Retro Computer General Thread

>>43198892


Illegitimate thread. The previous one didn't even hit the bump limit.

These are probably the second faggiest type of thread on /g/, behind cyberpunk threads.
At least this is fucking technology related.

>>43198912
Yes it did.

>>43198919

Not when this thread was posted.

>>43198936
Well it's at the bump limit now.

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Well, now that that the old thread hit the bump limit (thanks to 2 useless post), this one is finally the legitimate successor.
Remember :
- /retro/ is a no-bullying zone
- the IRC channel is #/g/retro on Rizon
- "MUH NOSTALGIA" posts are worse than cancer.

Useful informations like posting ASM programming tips or debates on various architectures are encouraged.

>>43199036
10 X=X=1
20 PRINT X;
30 GOTO 10
muh BASIC

MOV DX,OFFSET MESS1
MOV AH,9
INT 21h
MOV AX,4C000h
INT 21h

MESS1 DB 'YOU SUCK DICK',0Ah,0Dh,'$'

If old front-panel microcomputers trigger you interest, if you want to know more about these boxes that could seems useless from a profane, here's a website that talk about old (and not so old) S-100 bus-based stuff:
http://www.s100computers.com/index.html

>>43199076
Fucking DOS.
>strings are $ terminated
>being this retarded
>shiggy

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Also S-100 based. The North Star Horizon, which launched in November 1977 and was possibly the first microcomputer to ship with standard disk drives. Unlike the DIY kit computers such as the Altair and IMSAI, it came already pre-assembled with cards, a ROM BIOS, an OS, and software.

The Horizon ended up mostly being popular with universities and it gave way in 1983 to the North Star Advantage, an impressive computer with high-resolution bitmap graphics. However, the Advantage was still an 8-bit Z80 machine in a world being rapidly taken over by IBM PCs. Moreover, North Star's stubborn insistence on using hard sectored floppy disks made it hard to port software (aside from the disks themselves being difficult to source). The company filed for bankruptcy in 1985.

>>43199112
Global Thermonuclear War

>>43199199
In fact that was because Function 9 was lifted from CP/M and the original reason for using a dollar sign to terminate strings had to do with some DEC minicomputer terminal originally used to develop CP/M in the 70s.

>>43199212

This computer is noice. I love the (false?)wood box, it give him a pleasant late-70s aesthetic. Too bad it doesn't have front-panel switches 'n LEDs, It's pretty useful for debugging.
Then, I don't think this machine was really aimed at hobbyists, but maybe to give credibility to S-100 computers in the world of business and education computing..

>>43199076
The other way is by using Function 40h

mov ah,40h
mov bx,1
mov cx,14d
mov dx,offset mess1
int 21h
mov ax,4c00h
int 21h

mess1 db 'You suck dick.',0

>>43199279
>This computer is noice. I love the (false?)wood box, it give him a pleasant late-70s aesthetic
The Horizon switched to a metal case in 1980.
>Then, I don't think this machine was really aimed at hobbyists, but maybe to give credibility to S-100 computers in the world of business and education computing

Basically correct. For an OS, it could use either CP/M or North Star's NDOS. The latter included a homegrown dialect of BASIC which was mostly source compatible with Microsoft BASIC but changed a few things around such as using a backslash instead of a colon to separate multiple commands on a line. Also FILL and EXAM were used in place of POKE and PEEK. The reason for this change is unknown, but possibly had to do with legal concerns.

>>43199356

>but possibly had to do with legal concerns.

I don't think, locomotive BASIC on Amstrad CPC uses PEEK and POKE too. It was available on Sinclair machines too, that still didn't use MS BASIC.

>>43199370
There was probably less chance of Yuropoor companies getting sued (the odds of Microsoft finding out about that were lower than would be the case with an American company)

>>43199356
>>43199370
>>43199388
Microsoft didn't invent BASIC and there were lots of implementations, all slightly different.

FILL and EXAM are no more or less arbitrary than PEEK and POKE.

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>>43198892
>nostalgia shitposting
You can fuck right off, who do you think you are?

>>43199306
However, Function 9 is preferable because it's easier to set up (fewer parameters and you don't need to know the string length)

>>43199388

But the Timex Sinclair came out in the US too. I think the explanation given by >>43199421 is the most plausible, as it's true that Microsoft only ported one implementation of BASIC.

>>43198892
Welcome: Windows 1.x-3.x/9x/NT, MS/PC-DOS, OS/2, Classic Mac OS 1-9, Amiga, 8-bit home systems, CP/M, Legacy Unix platforms, anything pre-1999 you can possibly think of

Tolerated: Windows 2000, Windows Me, OS X on PowerPC systems, GNU/Linux (relating to retro hardware)

Tolerated, but discouraged: Retro consoles (there's /vr/ for that guys), DOS game emulation (/vr/)

pls go: XP, OS X on Intel systems

(Posting for completeness as it's a longer system list.)

>>43199212
What a cozy looking little machine.

>>43199587
I would use the shit out of that case for an HTPC.

>>43199601

Why not make your own?

>>43199627
money
amd my PC and TV are set in a way in my room already that I have it plugged into the TV at all times, I just swap outputs with Win + P

>>43199587
Mac users like to brag how they have very few viruses compared to Windows.

Of course the reason for it is that Apple is a virus in of itself.

>>43199643
What about apple ][ users?

>>43199643

Old Macs are cool m8. Not as cool as the Apple II, but they're still cool.

>>43199643
*cymbal shot*

>>43199642

'kay. If one ay you come across this kind of Mac, just be sure that it's a dead one that cannot be resurrected (ICs and stuff dead) before gutting it and replacing the mobo, they're not the easiest machines to find (not the hardest either, but still pretty difficult over here).

