oeuvre wrote:

those speakers are a hoot

They sound great. I got them for free, ended up paying only for the shipping.

New toy, I cleaned it up and set jumpers right for my needs. Now to actually test it.

good news and bad news...

so I got my first desktop case some time ago, this one:

and I got another one today:

notice any similarities? what are the odds 🤣

also got another oddity drive:

someone please stop me 😁

...and now for the bad
I wanted to make this a surprise post at first... like "guess what's inside this case" but then I got kind of demotivated upon opening it up... I primarily got it for the case itself and all the disk drives.
it's some kind of apple II? clone... unfortunately it arrived completely busted, the package itself looked fine from outside, but apparently it got smashed and shaken around quite a bit... most of the expansion cards fell out and rattled around inside, cables got ripped off, loose ICs laying around inside the case, this has to have gone through quite some abuse while in transit.
unfortunately the case is also quite damaged, the metal is bent quite a bit in some places and the screws holding the front piece all got ripped out, partly still attached to pieces and the front is chipped all around, it's just being held on by the drives and a cable.
I hope the disk drives are still ok 🙁 one of the closing mechanisms doesn't seem to close correctly.

😵

I hope I can still salvage most of it.

^^^Wow, that sucks! Hopefully you can fix it! An Apple II that looks like a old PC? O.O

I got these things a couple of days ago for frrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. 😁

-IBM Model F AT keyboard - ~i~ AHHHHhhhhHhHhHHHhhhhHHHHHH!
-IBM RS/6000 43p.
-IBM Tape backup enclosure -- I'm re-purposing this as a mini PC, ideally a MISTR FPGA.

I passed on the GIANT IBM f50 server. It was just toooo big. Its power supply was about the same size as my current PC. 😲

I need to pull the keyboard apart to do a full cleaning, but I did thoroughly clean the outside and wash all of the keys. Overall it's in great condition. There is a tiny bit of corrosion on the metal below the keys which I want to properly address. I only dabbed it with vinegar while cleaning.

The 43p boots into AIX. I don't have the password, but even if I did have it, I am absolutely CLUELESS about this OS. I've never used it and have no idea what to even do with it. Luckily it has a video card. I learned that many of these were terminals.

MCGA wrote:

^^^Wow, that sucks! Hopefully you can fix it! An Apple II that looks like a old PC? O.O […]
Show full quote

^^^Wow, that sucks! Hopefully you can fix it! An Apple II that looks like a old PC? O.O

[...]
I got these things a couple of days ago for frrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. 😁

-IBM Model F AT keyboard - ~i~ AHHHHhhhhHhHhHHHhhhhHHHHHH!

JEALOUS!!!! 😳

[...]

The 43p boots into AIX. I don't have the password, but even if I did have it, I am absolutely CLUELESS about this OS. I've never used it and have no idea what to even do with it. Luckily it has a video card. I learned that many of these were terminals.

Not terminals, they were headless and required terminals. As for AIX - it's Unix, use it for whatever you would otherwise use Unix for - playing Nethack or serving stuff 😉

I saw the add for the keyboard after the RS6000 and it just happened to be the same guy. I was only going to grab they keyboard, but I couldn't resist the IBM when I saw it in person.

Outside of the terminal window and power shell for things like SSH, I don't have much experience with Unix either. I'll have to look into resting the password. I hope there's a way? I was pondering reinstalling AIX, but then I read that it's not plug and play, so more work/research than I want to put into this at this time. I'd happily give this RS/6000 to someone that could make better use of it, but they'd have to drive to pick it up, or setup the postal. 😀

MCGA wrote:

^^^Wow, that sucks! Hopefully you can fix it! An Apple II that looks like a old PC? O.O

I got these things a couple of days ago for frrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. 😁

free is the best kind of payment 😁

it's the same as this board apparently: https://www.oldcomputr.com/wp-content/uploads … rboard-7755.jpg
idk if that was a diy job or a commercial clone, the case seems to be purposfully made for it though.

I'm not that familiar with apple/clone hardware, so I'm not sure yet what to do with it... as the case is going to need extensive repairs... and it doesn't hold regular PC hardware... use it for a sleeper PC maybe?
or would it be worth it to restore this clone?

Restore the clone! 😀

I never thought that there were clones, but according to wiki there were quite a few.

Your clone is something more than a standard apple 2 clone. Apple 2 does not use standard PC type 34 pin floppy drives. The floppy drives on the right hand side appear to be standard apple clone floppy drives connected to a standard clone apple 2 floppy controller. The standard floppy drives on the left hand side are completely out of place in an apple 2 - what card are they connected to?

Yamaha XG MIDI file CD-ROM with 100 MIDI files (probably classical music), some with PLG-100VL support:

Yamaha XG MIDI file Karaoke CD-ROM with 50 MIDI files:

Bundle of Japanese Roland SC-88ST manuals (not all pictured) and CD-ROMs:

The CD-ROM on the right is an older version of a CD-ROM I already owned. The one I had was from 1999, this one is from 1996. Despite looking the same, they feature different programs. This one has MIDI files, Windows 95/NT drivers for IBM and NEC PC98, Roland Remix, Doremix, NetJukebox, SingerSongWriter Lite, Cakewalk Demo, and Cakewalk HomeStudio.
The CD-ROM on the left is a Demo CD-ROM with MIDI files, Score Grapher Lite, Roland dtm database, GMGakki, Edirol stuff, Hyper Groove Demo, NetJukebox, SGL demo, and a Roland digital catalogue.
(It actually looks like the 1999 CD-ROM is a condensed version of both of the 1996 CD-ROMs).

