VOGONS


First post, by Baleog

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This is a picture of my main retro PC in its original form. The chassis is a Fujitsu ICL Indiana. Originally it had a Pentium 75 or 90, but because of the Dallas clock battery (and some other reason that I now can't remember) I exchanged the motherboard and PSU for a Fujitsu Ergopro E-series. They are in the same range of computers so the swap was trivial. I had a hard time removing the bios password but I finally found the instructions on Fujitsu's current support page. The bios is unfortunately still very limited. The original CRT, keyboard and mouse was part of the package so it is a complete system.

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Specifications:
200 MMX, upgraded from the ergopros P120.
32Mb Ram
Onboard video 2mb Mach64CT (cost reduced) paired with a Voodoo 2 12mb which I know is overkill for this system.
CF-Card and a spinning 4gb drive of some kind.
Orpheus Sound Card with PCMIDI MPU (Thank you for making this Keropi!)
Windows 95c Plus! with usb-support (works fine albeit slow with usb sticks after soldering headers to the mb)

Since this photo was taken i have tried to make my retro computer setup a little more discrete. But since I have a small apartment and don't have an extra room the only place for it is the living room. And some people will disagree but I just don't want visitors to see my setup and learn about my interest for several reasons. So hiding the computer and removing the CRT was necessary. Since I had acquired some rack units I decided to build a midi rack. So after ordering rails i bought some chipboard and caster wheels and Bob's your uncle. I will soon™ add some LED-lights and a smoked glass door but for now i think it looks a little better. And I can roll it out of the way when I need to.

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The monitor is just a Samsung TV that i got from a second hand store. But it does have Scart, VGA, composite and more. I'm trying to find a rack that the monitor can stand on and that I can hide the Amiga under but I haven't found anything nice yet.

The Yamaha speakers are REALLY good, with a surprising amount of bass for the size and I haven't seen anyone else using them. They are modern speakers called Yamaha NX-50. They have two 3,5mm inputs and headphone out. I don't remember if they switch inputs automatically or if they get mixed but they work seamlessly with the Amiga/PC. People love the Roland MA-12Cs but if you want an alternative look at the Yamahas if you can find them used for a good price.

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Midi Rack:
Midi router: 8+8 MTP Timepiece. Connected over parallel to the pc. Works great in Cubase
Mixer: Behringer RX1602 V1. Honestly not so pleased with this one. I'm getting a lot of hum and sounds bad when overdriven. But it's one of few cheap mixers with 8 stereo inputs.
EMU Proformance /1. Just temporarily fitted. For better Piano sounds when playing keyboard.
Sound canvases: rack mounted SC-55 with sound brush and a separate SC-55 and a SD-35. You all know about SC-55s. The SD-35 is apparently like a SC-55 MKII. I haven't experienced the buffer overflow with it that others have discussed on vogons.
Yamaha MU90R: Honestly my favorite midi unit. In my opinion it sounds much better than the Rolands in almost every case. But it was targeted more for the professional market.
Roland RA-50: A MT-32 in disguise. But sadly i can't get the mod that switches modes to work. I will have to revisit this one someday.
Roland D-110: A fun synthesizer. Cousin to the MT-32 and notoriously hard to program. It doesn't get much use but its nice to have. There are some patches/maps for Sierra games that allow you to use it directly.
Midiman Gman: Just temporarily fitted. Allegedly uses copies of Roland sounds. I will do a comparison some day.
MT32-Pi: I modified a Clumsy MIDI with a larger display and an encoder and 3d-printed case. This was the first midi unit I bought/built (and its possibly the best). But there is something special with vintage hardware.
I also have the Dreamblaster S2 and X2GS that I want to use in a Chill V and rack mount somehow.

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Bonus pic of my Roland E-20 synthesizer that also is essentially an MT-32 with keys. I usually use a Roland PC-180 when im (badly) trying to record midi song covers in Cubase.

