~Slideways~

Cool that you still have the floppy’s! Never played that but the Google images look pretty cool too.

Why wouldn’t you want the frustration of compatibility issues, obscure drivers and failing hardware?

These just arrived, never thought I’d be paying money for shitty old mice.

We had something as a form 1 class computer in 1995, I thought it might have been a c64. Where Acorn’s In schools a common thing? Ive been trying to find out what a game was but its hard when I don’t know the machine it was on lol.

Do it, some classic games never get old. Others, not so much lol.

You'd probably be able to sell the Amiga for a decent price if its still in the box. Collectors love boxed stuff.

Man I remember when Quake came out I was blown away that the demo was huge at something like 12mb. How times have changed.

I don’t think I knew that one?

Unless you try it in heretic.

Haha yeah I remember glittering prizes, what about blowing up sheep and ‘stop touching me’

Got win98 machine all working, CD drive and sound. Warcraft 2 with CD audio is awesome. fck yeah: Need to find some 90’s pc speakers:

I’ve collected a few old machines, one was free from my wife’s uncle. It’s a beige Dell optiplex with an Celeron 466mhz, 64mb ram and according to the driver an integrated Rage something or other graphics chip. I reinstalled windows 98 SE because a bunch of stuff wasn’t working, including the CD drive. So I had to take the hdd out and plug into another computer then copy the win98 CD files over. It worked fine but it still doesn’t detect the CD drive. Tried swapping cables, two different CD drives. Manually installing a driver etc etc. I even updated the bios firmware. Then I tried swapping the hdd and CD drive cables over at the motherboard end. Now it sees a CD drive but no hdd. Weird. Maybe 2nd IDE is dead. Cant just use a master/slave cable because it doesn’t reach. Maybe I could use a USB CD drive. But anyway, here’s Quake. Man these old games were fun. Different CRT monitor this time, I got this one for my birthday when it was new lol. A good CRT has an awesome crisp image, most went into the bin....

386 turbo button applied down to 8mhz and playing Sopwith 2 which I don’t think I ever had. Seems like they added a couple of hazards and that’s it.

Lol yep, already tried a few variations with no luck. Google says it’s a common problem too.

Trying to get Warcraft 2 working, sound blaster option for music works, but sounds effect set to sound blaster says I don't have a sound blaster. Try run game, crashes. Oh the 90's.

I found a local guy with a few bits so have a serial mouse and a generic vga card, its a pretty basic one but it should work. I am still keen to try out those ISA cards though if you are still keen to post them. No worries if not. Nah PS/2 is the small round plug that is still in use now (if not using usb mouse/keyboard), I needed the 9 pin D shaped plug (the crappy ball mouse ones that get gunked up wheels). From what I understand you can't just use a plug type adapter because of different voltages and protocol differences. Someone designed a converter board with adapter plugs which you have to flash firmware to just to get it to work, there are some for sale I think it was $65, might have even been USD? But I'm just doing this as a super low dollar hobby/time waster/not really sure why.

What a legend!

Might be a silly question but since there are higher spec Link G4+ ecu's (I'm using a Storm g4+ black) and the A+B looms are generic, does that mean all of the extra wires can be removed/ depinned? i.e. the wires for higher spec ecu's with more outputs etc, where my wiring plug diagram has some blank spaces.

I’m a bit stuck on the IBM 5155 memory expansion card and still waiting on the mouse for the 486 so I am now trying to revive a 386sx. Yep the poverty spec one not the DX. Have not been able to identify what the motherboard is. I love the case on this thing, its a lot like the one we had in the early 90’s, metal lift up hinged top with two push in clips on the sides. But it has very little sign of life and bios error beeps which indicate possibly a ram issue and video card as well. I don’t have any spare ram to suit or an ISA video card that will fit. Nothing at the local computer recycling place and nothing on Trademe. It did have a leaking cmos battery which corroded some traces but after cleaning it up and doing a continuity test it seems ok physically but still getting errors. Either the monitor (monochrome) is stuffed or the video card is stuffed. It’s designed to output to a monochrome or CGA but it’s just a garbled mess of text. Does anyone have some old ISA video cards they want to sell?

I’ve done it a couple of times and always ended up with a drive that started working when it was previously dead, so it not really brave it’s more like risking killing a dead thing. There were no signs of life except for the controller card was working since it would indicate it was trying to read but failing.

The initial start up failed to read an executable but it didn’t say what, but then it continued to this: It has Tetris! Some corruption happening here comrades:

Holy shit the IBM 5155 hdd is working! All I had to do is take it apart, plug it in while open and give the head arm a bit of a nudge. 20mb of glory. Some read failures but shit, it’s 35 years old!

I’ve had this IBM model M keyboard for a year or so but some random keys don’t work. Took it apart which involves cutting the plastic weld rivet things. Thought it was probably a broken membrane trace. I think this one on the edge is probably the problem, looks corroded. Tried a resistance reading and get nothing. Maybe one of those conductive paint pens would work?

1701 error is something to do with the hdd or the hdd controller. The fact that is knows to try read the hdd as soon as the card is installed should mean that the controller is working, maybe the 35 year old hdd is dead or stuck. I’ll see if I can take it apart and see if I can unstuck it.

Yeah that’s my thoughts, I’m sure there would be some that are viable but you wouldn’t know until you’ve started pulling it apart and the customer is very unlikely to accept just saying it’s going to take 6 months if at all. it would be fun to fix some stuff though, I’ve had some luck with my IBM 5155 from 1984. It didn’t even turn on and made plastic melting smells. By just researching then taking it apart, checking for obvious burnt capacitors or whatever. Then trying to power the motherboard with a spare AT type PSU. Then slowly plugging in parts starting with the video card. I’ve got it displaying something and so far the original power supply is actually working it seems to be a short in one of the floppy drives because it refuses to turn on with that one plugged into the PSU. Going from there the Harddrive controller seems to work but the hdd itself seems to be dead. All expansions work until I plug in the ram expansion one which then stops it from powering on. I bet it’s a shorted capacitor since they are really common on these old machines. I had it running for about 30min then it shut off and refused to turn on again. Started process again and got al the way back to just the motherboard plugged into the PSU. Found a really useful website stating that a couple of common capacitors fail and they can be removed since they are just line filter type things which are redundant since the expansion cards have their own. Removed one capacitor, tested and still nothing. Removed the other and it boots up and displays errors for lack of expansion cards etc. TLDR Its fun to diagnose this stuff and I guess it could be done on old CNC type machines but it would only be viable in certain scenarios. Ideally the best would be it’s not working at all and I can do an initial diagnosis etc with maybe having a solution. This thing is so cool: