Re: Retro builds with modern conveniences
Posted on 2020-07-10, 07:06
A modern-ish machine bridging serial to telnet saves me being tempted to pay for a telephone landline.
Re: Retro builds with modern conveniences
Posted on 2020-07-10, 07:04
Being a bit flexible on authenticity allows me more space for a greater variety of machines. Having CRTs for everything would mean I could have no more than 3 retro machines set up. So I am content with laptops and portables, and one LCD and a KVM for the desktops. As it is, I can boot up my TRS-80, …
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Posted on 2020-07-10, 06:43
Another retro activity the last couple days. I helped someone fix and improve a clock in QBasic over a Facebook retro computing page. That got me on a roll with something I had been meaning to do with Turbo C in DOS, doing some graphics with direct memory access rather than using the BGI library. It …
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2020-07-10, 06:31
Not a computer, but the evolution of calculators and adding machines led directly to the advent of microprocessors so I consider them a part of the computer heritage. Thrift store for $5. Funny bit is, I originally saw it on a Facebook auction page. Someone else wanted it more than I did and bid it …
Re: Is there any reason to keep a Win9X machine around for gaming except for fun or nostalgia?
Posted on 2020-07-10, 06:25
It isn't 9x, but I sold a pair of Pentium III toughbooks to an automotive shop recently. They had some expensive diagnostic software on a computer that died. The old version would not run on Windows 7/8/10 for some reason and they'd have to pay some astronomical price ($10k+) to upgrade to the …
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Posted on 2020-07-10, 05:03
I MacGyver'ed a temporary power supply for an automotive computer. I wish the Data911 MDS2000 automotive computer I have was so simple.
Re: CF Card Won't Save Partitions on 486
Posted on 2020-07-09, 04:36
Does your bios have a write-back caching option you can disable?
Gotek firmware update issue
Posted on 2020-07-02, 16:04
I'm not looking for help, I'm just wanting to post this in a Google-indexed place so retro enthusiasts of the future can save some time. I recently struggled to install FlashFloppy on a Gotek floppy emulator, model SFRC922D. The TTL programmer software would report "Unknown device" when attempting …
Re: What are you eating/drinking? (the vogons food thread)
Posted on 2020-07-01, 16:37
I just ate homemade toast with homemade dandilion jelly for breakfast. My wife has been ramping up her homesteading skills.
Re: Collecting rants
Posted on 2020-06-29, 17:59
Freaking scalpers... That's why I keep my stuff even if I don't want it, because I would much rather just give it to a close friend and fellow nerd for free, than see it sold for an abysmal price mere minutes after having sold it myself for a reasonable price. I suppose that's a silver lining on …
Re: What game are you playing now?
Posted on 2020-06-27, 20:59
I was playing Master Of Orion 2 on a retro machine the other day. It kept crashing following video corruption issues. Back in the day I'd spend days.troubleshooting the incompatibility between drivers and games. So it was not lost on me how nice it is now that I could just copy it to a different …
Re: My Two Floppy Drives became damaged after trying to duplicate disks of "Thexder". Any ideas?
Posted on 2020-06-26, 04:15
I have read warnings recently about old disk drives and the DOS format command, if you try to format 80 tracks on a 40 track drive for example it could damage the heads when it tries to move past its physical boundaries. But I'm skeptical whether that was ever really a big problem. Not sure if that …
Re: Collecting rants
Posted on 2020-06-23, 18:23
I 'watch' items I have no intent on buying, so I remember to go back and see what it sold for. Sometimes because I have something similar and I'm looking for actual selling prices and not eBay asking prices. Sometimes just plain curiosity.
Re: Collecting rants
Posted on 2020-06-22, 23:10
Grade A scumbag. Did you call Ebay, or file a fraudulent seller report from Paypal? You had damn well enough evidence to get the seller in trouble for taking both your item and money (and time). In my experience there's usually a human on the other end when calling Ebay. 8 weeks handling time makes …
Re: Collecting rants
Posted on 2020-06-22, 15:49
Talking about shitty sellers, a few years ago I had purchased an item on eBay and the seller promptly marked it as "shipped" but without any tracking information. I waited a little over a week, allowing for typical shipping time plus a few days. Then I asked the seller for the tracking information …
Re: Collecting rants
Posted on 2020-06-21, 01:39
I do think socket 478 are vintage. Just my opinion. 478 is certainly vintage to some and I'm not going to judge. I set one up recently just because I had enough parts. It was without challenge so I didn't find it terribly stimulating so I haven't powered it up since. Pentium 3s offer some challenge …
Re: Old Tandon notebook power supply - power supply accidentally reversed polarity without fuse
Posted on 2020-06-20, 15:13
Capacitors will explode sometimes if their polarity is reversed. So if there was an audible 'pop' then that'd be my guess, that a cap or several have been destroyed. I honestly don't know how the other components like MOSFETs deal with reversed polarity.
IR Keyboard
Posted on 2020-06-19, 22:25
Old Lunchbox 8088, Datavue 25. It has an wireless keyboard that uses IR. I'd like to document the IR signal that each keystroke produces so that I can reproduce it from an IR emitter in order to allow me to interact with the machine if the keyboard ever fails or for other pointless but entertaining …
Re: Collecting rants
Posted on 2020-06-18, 02:58
I don't see it as an investment in my case (to be honest I don't really like this mindset, but I'm not here to judge), I simply get what I want to have and hope it'll last as long as possible for myself. Sure my collection must be worth quite a lot of money by now. But money was definitely not my …
Re: Term program running off 360kb floppy?
Posted on 2020-06-17, 20:06
I literally did exactly this last night on an 8088. I used Procomm version 1.1 from winworldpc.com. It works with 128kB RAM and fits easily on a 360kB diskette (I have it and LapLink 2 and a few other things on the same bootable floppy).
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