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Bought these (retro) hardware today

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Reply 25080 of 52354, by OldCat

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It worth considering that for many of us there is a bit of a kick in playing with hardware that was back then (be it a decade or two) outside of our financial reach. We wanted to play with these toys, but we couldn't. Now we can. And twelve years is about as much time as is needed for the ridiculously outpriced electronic gadgets to become available for an everyman. Vintage? Not really. Retro? Perhaps. A little outdated and still interesting? Absolutely!

I bough cheap Dell M70 with Nvidia Quadro and Windows XP system to play XP games up to ca. 2005 and I mentally file it under "Retro" category. It's hard to fathom the flow of time, but Portal was published more than adecade ago!

Also, you wrote "time flies" and it's funny, 'cause your avatar is a frog. 😀

Reply 25081 of 52354, by arncht

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The retro, vintage, modern etc is very relative without any definitions. If i convert the pc history to the car history, means a 12 years old hw is a car from ~1975. At new inventions the first period is always more intensive, and the jumps are bigger. For me, the pentium was also new thing in 93, so i cannot feel big difference between, if i build a computer from 2000 or 2006. Both are nice periods of the pc history. I felt a big slowdown after circa 2008-2009.

But anyway... it is a good subject, i suggest to make some definitions.

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Reply 25083 of 52354, by Intel486dx33

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With all the computer recycling going on today it is hard to find old computer parts.
No one is saving these old computers and parts. They are recycling.
Personally, I hate working with old computers. They are so difficult to work with and many times do not make sense.
But that's why I like them. They keep me busy.
For people who don't want to fix hardware but just want to play games. Get DOSBOX , P3 with Win98se or XP computer.
Personally, I just want to listen to music on old sound card collection and old multimedia cdroms.
So a quiet computer is a must with SSD or CF card and large heatsinks with quiet fans.
I spent to many years behind old loud noisy hard drivers and fans.
I could never really enjoy multimedia on old computers because they where too loud.
That's why I mainly use my iPad. ( It's the perfect all in one computer ).

Reply 25084 of 52354, by liqmat

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Intel486dx33 wrote:
With all the computer recycling going on today it is hard to find old computer parts. No one is saving these old computers and p […]
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With all the computer recycling going on today it is hard to find old computer parts.
No one is saving these old computers and parts. They are recycling.
Personally, I hate working with old computers. They are so difficult to work with and many times do not make sense.
But that's why I like them. They keep me busy.
For people who don't want to fix hardware but just want to play games. Get DOSBOX , P3 with Win98se or XP computer.
Personally, I just want to listen to music on old sound card collection and old multimedia cdroms.
So a quiet computer is a must with SSD or CF card and large heatsinks with quiet fans.
I spent to many years behind old loud noisy hard drivers and fans.
I could never really enjoy multimedia on old computers because they where too loud.
That's why I mainly use my iPad. ( It's the perfect all in one computer ).

You must be young or at least much younger than me. Most members that I deal with here and at vcfed.org on a regular basis find what you call "noisy", music to their ears. Personally I find the clatter and chugging of an old MFM hard drive or the spin up whine and deafening tone of an old full height 5¼" SCSI hard drive almost euphoric. The sounds these old systems put out are a huge part of the enjoyment for me. When I turn on that old 286-12 I am restoring currently and it makes its burps and belches at post and boot time it has that presence of more importance than just flipping on a smartphone or solid state device. Just my opinion, but I've always been fond of my opinions.

Last edited by liqmat on 2018-09-09, 17:33. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 25085 of 52354, by jesolo

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Technically, retro is to imitate something of a specific period.
The correct term to use is vintage.
That being said, most of you on here will probably have the most fond memories of when you were in high school and will probably be mostly "attracted" to PC hardware from that same era.

For me, my favourite time period is the 386 & 486 era but, about 18 months ago, I started to play around with XT's as well, which include MFM drives. 360KB floppy disk drives and only 640KB of RAM 😀.

So, for me, a Pentium 4 feels like yesterday and I don't consider that to be vintage at all.

Last edited by jesolo on 2018-09-09, 19:12. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 25086 of 52354, by OldCat

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jesolo wrote:

most of you on here will probably have the most fond memories of when you were high school and will probably be mostly "attracted" to PC hardware from that same era.

That is spot on.

jesolo wrote:

For me, my favourite time period is the 386 & 486 era but, about 18 months ago, I started to play around with XT's as well, which include MFM drives. 360KB floppy disk drives and only 640KB of RAM 😀.

