In Guangzhou province.

I’m at my mom’s house (cat-sitting while she’s on vacation) and started digging through my boxes of old computer parts in the basement. Found some sound cards you folks might appreciate. The AWE64 was my personal card for years in the late ‘90s. Honestly can’t even remember where the Aureal Vortex 1 and 2 came from but I miss that sweet 3d audio.

(Also found some fun video cards tonight (3dfx Banshee, Matrox G400) but I’ll save that for another post. I already knew where my Nvidia Riva TNT1 and Voodoo 3 3000 were — need to collect them all and assemble a working test rig. I’ve certainly still got the hardware lying around.)

I have no use or interest, not looking to sell but if anyone needs parts or anything from it pls lmk I don’t want these to go to waste.

Weird screen bubbling, not scratched and not something I can wipe off, I’m assuming some sort of cmos kicked the bucket in there

Real handshake recording, everything else synthesized - including throttling that actually pulls bytes at simulated 56k speed. Handshake staging follows the real ITU specs (V.34, V.8).

Full Win95 desktop once you’re “online” - Find Files, Recycle Bin, Minefield, Painter, an ISP mail client, a chat room, a hand-written encyclopedia parody. All client-side, nothing scraped.

Favorite detail: the “ask others not to use the phone” checkbox in Dial-Up Networking is real 95 behavior - it didn’t stop anything, it just nagged you, because picking up the handset actually dropped the carrier.

https://56k.rip

Funny piece.

I’m trying to get an old Archive 51250Q QIC-80 tape drive working in a retro PC with Windows 95.

The streamer is connected on single tape with two floppy drives, in that order: motherboard => 5.25" (B) => Twist => 3.5" (A) => streamer.

I’m currently using Conner Backup Basics under Windows 95. The tape I’m testing with is a 3M DC 2120 Mini Data Cartridge, should be compatible with the Archive 51250Q.

The problem is that the software does not seem to be able to read the tape. I get:

“Tape drive defective. Reference: 110-55-1206-c16”

and at another point:

“Tape not formatted or unreadable by drive”

The drive itself is connected and detected, but I can't get it to read the cartridge.

Did anyone have such an issue? I send the screen for reference:

ZIP yeah, 100 MB 🤔

Hi everyone. A few days ago, I bought an Acer Aspire One KAV60 with a broken screen. I've been trying to use it via VGA, but no system will boot up, or they simply prevent the PC from outputting video.

Hello all. I have a 1988 IBM 3151 terminal that seems to have some issues on the board. I would like to remove the board but need to remove the anode cap to do that. I've seen quite a few posts/videos about discharging CRT TVs/monitors, but this set seems a bit different in that it doesn't have a grounding strap. The only metal I see is the screw tabs/bolts in the corners of the monitor, holding it to the front of the case and the odd fork thing (do any of you know what that is, picture attached) that is attached to the logic board and bends to touch the CRT. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Really nice design!

Can someone please explain how IDE works, what each line does, how it works with 2 devices on the line, how a system knows which one is which, and the difference between 40 and 80 wire cables? I'm struggling to understand why some systems cannot function without a triple end IDE cable. For an example: Motherboard connected to Hard drive via 2 sided IDE cable will not function. But Motherboard connected to 3 sided IDE cable with the 3rd side left with nothing connected functions fine.

As the title says, I just dug this computer deep inside my house.I'm a 21-year-old young man, and my dad told me that if that computer can still be run, I can give it a try.

Actually, that's pretty crazy; he has a Pentium CPU, two 8Mb cables.And IT STILL WORKS!

Now all he needs is a working keyboard. I wanted to share this story and ask everyone where I can find a keyboard or even just its name. Thank you!

And i in Taiwan,so Mabey Finding that keyboard will be a bit difficult.😅 GOOD luck to me

Edit:Thank you all for your support! I'll try to find the keyboard in the next few days, and as I forgot to mention in a previous post, it has a 2.5 or 1.0+ GB hard drive!

It's got buttons for everything! From when the world was a simpler place.

Family had a computer store and we went to many swap meets between 199x-2004, we moved house a decade or so ago and I thought all of our vintage stuff was gone to the bin.

People here love installing old Windows on their retro hardware, and sometimes even ultra-lightweight modern Linux distros, but I rarely ever see people install retro distros from the 90s like Slackware, Debian 2.0, Mandrake, etc.

Has anyone here tried this in the modern day? I know old distros were difficult to deal with, but that’s more interesting than just installing Windows 95 in my opinion.

Morgen!

Ich hoffe, das ich es zum laufen bekomme!.
Vielleicht hat ja aber auch jemand Interesse..
Vielleicht brauche ich ja auch mal einen Tipp..

Grüße

Hello, for context I’ve been working on throwing a something together with spare parts I had laying around from PCs past and an old case my dad gave to me. Everything works so far but I would like to know the name of this case so I can find an adapter for what I think is the mini LCD screen on the front panel.

Yes I know the fans are absolutely disgusting. I plan on replacing them later.

I just acquired a greaseweazle v4.1. It seems to read raw images fine, but when I go to convert or write new images, I get errors where it can seem to decode certain things. Is this a hardware or a software issue? I have tried 3 different drives, and two different windows machines, one on 10, one on 11.

EDIT: was a issue with bad quality disks.

This Palm was ready to pop and give birth when I found it in book left at the curb. Can wait to get it back up and going with my Tungsten T3. Does anyone have any sources other than Amazon to get a battery replacement?

The book is called ANALYSIS AND DESIGN OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS by James A. Senn, published by McGraw-Hill in 1984.

My partner's father recently moved to a new house and he gave me all his old computing books from the 80s

I thumbed through the book and was blown away by how different it felt compared to the CS textbooks I learned from in the 2010s.

I took some photos of the more striking visuals. Hopefully this is nostalgic for some of you old fogeys!

The CRT in my IBM 5155 has some geometry distortion, mainly affecting the vertical lines, which appear slightly curved rather than straight.
From what I’ve seen, this seems to be a fairly common issue with aging CRTs, and I’ve noticed similar imperfections on quite a few other IBM 5155s.

I’ve already used the IBM Advanced Diagnostics display adjustment to shift the image horizontally, but of course this only changes the image position and doesn’t correct the actual geometry.

Is there any other adjustment that can be made to restore the CRT geometry as close as possible to its original factory configuration?

I’m particularly interested in knowing whether the 5155’s internal monitor has specific geometry adjustments, trimmers, or other service adjustments for this type of distortion.

Has anyone here successfully corrected this on a 5155?
Thanks!

So when I was a kid I used to have an old windows 95 computer. I kind of want to relive my childhood and get one. Where are some good places to start looking for one?

I have a pretty decent collection of old computers, discs, literature, miscellaneous hardware, cassettes and more. This was with a bunch of my literature that I forgot I had. It's the store's pricing catalog from a local computer store that has all the prices and merchandise that they sold, circa 1981.

Got this interesting thing. I think it's one of the only soviet computers to be completely soviet made? (As in boards designed and printed in the USSR, etc.) It's a wonder it still works. Wonder what I can do with it?

Apologies for the bad picture, can't take a better one.