DaveJustDave wrote:

So i picked up this Packard Bell Legend.

Pretty much the cleanest example i've ever seen outside of a CompUSA in the mid 90s. No yellowing, scratches, chips, scuffs

20190327_192730.jpg

Ugh. I love the look of those packard bells. This is very similar to the model I had growing up. Just different specs.

CHiLL72 wrote:

MMaximus wrote:

CHiLL72 wrote:

I already have this card for many years, but kept it stored and never tested it. Until I stumbled upon it again today. And since I was testing a GUS classic I bought earlier this week, I decided to put this card in the same PC and give it a go.... And what do you know? Works perfectly!

20190328_204642.jpg

...

These are great little cards! Any chance you could image the floppies and scan the manual? I have a similar card and would love to get some info about the Dip switches settings.

Scanning the manual is something I can do, but finding a 5.25" floppy drive to image the floppies will be more of a challenge...

I'm also interested in images and manual. I have the exact same card.

liqmat wrote:

Some of you may remember my NEC Powermate Portable APC IV acquisition in April 2018. […]
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Some of you may remember my NEC Powermate Portable APC IV acquisition in April 2018.

Powrmatevania.JPG

Well, it's BIOS only supports its internal 720K floppy drive and a near impossible to find NEC external 5¼" 1.2MB floppy drive.

nec floppy.jpg

So a while back I picked up this drive thinking the NEC supported a DB37 connection.

pacific rim.jpg

I was wrong.

nec vs 37 port.jpg

So I ended up with a new in box Backpack 3½" parallel floppy drive and it works like a charm. When it rains it pours. It just so happens someone was also selling their used Backpack 3½" floppy drive on Vcfed for cheap so I picked that up for good measure since they are fairly pricey on Ebay. Some files I need to transfer over to the NEC system are just slightly over 720K and that becomes rather frustrating. This will make it a lot easier to move files back and forth between my daily driver and the Powermate. Also a bonus is the Backpack floppy drive driver will work with DOS as early as version 2.0.

backpack.jpg

Just as a heads up, the controllers in those backpack floppy drives support up to 4 drives. I've not heard of anybody actually trying to hook up more than 2 drives, but they definitely work with two drives.

CHiLL72 wrote:

Scanning the manual is something I can do, but finding a 5.25" floppy drive to image the floppies will be more of a challenge...

Anybody close have a 5.25" drive they can lend so we can get images of the floppies?

cyclone3d wrote:

liqmat wrote:

Some of you may remember my NEC Powermate Portable APC IV acquisition in April 2018. […]
Show full quote

Some of you may remember my NEC Powermate Portable APC IV acquisition in April 2018.

Powrmatevania.JPG

Well, it's BIOS only supports its internal 720K floppy drive and a near impossible to find NEC external 5¼" 1.2MB floppy drive.

nec floppy.jpg

So a while back I picked up this drive thinking the NEC supported a DB37 connection.

pacific rim.jpg

I was wrong.

nec vs 37 port.jpg

So I ended up with a new in box Backpack 3½" parallel floppy drive and it works like a charm. When it rains it pours. It just so happens someone was also selling their used Backpack 3½" floppy drive on Vcfed for cheap so I picked that up for good measure since they are fairly pricey on Ebay. Some files I need to transfer over to the NEC system are just slightly over 720K and that becomes rather frustrating. This will make it a lot easier to move files back and forth between my daily driver and the Powermate. Also a bonus is the Backpack floppy drive driver will work with DOS as early as version 2.0.

backpack.jpg

Just as a heads up, the controllers in those backpack floppy drives support up to 4 drives. I've not heard of anybody actually trying to hook up more than 2 drives, but they definitely work with two drives.

Excellent, good to know. Although, they will mainly be used for moving data back and forth on old systems like that NEC.

This came in a mixed lot of cards today. Can anyone identify this crazy thing?

It says "Timer" on it and it has a Dallas RTC, but it also has a 3.3v - 5v switch (blue and red thing), what appear to be RJ11 and RJ45 recepticles and a 9 pin dsub... with both PCI AND 8bit ISA card edge connections? They're very sparsely populated too I might add.

