Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-02-01, 23:52

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The final eBay PC of the trio saga. This one came from a college surplus sale and was visibly partially underwater at some point as there is some corrosion on the drive bays. It still POSTs fine, though. It's a: AMD Am386DX/DXL-25 @ 25 MHz 8 MB RAM (8 x 1 MB 30pin SIMMs), 0KB L2 cache Oak 256KB …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-02-01, 20:31

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What a small world! Also I hate it when people don't pack things properly. I've gotten various sound/video/NIC cards in the mail with no packaging before. I bought sealed copies of DOS 6.22 (3.5 floppy) and Windows 3.1 (5.25 floppy) once and they came in a box stacked ontop of each other with no …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-02-01, 02:33

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My second eBay find came! As you probably know, my first find was the IBM/Cyrix build I described two pages ago, which has a dying Quantum Bigfoot in it. Well, this one came. It's in a really cool AT style case WITH a front mounted AT keyboard port, hooked up to an 8 bit card inside. It doesn't seem …

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Re: Can't get AOpen CustomPC to boot

Posted on 2017-01-31, 14:19

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What did you use to create this homemade bootdisk? And before burning the actual media, it's always a good idea to test it in Virtual PC first (unless you're in dire need of lots of extra coasters :P). How did you proceed? Does an original XP disk work? I need to test it in virtual PC actually :lol …

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Re: Test system advice

Posted on 2017-01-31, 14:07

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Wow I was just thinking of building a test system myself :lol: I used my 98 gaming pc for a bit to test my graphics cards and found that its Abit BE6 motherbpard is excellent for testing cards-- 440bx chipset, and you can use AGP, pci and ISA cards to boot, it recognizes all three. Paired with an …

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Re: The dying Quantum Bigfoot

Posted on 2017-01-30, 16:16

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Errius wrote: Why are these drives sought after? They can't be mounted in the usual drive cages and force you to waste a 5.25" bay. Is it just the oddness factor? I guess 🤣

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Re: The dying Quantum Bigfoot

Posted on 2017-01-30, 11:48

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Were Quantum drives this quick to fail? Why "quick"? That drive must be around ~20 years old at this point. For a device designed to realistically last 3-5 years (and a budget model to boot, being a Bigfoot), it doesn't seem particularly surprising that yours is in this state. Yeah, I should've …

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The dying Quantum Bigfoot

Posted on 2017-01-30, 02:45

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is the third post about this specific PC ( :lol: ) but it's come with a host of problems and this one is a bit concerning. The PC's got a Quantum Bigfoot 1280AT 1.2GB 5.25" hard drive in it with a copy of Windows 98 FE on it. Ever since I got it, it's been corrupting itself at an alarmingly …

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Re: What is retro collecting for you?

Posted on 2017-01-29, 23:52

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by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another thing I forgot to mention is that I don't usually mod my preexisting systems,like ones I bought complete off ebay - if a part needs to be replaced, I'll find a similar replacement sure but I usually keep them original and if I need a retro rig I'll build it from ground up 😀

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Re: PC Chips (?) Socket7 Motherboard ID

Posted on 2017-01-29, 01:24

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Skyscraper wrote: I would guess its a Matsonic MS-5120 also called PC-Chips M547 and if so it uses a VIA Apollo VPX chipset which is decent. Here is the manul Matsonic ms5120.zip Close! The bios string reveals it's a M537DMA33.

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Re: cmos battery zaping the bios chip when low voltage?

Posted on 2017-01-28, 23:14

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Running a board without a CMOS battery just resets the BIOS settings and time and date settings. On some 386/486-era boards with RTC modules it'd make the board refuse to boot when the battery died but most boards after that just yell at you because the CMOS gets cleared and time and date settings …

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PC Chips (?) Socket7 Motherboard ID

Posted on 2017-01-28, 22:59

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi, I just got a PC off of eBay with a generic Socket 7 motherboard in it. The chipset is apparently from PC Chips. Can someone send me a manual and/or give me the model of the board? Thanks :D I also made a post about this PC in the bought retro hardware thread but I think this deserves its own …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2017-01-28, 22:21

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Was doing my daily eBay browse and saw a complete lot of a computer tower with a MHz display, a pair of speakers, a keyboard, mouse, some headphones and a boxed 56k external modem for about $50. Generic listing called "COMPUTER SYSTEM", make sure to use those generic terms for good deals! :D (This …

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Re: What is retro collecting for you?

Posted on 2017-01-28, 14:41

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Since I am still a young teenager (14) I really never got to experience playing on a 486 when it was new, or a similar system since the first PC I got was a Pentium II 400..I guess I do it just for preservation of history and because it's just fun 🤣

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Can't get AOpen CustomPC to boot

Posted on 2017-01-28, 00:34

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have an AOpen CustomPC Pentium4 box I can't get to boot off of a burned CD. It's a homemade Windows XP setup disc, but it is supposedly "bootable" and even copying the files to the HDD itself doesn't work. I'm stuck :( Specs: AOpen AX45-533 U2 Socket478 mobo Pentium4 2.53GHz 2GB RAM AOpen GeForce4 …

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Re: Question about 90s laptops

Posted on 2017-01-27, 17:47

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a CTX EzBook 700 series laptop with interchangeable 20x cd rom drive and 3.5 floppy drive, so they probably came with both which you could swap out when you needed to.

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Re: Best use for old hard drives?

Posted on 2017-01-27, 02:24

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have a ~500MB IDE drive? I'd love to slave it into my 486 build. I also have a few 386's without HDDs, any <250 MB IDE drives as well?

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Re: The forgotten companies of computing - New Entry for DTC!

Posted on 2017-01-23, 23:32

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by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Reveal Computer Products http://i.imgur.com/CZVMcMW.png Floppy drives, system memory, video cards, sound cards, keyboards, CD-ROMs, multimedia kits, tape drives, and so on. I recall seeing their brand everywhere between 1993-1995; by 1996 they slowly began to vanish, by 1998 Reveal was gone from …

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Re: DTC DTC2278 (E?) controller card help/jumper settings

Posted on 2017-01-23, 20:55

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bump 🤣

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Re: Targa Business Line PC

Posted on 2017-01-23, 00:21

by

by cj_reha

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's one of the shortest cases I've seen that's still technically a tower form factor! 😮 Definitely post pics when you pick it up, I'd love to see it in detail!

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