twiz11 wrote on 2024-01-04, 23:59:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-01-04, 01:09:

weedeewee wrote on 2024-01-03, 18:42:

Why would anyone throw away an SGI Octane.

Because Jurassic Park gave them nightmares as a kid? (-:

was that the pc the girl was accessing unix on?

No, she was using a youneecks system 😁

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one.

EvieSigma wrote on 2024-01-14, 18:00:

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one. […]
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It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one.

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Is that a WD Caviar I see. Most of those I still have have developed bad spots which can sort of be circumvented but still...
Let us know if it still runs without bad blocks.

EvieSigma wrote on 2024-01-14, 18:00:

a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one.

There is no such thing. Not anymore. Every working 486 system is a great catch these days, especially for free. Gone the days when you've seen one on every street corner and people were thankful you saved them a trip to the junk yard.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-01-14, 18:12:

EvieSigma wrote on 2024-01-14, 18:00:

a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one.

There is no such thing. Not anymore. Every working 486 system is a great catch these days, especially for free. Gone the days when you've seen one on every street corner and people were thankful you saved them a trip to the junk yard.

Oh, I mean, when I say "thoroughly unremarkable", I mean by the standards of its time. A 486DX-33 ISA-only system with no sound card is quite unremarkable!

That full tower case is pretty remarkable, any idea what this was used for in it's previous life?

EvieSigma wrote on 2024-01-14, 18:00:

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one.

I've seen these towers before. They are actually rather nice, with lots of large expansion bays in the front for whatever you might dream up to be plugged into there.

It would make an excellent vintage server with swappable hard drive trays in the front for easy maintenance. Maybe even run an old version of BSD or RHEL on it.

EvieSigma wrote on 2024-01-14, 18:00:

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one. […]
Show full quote

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one.

PXL_20240114_152806918.jpg
PXL_20240114_152822002.jpg
PXL_20240114_173202418.jpg
PXL_20240114_173207076.jpg

Unremarkable you say? That case alone makes it an amazing catch.

EvieSigma wrote on 2024-01-14, 18:00:

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one. […]
Show full quote

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one.

PXL_20240114_152806918.jpg
PXL_20240114_152822002.jpg
PXL_20240114_173202418.jpg
PXL_20240114_173207076.jpg

almost as tall as me, wow a beaut, what was the extra plug on the psu for? I could never find an adapter for the inverse of a regular power cord

twiz11 wrote on 2024-01-15, 12:21:

EvieSigma wrote on 2024-01-14, 18:00:

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one. […]
Show full quote

It's always a good day when you get to save a 486 system from being gutted, even a thoroughly unremarkable 486 like this one.

PXL_20240114_152806918.jpg
PXL_20240114_152822002.jpg
PXL_20240114_173202418.jpg
PXL_20240114_173207076.jpg

almost as tall as me, wow a beaut, what was the extra plug on the psu for? I could never find an adapter for the inverse of a regular power cord

It's common on UPSs. C14 socket. On these old PSUs they were used to power the monitor. I'd find it very odd if it was rare.

They were actually a bit annoying on towers around this size, because if attached to monitor it might only be 2ft long, or the ones with a monitor plug on the other end were often only 3ft. I think you could order longer ones, but most places only kept the 3ft. Anyway, this meant that because you didn't usually want huge towers on your desk but under it or beside it, that it was a bit too short in many cable routing situations, especially if you wanted your monitor up on a riser so you weren't crouched over it. Second annoyance was that since power wasn't switched on to the monitor until PC switch was pressed, the slow warm up of CRTs of that time usually meant you could only see what was going on when it was halfway through autoexec.bat. Later annoyance for a machine that wasn't powered up for often or long was that the fancy digitalised CRT lost it settings because it was burning battery instead of being in sleep. (Some could go months after an hour charge, some were more like "you've got an hour to move me to another power source")

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-01-15, 15:41:

They were actually a bit annoying on towers around this size, because if attached to monitor it might only be 2ft long, or the ones with a monitor plug on the other end were often only 3ft. I think you could order longer ones, but most places only kept the 3ft.

If you were looking for cables meant to be used in rack cabintets, you could get in 2m or longer. What's that, about 7ft or something?

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-01-15, 15:41:

Second annoyance was that since power wasn't switched on to the monitor until PC switch was pressed, the slow warm up of CRTs of that time usually meant you could only see what was going on when it was halfway through autoexec.bat. Later annoyance for a machine that wasn't powered up for often or long was that the fancy digitalised CRT lost it settings because it was burning battery instead of being in sleep. (Some could go months after an hour charge, some were more like "you've got an hour to move me to another power source")

Weird. In all the PSUs I had the C14 socket was parallel to the C13 and didn't pass through the switch meaning as long as the PC was plugged in the monitor got power regardless if the PC itself was switched on or off.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-01-15, 04:28:

That full tower case is pretty remarkable, any idea what this was used for in it's previous life?

I bought one of these cases NOS about 4 years ago. Shittiest eBay seller ever. The case is GIGANTIC and takes on old AT style PSU. There is also something weird with the lowest drive bay as it doesn't seem to fit anything that normally fits in a 5 1/4" bay. Nice front panel though but I would have preferred the mini-tower of this instead 😀

Something you sometimes see in older ones is the bottom bay, is actually the bottom half of a full height bay, so doesn't have the screw holes.

I've kinda "collected the set" of similar design ones, mini, mid and full towers.

Though there are at least three variations on that [ IIII ] style front.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-01-16, 14:38:

Something you sometimes see in older ones is the bottom bay, is actually the bottom half of a full height bay, so doesn't have the screw holes.

I've kinda "collected the set" of similar design ones, mini, mid and full towers.

Though there are at least three variations on that [ IIII ] style front.

Ah, right. That makes sense actually, especially since this case seems to be from around a time (given the AT style PSU) that full height drives might still have been around and in use. Interesting.

Not very retro, but did my best dumpster find ever a while ago 😁 A Thinkcentre M720q tiny form factor system, with a Core i5-9500T CPU, 8GB RAM, 500GB NVMe HDD, etc. Lenovo's support page states that it even has a few months of warranty left.

Found it in pieces, but nothing was missing, and it could be reassembled. Only a few scratches and a small bump on the lid, probably from when the original owner threw it, but otherwise almost as new. Was sure it was broken, but thought I could give repairing it a shot, or at least scavenge the working parts if repairing it failed, so brought it home. Took it apart again, let it dry for a few days, and reassembled it. It booted at first try, and has worked perfectly since. No idea why anyone would throw this computer away, but hell, I'm not complaining 😁

I've put it to good retro use though. It replaced an RPi 4 as an emulation console with Lakka. Running PS2 and Gamecube games with upscaled resolution at full speed without the computer even coming close to breaking a sweat. Can't hear the fan. Also love that it came with a VGA interface card, so I can run display through my OSSC for scanlines if I like. Played through TLoZ - OoT the last week 😀

Only pics I took of it before tucking it in the media bench where it's hard to access was when doing some EFI hacking, enabling hidden options etc:

chinny22 wrote on 2024-01-15, 04:28:

That full tower case is pretty remarkable, any idea what this was used for in it's previous life?

No clue! But with the incredibly basic card layout of serial, parallel, video, and a modem, I can't imagine it was used for much.

It has the hard drive so when it stops being so horrendously cold I can pull it out and attempt some digital archaeology.

a roland rap10/AT and an asus P5A-B with a K6-2/400
an adaptec 2940uw (one broken trace on the scsi connections) and an adaptec 19160
a teac fd-05hg and a lkm-f934-1
a 68pM to 50pM SCSI cable external
a 68pM to 50pM centronics SCSI cable external
a 68pF to 68pM SCSI cable external
an HP XXGBi
a ZIP100 USB
a UF144R USB fdd not reading any floppies. missing one head.
a gigabyte gv-n98tsl-1GI
and an assortment of cables.

Now to figure out what still works.

pan069 wrote on 2024-01-16, 19:39:

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-01-16, 14:38:

Something you sometimes see in older ones is the bottom bay, is actually the bottom half of a full height bay, so doesn't have the screw holes.

I've kinda "collected the set" of similar design ones, mini, mid and full towers.

Though there are at least three variations on that [ IIII ] style front.

Ah, right. That makes sense actually, especially since this case seems to be from around a time (given the AT style PSU) that full height drives might still have been around and in use. Interesting.

Remembering faintly a thing i did on one machine where there was a full height bay that didn't have lower half screw holes. I had a 5.25 floppy half height with screw holes on the bottom, and a 3.5 to 5.25 bay adapter for a floppy that also had screw holes on the bottom. Since that's just a frame thing I could get at the bottom screws from above. Can't remember if I had to clear them from the top side so they went right through or not. Anyway, I was then able to mount the 3.5 adapter upside down to the bottom of the 5.25 drive, mount a 3.5 drive in it upside down which became right side up, then mounted the whole caboodle on the upper half fixings via the 5.25 drive. Not entirely sure what I did to line up the 3.5 screw holes right whether I slotted the holes or what. Some offer either way up mounting.

Salvaged this little monitor from recycling bin at work. Dell 2007FP 20", with LG IPS panel. 4:3, 1600x1200, DVI, VGA, composite, S-video, 4-port USB hub. Height ajustable stand with pivot. Not very retro itself, but very usable with lot different of retro hardware, thanks to the aspect ratio, high resolution and wide range of connectors. Almost perfect cosmetic condition and not a single scratch on the screen.