Tested, marked and catalogued around 40 EDO & FPM 72-pin SIMMs.

I love the IBM PS/ValuePoint series. Beautiful machines with great hardware and excellent documentation. They are also really cheap usually because very few people collect them. I am working on buying a 325T this week. IBM 386SLC 25 CPU. They also do not have MCA but ISA/VLB/PCI which is convenient.

PeterLI wrote:

I love the IBM PS/ValuePoint series. Beautiful machines with great hardware and excellent documentation. They are also really cheap usually because very few people collect them. I am working on buying a 325T this week. IBM 386SLC 25 CPU. They also do not have MCA but ISA/VLB/PCI which is convenient.

For me, the most beloved bus, is still VL-Bus. I do not know why, just think that is was such an awesome technology.
Actually, the most beautifull IBM for me, was the PC330, like this one below.

Really awesome front, really beautifull computer.

Very nice machines as well! 😀

Went and picked up my new Corsair 600T White Edition case to begin my next retro project. Got back and couldn't find the damn I/O shield for the motherboard so my excitement quickly turned to frustration 🙁

Had to order another one off eBay. Amazing how out of all the I/O shields for sale on eBay, I only found one that suited. Board is a Gigabyte GA-6BX7+. Using a pin modded P3 1.4ghz Tully. I'm just hoping that the cpu works on this board as it was never designed for Tualatins. I have used these pin modded cpu's in my other coppermine boards with no problems so I'm hoping I have the same luck this time round.

Here's a photo of the case from corsairs website:

Tried the "oven trick" desperation move on a video card a few days ago. I don't think I got it hot enough. It's back working, but other people's track record on this is that it probably won't stay fixed for long. It was a fun experiment, anyway.

Got some 512MB PC133 modules in from eBay, only the common CL3 type but still glad to have them. Most of my old ones turned up faulty recently.
Realized I need another RAM tray. This is getting ridiculous.

Drove by a homless man gutting a P4 for copper and bought 4x256MB DDR2 PC3200 and a 40GB Seagate 7200.7 hard drive for a beer.

Got a gateway Celeron S378
600MHz Celeron
256MB RAM
No HDD (8GB HDD Planned)
CDROM 48X
FDD 1.44MB


Original CPU was a 700MHz Pentium III.

The case made it look like a pentium 2, and has a 56K Modem, not build-in LAN.

I smell something burning...

That Corsair case is really tasty.
Gave an HP keyboard a bath, it came up like new and whilst I was putting the keys back, wondered if I could do it without the photo I took earlier.

RacoonRider wrote:

Drove by a homless man gutting a P4 for copper and bought 4x256MB DDR2 PC3200 and a 40GB Seagate 7200.7 hard drive for a beer.

Did you buy it from the homeless man? 😉

Splinter wrote:

That Corsair case is really tasty. Gave an HP keyboard a bath, it came up like new and whilst I was putting the keys back, wonde […]
Show full quote

That Corsair case is really tasty.
Gave an HP keyboard a bath, it came up like new and whilst I was putting the keys back, wondered if I could do it without the photo I took earlier.

How'd you clean it up?

I cleaned a Dell Quietkey by pulling the keycaps, washing them in the dish washer in a mesh bag, and then scrubbing the keyboard body and drying it out in front of a fan for a week. 😀 Took a lot of work and didn't clean it up all that much unfortunately.

fyy wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

Drove
by a homless man gutting a P4 for copper and bought 4x256MB DDR2 PC3200
and a 40GB Seagate 7200.7 hard drive for a beer.

Did you buy it from the homeless man? 😉

Well, yes... 😀

upd: DDR, not DDR2 😀

Started a big Voodoo benchmarking project focusing on the faster cards this time. Done the Velocity 100 and V3 2000 and lots more benchmarks to go 😀

RacoonRider wrote:

rick6 wrote:

Oh, we should play UT or even Unreal1 someday online with our retro rigs 😜
I bet that there are others here that would enjoy playing with us too.

We probably should play some UT on our retro rigs! I'm with you guys once I complete my Athlon!