>>43199719
>dat pincushion

>>43199733
I think that monitor also has a dead red gun.

>>43199733
kinda hard to judge pincushion correction when the photo isn't facing the screen

>>43199737
there's yellow in the pallete

green+red=yellow

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>>43199751
Nah that's not right.

>>43199719

Man I'd love to find an Amiga 1000, but these are hard to come by. Most of them ended up in the dumpster instead of being sold again. I love the pizza-box design of the Amiga 1000, C=128D and Sun UltraSPARC 5.

>>43199773
It was a non-expandable piece of junk.

>>43199773
There's an A1000 on fleabay right now.

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>>43199796
>It was a non-expandable piece of junk.

And you're an uneducated nigger maybe?

It had a side expansion port and tons of upgrade possibilities and third party hardware. Yeah, it's not as much as the Amiga 2000, but it's still easy to expand.

>>43199818

Thanks anon.

>>43199773
I used to have an Apple LC 475. Shit was cash.

>>43199773
A guy I worked with gave me his, just to get it out of his house. It even had the box they came in.
I still like my A500 better.

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S-100 motherboards like pic related, are the simplest motherboards kind you can have, yet it allows you to have one of the most powerful microcomputer available when coupled with the right cards, as it doesn't have any bus speed limit (it has a 8/16-bit bus, so you just have to use a bus 4 time faster than the CPUs you're using). Just imagine a machine with, like, 15 bi-Power8 CPU and FPU boards, and a few interface boards and video boards.

>>43200616
Most S100 computers used the 8080 or Z80; some also had 6800s and a few even 8086s. I do not know of any 6502 ones though.

>>43200616
I love that 70s bubble font lettering

>>43200696


Yup, S-100 computers used many CPUs. 8080, Z80, 8088, 6502, but also 68000, 286/386, 68020, but mainly the one you cited. There are some ARM based boards that are developed.

>>43199773
I have an Ultra 5. I just got a 160GB IDE drive in the mail today and I'm gonna put OpenBSD 5.5 on it. :3

>>43200616
So if you clock it up to about 10GHz you can do PCIe?

>>43201247

The only limitations are how wide the data and address bus are supposed to be, so yes, you can surely make a PCIe ? S100 adapter.

S100 has no theoretical speed limit, but on 16-32-64-bit CPUs, it's kind of useless since you can only connect a small number of the data/address lines.

Were i can find IBN 5100 ?

>>43201358

16 bit CPUs can be used on the S-100 bus as there is already 16 data lines: 8 data in and 8 data out.
Also, we can still make the bus faster than the CPUs, thanks to some sort of cache for example, where the bus can carry 4 time 16 bit of data while the CPU handle 64 bit of data once. I don't think we can call this multiplexing at all, but it's in the same vein.

>>43201454
I thought though that most 8-bit CPUs had an 8-bit data bus which meant that they only used half the lines on the S-100.

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>>43201170
OK, so I've set up a Raspberry Pi to connect to the Ultra 5's serial console. Install time!

>>43201546

Nice anon! Don't forget to tell us how it went, it seems pretty interesting.

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>>43201574
Here's the partitioner. Sane defaults are a glorious thing. This is basically the first screenful of installer that won't leak my private data all over the place, but I've already set up user, hostname, IPv4 and IPv6 static addresses and gateways, disabled root ssh logins, and set ntpd to start at boot to make up for the fact that my nvram chip is borked and the RTC can't keep time between boots. If anyone knows a reputable place to buy replacement Ultra 5 nvram chips I'd be most grateful.

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>>43201633
OK, the partitioner's done, the CD has been scanned, and now I'm loading the sets. The installer is remarkable for being quick and responsive over a slow-ass serial line (see filename). Even Debian and FreeBSD's installers tend to be a bit too graphical to work well at this baud rate.

>>43201633

Have you opened the computer? I had the same problem until 3 month ago with my 486 PC: the RTC+NVRAM+battery component (a clone of the Dallas DS1285) died and I replaced it with a newer component that was compatible (a Dallas DS12885).
What is the model is it?

>>43201702
I had it open a little while ago to put the new HDD in, but I didn't look at the model number. I'll crack it open again when my 4x128MB ECC EDO RAM upgrade arrives. The 128MB system RAM I have now is doable, but a wee bit cramped.

>>43201699
a-are you installing an operating system to an old computer over a serial cable?

>>43201729
Well I'm controlling it over a serial cable. The install media is the internal CD-ROM drive. If I had to load the OS inline over XMODEM I'd probably commit sudoku.

>>43201699

9600 baud is fast enough when it comes to text-only stuff imo.

>>43201729

I think he don't own the monitor and keyboard of the machine, so he monitor the installation with a terminal.

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>>43201750
Done! God, this is so much better when the hard drive is fast and doesn't sound like a rock golem with digestive problems.

>>43201729
Here's my script I feed to C-Kermit (an excellent program, by the way) to connect to the Ultra 5 from the Pi. Hardware wise, I use a DB-25 to DB-9 null modem cable and a standard USB to DB-9 adapter with a powered USB hub.

#!/usr/bin/kermit
set line /dev/ttyUSB0
set serial 8N1
set speed 9600
set carrier-watch off
connect

>>43201753
I have the keyboard and mouse, but no place to set them up on my desk. Someday I'll get a 1280x1024 panel for this bad boy and set up X with Window Maker.

>>43201788
OK, maybe I overstated when I said "done." Now I have to check out the -stable branch to /usr/src and do a complete rebuild of the system to fix Heartbleed. OpenBSD 5.5 went off to the CD master about half a week before Heartbleed was revealed, and M:Tier doesn't do binary upgrades for sparc64.

>>43201806

Oh I see, well it's understandable.

>>43201895

Ouch, that sucks. Good luck anon.

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I have my dad's old PC/XT sitting around and I'd like to breathe some life into it (it doesn't seem to boot up, but i might just be retarded).

1. How can I tell what revision I have?

2. What good resources are there for info on this stuff?

>>43202042

Check the motherboard, on most computers the revision is written somewhere on it.
Have you tried to make it run without any additional cards?

>>43202042
You could ask on vintage-computer.com. They probably would be able to help you more than here.

>>43202067

No, i haven't opened it up yet or messed with the cards, planning to take it apart this weekend to remove the dust and get a look at what's installed.

>>43202042
remove all cards, make sure to use a grounded outlet. clean out the case with compressed air. disconnect, inspect all internal cables, checking for dust, mouse shit, and rust. then reconnect all cables and turn on. if it isn't making noises, disconnect, test the power supply with a multimeter. that may be your problem there.

if it works, shut down and add each card one by one. make sure to clean the connectors with compressed air and remove any rust with a rag and a mild cleaner, such as rubbing alcohol.

if you are interested in vintage hardware, you should do a bit of reading on how to diagnose computers. download the A+ cert manuals and learn it, that will be a good start.

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>>43202132

pic related.

>>43202136

Okay, good luck with this machine then.

>>43199587

I have both the 650 and 610, they're not too bad but Quadra still a best

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>>43198892

>these threads used to be fucking great
>most of the tripfags actually weren't terrible and contributed to the discussion
>aspergers moves in
>every new thread has a different copypasta trying to exclude some platform "they don't like" or some shit
>butthurt everywhere
>shitposting everywhere

>>43203454
its ok, under my orders windows xp is now tolerated

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Every OS what isn't latest is now considered retro. OSes two generations ago are now fossil level old. OMG I totally used norton commander as a kid, I do hardcore, unfffff, so old, ohhhhh yeah, beard goes down the neck, ahhh yisss!

>>43204053
Norton Commander was a DOS program and hasn't been in wide use since 1994 at the very latest. That was twenty years ago, an eternity in computer time.

>>43204053 is what is wrong with some people in these threads. They think everyone is here because "MUH NOSTALGIA OF WINDEW 98" while many people here are just interested by this kind of machines, how they worked, how to use them the best way, what kind of peripherals you can hook up to them, what kind of fun stuff you can do with them. When you start talking about interesting stuff that predates windows 98, that's it, all they say is:
>"xD wat a fossil! MUH CHILDHOOD IS BETTER THAN URS xDDDD"

>>43204315
This code fragment can be used to clear a text mode screen:

mov ax,600h
mov bh,7
xor cx,cx
mov dx,184fh
int 10h

But writing directly to the video memory is a lot faster:

mov ax,0b800h
mov es,ax
cld
xor di,di
mov ax,700h
mov cx,0fa0h
rep stosw

>>43204053
grand theft niggers is the worst GTA game.
ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS FOLLOW THE DAMN TRAIN CJ!!
shit teir.

>>43204053
You realize that computing is at best about fifty years old right? Even a few years is a huge amount of time here

>>43199643
Old Macs had just about as many viruses as DOS did, and they were a lot more fun looking, like the ones in 'Hackers'.

>>43204610
It's actually kinda mind blowing to think about how someone 60, which isn't even particularly old, was born into a world with no computers. And there are a few people who lived during the 1800 and they literally saw the whole thing unfold.

>>43198892
what about old < 2000 linux?

>>43204693
My dad's in his fifties, and his first experience with a computer was using a teletype and an acoustic coupler modem to run BASIC programs on his school district's PDP-8.

This is OpenWindows 3, the windowing system for SunOS and UNIX System V, and was developed by AT&T and Sun as a joint project. You can find a slimmed down and open source rebranding of this software as 'XView". Personally I like the XView API, and find it superior to both Motif and GTK+ for its simplicity.

>>43204742

>Unix/Sun workstation

You have your answer.

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>>43204765
Pic.
>>43204756
My grandfather is almost in his 80s and his first experience was working on IBM System/360 mainframes at his company(NASA contractor).

>>43204765
Nice picture, faggot.

>>43204769
Counts only if it's a workstation. Most Linux users, today or yesterday, hardly ever use their computers for 'work'. In contrast, UNIX workstations were commonly used for scientific computing, graphics work, 3D animation, and general office use. Hardly anyone had a UNIX computer at their homes in the 80s/90s, and those that did didn't use them to fuck around on IRC and customize their desktops(Theo de Raadt owned a SPARC computer and helped in porting NetBSD to Sun workstations).

>>43204803
>>43204795

>>43204844
Except that Linux and OS X devoured the entire Unix workstation market and shat it out behind them. A smaller fraction of Linux users use the OS for serious computing(tm) than Unix (!OSX) users, but that's because there's so many more of us.

>>43204928
UNIX essentially killed itself. Because it had a monopoly on the workstation market in the 80s and early 90s, little engineering was being done to improve the existing code base. Each flavor had its own development toolchain and developers were wasting too much time trying to create standards to bridge the gap between the various similar UNIXen. GNU had started to rise in power, but other than GCC, they were a minor threat to the various UNIX vendors. When Linux appeared, it allowed all of GNU's various utilities to be sewed together, all-in-all creating a superior, cross-platform operating system, making the various standards vendors had wasted so much time creating obsolete(XPG etc). When Windows and Linux were able to run on x86 hardware, which no vendor other than Sun supported(but only on their own hardware), it became clear that UNIX and the expensive RISC hardware it depended on would soon fade away.

OS X had nothing to do with UNIX's death, but merely stole users from Linux and Windows, like jwz.

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Just tried the GUI OS of the x6800, SX-Windows 1.0. It's a looks and feel pretty comfortable, and I would surely enjoy use it on an daily basis (if I understood what was written everywhere).

>>43206036
Those icons are for anti-gaijin propaganda.

>>43199025
Well you should at least wait.

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>>43206036
>>43206395

This guy got a nice setup.

>>43198892
Why does mouse clicking in Amiga workbench feel so fucking satisfying?

>>43208176

I dunno, but like many GUI-based OS, it sure is easy to use. I never understood why people needed more simplification after mainstream OSes switched to GUI. I mean, you just need, like, 30 minutes of exploration and that's it you know how to use it.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MikoF6KZjm0

>>43208251
Is it a reaction to the complexity of current operating systems? I feel using Win9x now is like a breath of fresh air. I feel it doesn't have the same learning curve as Windows 7 or 8. It seems easier somehow, but I don't know if this is because I used Win9x every single day during my teenage years.

I don't think I would want to go back to a text based system tho. A lot of people get pissy when I say this, but I do prefer to work with the mouse. It is more relaxed.

I want an old pdp.

It had an interesting assembly language that influenced much in the modern computing world.

I'd also be able to run older software, like ITS, TECO, and the some of the first Lisp implementations.

It would be cool for the user interface to be a debugger, like in ITS.

Still, there's also the lisp machines, which were completely written in lisp and user modifiable in everything. They also had kickass keyboards.

Will early VGA cards drive an IBM 5153?

I know I was able to drive an amber 5151 clone with my ATI VIP but I've never tried the 5153 on it.

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>y'all niggas be jelly

I just scored an Amiga 1200!
For free!

I got it today from my optometrist. His office was upgrading all their vision testing equipment, so he called me up (he knew I was into retro comp stuff) and said he had a "commodore" if i wanted it, so I said I'll be over. I arrived at his office expecting a C64 or something, but he brought be into the back and there it was; an Amiga 1200!

Brought it home and plugged it in and it worked! I messed around with it for a while; not much on it (just the OS and some vision testing software). It has a hard drive and I'm thinking of doing a CF mod to it so I can easily copy .adf files from my PC to it.

It also came with a mouse, joystick and a monitor.

I do gud /g/?

>>43211183
You did good anon.

Considering how there were no real "graphics cards", just VGA devices, does that mean that every pixel needed to be set manually for old games?

Was there any efficient way to implement scrolling? What about tiles and maps?

>>43198892
I'm interested in Windows 2000 but what can you do with a retro OS ? Other than games and learning how they work, what can you do with them.
Does anyone do some type of work with them ?

>>43211287
>2000 isn't retro

>>43211287
>what can you do with them

I have a Windows 98SE box that I shitpost on /g/ from, play period games, fap to furry porn, etc. You know, anything you would do on a current machine.

I don't understand your question, people collect and maintain old computers for its own sake, not to accomplish anything. Like someone that collects classic muscle cars will still drive a Honda Civic to work because it's more practical.

>>43211318

ret·ro [re-troh] Show IPA
adjective Informal.
1.
retroactive: retro pay.
2.
of or designating the style of an earlier time: retro clothes.

>>43211529
>I have a Windows 98SE box that I shitpost on /g/ from, play period games, fap to furry porn, etc. You know, anything you would do on a current machine.

are you me?

>>43201830
I do like that we had touch screen PC's so long ago.

[spoiler]Hopefully they'll be as ignored in 2014 as they were in 1984[/spoiler]

>>43211183
Mother fucker. I have an Amiga 1200-shaped hole in my collection. Enjoy it, you lucky bastard.

>>43211568

Fuck off dildo, try looking up douchebag

Within the context of these threads, NT 5.0 isn't fucking retro

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>>43211668
I will :^)

>>43211529
>I don't understand your question
what, other than playing games and just learning how they work, does anyone on /g/ do some type of work on them or anything ?
If I can't do anything other than just play games and learning the OS then after a month or two I'm just going to move on to another one.

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>>43199224

>>43199212

>Unlike the DIY kit computers such as the Altair and IMSAI, it came already pre-assembled with cards, a ROM BIOS, an OS, and software.

Prebuilts are for casuals.

>>43211287

I shitpost on this board from a Windows 2000 system (Pentium 4 1300, 1 GB RDRAM, Matrox G450 dualhead) quite often.

But it really depends on what you want to do, even the oldest systems are capable of many basic tasks that we still regularly do today. If you like the experience/feel of older boxes, you could use them for just about anything but web surfing.

>>43198892
so I need drivers for me emachine w3410 and it can't access the internet because apparently ie is retarded.

>>43212592
Copy drivers to a USB Dongle from another computer?

Install a good browser?

Also:
>using micro$hit internet exploder
>ishiggydiggydoo

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http://www.ebay.com/itm/Packard-Bell-C115-Pentium-120-MHz-Win-95-Desktop-Computer-Working-/271553376206?pt=US_Vintage_Computers_Mainframes&hash=item3f39d7afce

>people are paying more than $20 for these systems
>mfw I pass these up at $5 each at the recycler every week

I-is this a special case? Please tell me it isn't.

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>>43212061

Buying the boards already made and just assembling them too. The REAL computer hobbyist solder all his components himself.

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>>43199851
Nice. I had a teal one.

Really wanted an Octane with the video adapter, couldn't afford it.

>>43211238
I can only speak for what I know, but PC hardware only had the framebuffer so yeah you had to set every individual pixel. There was nothing like hardware tile acceleration like on game consoles. You could do palette rotation for effects though.

On the other hand, the Commodore 64 had actual sprites. You could simulate tiles by overwriting the 8x8 character set and just using those.

>>43214752
SGI sure likes purple and teal, don't they?

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>>43214819
I worked with an engineer, and she had a poop-brown one. Pic not mine, but same device.

At one time or another I've used or interacted with just about every SGI device. The one just to the right of the Fuel is actually a Windows NT 4 box that SGI put out for some reason. Overpriced shit.

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>>43214878

They made some generic Itanium systems too during this era.

Total shit, but I'd still like one.

>>43214878
>>43214979
There wouldn't be any disagreement if I were to say I really like the aesthetics of SGI products, right? There is something about them.

>>43209029
>Is it a reaction to the complexity of current operating systems? I feel using Win9x now is like a breath of fresh air. I feel it doesn't have the same learning curve as Windows 7 or 8

Nah it's way easier now. You have no idea how much of a bitch pre-XP hardware and OSes were because you're underage.

>>43210026
What? Absolutely not. The 5153s only take a 15Khz digital RGB signal. Besides, the connector isn't even the same.

>>43198913
What about guts threads, desktop threads, homescreen threads? If you really think about it this thread is not so bad.

>>43215032
When some of these were brand new, they were like alien technology or something. 99.999% of PCs were still beige boxes, so the effect was even more pronounced. People shit bricks when they saw black NeXT boxes, but an SGI on your desk was a straight up status symbol. "My PC cost more than your new car."

>>43211238
CGA/EGA/Tandy/Hercules graphics were a serious programming headache compared to the completely linear VGA Mode 13.

>>43215081

Eh, not him, but Windows 3.1 and other GUI-based OS of the time are definitely simple enough to learn and use it quickly after the first use, no matter how many "hurr underage" you might throw.

>>43215112
Yeh they look like something Captain Picard would use.

Is Pentium M laptop good for 2k?

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>>43215164
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE X=C000-CFFF NOEMS
FILES=64
STACKS=0,0

Tell me what this stuff does and back to me.

>>43215164
>>43215081
I would kind of agree that MacOS has become less user friendly over time. Everything after System 6 was incoherent, and with OS X they just threw it all out for Unix and took five more revisions to unfuck it to the point that it was comparable to Windows 95.

>>43211183
Without a RGB monitor, you can't have color 640x200.

>>43211696
douchebag |?du??bag|
noun
1 a small syringe for douching the vagina, especially as a contraceptive measure.
2 N. Amer. informal an obnoxious or contemptible person, typically a man.

I don't mind Win2k and retro used in the same sentence. It is a waste of time arguing about what is and what isn't retro. It isn't a term with a defined predefined timeline. The OP clearly states that Win2k is allowed, and I can't remember a single thread that said it wasn't allowed.

>>43215258
This isn't a problem for games of course since they mostly all use 320x200, but if you wanted to do application stuff, a fuzzy B&W TV display is not gonna cut it.

>>43214979
A friend of mine worked for an aeronautics company and did stuff with a 128-cpu Itanium SGI Altix. (Altix not retro though, so polite sage.)

>>43215213

>DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE X=C000-CFFF NOEMS

Extended memory manager is launched, prevented from using segments set by the X parameter, and EMS disabled.

>FILES=64

Number of file pointers.

>STACKS=0,0

Set 0 stack which sizes are 0 bytes.

Yeah, that's some stuff you need to know if you want to tweak your windows 3.1 installation, but the base install configure it automatically, so 75% of the users didn't see that. Also, you don't have that stuff either in old MacOS and AmigaOS.

>>43215081
I used Win95 from 95 until about 2002 or 2003 using a computer from 1995. I think I know how much of a bitch it was. It really wasn't.

I never had to fuck around with IRQs. The hardest part about those computers were setting the master/slave switches on harddrives and figuring out which way the IDE plugs should be oriented. None of my ribbons had keys back then. SIMMs weren't really an issue either. Just had to make sure you installed a matching pair.

>>43214243
even at $20, why aren't you taking them and selling them for $10-15 profit?

ship a few and you could buy something nice.

>>43215346
I meant, what does that shit mean to a non-technical person?

>>43215458

Nothing because they click on "Let windows modifiy Config.sys and Autoexec.bat himself".

>>43215458
I don't think non-technical people ever had to touch those on pre-built pre-installed systems. If 3.x didn't start automatically, they'd just type win every time they started the computer.

>>43214243
I found this one a week ago.

http://www.finn.no/finn/torget/annonse?finnkode=49112045

>Antique games pc
This Jonas fucker wants about 240 dollars for it.

>>43215346
C000-C7FF is a common area to exclude because the VGA BIOS normally resides there.

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>>43198892
op is a faagooot~

>>43215875
i'm a huge faggot

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>>43215951

>>43199587
I still have my A2000 at my parent's home but admittedly the A1000 looked way more sexy.
Still using the 1084 monitor for watching videos from a DVD player.

>>43216043
I wouldn't want to keep stuff laying around at my moms house. She likes to throw shit out without notifying the owner when she needs the space for herself.

She can barely even hold on to it for an hour to give me a chance to come pick it up before she throws it out.

I never keep shit at my moms house because of this.

>>43216043

I think they're both sexy in their own way.
The 2000 is a good looking desktop machine, it looks like the machine it is: a computers made to be upgraded and expanded indefinitely (I think that if we still made cards for the 2000, we could turn it into a pretty damn fast machine). On the other hand, the 1000's sexiness is mainly from it's sleek pizza-box design, with places to keep the keyboard underneath when not used.

>>43216160

Noice, at first I though that the monitor was a Sony KX-21ps1.

