luckybob wrote on Yesterday, 00:07:

GigAHerZ wrote on 2025-12-06, 23:46:

Behold, it has been published!

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7223953

And here i am, just putting all my ram into baggies and stuffing them all in a big box. Like some kind of pleb.

I have boxes for each type of RAM, and some ESD safe bags to separate some, but a lot of times I will use twist ties to keep matched sets of RAM together. This is especially handy for 72pin and 30pin SIMMs that basically require being used in sets. I made the mistake of using rubber bands many years ago, but the rubber decomposes rather quickly and then adheres to the RAM wherever it was touching. So... no more rubber bands!

3D printed holders would be neat, but I think I'd need a much larger container to put all of them in if I tried to store them this way. Also, a 3D printer. I'd need one of those too. And a place for that. And filament. Ahhh...

fosterwj03 wrote on 2025-12-06, 17:52:

I like NT 3.51 for its stability and the retro Windows interface. I didn't use NT as my daily driver OS until NT 4.0, though. I've learned to appreciate NT 3.51 in later years.

All versions of Windows are fast and stable when there is no software to load onto them 😉

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 09:18:

fosterwj03 wrote on 2025-12-06, 17:52:

I like NT 3.51 for its stability and the retro Windows interface. I didn't use NT as my daily driver OS until NT 4.0, though. I've learned to appreciate NT 3.51 in later years.

All versions of Windows are fast and stable when there is no software to load onto them 😉

True. I'm also a fan of well written 32-bit software. That has, sadly, become less common in recent years.

fosterwj03 wrote on Yesterday, 14:23:

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 09:18:

fosterwj03 wrote on 2025-12-06, 17:52:

I like NT 3.51 for its stability and the retro Windows interface. I didn't use NT as my daily driver OS until NT 4.0, though. I've learned to appreciate NT 3.51 in later years.

All versions of Windows are fast and stable when there is no software to load onto them 😉

True. I'm also a fan of well written 32-bit software. That has, sadly, become less common in recent years.

It's just a hunch but I suspect we find the most efficient applications are from the era when RAM was prohibitively expensive.

On my K6-2 circa Y2K I used to use PhotoShop3 and Word For Windows. Those apps was already retro software, but functional. The basic concepts didn't change. What did change is that complex apps like Word for Windows (multi-language spell check, grammar check, various fonts, etc.) opened faster than the most basic apps like Notepad - how can Microsoft defend that?

For comparison, the contemporary MS Office had extra startup pre-fetching yet ran painfully slow. The trend was clearly not what users wanted, unless users wanted cheap software?

Good progress on the LOGI PC88XT motherboard repair (background in the earlier posts of this thread).

All tantalum capacitors on the power rails were bad and have been replaced. The CPU, BIOS, and DRAM ICs were temporarily borrowed from an Auva XT clone used as a donor.
The system now boots, though there are still issues with RAM, the keyboard, and the floppy subsystem—still a solid step forward.

Using the XTRAMTEST BIOS I was able to identify a faulty DRAM and replace it. I still need to track down a remaining parity error.