I just wasted 3 full hours trying to bring the GF4 Ti4600 back to life. Replaced all of the missing components, but it still won't work. Meh 😐

Just changed the coolant in a Corsair H70 AIO. The thing must be at least ten years old but the fins on the cold plate were pristine inside and there was nothing nasty floating about in there. So good job Corsair.

I got slightly more coolant in than I got out .

Decided to bring a P133 PC back to life. Was not posting when I got it over a month ago and suspected that a dead Dallas chip was to blame.
Looked up some battery mod guides, took a spare dead RTC, drilled away and soldered a battery holder.

Might block some ISA cards, but its not like I would ever use more than 2.

And it works after a single try!

Looked up what files it had and they indicate that this was a spreadsheet machine for a bakery that was in use all the way up to 2004. Now to figure out what upgrades I should add.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-01-25, 08:22:

It's a J-Mark OPTI-495SX 3/486WB (or Jetway).

I was the only bidder on this board and it's coming along well. Just waiting for some parts to come in the mail so I can replace those items and get it to work. I haven't tested it since the IC socket for the EPROM BIOS is gone (the left side had rusted out and the right side is still good), but the BIOS chip looks good and no signs of rust.

Thanks - I'll keep an eye out for those. There are similar ones on eBay now but with only one VESA card, and it doesn't seem I can put an FPU on it. Also for $250, that's a tad much.

Started work getting the 40EC sorted out - mainly the screen, my last J.B. Weld repair is holding up really well so the hinge cover looks great now. Ordered a new motherboard ($20). I'm going to attempt to build a composite of two of the three remaining NL6448 panels - using the (NL6448AC30)-03 from the Ultralite with the -10 from the first M/75. Thinking I might need to buy some new ribbon cables for this, nice part is the -03 boards all have mf connectors on them (can't remember the right term) with that sliding latch, so only one side of SMD soldering - which I seem to have a knack for.

After that, I'm thinking 2 more huge ATA-133 drives are in order - then I can start with that puzzle called the "Ultralite". One for the M/75 to run WFW311 on top of DOS 7.1 (win3xstart is a friend of mine), one for the 40EC for a second install of FreeDOS on that, and then the rest of the drives will be as follows....

105MB.... - MS-DOS 5.00 and Windows 3.1 with Windows 3.0 wallpapers, as I think the Ultralite originally had 3.0 on it (Chess Wallpaper)
250MB #1 - The original "Ford" installation for the 40EC
250MB #2 - do this one last - reformat, remove Drivespace, setup for my Tandy 1000A
540MB #1 - Setup for OS/2 2.1 with Win O/S 2 and Multimedia extensions (I have it in the box but I never use it, might be fun)
540MB #2 - Setup for MS-DOS 6.22 and WFW 3.11 for the M/75 with games and the software for talking screen (as I've started using it in my music)

New Drives
40EC - <80GB - FreeDOS 1.2 or 1.3.
M/75 - <80GB - MS-DOS 7.1 w/ WFW 3.11
P/75 - <80GB #1 (have) - FreeDOS 2.1
P/75 - <80GB #2 (have) - Windows 95 OSR 2.5 setup for 800x600 w/ SB ESS688

I diagnosed and repaired a mainboard in my second Amiga 2000 (which I'm going to sell now). It wasn't working. Works flawlessly now.

Got invited to a wedding by people I neither know or have ever met.
Whats that gotta do with retro you might ask?

Well it starts with a pile of hardware I got years ago.
And in that pile there was a nice large and working IDE drive from a few years into the new millennium.
On that drive there was a broken windows XP, and also a lot of personal pictures.
Normally I just delete anything even remotely personal on storage media I get.
But this was something else.
Thousands of pics of pretty much everything a family does.
And everything meticulously sorted and named.
As the age and (unusual) name of one person was known (birthday pics) the detective work was fairly easy to find that person online.

Now I agonized about this for quite some time.
Would I want to be contacted by someone that found old pics of me? no, probably not.
But the "family album" structure of the whole thing finally made me send an email including a few pics.
Basically asking if this was something I should delete or if it was interesting for the person.

And in less then an hour I had a reply.
And a very happy reply at that!

And to make a long story short (this whole deal took like 6 months) .
Some time passed and i get a wedding invitation in the mail.
One of the kids in the "album" is getting married and as thanks for restoring their childhood pics I'm invited.
Now I'm sure this is just them being polite, and its like a days car ride away.
So I'm probably gonna excuse myself.
But hey, my hobby made someone happy, that's enough for me!

Fitted plastic spacers to the ends of each of the full-length ISA cards in my PVI-486SP3 so that there isn't any danger of them shorting out.