>>43216191
Don't use the word "noice". It's autistic.

>>43216669
>The Amiga video out is straight SCART compatible RGB signals.
i'm aware

>>43216684
Except that SCART has composite sync while Amiga has separate lines for the H and V pulses.

>>43216996
there's a few simple curcuits to properly composite them

i've actually got my desktop hooked up to a tv via scart right here, and all i did was solder both H and V into the sync pin (20)

i know it's not a 'clean' way to do it, but it works

>>43217028
oh yea, also, the amiga provides composite video, no?

you can also use that pin for scart composite sync

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The North Star Advantage, the ill-starred (bad pun) successor to the NS Horizon. Although it had impressive hi-res graphics, it was still an 8-bit Z80 computer at a time when the IBM PC was rapidly taking over the business market. That and NS's stubborn insistence on using hard-sectored floppies.

>>43217261

It looks like a dumb terminal with 2 floppy drives.

>>43217322
These all-in-one computer designs were popular in the early 80s.

>>43204795
I love how they had to tell you how to use a mouse.

>>43217261
I wonder if you opened up these old All-In-Ones, would you find a nest of spiders?

>>43217516
People weren't born knowing how to use mice, and mice were actually a new thing to a lot of people.

>>43217028
>>43217062
You can indeed, anon.

http://s3.postimg.org/oc5lnh4tf/amiga_scart.jpg

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>>43215258
>>43216625
The monitor I got (>>43211183) has a scart input on it.

It also has a VTR input, which is great if I wanted to get one of them old U-Matic VCRs.

>>43220288

there is no SCART input in that picture

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>>43220288
Whoops forgot to trip

Model#

>>43220321
dadgumit I just woke up I didn't meanscart, i ment rgb

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Just blew some ultramong the fuck out at auction and scored this for $9, can't wait to get it home

>>43220804
Where do you find auctions for retro stuff in real life, or do you mean from ebay?

>>43220829

Local auction house, they get some breddy good shit sometimes, scored a TRS-80 Model 1 with expansion, monitor and 42 cassettes for $15 and a boxed VIC-20 for $5 a while back from the same place.

>>43201895
Ultra 5 anon here from yesterday. That source rebuild is STILL GOING. It's on OpenSSL right now.

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Bump.

>>43223864
>actually engineered to be expandable and repairable.

Jesus

>>43223864
>28 amp power supply
I just nutted in my pants.

>>43223962

See? That's horrible! How will they buy a new computer every 2 years with this?

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>mfw my grandpa actually uses BSD because he grew up on unix

I had to double-check myself a couple times, thinking maybe someone was playing a prank on him or something. Apparently, our neighbor set him up with it last year after hearing him talk nostalgically about working in the computer room at Sanderson Farms. Completely took away any haxor feels I ever had about using leenux...

>>43223994
Youkd be doing more than that if you touched it wrong.

>>43224069
Your grandpa is hardcore. Does he even use X or is he still rocking the console? If you want to really blow his mind, introduce him to things that didn't exist back then, like ssh and tmux.

>>43224110
I'm not sure. I live on the opposite side of the country, but I plan on picking his brain when I come home for Christmas. It was definitely a tty prompt that I saw in the picture, though. I saw it on facebook in the background.

>>43224004
Planned obsolescence ought to count as fraud.

>>43224110
Edit: actually, thinking back, I remember my sister mentioning something about a "demon baby" when I asked. Does fBSD show their mascott on install?

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>>43220804

>take it home
>write a refdisk
>configure
>1780 Drive seek failure

F U C K
U
C
K

Is there any hope? ;_;

>>43224280
Only the ASCII art simplified version, but it's prominently displayed on http://freebsd.org.

>>43224303
ha, I thought of that when I saw your first post but I didn't want to piss on your parade. I've come across a couple of those, and have yet to see one with working drives. The hdd is pretty much guaranteed to be dead, they were shit. You can try cleaning the head on the floppy, but it probably needs an alignment at least.

>>43224381

Floppy drive actually works pretty well, but the hard disk is shit.

I've never encountered a single working Connor laptop drive in this size range. Good thing I have lots of replacements.

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>no A/UX ITT

I miss my Quadra 950. It looked neat, like an international-style skyscraper, and the case was so big it was pretty easy to work in.

>>43225068
How was A/UX compared to System 7?

>>43224472
does it use a standard 44pin ide drive?

i picked up a 1997 thinkpad 770 some time ago and it had a broken hdd, but in the hdd caddy was just a plain hdd (hitachi, i think), so i just swapped it out and it was good to go

>>43225085

Not him, but it was a fantastic idea, shameful Apple didn't pursue it further.

Unlike OS X, it was real, multiuser UNIX, and it was able to run most popular pieces of software for System 6/7 (depending on version) with no modification.

Not many people bought it, though, and they abandoned it before the PowerPC switch.

>>43225335

Yep! I'm trying another destitute 60 MB Conner drive out of a Compaq 386/20 now for autism purposes

w-wish me luck ;_;

>>43225354
What a shame.

>>43225379

dead too, fug :DDD

guess I either have to find my beheaded 701cs or pull the drive out of my spare 755CX

>>43225684

Fuck.

hey >>43224381 do you know how to configure a non-standard disk on this thing? It refuses to recognize the 540 MB drive I installed in it and throws a 162, then boots into BASIC.

>>43217516
As a guy who started making an "intro to guis" for his grandpa, do we have a problem?

>>43226397

>try yet another 60 MB Conner drive from a completely different system

>1780 again

Maybe I should just kill myself.

>>43227584
Did you get/write a setup disk for that model and change the cylinders/heads/sectors parameters?

