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Old computers


~Slideways~

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Keep the cool old computer stuff coming.

I found an 8gb HDD which must have been from an old family computer. Put it in (hanging out the side) a win7 computer and it’s partitioned to a couple of 2gb drives but win7 doesn’t like whatever the file format was and wanted to format. So I used some free file recovery software and recovered what must have been me doing the same thing 20 years ago lol.

 

Formatted it to FAT and plugged into the 486 and it’s working, currently installing DOS 6.22

 

 

ACE2FDA5-9385-402E-8FA3-75A517180BDF.jpeg

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Also tried the recovery software on the 426mb drive which came with the 486, at first it wouldn’t spin at all again. Tapped it on the table and then it started spinning lol.

Surprisingly it reads fine, just has some win95 files and nothing else really.image.thumb.jpg.5bf212eca53eb2a9a2f958771fc7df0c.jpg

 

Not worth using though if it’s going to refuse to work some times.

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20191119_170757-2016x954.jpg

Have a few old cards stashed in the shed. IIRC I bought this second hand via The Case BBS back in the day, early 90's I suppose.

Not sure I could handle working with old PC's again. Too slow/finicky. I trashed a working Win 98 system a while ago to get some bench space back.

I see someone selling this card on ebay for $89USD so there must be some sort of market for old junk if working.

 

https://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/vintage

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That video card is massive!

I got Heretic working but without sound, I only have ISA slots so need to find a sound blaster or compatible. It came with a sound card but I’m still looking for drivers and not sure if it will work with dos games.

Also need to find a Serial Mouse... 

installed windows 3.11 lol

 

589CE61C-44E2-4436-B0AE-AE56B01937F5.jpeg

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16 minutes ago, Nominal said:

20191119_170757-2016x954.jpg

Have a few old cards stashed in the shed. IIRC I bought this second hand of a BBS back in the day, early 90's I suppose.

Not sure I could handle working with old PC's again. Too slow/finicky. I trashed a working Win 98 system a while ago to get some bench space back.

I see someone selling this card on ebay for $89USD so there must be some sort of market for old junk if working.

 

https://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/vintage

There is definitely a resurgence of nostalgic dumb asses such as myself playing with this old junk.

what else have you got?

Ive seen high prices but I guess it depends if someone will actually buy it? I’ve bought some old stuff and it’s dead so it’s a bit risky.

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image.png.1873cfce0eab6e8f2684657a7ed4f4ee.png

My friend had one, we would play Load Runner, Snakes, some vampire game, carman sangeago, and that shuttle puck game with the monsters, I am not a computer person, did this heap of shit have any use? I rember they would screw up and now work at the drop of a hat.

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On 19/11/2019 at 17:22, ~Slideways~ said:

installed windows 3.11 lol

589CE61C-44E2-4436-B0AE-AE56B01937F5.jpeg

This thread is relevant to my interests.

A few years ago I installed DOS 6.2 and Win 3.1 or 3.11 on an mid 2000s Pentium laptop I had for shits and giggles. It must have been a rainy day or something.

OMG all the speed and it booted up in about 7 seconds.

Tried to install Netscape Navigator and see what the internet did but couldn't make the LAN connection work on old Windows.

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This is the cmos/bios battery, it’s totally dead now but it held some power for a bit. Good thing it isn’t an onboard one because that’s what kills most old hardware due to acid leaks.

EDDACB64-A9C2-416D-9AF2-998A99DFEB5F.jpeg.aec5492da95a87f3075c17ca96ceaaa3.jpeg

Found you can still buy them but they are $40.

I took the dead motherboard out of one of my first home built (from new parts) computers from around 2001 and removed the coin battery holder.
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It looks very rangi’d up but it’s mostly just the electrical tape covering the solder... mostly. It’s attached with the same Velcro the original one was in 1994 (I assume).

And it works perfectly, no need to tell it wtf a hard drive is every reboot lol

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Man,  this is a pleasant blast from the past.

run timedemo demo1   or something like that was the test for CPU/Video card we used to run on Quake

I have a ton of old SIMM's and DIMM's if you ever get stuck.

Ironically I was looking at my old Jazz drive and 1GB cartridges just yesterday wondering what was on them and if I should have a crack at getting it going..

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1 hour ago, kempy said:

Man,  this is a pleasant blast from the past.

run timedemo demo1   or something like that was the test for CPU/Video card we used to run on Quake

I have a ton of old SIMM's and DIMM's if you ever get stuck.

Ironically I was looking at my old Jazz drive and 1GB cartridges just yesterday wondering what was on them and if I should have a crack at getting it going..

It’s satisfying to mess around with this old stuff for some reason, probably the same reason I like old cars too.

Thanks for the offer of the ram man, I might take you up on that if I need more later. I need to play with the memory settings, I’ve found a few games that won’t run due to lack of ems memory.

Ive picked up another really cool old IBM 5155 which doesn’t turn on, will be interesting to see if it’s capacitors or something replaceable.

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if you have a current working knowledge of old pc gear, you should advertise as a cnc repairman, there is a huge amount of os/2 and drdos machines with obscure isa motion control boards still running that everyone's too scared to do minor pc maintenance work on. soon all the xp (sp0) based machines with netbios comms to the motion side will start needing stuff swapped to keep them going for the next 10 years, which is even easier - and all the current crusty old dudes that still remember how it works will be out of the game. Even basic stuff like being aware of the ide jumper settings when swapping discs is seen as magic.

 

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4 minutes ago, sentra said:

if you have a current working knowledge of old pc gear, you should advertise as a cnc repairman, there is a huge amount of os/2 and drdos machines with obscure isa motion control boards still running that everyone's too scared to do minor pc maintenance work on. soon all the xp (sp0) based machines with netbios comms to the motion side will start needing stuff swapped to keep them going for the next 10 years, which is even easier - and all the current crusty old dudes that still remember how it works will be out of the game. Even basic stuff like being aware of the ide jumper settings when swapping discs is seen as magic.

 

Well I am officially unemployed now, I've been free of work for almost 3 weeks now. By free I mean I've been catching up on years of house maintenance, school runs and doing stupid things with old computers lol.

That's an interesting idea though. It'd have to be on the side as I need to feed a few people here.

I wonder how much work there is? And I'd need an inventory of spares as well as the liability of being blamed for unexpected faults from touching old stuff. 

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I got some shitty old cnc plasma machine controllers up and running after everyone saying yea nah mate can't get parts for it. All it needed was a new power supply, video card, ram, hdd, touch screen and some repairs to the key pad. 

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There would be a lot of parts that would be practically unobtainable for old cnc machines unless you've been hoarding them for 40 years, I'm not sure knowing how to run old computers would be enough to get you through. Unless of course your customers are willing to wait 6 months for you to track down that special card

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1 hour ago, ajg193 said:

There would be a lot of parts that would be practically unobtainable for old cnc machines unless you've been hoarding them for 40 years, I'm not sure knowing how to run old computers would be enough to get you through. Unless of course your customers are willing to wait 6 months for you to track down that special card

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:

 

F7C2EA62-F136-40E2-B252-2718604814B3.jpeg

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