Backed up the HDD of a friend's IBM ThinkPad X32 just before the HDD failed; he only wanted the data and donated me this 2005-vintage laptop at my disposal.

Apart from the failed HDD and the notorious sticky rubber coating of ThinkPads, the laptop is quite clean and worked fine. I (painstakingly) removed the rubber coating, opened it up, cleaned dust, reapplied fresh thermal paste, took a spare 20GB PATA HDD, installed fresh WinXP SP2, and it was quite snappy, although it took me several attempts to boot from an USB CD-RW (the boot manager only allows THREE boot devices on the menu; with HDD always occupying one slot, the external CD would never show up if you don't disable either FDD controller or LAN boot from BIOS). Its working infrared port, 1394 port, PCMCIA, and 56K modem are rather uncommon today and can be useful in a retro environment. However, with SP3, IE8, and AVG antivirus, the system gradually loses its responsiveness. 😅 The official driver page is also a big mess.

Later I took the failed HDD to e-waste and exchanged it with a working 2GB SD card. 😸

Installed a NOS riser in the Compaq Prolinea 4/66. Love that Langlaufing guy on the PCB.

Does anyone know why Compaq put a much slower 486SX in there? Funny way to save on assembling/production costs.

been continuing to slowly but surely sort through and organize a large hoard of vintage equipment I bought earlier this year. anyone in my area wanna come lend a hand, hahaha

The last photo has what appears to be a big crt, along the bottom right of center. Was ist das?

chris2021 wrote on 2022-09-20, 16:18:

The last photo has what appears to be a big crt, along the bottom right of center. Was ist das?

some samsung, I think a syncmaster 755df

I thought I had a lot to go through when someone gave me 2 Jeep loads worth of stuff. That's crazy.. I would absolutely have done it too! 😀

Not retro, although some may argue the system is old enough to be retro, as it's not supported in Win 11.

I upgrade a sata ssd to 256MB nvme (haven't seen any speed improvements, still takes 31 - 32 seconds to boot and load all start-up apps. 2 days later, the 128MB sata ssd failed BIOS SMART checks.

libby wrote on 2022-09-20, 16:13:

been continuing to slowly but surely sort through and organize a large hoard of vintage equipment I bought earlier this year. anyone in my area wanna come lend a hand, hahaha

1.jpg2.jpg3.jpg4.jpg

I would love to help, but the distance is simply too big.

Just got a Vibra16 PnP working in an IBM PC330 486 - plug and play config wants the sound card to be A280 I10 D3 H7 P380 WTF everyone knows it should be A220 I5 D1 H5 P330!

debs3759 wrote on 2022-09-20, 18:43:

Not retro, although some may argue the system is old enough to be retro, as it's not supported in Win 11.

I upgrade a sata ssd to 256MB nvme (haven't seen any speed improvements, still takes 31 - 32 seconds to boot and load all start-up apps. 2 days later, the 128MB sata ssd failed BIOS SMART checks.

Should had bought a good brand, Crucial, WD or Samsung, also between 1TB or 2TB to see speed difference. Smaller capacity below 512GB and any other brands is slower due to controllers tend to be low end.

Cheers,

libby wrote on 2022-09-20, 16:13:

been continuing to slowly but surely sort through and organize a large hoard of vintage equipment I bought earlier this year. anyone in my area wanna come lend a hand, hahaha

1.jpg2.jpg3.jpg4.jpg

Impressive, very nice.
Feel like in a cocoon .. 😀

Replaced the chinese junk power cord with another got power supply working. This is 36V power supply driving a 48V centrifugal backward curved blower fan for special project.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-09-20, 21:50:

debs3759 wrote on 2022-09-20, 18:43:

Not retro, although some may argue the system is old enough to be retro, as it's not supported in Win 11.

I upgrade a sata ssd to 256MB nvme (haven't seen any speed improvements, still takes 31 - 32 seconds to boot and load all start-up apps. 2 days later, the 128MB sata ssd failed BIOS SMART checks.

Should had bought a good brand, Crucial, WD or Samsung, also between 1TB or 2TB to see speed difference. Smaller capacity below 512GB and any other brands is slower due to controllers tend to be low end.

Cheers,

It's a Samsung 970 Evo Plus, so should be among the best 250 GB PCIe-3 drives. Should be 10 times (or more) better than the OCZ SATA drive. I upgraded the RAM to 3200 MHz (was 2666 before) at the same time. Can't clock the i7 6700K beyond 4.3 GHz without temps going over 70C with the Noctua NH-D14. Might dig out the watercooling kit - gathering parts for a 6 core Coffee Lake (Z370, for playing with Win 11) and a 12 core or better X99 system, and thinking of putting all of them in a complex loop with my water chiller, for higher clocks 😀

Today I learned that playboy apparently wanted to inform its readers about how cool the 3DFX Voodoo and Rendition Verité were.

1997 was a wild time, and just look at that off-model Duke.

BetaC wrote on 2022-09-20, 23:26:

Today I learned that playboy apparently wanted to inform its readers about how cool the 3DFX Voodoo and Rendition Verité were.
CDA2071E-578D-452B-A824-F3C76F95C51D.jpeg
1997 was a wild time, and just look at that off-model Duke.

Funny 🤣

BetaC wrote on 2022-09-20, 23:26:

Today I learned that playboy apparently wanted to inform its readers about how cool the 3DFX Voodoo and Rendition Verité were.
CDA2071E-578D-452B-A824-F3C76F95C51D.jpeg
1997 was a wild time, and just look at that off-model Duke.

So Duke Nuke 'em 3d was accelerated according to that article. And that picture of Duke fighting a "Baldie" is too much. I don't think Hellbender had 3d acceleration either did it?

BetaC wrote on 2022-09-20, 23:26:

Today I learned that playboy apparently wanted to inform its readers about how cool the 3DFX Voodoo and Rendition Verité were.
CDA2071E-578D-452B-A824-F3C76F95C51D.jpeg
1997 was a wild time, and just look at that off-model Duke.

This article forced me to look up that NEC Powerplayer 2020 system of course. Never heard of that model before. Sweet little gaming tower.

I took another stab at trying to get the CF card / XT-IDE adapter working on my old Tandys.

Tried re-flashing with the R567 bios versions from the lo-tech Wiki. The result after trying in both my Tandy SX and TL/2 is that it won't even detect the CF card at all, despite trying multiple card adapters and cards.

So in the course of a few days of testing and reflashing this thing, I've gone from:

1) boots to CF card but hangs on trying to do anything
2) detects CF card but hangs on boot
3) doesn't detect CF card at all

Yay for reverse progress!

At this point I'm afraid to try anything further as I suspect the next stage may involve something catching on fire. 😳

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-09-21, 14:51:

Yay for reverse progress!

This gave me a good morning chuckle. Not AT you, but from personal experience. Yes, reverse progress can be a thing when dealing with vintage hardware.

liqmat wrote on 2022-09-21, 14:59:

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-09-21, 14:51:

Yay for reverse progress!

This gave me a good morning chuckle. Not AT you, but from personal experience. Yes, reverse progress can be a thing when dealing with vintage hardware.

I suppose learning what not to do can be just as important as learning what to do. 😁