They are, in turn:

- Soundblaster AWE32 CT2760 with NEC XR385
- Transtech TMB04 Transputer interface board (1x 32bit T805 transputer with 16MB of SIMMs)
- Ultrasound MAX
- Transtech TMB08 Transputer interface board (4x 32bit T800 transputers each with 1-4MB RAM, + 2x 32bit T400 transputer with

I give up one of the three PCI slots to have 4 ISA cards, but that's fine - all I need is PCI video (choice being either a Voodoo 3 3000, or a S3 Trio64) and networking (Intel Pro100).

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2021-01-25, 17:01:

Got invited to a wedding by people I neither know or have ever met. Whats that gotta do with retro you might ask? […]
Show full quote

Got invited to a wedding by people I neither know or have ever met.
Whats that gotta do with retro you might ask?

Well it starts with a pile of hardware I got years ago.
And in that pile there was a nice large and working IDE drive from a few years into the new millennium.
On that drive there was a broken windows XP, and also a lot of personal pictures.
Normally I just delete anything even remotely personal on storage media I get.
But this was something else.
Thousands of pics of pretty much everything a family does.
And everything meticulously sorted and named.
As the age and (unusual) name of one person was known (birthday pics) the detective work was fairly easy to find that person online.

Now I agonized about this for quite some time.
Would I want to be contacted by someone that found old pics of me? no, probably not.
But the "family album" structure of the whole thing finally made me send an email including a few pics.
Basically asking if this was something I should delete or if it was interesting for the person.

And in less then an hour I had a reply.
And a very happy reply at that!

And to make a long story short (this whole deal took like 6 months) .
Some time passed and i get a wedding invitation in the mail.
One of the kids in the "album" is getting married and as thanks for restoring their childhood pics I'm invited.
Now I'm sure this is just them being polite, and its like a days car ride away.
So I'm probably gonna excuse myself.
But hey, my hobby made someone happy, that's enough for me!

I usually wipe old drives without looking what is on them. Stories like this do make me wonder how often I should check them though. Very heart warming to me 😀

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-25, 17:23:

I usually wipe old drives without looking what is on them. Stories like this do make me wonder how often I should check them though. Very heart warming to me 😀

I NEVER do that. Why would I? People who sell/bring machines with all the data on HDD don't care about their privacy or data anyway. I did contacted a person like this a few times for similar reasons, but got no reply.

Just been playing with the Amstrad PPC640 that I picked up today for next to nothing and it works perfectly 😀 but wow that screen is horrible! Shame I don't have a CGA monitor to connect it to.
Need to experiment with more games as I had some success and some failures. It was a lot better once I realised the DIP switches were set to MDA instead of CGA!
I think this must be the first PC I've had which has no hard drive at all, it's certainly the oldest I now have at home.

bofh.fromhell wrote on 2021-01-25, 17:01:

Got invited to a wedding by people I neither know or have ever met. Whats that gotta do with retro you might ask? […]
Show full quote

Got invited to a wedding by people I neither know or have ever met.
Whats that gotta do with retro you might ask?

Well it starts with a pile of hardware I got years ago.
And in that pile there was a nice large and working IDE drive from a few years into the new millennium.
On that drive there was a broken windows XP, and also a lot of personal pictures.
Normally I just delete anything even remotely personal on storage media I get.
But this was something else.
Thousands of pics of pretty much everything a family does.
And everything meticulously sorted and named.
As the age and (unusual) name of one person was known (birthday pics) the detective work was fairly easy to find that person online.

Now I agonized about this for quite some time.
Would I want to be contacted by someone that found old pics of me? no, probably not.
But the "family album" structure of the whole thing finally made me send an email including a few pics.
Basically asking if this was something I should delete or if it was interesting for the person.

And in less then an hour I had a reply.
And a very happy reply at that!

And to make a long story short (this whole deal took like 6 months) .
Some time passed and i get a wedding invitation in the mail.
One of the kids in the "album" is getting married and as thanks for restoring their childhood pics I'm invited.
Now I'm sure this is just them being polite, and its like a days car ride away.
So I'm probably gonna excuse myself.
But hey, my hobby made someone happy, that's enough for me!

Go for the food, stay for the beer. 😜

I'd give them the hard drive as an ultimate "take this out when you're getting rid of a computer" bomb.

HanJammer wrote on 2021-01-25, 19:16:

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-25, 17:23:

I usually wipe old drives without looking what is on them. Stories like this do make me wonder how often I should check them though. Very heart warming to me 😀

I NEVER do that. Why would I? People who sell/bring machines with all the data on HDD don't care about their privacy or data anyway. I did contacted a person like this a few times for similar reasons, but got no reply.

I found TONS of games on retro machines this way. Once I did get a computer with personal data on it - SSN, tax info, all that - I DoD'd the drive and reinstalled what I needed on it, and then contacted the seller - "Hey you left your SSN and tax info on the drive, as well as the programs needed to read the files - I deleted everything on the drive, just wanted to tell you that this can be quite dangerous, and you should always delete etc." Reply - "Yeah I saw that, the data is old, so I left it."

Not even mad about not getting any acknowledgement, but unless you changed your SSN and tax information, that information does not really expire.