>>43227784

Reference disk doesn't allow it, so I don't know what else will work.

I found a Quantum GoDrive that I thought was dead and tried it anyway

>seems to work

So, /g/, do I go the DOS 5.0/Windows 3.0 route or OS/2 2.0?

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>>43211183
that's very impressive

>>43228578
DOS 5.0/Windows 3.0

OS/2 is bretty gud, but in the long run, Win3 is better for games and other software.

>>>/vr/

>>43229286

/g/ retrothreads are general hardware/software discussion, not DOS games

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Finally, it begins.

>>43231137
Is that Win9x running on that there sun monitor? :^)

Also:
>Install Calmira

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>>43231281

got a 2k, NT4, and a pair of DOS/3.1x workstations currently hooked up

shitposting from the 2k box right now

pic related (three of them), pls don't mind the mess (and the shit quality as usual) though, still cleaning out this room

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>that based fresh install feeling

I'm going to have to install Calmira on something else, as much as I want to try it on this thing. No mouse and muh stock autism.

>>43231393
I miss beige boxes making up the majority of computers.

>>43231393
Noice comps m8

Wish I had one of them Win3.1 boxs tho, saw some on craigslist, i might get one soon..

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>>43231418
Sexy as fuck.

>>43232628
My friend had one of those when we were in school. I was super jealous.

>>43211183
Damn skippy you did. Get three CF cards: one for AmigaOS, one for AROS m68k, and one for NetBSD.

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>>43198892
instol richard stoolme

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L40SX autist here

does anyone know where I might be able to find the features/drivers diskettes for this shit? PC-BBS doesn't seem to have very much.

sorry if it's not fully kosher, I need to read some 5.25" drives. They'll work through IDE on an XP machine, yeah?

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>>43233125

Floppy drives use their own cables (MFM, but it uses the same kind of connector as IDE)

autism aside, if your shit was equipped with a floppy drive to begin with and you can find a cable like pic related to go along with the drive you want to use, XP should still support those drives just fine

>>43232628
crap, meant disks. I need a drive and am looking for one with IDE to hook into an XP machine. That much to find?

>>43233189
pic is how I had old FDD drive hooked up. Now I know that it is more than just a multi-pronged IDE. Thanks for your help.

Ultra 5 anon here from a couple days ago. That source rebuild is STILL GOING. GCC takes for fucking ever to build from source, even on a fast machine.

>>43233483

Ouch, that's a pretty long compilation here. Good luck anon.

>>43233125

Even Windows 8 still knows what a floppy drive is.

If your mainboard has a floppy header, bear in mind that MB manufacturers rarely wire up both channels. You will only be able to use one of the primary connectors on the cable.

>>43231418
PS/2 L40s have a 386SX/20 and 2MB of RAM (16MB total). The original OS would have been DOS 5.0/Windows 3.0.

>>43232968
Drivers for what exactly?

>>43234396
He probably means the video and whatnot.

>>43234437
Oh.

The L40 just has straight VGA; there's no SVGA modes so you don't need anything more than the included Windows drivers.

>>43234509
Laptops didn't get SVGA until moving to color displays (which was around 1994-ish)

General rule of thumb for laptop displays:

>8086/286
CGA
>386
VGA
>486+
SVGA

With a few occasional exceptions like the Zenith Supersport 386 which had a CGA display, but it predated Windows 3.0. Also some portables had plasma displays which copied the AT&T/Olivetti 640x400x2 mode.

>>43231137
>>43231418
Why not put 3.1 on there instead? It's more stable and more software will work with it.

>>43231418
Go get a mouse on Fleabay.

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>>43235706

>>43233189
>Floppy drives use their own cables (MFM, but it uses the same kind of connector as IDE)
>MFM
Confirmed for not knowing shit. MFM was used for hard disks.

>>43237680
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV1ki6LiEmg

>>43238368
Of course floppies use MFM, silly. Hard disks haven't used it since the 80s.

>>43235706
>>43237680
These threads have a lot of Altair/IMSAI stuff, but what could you actually do with these computers?

>>43238486
Okay, I was wrong, never heard MFM mentioned when speaking about floppies. I just got to know it because I have an old Seagate ST-225 with corresponding controller lying at home (both should still be working). Finally I know, what "MFM" actually means.

>>43198892
------------>
>>>/vg/

>>43238935
Build one and have fun.

>>43238935

Everything, given you have the right expansion card, but most of the time, just like >>43238967 said, have fun.

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>>43238935

This is what a well-equipped IMSAI could look like.
A fully equipped one would also have an HDD controller hooked to an external drive (maybe an SCSI one), a linepinter for physical listings, a tape reader/writer for backups, maybe multiple monitors instead of one, and maybe multiple CPU boards too.

This IMSAI is from the film Wargames.

>>43233189
>>43234047

Other problem. I'm looking on fleabay and I'm not sure that the drives have IDE. Would there have been some adapter needed for the FDD cable to fit, or a certain identifying word for those kinds of drives?

Also, is there an online spot better than fleabay to find older PC parts? I'm looking for stores near me and not turning up anything.

>>43239900

im cumming
right now, as im tying this.

like, i have to go change my pants now.

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>>43240006

Pic related is the system of the owner of the
s100-related website posted here >>43199140.
Nice isn't it?

>>43240313
That's one sexy beast

>>43239927
>fleabay
>Forbidden - Visitors from your country are not permitted to browse this site.

Is it only for USA or something?

Anyways. I get most of my parts from ebay. Sometimes locally.

>>43240313
Those multicolored ribbons. Does anyone sell 80-wire IDE ribbons like that? I can only find plain grey and black ones. I'd love to gay up my PC a little.

