VOGONS


Reply 3520 of 4586, by chrismeyer6

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pan069 wrote on 2022-03-14, 20:07:
HanJammer wrote on 2022-03-14, 11:00:

This late XT board. It's Tidalwave XT All-In-One and has serial/parallel/gameport/floppy controller and video on-board. NOS in the box. Battery leaked a little, but corrosion damage is minimal. I will likely throw-in V30 and FPU on it. Or 286 accelerator I got recently.

Oh, that's really nice. Looks like an 8088 at 10Mhz? All connectors look pretty standard, what that connector next to the game port?

Zooming in on the picture I think it's the on board video out port.

Reply 3521 of 4586, by HanJammer

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pan069 wrote on 2022-03-14, 20:07:

Oh, that's really nice. Looks like an 8088 at 10Mhz? All connectors look pretty standard, what that connector next to the game port?

Video

Better pics:

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Reply 3523 of 4586, by pan069

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HanJammer wrote on 2022-03-14, 20:25:
pan069 wrote on 2022-03-14, 20:07:

Oh, that's really nice. Looks like an 8088 at 10Mhz? All connectors look pretty standard, what that connector next to the game port?

Video

Better pics:

Thanks. Yeah, I thought it said video but wasn't sure. What kind of video are we talking about here? VGA?

Reply 3524 of 4586, by debs3759

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According to https://www.oldcomputers.co.za/item/tidalwave-tm2307a-1 TM2307A is an MDA video chip. I would have expected at least EGA from the dates on the chips

EDIT:

https://oldcomputers.onlinecollector.co.za/it … dalwave-tm2307a says CGA

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 3525 of 4586, by Cuttoon

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An old German joke begins with the question how to procure a Starfighter (Lockheed F-104G).
Answer: Buy a piece of farmland, wait.

Same applies to the basement of my apartment building.
Just not for cold war supersonic aircraft (possibly a good thing), but Win XP junkers.

Is it still trash or already retro?

An Nvidia nForce 520 chipset with Socket AM2 Athlon 64 X2 5600+ at 2.9 jiggohertz.
That's a 940-pin organic microPGA - yes, it has LEGS! 😳

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I like jumpers.

Reply 3527 of 4586, by HanJammer

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debs3759 wrote on 2022-03-14, 21:21:

According to https://www.oldcomputers.co.za/item/tidalwave-tm2307a-1 TM2307A is an MDA video chip. I would have expected at least EGA from the dates on the chips

EDIT:

https://oldcomputers.onlinecollector.co.za/it … dalwave-tm2307a says CGA

Most clone chipset support both Hercules/CGA although I'm not sure if CGA modes are supported in color (probably not) - I never tried them on CGA monitor.

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Reply 3528 of 4586, by Kahenraz

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All of the Athlon 64 and multi-core chips were great. They were never truly surpassed until the Core 2 series. Both of these technologies were such a generational leap in my eyes that I still consider them to be fast and good enough for most general computing tasks, with the right software.

The only thing that truly dates a computer by today's standards is whether it can run a modern web browser.

Reply 3529 of 4586, by HanJammer

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Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-15, 03:38:

All of the Athlon 64 and multi-core chips were great. They were never truly surpassed until the Core 2 series. Both of these technologies were such a generational leap in my eyes that I still consider them to be fast and good enough for most general computing tasks, with the right software.

With the right software even 386 or maybe 286 is "good enough for most general computing tasks"... It's not like office worker needs multicore CPU and 16GB of RAM to fill spreadsheets or write memos or emails.

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Reply 3530 of 4586, by Cuttoon

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HanJammer wrote on 2022-03-15, 08:50:
Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-15, 03:38:

All of the Athlon 64 and multi-core chips were great. They were never truly surpassed until the Core 2 series. Both of these technologies were such a generational leap in my eyes that I still consider them to be fast and good enough for most general computing tasks, with the right software.

With the right software even 386 or maybe 286 is "good enough for most general computing tasks"... It's not like office worker needs multicore CPU and 16GB of RAM to fill spreadsheets or write memos or emails.

While I'm a bit of an advocate for the general idea, there are certain hard limits.
I used spreedsheets and word processor on a 386 and 4 megs of RAM. Microsofts unofficial motto: "We have ways of making you buy a faster computer".
And, the world could have agreed to send only text E-mail 20 years ago and we'd need a few coal power plants less.
But finally, excluding www can't be dubbed "most" tasks - and modern websites with all their scrips and whatnot eat up copious amounts of computing time and memory, can't be helped.
E.g.: My mom had to upgrade from her trusted T500 core 2 due laptop because win xp just won't do any longer, because security, etc.
I later installed Xubuntu on it and it runs just fine with that.

I like jumpers.

Reply 3531 of 4586, by HanJammer

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Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 09:09:
While I'm a bit of an advocate for the general idea, there are certain hard limits. I used spreedsheets and word processor on a […]
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While I'm a bit of an advocate for the general idea, there are certain hard limits.
I used spreedsheets and word processor on a 386 and 4 megs of RAM. Microsofts unofficial motto: "We have ways of making you buy a faster computer".
And, the world could have agreed to send only text E-mail 20 years ago and we'd need a few coal power plants less.
But finally, excluding www can't be dubbed "most" tasks - and modern websites with all their scrips and whatnot eat up copious amounts of computing time and memory, can't be helped.
E.g.: My mom had to upgrade from her trusted T500 core 2 due laptop because win xp just won't do any longer, because security, etc.
I later installed Xubuntu on it and it runs just fine with that.