Same here, although 286 does qualify as well (first PC computer was AT with Hercules). XTs in mind are a bit too close to 8bit - lovely, but primitive and troublesome.

Reply 25087 of 52354, by brostenen

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Heh'... Vintage is something that are utterly incapeable of modern ways of computing. Think of the computerworlds answer to a Ford Model-T, and you have that vintage machine. Retro is more like relative for people, as far as I can understand. Seems like retro is nostalgia and vintage is "really old". And yet I keep talking about pre-Win9x as vintage.

Anyway...
Found an Amiga500 keyboard (cheap), wich are one of those red-light models. I really need one for my Amiga500 repair project. Then some standoff's for IC sockets and a keyboard-key-extractor.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

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Reply 25088 of 52354, by MMaximus

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liqmat wrote:

You must be young or at least much younger than me. Most members that I deal with here and at vcfed.org on a regular basis find what you call "noisy", music to their ears. Personally I find the clatter and chugging of an old MFM hard drive or the spin up whine and deafening tone of an old full height 5¼" SCSI hard drive almost euphoric. The sounds these old systems put out are a huge part of the enjoyment for me. When I turn on that old 286-12 I am restoring currently and it makes its burps and belches at post and boot time it has that presence of more importance than just flipping on a smartphone or solid state device. Just my opinion, but I've always been fond of my opinions.

I wholeheartedly identify with this. When I turn on one of these old AT beasts and hear their familiar sequence of start-up sounds (Power switch, PSU fan, RAM ticking count, HDD and FDD initialization, speaker beep) I am invariably reminded of my childhood and the joy I had using the family computer at the time.

I like using modern PCs as well but the experience is totally different and doesn't feel as immersive or sensory to me. Now everything is smooth and somewhat sterile and I feel something is missing from it all. We have made leaps and bounds in user experience and capabilities since that time and can do so much more now with our modern devices, but I don't get excited about them.

Of course if you haven't lived through that time in the first place you're not expected to feel the same way - why would you? I never got the excitement of listening to a very old radio for example - but my dad did, as it too probably reminded him of his childhood.

Hard Disk Sounds

Reply 25089 of 52354, by Thermalwrong

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liqmat wrote:

You must be young or at least much younger than me. Most members that I deal with here and at vcfed.org on a regular basis find what you call "noisy", music to their ears. Personally I find the clatter and chugging of an old MFM hard drive or the spin up whine and deafening tone of an old full height 5¼" SCSI hard drive almost euphoric. The sounds these old systems put out are a huge part of the enjoyment for me. When I turn on that old 286-12 I am restoring currently and it makes its burps and belches at post and boot time it has that presence of more importance than just flipping on a smartphone or solid state device. Just my opinion, but I've always been fond of my opinions.

It depends on the person you ask, for me, my interest in retro computing was brought on by my overall dislike for the noises hard drives make and the small, fast and not-speed variable fans of the 486/pentium era.
My hearing is quite sensitive though and certain noises really bother me, so nostalgia for some computer activity sounds is less enjoyable for me.

After a random search, I finally found an MS6168! hopefully working? though looking at the socket A motherboard it's bundled with, I suspect it *may* need some work:

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Putting this thing in a custom case is something I have wanted to do since I missed out on getting hold of one ~16 years ago. Perfect combo of odd hardware and extendable capability.

And a Yamaha MU10, a DB50XG/DB60XG in a box, which I think probably completes my midi module collection now:

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Reply 25090 of 52354, by debs3759

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MMaximus wrote:

I never got the excitement of listening to a very old radio for example - but my dad did, as it too probably reminded him of his childhood.

The first radio I built in the 60s had a variable capacitor that wouldn't fit in my handbag, a coil that by today's standard was huge, 12 feet of wire for the ariel, and a couple of other discrete components. No battery or other amplifier. I used earphones connected via a 3.5 mm jack to listen to VHF radio stations. I was dead proud (I was only 6). I's love to find the plans to build something similar. Doubt I could find such a large capacitor now though (it was about four inches (10 cm) cubed).

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 25091 of 52354, by luckybob

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Friend found a IBM model 80 at a thrift store and was kind enough to sell it to me for only a small markup! (still cheap!)

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I only just got her opened, but she was missing a few obvious bits, plus the hard drive and memory.

Thats okay. The motherboard is an A31, so no matter what I got the nicest stock model 80 IBM made.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 25092 of 52354, by yawetaG

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Roland Musi-kun CD-ROM, which accompanied the Roland SC-88ST in the Japanese Musi-kun DTM package back in 1999:

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Probably includes a light version of some sequencer, plus some other unknown stuff.