Count me in, as long as we can play some HL1 Deathmatch afterwards!

How'd you clean it up?

I cleaned a Dell Quietkey by pulling the keycaps, washing them in the dish washer in a mesh bag, and then scrubbing the keyboard body and drying it out in front of a fan for a week. 😀 Took a lot of work and didn't clean it up all that much unfortunately.[/quote]

Detached the front from the back, popped out all the keys (took a photo first), put them all in a bucket of soapy water and scrubbed each one. The front and back just needed a wash and I left the whole lot in the sun for an hour or two, turning when necessary 🤣.
Delighted with the result, so much so that my wife now wants the keyboard back, but she'll have to prize it from my cold, dead hands.

armankordi wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

rick6 wrote:

Oh, we should play UT or even Unreal1 someday online with our retro rigs 😜
I bet that there are others here that would enjoy playing with us too.

We probably should play some UT on our retro rigs! I'm with you guys once I complete my Athlon!

Count me in, as long as we can play some HL1 Deathmatch afterwards!

Oh hells yes. Imma drop some laser tripmines on ur a$$
Some retro online games would rock
Bet we could get a bunch of the guys to buy in on that

not PC related, but I fixed my Saturn 3D controller, the left trigger would not work and I was considering buying a new one. Turns out it was a magnet that got dislodged. After putting it back in the right place , the controller works perfectly. Thats £17 saved.

Finished off the Athlon 700 on Gigabyte GA-71XE mobo with Voodoo 2 SLI to bring to four my retro machines, which is probably enough for the moment as I need to pay the rent.
Pics to follow.

I’ve been futzing around with the sound hardware in my 486 and finally settled on a Sounds Blaster Pro 2.0, a Roland SCC1 and an MT-32. Both of ‘the Rolands’ are mixed in via the Sound Blaster’s line in, with a stereo switch to choose whichever is appropriate at a given moment. I’m always tempted to cram as many sound options into this machine as possible but that invariably leads to hours of my life lost to infuriating incompatibilities and compromises. Note to self: keep it simple stupid.

The other thing I’ve been doing is imaging my floppy disks and backing up the results. This is something I’ve been meaning to do properly for a while now – as I’ve bought software on floppies over the years I’ve backed them up… onto another floppy. This time I’m using WinImage on my Windows 98 machine and that seems to work pretty well. Persistence is required when restoring images smaller than 1.44mb onto a 1.44MB disk, but it does seem to work. So far so good and I’ve been able to get all games / apps backed up, but a couple of the originals are dead so it’s a good thing I’ve finally gotten off my arse and copied them.

I suppose my CD’s will all die one day too, so there’s another future project.

badmojo wrote:

I’ve been futzing around with the sound hardware in my 486 and finally settled on a Sounds Blaster Pro 2.0, a Roland SCC1 and an MT-32. Both of ‘the Rolands’ are mixed in via the Sound Blaster’s line in, with a stereo switch to choose whichever is appropriate at a given moment. I’m always tempted to cram as many sound options into this machine as possible but that invariably leads to hours of my life lost to infuriating incompatibilities and compromises. Note to self: keep it simple stupid.

The other thing I’ve been doing is imaging my floppy disks and backing up the results. This is something I’ve been meaning to do properly for a while now – as I’ve bought software on floppies over the years I’ve backed them up… onto another floppy. This time I’m using WinImage on my Windows 98 machine and that seems to work pretty well. Persistence is required when restoring images smaller than 1.44mb onto a 1.44MB disk, but it does seem to work. So far so good and I’ve been able to get all games / apps backed up, but a couple of the originals are dead so it’s a good thing I’ve finally gotten off my arse and copied them.

I suppose my CD’s will all die one day too, so there’s another future project.

Good thoughts and points you have there. Yeah. Media's will die off one day or another.

The thing about soundcards you have there, is something you are not alone about.
I do the exact same thing, as I try to get as many possible options in my builds.
Yet I do not have true Yamaha cards at my disposal, so emulation are my options.
Yes. I know the feeling of loosing hours to one project. And that's the fun part. Right? 😉