is set for the wrong refresh rate. Had that problem once, did a factory restore on a machine and it would only work with a CRT until I got it adjusted to a rate compatible with newer screens. Though that would only cause the problem when running Windows, DOS shouldn't have that …
Re: Why DOS died...
Posted on 2021-04-17, 20:18
I was still using DOS at work in the early 2000s. It was built into the Janus 2020 handheld bar code scanners we were using. Seemed fast and reliable enough at the time for that purpose.
Re: office suites and business software
Posted on 2021-04-08, 23:33
I miss WordPerfect, used the DOS version (5.1) back in my college days. The other WP/spreadsheet we used a lot was SAMNA Pro running on AIX. So glad to see the back of that monstrosity. It was hellish even by the standards of the time (don't get me started about the spreadsheet aspect of it just ... …
Re: First computer-related job?
Posted on 2021-04-08, 21:53
First job, straight out of college back in the mid 90s working as a code monkey for a small software house in Stirling. Working on a line of business suite written in BASIC on a Linux system. Oh, and it was an INTERPRETED version of BASIC. So anyone who bought the suite would also have needed to buy …
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