gerry wrote on 2021-10-07, 16:04:

I don't really care much for 'retro brighting', i see it works and looks kind of good, I can appreciate it when done by others - but i actually quite like the aged look, old warhorses and all that!

I am this way for slightly yellow or amber items but some things are either so goddamn brown that they look like a pirate's wooden teeth, or so onevenly yellowed (window side vs room side etc.) that I can't bear their appearance 🙁

appiah4 wrote on 2021-10-12, 06:22:

gerry wrote on 2021-10-07, 16:04:

I don't really care much for 'retro brighting', i see it works and looks kind of good, I can appreciate it when done by others - but i actually quite like the aged look, old warhorses and all that!

I am this way for slightly yellow or amber items but some things are either so goddamn brown that they look like a pirate's wooden teeth

a pirate themed PC case..... there's an idea! 😀

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-10-07, 20:29:

I bet you never used any of the Optiplex SX/GX 260/270/280 machines during the capacitor plague years... Was doing onsite Dell w […]
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Standard Def Steve wrote on 2021-09-24, 04:11:

I've got another one! […]
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I've got another one!

I am probably the world's biggest Dell fanboy. No, Dell didn't start the IBM clone business. They didn't out-junior the PCjr with their own custom sound and graphics modes. Hell, they didn't even have the balls to affix "Never Obsolete" stickers to any of their cheapo Celeron boxes. Still, I love them. Every Dell I've owned--and there have been plenty over the years--has never given me any trouble. They're just fantastically quiet, robust workhorses.

You know, if I were fortunate enough to stumble upon a $10 Amiga 4000 and a $10 Dell 386 at a garage sale, yet unfortunate enough to find but a single tenner in my wallet, I'd pick the Dell. No lie!

We should totally dedicate the month of February to our favourite Dells! Call it FebruDellry or something! TechTubers, are you listening? 😜

I bet you never used any of the Optiplex SX/GX 260/270/280 machines during the capacitor plague years... Was doing onsite Dell warranty during that time and we were replacing those left and right. Was most of our work for a few months at least.

Or how about the Dell Dimension 4600 towers where the exhaust fan was installed backwards from the factory. This was leading to all sorts of problems such as RAM, HDD, and motherboard failures not to mention CPU throttling due to overheating. Almost every single Dimension 4600 I worked on had this issue.

Then there was the multiple years of poorly designed screen hinges on the laptops. Screws would come loose and worst case scenario was the aluminum on the hinge mechanism would break and/or cause the chassis to break. It could also break the bezel on the screen itself.

To this day, every Dell laptop I work on gets the screen hinge screws tightened up as much as I can tighten them without breaking them or stripping the screws because they still come loose after maybe 6-months to a year.

That being said, I still like Dell machines . I have a decent number of newer Dell laptops as well as a desktop that all get used pretty regularly . I also have some retro/vintage Dell machines .

You're right man, I've never used those machines. I never really liked the P4 though, so I pretty much skipped that entire generation of Optiplexes and Dimensions. I do, however, have a Dimension XPS Gen 2 decked out with a P4EE 3.2 and an FX5950 Ultra. I was fortunate enough to find that machine right here in town about a year ago. I never experienced the P4EE and 5950U in their heyday, so I was beyond intrigued; the fact that it was housed in a Dell flagship made me want it even more! Luckily, the owner was very much into retro computing, and he was more than happy to trade the XPS for my maxed out PowerMac G4 (dual 1.5GHz G4s, 7800GS AGP).

The old XPSs used motherboards and enclosures from Dell's Precision workstations, so probably had far better caps and cooling than their mainstream P4 junk.

Speaking of XPS, I've been eying those sexy new OLED-equipped XPS 15s to replace an aging Surface Pro 4. I want one in a bad, bad way...ugh. 🤤

My current confession, I'm starting to get bored of accumulating hardware and more interested in using what I have and optimizing it, which there's not much left to do that. Tinkering is getting too easy, I realized this the day I revived my Versa V/50 by just, on a fluke, finding the bad fuse on the motherboard and replacing it.

Lately, I've been sick a lot, off and on, as well as busting my arse IRL, and it's been a lot more fun to just play games and create on said machines as/is than it has been to come up with some big, lofty idea and then execute it because I think it's cool. Maybe something will light the fire under my rear again, but aside from an 8087, a V20, and a replacement digitizer for the M/75, I don't really have a lot to do or work on of any substantial challenge.

creepingnet wrote on 2021-10-18, 20:34:

My current confession, I'm starting to get bored of accumulating hardware and more interested in using what I have and optimizing it, which there's not much left to do that. Tinkering is getting too easy, I realized this the day I revived my Versa V/50 by just, on a fluke, finding the bad fuse on the motherboard and replacing it.

Lately, I've been sick a lot, off and on, as well as busting my arse IRL, and it's been a lot more fun to just play games and create on said machines as/is than it has been to come up with some big, lofty idea and then execute it because I think it's cool. Maybe something will light the fire under my rear again, but aside from an 8087, a V20, and a replacement digitizer for the M/75, I don't really have a lot to do or work on of any substantial challenge.

Went to look on your YouTube channel, you are quite talented and I like your music. Hope you get better soon. /J

My confession: Regret getting into retro PCs very late (only since about a year -during the lockdown). Missed the time period when Voodoo cards and other older PC components were cheap (circa 2010 when I was clueless about retro computing). Voodoo cards were/are literally unheard of in my country. In fact got to know more about those only recently through Vogons. Hope to build a Slot 1 system with a BX board and P3 very soon(my dream for now). Also to get one Voodoo 3 in the build some day soon!

