Post your old computers here!

[zandrax]

Re: Post your old computers here!

Oh my god, that thing is 6 feet tall!

It's 62 cm tall, slightly above two feet It was called "big tower" and, no doubt, it was big enough.
The battery in the original mobo was a 6 V NiCd one soldered on the motherboard: it leaked after a few years and by the time I got it, I had to restore bios settings every day (I used an handy tweaking tool, Amisetup). When I got this used Pentium mobo with the processor, I had no scruples in upgrading the pc.

Also, correct me if i'm wrong, but you have it running a ATI Mach 64 and a 3dfx Voodoo 2 12mb, are they like sli'd in a way? How do you do that?

That's not SLI: the external cable is a pass-through VGA cable which connects the Voodoo2 to the graphic card. Voodoo 1 and 2 don't have an onboard graphic chip: they're plain 3D accelerators and require a graphic card; among the favourite mates there were Atis and Matroxes because had the cleanest output.
Voodoo2's Scan-Line Interleave uses a 34 pin cable (the same used for floppy drives) connecting two twin cards and, of course, another pass-through cable connecting first Voodoo's VGA output to 2nd Voodoo's VGA input: both cards run in parallel, the first drawing the odd lines of the image and the second the even ones; another bonus, besides the higher framerate, was the capability of running games at the then amazing resolution of 1024x768.

I don't run SLI for three reasons: 1) I don't have a 2nd Voodoo2 ; 2) the motherboard has only three PCI slots and only the first can host the long Voodoo2, the other two are blocked by the CPU heatsink; 3) the old P100 can barely run most games at 640x480, some at 800x600: I'd need a beefier cpu (e.g. a 166 or 200 MHz MMX one) for a decent SLI at 1024x768

Zandrax

[370forlife]

Re: Post your old computers here!

Can that support a amd K5 PR133? I have one, i believe they run at 100mhz, but is comparable to a 133mhz p1. I could get you a 166 or 200mmx p1 if you want.

[zandrax]

Re: Post your old computers here!

Can that support a amd K5 PR133? I have one, i believe they run at 100mhz, but is comparable to a 133mhz p1. I could get you a 166 or 200mmx p1 if you want.

I never tried: the motherboard manual states it supports all not-MMX Pentiums up to 166 MHz.
I think the best expansion would be a newer motherboard, maybe with the 430VX or HX chipset, with Sdram slots (I have 32 and 64 MB sticks so ram is not an issue), with at least 4 PCI slots and, of course, supporting Pentium MMX

Zandrax

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Post your old computers here!

Are you sure it wasen't a 386 with a 387 math co? Sometimes there are even motherboards that have a socket for a intel 386, then theres a socket for a 386 clone, so you could run a intel 386, or remove it and run a clone 386.

Yes I'm sure.
Go read the link I posted.
I found what it was.

[370forlife]

Re: Post your old computers here!

Ya I was stupid and posted before I read that link.

[bgavin]

Re: Post your old computers here!

I have an IBM Personal Computer in the attic in my garage. It has an 8088 processor and 640k of memory. Two 360k diskettes. I bought the 8087 NDP as well, when it came available later as an accessory. The CGA video card is installed.

Paid $2700 USD for it, and that was cheap because I got the (IBM) employee discount. I did buy the Visicalc and Microsoft BASCOM software which added somewhat to the price.

At the time, I wrote an Xmodem protocol for file transfer in both BASCOM and Atari 800 Basic. The interpreted Atari was MUCH faster than the compiled BASCOM code. LDA, STA, LDA, STA...

[arneson]

Re: Post your old computers here!

If anyone has the IBM 5100 system, I know of a guy from the future that needs one.
http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5100.html

[370forlife]

Re: Post your old computers here!

The guy who pretended to be john titer is probalby somewhere in a basement laughing so hard after what was probalby suppose to be a little prank got so much attention around the web and even in the media. I mean, honestly, I highly doubt we will have any more advancements in the theory of time travel in the next 100 years. Most experts say that It is impossible.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Post your old computers here!

Time travel isn't impossible.
We move forward through time all the,, ah,, time.

[pentium]

Re: Post your old computers here!

I have an IBM Personal Computer in the attic in my garage. It has an 8088 processor and 640k of memory. Two 360k diskettes. I bought the 8087 NDP as well, when it came available later as an accessory. The CGA video card is installed.

Paid $2700 USD for it, and that was cheap because I got the (IBM) employee discount. I did buy the Visicalc and Microsoft BASCOM software which added somewhat to the price.