There's an address for a company called ProCom in Germany, and they make all sorts of things, but I can't find any information about this card. I'm assuming it is something out of an industrial machine of some kind.

Also, I think this might be the only device I have seen that uses those crazy 3-leg ceramic caps aside from MediaVision cards... they aren't the same value as the ones used on MV cards though, so they can't be used as replacements. I have a Pro Audio Premium that needed one and I was surprised to find one on mouser... though they are bright blue now, not brown.

... anyway, what is this?? 😊

@ozzuneoj

God I love cards like that. Total mysteries!

As simple as it is, I'd wager it is turning devices on/off at certain intervals programmed via the serial port.

This week's lot. The board and the cards on the last photo are quite in a bad shape, because they were lying on the concrete floor and above them there were four or five boxes filled with e-waste. Also one chip is missing on the board (signs of desoldering).

^^looking very coll but you will have some work with restauration 😀

Predator99 wrote:

^^looking very coll but you will have some work with restauration 😀

I know. But that's the fun of it 😀

I found NOS 5.25"->3.5" adapters. Immediately bought all of them 😁

Woah cool !

may or may not have bought an IBM Model M keyboard

oeuvre wrote:

may or may not have bought an IBM Model M keyboard

Is this a kind of Schrödinger's Cat experiment? Only once you open the box is it clear what you did. Until then it's both bought and not bought...

Oeuvre what have you done? You've placed the IBM Model M keyboard market in a state of quantum uncertainty! Help, it's propagating to other retro stuff too!!

cyclone3d wrote:

Yes, definitely. […]
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oeuvre wrote:

you must make replicas of this sticker

Yes, definitely.

What we need is either a high quality in-focus macro shot of the sticker along with the measurements OR a high quality scan done with a hand scanner.
Or you could lay the cover on a flatbed and scan it that way. 600dpi should be good.

Here is a link to the page that the sticker originally came on:
http://www.cpucollection.se/details.php?image_id=1252

And the pic snagged from said link:

Intel_sticker_kit_Math_Coprocessor_installed.jpg

I'll clean up the image if we can get a scan of it.

Will the black smudge come off easily? Is it a paper sticker or more of a plasticy sticker?

To all interested:
- The smudge came off easly.
- I was able to remove the sticker intact (with a little help from a heat gun) and transfer it to a wax paper.
- I made both - the photos, and scans, and took dimensions as well.
- Unfortunatelly the lobster sticker being paper and general poor quality didn't made it (it wouldn't survive the cleaning/retrobright anyway).
- Original decal is printed on PCV film (plasticy sticker as you described it).

Here are the scanned images along with CDR and PDF containing measurements: https://mega.nz/#F!MEFAWKLL!rFwfmmGQwbQqNObaBNrLJQ

Note: colors on the scan (TIFF file) are almost perfect (although sticker could have lost some colour due to sunlight), so don't use photos (JPGs) as colour reference.

Very nicely done sir. Thank you!

Sweet! Thanks!

Only just a small area on the chin that will need to be fixed.

I'll probably end up making 2-3 different edited versions at some point when I get the time.
1. Just the smudge on the chin fixed as well as the black borders fixed
2. Same as above but with all black lines made a lot crisper.. .and maybe add a black border to the sleeve on the right hand side. It just looks weird as-is
3... IF I get real ambitious, one with the colors completely redone in smoother gradients, not like the way the original was printed.

At last, something worth posting... It was cheap, still not tested, hope it works.

No pictures as it hasn't arrived yet, but I bought online today - an Amstrad CPC 464, with green screen monochrome monitor. All in good working condition.

I never owned an Amstrad CPC back in the day. I've used an emulator in the past, but always been curious to try out the actual hardware.

It comes with 3 games and I already have 2 games in my collection (cassettes that held the C64, Spectrum & Amstrad CPC versions of the game on the same tape). Plus I have loads of CDT/TZX files to try on this thing too, should keep me busy for a while. 😎