Yeah, I would have wanted to hoard Voodoo, Creative AWE cards and other stuff...

I have *three* Voodoo3 AGP cards! But only one is working. The other two wouldn't POST when I tried. 🙁

Yeah, same, but when these mid-to-late 90s stuff were at the bottom of their value curve I was a penniless high school student. I barely could afford to keep the generic trash I had at the time.

dr_st wrote on 2021-10-20, 14:49:

I have *three* Voodoo3 AGP cards! But only one is working. The other two wouldn't POST when I tried. 🙁

Try baking them in the oven.

BardBun wrote on 2021-10-21, 10:50:

dr_st wrote on 2021-10-20, 14:49:

I have *three* Voodoo3 AGP cards! But only one is working. The other two wouldn't POST when I tried. 🙁

Try baking them in the oven.

Don't do this, you will find that the solder on these cards melt WAY WAY easier than modern stuff. I tried it with an ATI Fury MAXX and half the components just fell off the PCB.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-10-21, 12:07:

BardBun wrote on 2021-10-21, 10:50:

dr_st wrote on 2021-10-20, 14:49:

I have *three* Voodoo3 AGP cards! But only one is working. The other two wouldn't POST when I tried. 🙁

Try baking them in the oven.

Don't do this, you will find that the solder on these cards melt WAY WAY easier than modern stuff. I tried it with an ATI Fury MAXX and half the components just fell off the PCB.

I don't think I'm inclined to try anyways, but won't it re-solidify in the same shape if you let it cool down slowly? Or will it leak and change shape while liquid?

It's easy for surface mounted stuff to come off or drift away. It's not a fix even for modern lead-free soldered graphics cards. More like necromancy. It just reanimates a card for a short time, generally from a couple of days at most. It's good for frauds when they want to sell failed hardware as working. It might survive the first tests at the buyer before they fail again.

dr_st wrote on 2021-10-21, 12:35:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-10-21, 12:07:

BardBun wrote on 2021-10-21, 10:50:

Try baking them in the oven.

Don't do this, you will find that the solder on these cards melt WAY WAY easier than modern stuff. I tried it with an ATI Fury MAXX and half the components just fell off the PCB.

I don't think I'm inclined to try anyways, but won't it re-solidify in the same shape if you let it cool down slowly? Or will it leak and change shape while liquid?

In theory, yes. In practice, strange things happen when solder melts and components heat up. A lot of the pieces on my card fell off because I tried to remove the oven tray from the oven before it had cooled (I thought removing it would help it cool faster) but there were problems with some components sliding around before I even did that - being able to gently push them back into place was my main motivation in the first place.

Regardless, it was disastrous.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-10-21, 13:04:

In practice, strange things happen when solder melts and components heat up. A lot of the pieces on my card fell off because I tried to remove the oven tray from the oven before it had cooled (I thought removing it would help it cool faster)

Reminds me when we accidentally left the house with the gas stove running over the weekend, and the glass cover closed on top of it. 😨 Luckily the fire never stopped burning. Came back, and the first reaction was to shut off the gas and lift the glass cover. Guess what happened next? 😁

dr_st wrote on 2021-10-21, 13:41:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-10-21, 13:04:

In practice, strange things happen when solder melts and components heat up. A lot of the pieces on my card fell off because I tried to remove the oven tray from the oven before it had cooled (I thought removing it would help it cool faster)

Reminds me when we accidentally left the house with the gas stove running over the weekend, and the glass cover closed on top of it. 😨 Luckily the fire never stopped burning. Came back, and the first reaction was to shut off the gas and lift the glass cover. Guess what happened next? 😁

I'd say the glass cover disintegrated, it may have even exploded due to the heat it stored..

Exploded alright. Luckily no one got hurt. 😀

dr_st wrote on 2021-10-21, 17:46:

Exploded alright. Luckily no one got hurt. 😀

Glad! We work in an open office with glass walls/doors and one day one of the walls basically imploded during a meeting. Apparently it was not cut to right size and during construction someone fudged it into place, where it had to endure some serious pressure for years. You know glass is not really solid, it's just a VERY viscous fluid, so over time this thing eventually morphed and caved (invisible to the eye) until one day it just popped..

What was scarier than the glass flying all around was the sound. It was almost as if a bomb had gone off.

Back in the day ca 1996, demos on CDs were a thing. This is when I played my first 3d game, Tomb Raider, probably on my socket 7 Cyrix 133 MHz or equivilant.

I ran around shooting wolves and ran away from a scary bear and after a few tries I killed everything on the demo level. But I never finished it... Thing is that I never understood you could push and pull the giant rocks... I remember seeing Lara bending over and 'farting' when I pushed ctrl in front of the stones though!

Still it is one of the best gaming memories I have. 🤣

I always install The Secret Of Monkey Island and the like on my retro builds, but I find adventure point and click games boring as hell and very hard to go back to, particularly the pre-1995 ones.

But if we're really confessing then I have to say: I prefer Outlaws to Doom or Duke Nukem 3D, and I mean by far. *whisper* I think they are way too overrated in retro circles nowadays...

I confess that I never get a floppy drive's cable plugged in correctly the first time, ever.