>>43240812

I one, but it's an SCSI ribbon.

>>43234396

The L40 had a number of DOS utilities that came pre-installed on the system, I wish the original drive was still functional so I could back them up. Oh well.

>>43235219

I had a boxed set of 3.0 on hand, as well as autism.

>>43235285

>tfw I'll never find a ball/retainer for my actual IBM PS/2 mouse

>>43214752
Why can't I get a beautiful case like that for a modern PC?

>>43220804
>>43224303
NO, not windows 3.0! Just go with Windows 3.1, you'll love it.

>>43225335
If it is, any common laptop IDE drive will work* although the BIOS probably has a size limit (can be overcome with BIOS extenders; I used to use one on a Pentium PC).

*Up to 2GB which is the maximum partition size supported by FAT16

>>43242352
Win3.1 is just Win3.0 with extended multimedia features.

My guess is that anons laptop (with a B/W display) just has a piezo speaker, so there is no reason to use Win3.1 on the laptop... Win3.11 on the other hand (if anon has a network adapter) would be better than 3.0 because it has networking support.

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>>43198892

>>43242352

3.0 has a GOAT splash screen though, 3.1x is disgusting.

>>43238476
>watch video
>a "clone", that's sound interesting
>go to altairclone.com
>see pics
>entire case is heug but empty
>all work is done by PIC
That's fucking lousy.

>>43245186
jason pls go

>>43238935
play Global Thermonuclear War

>>43245559
I had my hopes up about that too. Would love a proper clone system with a backplane and expansion cards.

>>43245312
That doesn't make it the better OS. 3.0 was really the last "toy" version of Windows and 3.1 the first real one that was usable.

>>43245119
How dumb and uninformed are you? 3.0 is a _lot_ more primitive and unstable than 3.1, plus not much software works on it.

>>43198892
>kq3
>not nostalgia shitposting

>>43245980
There was no implication of nostalgiafagging in OP post.

>>43245119
>Win3.11 on the other hand (if anon has a network adapter) would be better than 3.0 because it has networking support

He said it has 2MB of RAM. That's not enough for WfW 3.11 which doesn't support Standard Mode. It needs more memory than that.

>>43239927
>I'm looking on fleabay and I'm not sure that the drives have IDE.

The only floppy-capable drives that will have IDE interfaces are non-standard ATAPI devices like Imation Superdisk or Sony HiFD floptical drives.

Standard floppies use MFM interfaces. Although the "modern" floppy MFM connector looks like an IDE ribbon, it isn't.

>>43238951

HDDs needed to move away from MFM for performance reasons. There really wasn't any reason to do the same for floppies since they couldn't really take advantage of the interface.

>>43246032
IDE hard disks use what's known as RLE encoding; it's not MFM at all.

>>43245940

Seems to be working well for me so far, I chose it mostly because it was the correct era for the hardware and the L40SX was sold with DOS 5.0+Win 3.0 installed or optionally with OS/2.

I miss the Startup folder though, I don't think there's any way to do auto-starting programs in 3.0.

>>43246032
>HDDs needed to move away from MFM for performance reasons

MFM limited hard disks to 32MB. It needed to be replaced by something better.

>>43246015

It's actually got 10 MB in it from what I presume to be 8 MB base and a 2 MB SIMM installed

>>43245940
My dad used it at work back then. He said 3.0 was cute, but crashed a lot and there wasn't much you could do beyond play with the included applets.

There's no reason to use 3.0 at all on a 386. Maybe a 286 or an XT.

>>43246015

You can hook into a DOS packet driver for TCP/IP under Windows. You don't need to use WfW unless you need to access a windows domain/workgroup.

>>43246093
It can take 16MB maximum RAM.

>>43198892
>tfw i had to throw out my old i386 when i moved last month
hold me /g/

>>43246125

Yeah, I'll have to try shoving some more RAM in it later, but I can't remember if it took proprietary SIMMs or not.

>>43246162

Sucks.

But they made millions of them, trust me, you'll find another, probably better one.

>>43246162
Why not sell it on Ebay?

>>43246066
>it was the correct era for the hardware

Upon release. Bear in mind that users typically upgraded to Win 3.1 when possible due to 3.0's shortcomings. DOS 5 to Dos 6 -> 6.2 -> 6.22 also, due in no small part to the inclusion of Defrag and Doublespace.

WfW 3.11 wasn't really used on home PCs.

>>43246201

New thread

>>43246227
>Upon release. Bear in mind that users typically upgraded to Win 3.1 when possible due to 3.0's shortcomings

I have a 386SX/20 which is an upgrade from 3.0 (indicated by how Reversi is still present in the Windows directory).

>WfW 3.11 wasn't really used on home PCs

Incorrect; once DOS 6.22 came out in May 94, WfW 3.11 was shipped with virtually all PCs until Windows 95 arrived.

L40s are pretty much bog-standard 386s; you won't need any drivers beyond basic mouse/printer stuff. They obviously have no sound card or SVGA (laptops didn't have those until 1994-ish)

>>43246227
As I said, I'd only put 3.0 on an 8086 or a 286.

>>43246278
>once DOS 6.22 came out in May 94, WfW 3.11 was shipped with virtually all PCs until Windows 95 arrived.

This was not the case anywhere I'd been or traveled, but I guess it must have varied by region. I've seen non-WfW editions of 3.11, though they were all upgrades from 3.1.

>>43246401
The first PC in my family was a Micron 486/66 purchased in early 1995 and it had DOS 6.22/WfW 3.11 like every PC between May 94 and July 95.

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>>43245963
Well Win3.0 ran everything I needed perfectly fine when I was using it on a Compaq Portable III...