At the time, I wrote an Xmodem protocol for file transfer in both BASCOM and Atari 800 Basic. The interpreted Atari was MUCH faster than the compiled BASCOM code. LDA, STA, LDA, STA...

I got a PC Portable in my storage room.
I gave it a full640K ram as well as an 8-bit scsi card and replaced one of the 360K floppy drives with a 40Mb scsi hard drive (If it was not for the scsi connector it looked like any other ST-225). I later found a co-processor, modem and network card for it and it's loaded with programs like Lotus 123 and it can even run Windows 1.01
Pity I can't make the thing drop me to the ROM BASIC anymore, I would have to remove the scsi card before I could boot directly to it.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Post your old computers here!

If anyone has the IBM 5100 system, I know of a guy from the future that needs one.
http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5100.html

I think I used to use one of those back in the late 80's.
If not that one then something that looks very similar.
Military had a supply system database called SNAPS on them and they were used to order parts.

.

[Fizzycapola]

Re: Post your old computers here!

Some of the PC's I've had: (starting happy, ending sad)
Acer 8086
Vale Pentium 75 (£1800)
Custom Dual CPU Pentium Pro 166Mhz 512kb cache (£900 per CPU!)
Custom Athlon 1600
Custom Athlon 1800 <<< in use
Custom Athlon 2400
Custom Athlon 3000
Custom Athlon 3200
--- >>> this is the point where either I became stupid or my luck ran out ( or as I prefer to conspire - I was put on the screw this guy over database )---
Custom Athlon X2 3800 (£800 - failed!!! to work)
PowerC Computing Athlon X2 3800 (£1000) <<< in use
Advent (shop brand) 2800+ Sempron Laptop (£500)
Advent 2800+ Sempron Laptop (£500 returned - faulty!!! and built differently to one of same model number purchased prior - different screen!!! / rubbish)
Custom Core2Duo 6700 (£1600 - failed!!! to work no matter!!! how many motherboards I bought or new parts, returned parts for refunds as agreed in emails with retailer but all sellers lied and sent more parts to me instead of honoring their email agreements, and they kept lieing until warranty expired!!!)

[370forlife]

Re: Post your old computers here!

I think I used to use one of those back in the late 80's.
If not that one then something that looks very similar.
Military had a supply system database called SNAPS on them and they were used to order parts.

.

1 day after saying this, PCBONEZ is found dead in his basement, poisened by a unknown substance. The US government declines any comments

[Spacedye69]

Re: Post your old computers here!

If anyone has the IBM 5100 system, I know of a guy from the future that needs one.
http://oldcomputers.net/ibm5100.html

Thats much cooler than the old Commodore PET I use to use in the late 70's. I think I'm out of 8088's, but I still have a 286 and a TI994A in the garage.

[linuxguru]

Re: Post your old computers here!

I have a C64 (repaired many times and powered up OK the last time I checked), a working clone 8088 PC/XT mobo which runs the IBM ROM Basic, a working Bullet 286/XT mobo (an odd 80286 board with only XT-style 8-bit slots), several 8088 to 80286 accelerator boards that have socket connectors that fit into sockets on 8088 mobos, a working Tadpole/IBM N40 PowerPC/AIX notebook, a dead Grid 1550 laptop, numerous Thinkpads (both working and parts), three working Omnibook 800cs Pentium notebooks with 'Instant On/Off', a working Toshiba Portege 610ct, various PII/PIII and more recent desktops and notebooks.

The most durable is probably an Omnibook 800 - it has survived a 2-foot fall onto a hard floor. I will also make a special mention of a Thinkpad 760xl with its special IBM-designed P166/MMX module that is still fully functional in its 12th (?) year with its original Li-Ion battery, now running a custom Fedora Core 4 installation with its memory maxed out to 106 MB and a 6 GB hard disk. I paid $25 for it at one of the Foothills swap meets in 2001, at the height of the tech bust. The guy selling it had what looked like a container load of Thinkpads bought at dot-com liquidations, and the only buyers seemed to be Asians who were buying it for resale in Asia.

If you keep a sharp eye for bargains, the on-going financial sector meltdown should also bring in a huge bonanza of tech goodies in the next year or so. Laptops should be plentiful, and so will big-screen plasma displays, routers, servers, etc., for pennies on the dollar.

[linuxguru]

Re: Post your old computers here!

I also have a collection of somewhat special processors - A Tillamook mobile Pentium/MMX 300, a Cyrix MII-366, several Via C3/733, an Intel P24T Overdrive Pentium 75 that fits in some 486 mobos, a couple of Intel Overdrive MMX CPUs with integrated split-plane voltage regulators that will fit in Pentium mobos with only a single power plane, a few Winchip 200s, a few Rise MP6s, an AMD K6-III+/450, a CMOS AMD 80286/12, a Cyrix 486DX2/66 which is socket-compatible with some i386DX-33 mobos (in retrospect, I paid a bomb for Cyrix and Overdrive CPUs, but no regrets. It kept some older equipment working long after their planned obsolescence).

