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First post, by McMick

Posted on 2012-01-19, 22:20

McMick Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 74
Joined: 2012-01-19, 22:06

I've lurked here occasionally since like 2000 or something. I think I stumbled on the site when I was looking for a way to make my Sound Blaster work in Windows 2000, and found out about VDMSound. I really like the Hitchiker's theme too. I first found out about that series when I was a kid and had a subscription to Color Computer Magazine. There was a feature on the newly-released book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, complete with artwork on the magazine cover, and an excerpt from the book. Hilarious stuff. I've since read everything Adams has ever written, of course.

I decided to become a registered user of this site (though I may have actually been registered in the distant past) after I started building a 486 retro-gaming PC and noticed a lot of google search results on the topic pointing to here. So here I am.

I was wondering whether anyone here would be interested in discussing my build? If so, I'll post all the info and specs here. I may wind up selling it on ebay, and I just noticed a 4 page thread on etiquette in this forum so, so I figured I'd better ask rather than just do it. I DON'T PLAN TO SELL IT HERE, ONLY ON EBAY. I would, however, like to get opinions on it. I also have a bunch of 486 boards and processors which I'm slowly selling on Ebay. Maybe you guys would be interested in those as well. If anyone expresses interest, I'll talk more about them.

Anyhow, thanks for being here all these years, guys. You made Win2k and WinXP tolerable!

Reply 1 of 5, by nemesis

Posted on 2012-01-20, 00:14

nemesis Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 375
Joined: 2011-01-18, 21:05

Welcome! I think you'll find that we're very interested in your build as computer enthusiasts. 486 seems to be a sweetspot for a lot of people here and it's a personal favorite of mine.
Btw I loved the TRS-80s magazines, and I still have a COCO II running (sadly my family gave away the COCO III, joysticks, extra drives, thousands of games, etc...) and every once and a while I like to dig up some old code and wish that I actually learned some more programing.

Reply 2 of 5, by Tetrium

Posted on 2012-01-20, 00:37

Tetrium Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 9607
Joined: 2010-01-27, 18:53
Location: Netherlands

Welcome aboard stranger!

Please feel free to post pics, the more the better! 😁

Whats missing in your collections?
My retro rigs (old topic)
Interesting Vogons threads (links to Vogonswiki)
Report spammers here!

Reply 3 of 5, by McMick

Posted on 2012-01-20, 02:05

McMick Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 74
Joined: 2012-01-19, 22:06

I do have a TRS-80 Color Computer (the early big silver kind) w/ Extended Color Basic and 32K factory RAM, still working and with a tape drive, joystick, and a few cartridges, and the manuals. It still works like new. I sometimes worry that someday I won't have a monitor or TV that I can hook it up to. I know you can't hook anything up to a float screen without at least a Laser 7 output.

I'll get some snaps of the unit posted when I can. Right now, the specs:

-PCChips M919 Motherboard ver. 3.4B/F
-AMD 5x86-133 CPU
-32MB (8x4) 72-pin 60ns EDO SIMM
-GeForce 4 MX420 64MB PCI video
-"NE2000 compatible" soft-set ISA NIC (never bothered to look at the brand -- who made all the "Works with Netware" cards back then? It was probably them)
-Some brand of Rockwell 56k ISA modem. Or maybe it's TI, I forget. Either one are good. Jumpers set to Com4, IRQ3 and all that.
-SoundBlaster AWE-3200 CT3600 PnP w/ 2x1MB 30-pin FP SIMM. I might swap this out for a plain old jumper-configured, volume-knob-toting SB-16 I have around here somewhere, 'cause CTCM and all that stuff is a pain in the DOS.
-No HDD. I was using a 40GB HDD with bad sectors on it, figuring hey, when I put it in compatible mode I won't need to worry about them, since I'll only be using 2GB. But the drive developed more bad sectors over time. Naturally, it was when I was just about finished installing and configuring everything.
-32x CD-ROM drive
-3.5" 1.44MB A: drive
-5.25" 1.2MB B: drive (I hope these are swappable in BIOS so i don't have to mess with the ribbon cable again in this super-cramped case)
-200W generic PSU

So when I get a good HDD in it and get it working I'll snap some pics. What forum would be best to post this stuff in?

P.S. Speaking of Adams, I also am the proud owner of the old Infocom game, complete with pocket lint and all that other weird stuff. I will be using this PC to test the disks to see if they're still OK 😜