Jed118 wrote on 2021-01-25, 22:26:

HanJammer wrote on 2021-01-25, 19:16:

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-25, 17:23:

I usually wipe old drives without looking what is on them. Stories like this do make me wonder how often I should check them though. Very heart warming to me 😀

I NEVER do that. Why would I? People who sell/bring machines with all the data on HDD don't care about their privacy or data anyway. I did contacted a person like this a few times for similar reasons, but got no reply.

I found TONS of games on retro machines this way. Once I did get a computer with personal data on it - SSN, tax info, all that - I DoD'd the drive and reinstalled what I needed on it, and then contacted the seller - "Hey you left your SSN and tax info on the drive, as well as the programs needed to read the files - I deleted everything on the drive, just wanted to tell you that this can be quite dangerous, and you should always delete etc." Reply - "Yeah I saw that, the data is old, so I left it."

Not even mad about not getting any acknowledgement, but unless you changed your SSN and tax information, that information does not really expire.

Agree ! Put me in the "I do not wipe a drive until I see what is on it" group. Even with old XBOX or TIVO boxes I buy for the HD still look to see what is on them....a PC HD will double look it over...

I'm always paranoid about keeping HDDs with stuff on it due to some pervert having shit like child porn on it or something. If I found something like that I'd feel compelled to report it, so I just DBAN them at earliest opportunity.

Horun wrote on 2021-01-26, 03:41:

Jed118 wrote on 2021-01-25, 22:26:

HanJammer wrote on 2021-01-25, 19:16:

I NEVER do that. Why would I? People who sell/bring machines with all the data on HDD don't care about their privacy or data anyway. I did contacted a person like this a few times for similar reasons, but got no reply.

I found TONS of games on retro machines this way. Once I did get a computer with personal data on it - SSN, tax info, all that - I DoD'd the drive and reinstalled what I needed on it, and then contacted the seller - "Hey you left your SSN and tax info on the drive, as well as the programs needed to read the files - I deleted everything on the drive, just wanted to tell you that this can be quite dangerous, and you should always delete etc." Reply - "Yeah I saw that, the data is old, so I left it."

Not even mad about not getting any acknowledgement, but unless you changed your SSN and tax information, that information does not really expire.

Agree ! Put me in the "I do not wipe a drive until I see what is on it" group. Even with old XBOX or TIVO boxes I buy for the HD still look to see what is on them....a PC HD will double look it over...

+1
I'm just too curious not to look. Though my drives generally come from companies sometimes with business data on them.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-01-26, 06:02:

I'm always paranoid about keeping HDDs with stuff on it due to some pervert having shit like child porn on it or something. If I found something like that I'd feel compelled to report it, so I just DBAN them at earliest opportunity.

Mine are usually from pre-internet era. The most debauched thing I found were pics of Pamela Anderson in gif format in size of a postal stamp 🤣. Usually it's DOS, Norton Commander, some database and Monkey Island ;D

I occasionally found photo's on harddisks people gave to me. Since I know these people fairly well I explained to them it's best to wipe your harddisk properly before you give it away. Recently I sold my old computer, but not before completely reinstalling the OS from scratch and if I remember correctly I used some utility to overwrite any remains of deleted files. While I don't keep anything of any real interest on my hdds it just doesn't feel right to me not erase them properly before getting rid of them. Also, if a hdd went into the trash, it would first be thouroughly destroyed by me.

Jed118 wrote on 2021-01-25, 22:26:

[...]

I found TONS of games on retro machines this way. Once I did get a computer with personal data on it - SSN, tax info, all that - I DoD'd the drive and reinstalled what I needed on it, and then contacted the seller - "Hey you left your SSN and tax info on the drive, as well as the programs needed to read the files - I deleted everything on the drive, just wanted to tell you that this can be quite dangerous, and you should always delete etc." Reply - "Yeah I saw that, the data is old, so I left it."

Not even mad about not getting any acknowledgement, but unless you changed your SSN and tax information, that information does not really expire.

Don't go out of my way to look, but sometimes you stumble over stuff... once I found an old system in the street in front of my house. Booted it up and it booted straight through to Win98 with my neighbour's 2007-2012 tax returns on the desktop (this would have been around 2013). Next time I saw him I pointed out that it wasn't such a smart move. He just shrugged.

Nuance: this is Europe and as there is a centralized civil registry per country, things like SSN and passport data are far less easily abused than in places like US where that isn't the case. Still, I wouldn't leave mine out in the street regardless...

dionb wrote on 2021-01-26, 10:26:

Nuance: this is Europe and as there is a centralized civil registry per country, things like SSN and passport data are far less easily abused than in places like US where that isn't the case. Still, I wouldn't leave mine out in the street regardless...

Yeah, If I sell a hard drive or PC other than retro stuff (I don't keep anything sensitive on those), I always properly wipe them. First making a full disc encryption with several times overwriting the data than format the drive. My portables are encrypted anyway.