Website is (usually) a software nowadays, and we are talking about the "right" software, don't we? 😀 It's not like html5, video background, script packed website has any more information value over plain text-only website. It's just more eye-candy. If it comes to productivity I'm pretty sure old CPUs can do as good as new ones. One limitation to older CPUs which I even notice on my Q9550 machine (I use it it as linux rig, mostly for storing large amounts of data - ie. backups) is lack of security features which nowadays are necessery (ie. AES-NI instructions) and multimedia features (hires video decoding and so on - but again - it's not important in most office tasks and I would even argue it's counter-productive because people spend time on watching cat videos, tiktok stupidity and russian influencers crying over the ban of instagram in their totalitarian country instead of working ;d ).

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Reply 3532 of 4586, by dormcat

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Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 09:09:

E.g.: My mom had to upgrade from her trusted T500 core 2 due laptop because win xp just won't do any longer, because security, etc.

I assume that's a Lenovo ThinkPad T500 with either C2D P8400 (2.26 GHz), P8600 (2.4 GHz), or T9400 (2.53 GHz) CPU. Their "official" CPU-Z x64 2017.1 multi-core scores are 368, 390, and 426, respectively. Sure, those scores are not meant for gaming or multimedia content creation, but upgraded with an SSD and 4+ GB RAM with Win7 / Win10 x64 can still make it a capable office PC.

My Dad's retirement gift was an MSI CX500 with Pentium T4500 (2.3 GHz, CPU-Z score 360), 2 GB DDR2, 320 GB HDD, and preinstalled Win7. Upgrading it with another strip of DDR2 and 128 GB SSD makes it acceptable for surfing and office uses.

Reply 3533 of 4586, by Cuttoon

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dormcat wrote on 2022-03-15, 14:57:
Cuttoon wrote on 2022-03-15, 09:09:

E.g.: My mom had to upgrade from her trusted T500 core 2 due laptop because win xp just won't do any longer, because security, etc.

I assume that's a Lenovo ThinkPad T500

Correct - really fine accountant's tool. (very basic display, though.) Don't remember the exact specs and it's some 700 km away. 2.4 GHz and 4 GB RAM. Bought it used for really cheap (~250 €) in 2012 to replace an Athlon TB 800 from 2000. Installed a very fast conventional HDD and bootup time with Xubuntu is still perfectly adequate.
(300 € beeing an overall budget I could raise myself back then and that was easier than convincing mommy she really, really needed the 3rd old PC in her life.)

On a more philosophical note:
My folk are the people who drive their cars until they really, really fall apart. Later states of financial wellbeing don't help, I checked.
Mr. T500 had to go because the kids were worried about issues like home banking and online shopping, but no one could be bothered to upgrade the Thinkpad. The battery is weak and the fan might be on its way out.
I strictly refuse to touch any kind of Windows for any serious purpose - for all I care it's the evolutionary equivalent of a malevolent cancer.

And, why any of that might acutally matter: It's not like we Germans don't discuss resources and climate change, ad nauseam.
But the simple fact that roughly 99 % of actual computing today could be done with machines built by 2015 for the next ten years to come is pretty much taboo.
Other generations had world wars, great depressions or pandemics that killed healthy people.
We can't even be bothered to increase our inflated standard of living just a little bit slower, so the Chinese could keep up with bulding wind farms, or something like that.
Instead of arguing whether anything but netflix in 4k still agrees with human dignity. It's rather shameful in a way... 🙁

I like jumpers.

Reply 3535 of 4586, by Kahenraz

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Warlord wrote on 2022-03-20, 14:14:

A 386

I think this is the same model of computer my family had at home. My mom used it daily for all of her WordPrefect word processing and I did a lot of homework on it. It was also used to play games like Monkey Island and Loom. 😀

Reply 3536 of 4586, by BitWrangler

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Nice box. I got one of those cases years ago in the era where I was desperate to find any kind of case cheap. Forgot what it had in it, or if it's still got what it came with, it's near the bottom of a stack. Might have had a 486 ISA board installed with a DX or SX 33.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 3537 of 4586, by HanJammer

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Kahenraz wrote on 2022-03-20, 16:31:
Warlord wrote on 2022-03-20, 14:14:

A 386

I think this is the same model of computer my family had at home. My mom used it daily for all of her WordPrefect word processing and I did a lot of homework on it. It was also used to play games like Monkey Island and Loom. 😀

It's generic, very popular case model of the xt/286 era... so I doubt it's "same model" - it's just some clone...

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Reply 3539 of 4586, by douglar

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Warlord wrote on 2022-03-20, 14:14:

A 386

That is a classic case style. Looks like my uncle's 486-33 that he bought from computer shopper in 1991. About a year earlier, I bought a 386sx in a generic slim line case with an ISA riser board . I used that cramped little finger slicing, cable-agami case for about 4 years until CPU fans and VLB put and end to its utility. All the while those old 3 bay AT cases soldiered on. At least until the ATX extinction event.

I found a mint condition Pentium 166mmx CPU in the back of a box in my basement yesterday. It was mixed in with some 20 year old Belikin Beer bar coasters, 2 cups of Mardi Gras beads, a wig and a Jew's harp. Must have been a good party if a CPU ended up in there.