Thermalwrong wrote:

And a Yamaha MU10, a DB50XG/DB60XG in a box, which I think probably completes my midi module collection now:

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Slightly more than a DB50XG/DB60XG in a box, because with certain editors you can do more with it than with some of the other MU-units as certain parameters can be modified more extensively than on later MU-units.

Reply 25093 of 52354, by x0zm_

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Finally joined the club and got my own instead of (long term) borrowing a friends.

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Got it locally too instead of having to import from the US/Japan. Really happy about that.

Reply 25094 of 52354, by dionb

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Thermalwrong wrote:

It depends on the person you ask, for me, my interest in retro computing was brought on by my overall dislike for the noises hard drives make and the small, fast and not-speed variable fans of the 486/pentium era.
My hearing is quite sensitive though and certain noises really bother me, so nostalgia for some computer activity sounds is less enjoyable for me.

It can even go both ways in the same person. On the one hand I'm nostalgic enough for old crap to like hearing RAM test clickings, hard disks spinning and whirring etc. But on the other, when it comes to vintage systems I actually intend to use on a regular basis, they get the full silent treatment even if that's not strictly period correct.

Case in point: my idiot Packard Bell system, with MS-6168 (yep, you triggered me 😉 ), active fan on the Voodoo replaced by a big-ish passive heatsink, CPU fan replaced by a Zalman CNPS6000, Zalman's original small 80mm fan replaced by a 120mm Noctua, and the 80mm in the PSU also replaced by a quiet Noctua 80mm. Oh, and an SSD instead of a HDD. So now it's almost silent - except for some coil whine I couldn't hear before 🙁

After a random search, I finally found an MS6168! hopefully working? though looking at the socket A motherboard it's bundled with, I suspect it *may* need some work:

s-l1600a.jpg

Putting this thing in a custom case is something I have wanted to do since I missed out on getting hold of one ~16 years ago. Perfect combo of odd hardware and extendable capability.

Nice find. That looks like the rev.1.0 with i440ZX chipset. The power regulation circuitry is different to the rev.2.0, which is bad news if you want to run a Coppermine (at least in theory), but good news that they didn't use the suicidal caps on the rev.2.0. Your pic isn't good enough to be completely sure, but it looks a lot better than my two rev.2.0 boards did when I got them.

Interested to hear if you could get a Coppermine running on this baby.

Reply 25096 of 52354, by canthearu

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MMaximus wrote:

I wholeheartedly identify with this. When I turn on one of these old AT beasts and hear their familiar sequence of start-up sounds (Power switch, PSU fan, RAM ticking count, HDD and FDD initialization, speaker beep) I am invariably reminded of my childhood and the joy I had using the family computer at the time.

I agree with this part, for the most part.

There were certain sounds, however, mostly due worn drive bearings, regardless of the vintage of the computer, just drive me crazy. The high pitched squeal from some MFM hard drives and also many of the Quantum Fireball drives is just nasty. And none of the small, noisy 40mm fans sound better to me these days then when I originally experienced them.

Nostalgia only takes you so far!

Reply 25097 of 52354, by wiretap

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Over the past week.. picked up a few more semi-modern components before they get ridiculous in price. Got the A8N boards free, NF7 free, and everything else less than $30.

AMD FX-57 (IHS a little scratched up, previous owners likely used a screwdriver to scratch off thermal paste, 🤣 - works though)
AMD FX-60 (working)
2x Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe (one came in the original box, all accessories. Both need some rework/repair, one boots to crashfree bootloader but won't flash, one powers up but needs reflow of NB BGA)
Asus Striker Extreme + Q6600 + 2GB (in route)
Abit NF7-S v2 (Needs a few caps replaced, sometimes unstable after boot, or fails boot)

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Last edited by wiretap on 2018-09-10, 10:15. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 25098 of 52354, by brostenen

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A8N-Sli.... Sweet. Not the best caps, and the standard edition have a bad chipset cooler. Other than that, they are good. I had a chance to work with them, a week or two, before they were released to the public back then.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 25099 of 52354, by stamasd

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A8N-SLI Deluxe was the motherboard in the rig I used back in 2012-2013 to mine bitcoin for a few months. Put a couple of Radeons in it (a 5870 and a 6870), it was a nice room warmer for the winter. I still have the machine, and still working well (though no mining anymore, I gave that up after a few months - basically when the winter was over 😀)

As for new retro purchases, just got another Powerstorm 300 for my Alpha rig since the first one didn't work too well. Maybe the second one will.

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O