Also included was a mint, sealed copy of MOTU Unisyn for Windows 1.2 "Roland Edition", which is a Windows 3.x/Windows 95 software librarian for tweaking gear via MIDI, with support for a crapton of Roland gear (A880, Alpha Juno 1, Alpha Juno 2, CM-32P, CM-32L, CM-64, D-10, D-20, D-110, D-50, D-550, D-70, DEP-5, GM-70, GP-8, GR-50, JD-800, JD-990, Juno 106, JV-35, JV-80, JV-880, JV-90, JV-1000, JV-1080, JX-8P, MKS-20, MKS-50, MKS-70, MKS-80, MT-32, PAD-80, R8-M, R-8, SC-33, SC-50, SC-55, SC-55Mk.II, SC-155, SC-88, SC-88Pro, U110, U220, U20, XP-10) 😎 . This CD was a surprise, as it was inside one of the manuals.

Does anyone know where can I buy a XR385/DB60XG? Or anyone has a surplus and might wanna get rid of it?

Marmes wrote:

Does anyone know where can I buy a XR385/DB60XG? Or anyone has a surplus and might wanna get rid of it?

There is one on yahoo auctions Japan right now.

I go through buyee.jp.

https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/w332137825

The Dell Optiplex GXM 5133 came yesterday. I paid $90 shipped for this, which is a lot IMO. Still, could've been much worse.

seller's pic

after the retrobright... not perfect but much better!
Dell Optiplex GXM 5133
Pentium 133MHz processor
32MB 72-pin EDO SIMM RAM
1GB IBM hard drive
8X NEC CD-ROM
3.5" floppy
Onboard S3 graphics (1MB)
CNet Pro200WL PCI network card
YAMAHA YMF-719 ISA sound card

added an ISA sound card and a PCI network card

opened up

all cleaned up

closeup of PSU and HDD

dat CD-ROM drive

Planned upgrades - 64MB RAM, larger + faster HD (Quantum FireBall), PCI video card upgrade, possibly a COAST module if I can find one

A pre-Streamline Moderne Optiplex, nice!

yawetaG wrote:

Yamaha XG MIDI file CD-ROM with 100 MIDI files (probably classical music), some with PLG-100VL support:

Yamaha XG MIDI file Karaoke CD-ROM with 50 MIDI files:

Cool stuff! Is there a chance that you dump these disks and upload somewhere?

dr.ido wrote:

Your clone is something more than a standard apple 2 clone. Apple 2 does not use standard PC type 34 pin floppy drives. The floppy drives on the right hand side appear to be standard apple clone floppy drives connected to a standard clone apple 2 floppy controller. The standard floppy drives on the left hand side are completely out of place in an apple 2 - what card are they connected to?

see, as I said I'm not familiar with apple hardware, I didn't even know apple had special disk drives ^^ I just thought they were regular 360K or 720K drives at first glance.

this is the card the other drives are connected to, also thanks for making me check, judging by how that IC in the bottom left is totally bent out of place and the chipped empty socket I guess the loose IC that was flying around in the box probably belongs here.

edit: google led me here http://www.appleii-box.de/H085_AppleIIFDC4.htm

1 final Games Console purchase for me for the year - I bought an original Xbox. I saw how bad the current state of Xbox emulation on PC was, so just had to get one. No pics as I haven't received it yet, it should arrive with me in a couple of days, so fingers crossed it's in decent condition inside. Comes with a bunch of games already, but I also purchased Splinter Cell for it, for no particular reason... 😉 🤣 😈

I plan to upgrade the HDD eventually. I have a spare 500GB drive that should do nicely, provided it plays nice with my SATA-IDE adapters. If it doesn't, I'll probably just take a chance and purchase an old IDE drive.

I actually received the Splinter Cell game today and ended up playing it for a couple of hours on my Xbox 360.

imi wrote:

edit: google led me here http://www.appleii-box.de/H085_AppleIIFDC4.htm

You may have a somewhat historical system there! If you had plenty of times you could skim through the old Creative Computing mags on archive.org - they had a lot of ads for Apple II clones in the early 80s, and a column dedicated to them for a while IIRC.

It could also be a homebrew or one of the non-US clones... I would love to have access to some of the output of some of the domestic industries of places like Brazil and France that tried hard to have their own large domestic industries in the 1980s (actually a lot of countries did, I learned some about Norway's last year).

tell you the truth its hard to believe that apple II clone or whatever was damaged like that during shipping. Expansion cards don't get unscrewed and come out on their own and fly around inside of a case. It must of been like that and then whoever sold it shipped it like that because they were dumb.

Not quite retro, but I will be using it outside in my garage.

https://imgur.com/a/Vy1AcNq

Paid $40 for it. Asked if anything was missing, said no. I drive 30 minutes to get it, no feet.

Add $15 for feet.

It should clean up fine, but I'm 100% going to replace the fans. I let this bake outside in the 100F sun for 2 days before I brought it into the garage.