Thanks for watching my little setup. More computers will be added in this thread. Any feedback is welcome!

Last edited by Baleog on 2024-02-11, 13:58. Edited 1 time in total.

Mixed PCs - Midi racks - Micros and more

Reply 1 of 14, by RetroHamer

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The Indiana was my first PC back in 96. A mighty 486DX4 and played so much C&C on it. I am looking everywhere for another one here in the UK but sadly no luck, though I have found a PCTV that I will be picking up soon so my search has not been a complete waste.

Reply 2 of 14, by Xanxi

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Very nice and clean setup.
What softwares are you using on the Amiga with all these MIDI devices?

Reply 3 of 14, by chrismeyer6

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That's a beautiful setup seriously nice job!

Reply 4 of 14, by Baleog

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RetroHamer wrote on 2023-01-28, 21:32:

The Indiana was my first PC back in 96. A mighty 486DX4 and played so much C&C on it. I am looking everywhere for another one here in the UK but sadly no luck, though I have found a PCTV that I will be picking up soon so my search has not been a complete waste.

This is the only one I have seen on the local auction sites. I think I have seen one for sale in Finland using the "MikroMikko" brand - so try using that in your searches. The story around these brands are quite interesting.

Xanxi wrote on 2023-01-28, 21:47:

Very nice and clean setup.
What softwares are you using on the Amiga with all these MIDI devices?

Thanks! I have had some trouble getting software to run stable in general on the 1200 with the last example being Bars & Pipes. So right now I have only tried out a few games. But i know there are a few trackers out there with midi support that im interested in trying out. But I will gladly accept any feedback on software - I did not have an Amiga back in the day, and I got this one only a year ago, so the entire amiga world is new to me. I do have an Atari STe on the healing bench with probably a bad floppy controller (I know about DMA issues). But I have to do one thing at a time. This hobby is not cheap if you want to do things fast.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2023-01-28, 22:11:

That's a beautiful setup seriously nice job!

Thanks!

The next things on the shopping list for the rack is an Roland M-GS64. And I probably should get a real MT-32 some time. But that will only happen if a good deal comes along.

Mixed PCs - Midi racks - Micros and more

Reply 5 of 14, by MMaximus

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Nice! I love the look of that Fujistsu system - these black setups weren't common back in the day when beige was everywhere 👍

Nice midi rack too. Curious as to why you're looking for an M-GS64 and not an SC-880 for example?

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 6 of 14, by Baleog

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MMaximus wrote on 2023-01-29, 09:31:

Nice! I love the look of that Fujistsu system - these black setups weren't common back in the day when beige was everywhere 👍

Nice midi rack too. Curious as to why you're looking for an M-GS64 and not an SC-880 for example?

Exactly, and it has the added benefit of not yellowing.

Regarding the SC-880 i would love to have one. I tend to only buy stuff on my countrys largest auction/classified sites and I have never seen one there, and now when I look on sold prices on ebay I would have a hard time justifing a purchase when compared to the price of a m-gs64. But sure! The JV and XV-series would also be really fun to try out. And the MKS-50 for recording purposes.

Mixed PCs - Midi racks - Micros and more

Reply 7 of 14, by pshipkov

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At some point i was thinking of similar layout for stacking hardware under the desk.
Is it comfortable to you to work with the knobs while on the chair ?

retro bits and bytes

Reply 8 of 14, by Baleog

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pshipkov wrote on 2023-01-29, 20:55:

At some point i was thinking of similar layout for stacking hardware under the desk.
Is it comfortable to you to work with the knobs while on the chair ?

For gaming and just experimenting I think it works fine. I have the most components I use the most in arms reach. The midi router routes the signals to all 8 channels so I just mute/unmute the sound on the audio mixer for the component that I want to listen to. The rack also need some more lights so I can see all the buttons.