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Post your old computers here!

1 day after saying this, PCBONEZ is found dead in his basement, poisened by a unknown substance. The US government declines any comments

Nah, the classified stuff was on a laptop in a safe.
They are 'hardened' meaning there is no way to write to anything.
No USB, no floppy drive, no CD, not even a printer port.

Only thing that got from there into the other machine to order something was the part number (no description or use given in the other system, just a number) and you had to write it down.

Typos made for some interesting mistakes.
~ Like ordering a relay and getting a box of steak knives.

.

[zandrax]

Re: Post your old computers here!

[Continue from previous post]

As I wrote before, my father bought a home pc in late 1998: it was a Compaq Presario 2292, cheap desktop case with a Flex ATX mobo based on the Sis 5598 chipset, AMD K6-II 333 MHz, 64 MB SDRAM, 4 GB Seagate Medalist hdd, a Liteon 32x cd player (replaced with a 40x one, both won't play discs if temp is above a certain value), a Conexant HCF softmodem, a 15" Compaq monitor (of course) and 100 hours for dial-up Internet access bundled [*].
I started customizing 98, tweaked it a bit (WPCREdit and WPCRSet), learnt the importance of a firewall, installed a cd-rw first and a dvd-cd combo later, installed a second hdd despite the strict space available, added a Voodoo 3 PCI, a SB and other cards, overclocked at 387 MHz (again not stable, so switched back to 333 MHz), installed linux (first Mandrake 8 in 2001, but I ditced it a few days later: autoconfig didn't initialize the graphic card properly [learnt xfree.conf] and hanged for 25 minutes at every boot detecting the winmodem [couldn't remove it, needed for internet connection]; later Suse 9, Red Hat 7 and others, but linux wasn't mature enough for desktop use), BeOS 5 just two months later Palm acqired Be Inc., NT 4.0 and 2000 beta. When it was old enough, I expanded ram to 192 MB (once a time I filled it with 320 MB, but I never found that necessary) and used it as a personal server.

Now it runs a my print server, generic home server and F@H client at around 1000 steps/hour: it strong point is quite low power consumption (idling at 25 W, averaging in the 30 and something watt, maximum is 40) and, of course, computing power is enough for my needs. I still upgrade it and my next move will be a better hard disk: it actually mounts a 1.2 GB Maxtor working in PIO mode only

Front cover:


Rear and internals: I tight packed everything under the cdrom otherwise it'd be full of cables. Damn proprietary psu and connectors: I can't replace it.


Mobo caps are I.Q.s: it seems an OST brand. Being manifactured in 1998, they predates the bad caps fiasco ...


Zandrax

[To be continued ... again?]

[linuxguru]

Re: Post your old computers here!

That PSU is just an AT PSU with an additional +3.3v connector. This was widely used by HP, IBM and various other manufacturers in the LPX form-factor mobos. If you haven't already done so, you should recap that Hipro PSU.

Incidentally, IBM and Microstar both offered SFF machines in the same form-factor. The IBM Aptiva D1N used the same SiS 5598 chipset, but with a Cyrix M2-300 (225 MHz) Socket-7 CPU. This could be upgraded all the way to a K6-II/500 with nothing more than a BIOS upgrade. The Microstar machine was even better - it used a Via Apollo chipset and supported even the K6-III+/550. I got the Aptiva free and the Microstar for $35 at a swap meet in 2001, and both are running fine to this day with the original mobo caps, but I've upgraded just about every other removable subsystem except the PSUs, which are small form-factor ATX. The PSUs have been recapped, but are otherwise original.

Another machine in a similar form-factor, but with an i815 board and Coppermine PIII support, is the FIC Sabre, which sold for a while at Fry's for $225, barebones.

[jpdoe]

Re: Post your old computers here!

I have a Commodore 64C, in its original box, stored in my placard. About 15 years ago I sold the datasette, but I didn't have the heart to part with the cpu/keyboard. The system I'm using daily today is already old: an athlon xp 2000+ whose motherboard + cpu I bought used a few years ago. The systems I had in between are all gone, except for a celeron 400mhz I'm repairing in order to give to my goddaughter as a gift. Nevertheless, I own a growing collection of empty cases. I hate the tin can boxes they sell nowadays I find difficult to part with the sturdy ones.