But for audio production the ergonomics is terrible. You really should have a slanted rack or have the rack on top of the desktop. Before building this rack i scanned every music store for inspiration. The desk I liked the most (aesthetically) was the Gator Frameworks elite series. And im still kind of tempted of buying one and a matching sidecar rack.

Mixed PCs - Midi racks - Micros and more

Reply 10 of 14, by chinny22

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I like the setup, Nice and tidy. I get not wanting to put your hobby on display but I kind of outgrew that option but kept the somewhat rack option.

Rack.jpg

I was surprised at which guests that come over and are genuinely interested and ones that just don't get it who I thought would understand. Oh well not my problem, I'm happy.
CRT's are the tricky one. Mine sitting behind isn't ideal as the screen in front doesn't quite move up enough to fully get out the way. I keep coming up with ideas to improve the rack but nothing re screens and desk space.

Anyway nice PC and while it's probably 100 times more useful my eyes did keep drifting to that beige case next to the desk....I'm only human

Reply 11 of 14, by Baleog

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chinny22 wrote on 2023-01-31, 17:25:
I like the setup, Nice and tidy. I get not wanting to put your hobby on display but I kind of outgrew that option but kept the s […]
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I like the setup, Nice and tidy. I get not wanting to put your hobby on display but I kind of outgrew that option but kept the somewhat rack option.

Rack.jpg

I was surprised at which guests that come over and are genuinely interested and ones that just don't get it who I thought would understand. Oh well not my problem, I'm happy.
CRT's are the tricky one. Mine sitting behind isn't ideal as the screen in front doesn't quite move up enough to fully get out the way. I keep coming up with ideas to improve the rack but nothing re screens and desk space.

Anyway nice PC and while it's probably 100 times more useful my eyes did keep drifting to that beige case next to the desk....I'm only human

Yeah, everyone that visited had opinions one way or another. I just did not want to have a discussion about it every time. This way I can just say it's for basic music production and it usually ends there.
Im going to post some more pictures of that beige box in a not so far future, im just waiting for some parts and inspiration to finish up some things with ut. Stay tuned 😀

Btw. Your beige box top right looks really nice, specs?

Mixed PCs - Midi racks - Micros and more

Reply 12 of 14, by MMaximus

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I assume that beige box is a model 80? Interested to read about yours - I got one of these as well 😀

I got curious about the Yamaha NX50 speakers a while ago as I like their design but in the end I didn't get a pair as IIRC they're not shielded...

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 13 of 14, by chinny22

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Baleog wrote on 2023-01-31, 21:34:

Btw. Your beige box top right looks really nice, specs?

That was started me back down this rabbit whole of playing around with old hardware.
You can read about it and also see how clueless I was at the beginning here. (last post has the current specs)
Another 486 being built

Reply 14 of 14, by Baleog

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chinny22 wrote on 2023-02-01, 11:11:
That was started me back down this rabbit whole of playing around with old hardware. You can read about it and also see how clue […]
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Baleog wrote on 2023-01-31, 21:34:

Btw. Your beige box top right looks really nice, specs?

That was started me back down this rabbit whole of playing around with old hardware.
You can read about it and also see how clueless I was at the beginning here. (last post has the current specs)
Another 486 being built

I am going to do just that, thanks! Well i was and still am clueless. But i manage to have fun anyways.

MMaximus wrote on 2023-01-31, 22:40:

I assume that beige box is a model 80? Interested to read about yours - I got one of these as well 😀

I got curious about the Yamaha NX50 speakers a while ago as I like their design but in the end I didn't get a pair as IIRC they're not shielded...

It is! I was lucky to find one locally. My first computer was a very basic model 60 that my dad got from his workplace. It didn't have a soundcard and just a 40mb hdd or something like that. This computer will be a little more interesting hopefully 😀

Oh i just assumed they were shielded since they were sold for TVs and PCs, thanks for letting me know. I'm still going to use them since I dont use the CRT but I will be a little more careful around them.

Mixed PCs - Midi racks - Micros and more