Is anyone into "retro-computing"?

[evident]

First computer I had was a 25mhz 486/SX with 4 MB of RAM. I feel zero nostalgia for that thing, I can't count how many hours I wasted screwing around with bootdisks trying to get some games to run. Wing Commander 2 was a freaking nightmare...

this! i remember having to upgrade to 8 mb of ram to play doom 2.

and my sister has a macintosh classic that is sitting in my old room's closet that i have no idea why she's keeping.

 

[vshah]

i remember taking a baseball bat to an old modem while it was running to try to kill it...i couldn't.

 

[Fritzo]

My dad still has an IBM PS/1 from 1991 that used to belong to me. It has a tiny screen and no hard drive. Great for "surfing" the free online Prodigy account that came with it with my 2400 baud modem. It was owned by Sears and IBM back then.

I had that same POS. It had a 286, no hard drive, and DOS 4.01 built into a ROM chip to boot off of. I had to swap floppies like every 5 minutes to connect to AOL (actually Prominade, a precursor to AOL). You couldn't even add cards to it because it needed a $160 "riser card" to allow up to 2 ISA cards to be added, or one of IBM's crappy MCA cards (MCA- micro channel architechture- was a card interface that never took off).

What it did teach me is how to get around hardware limitations and set me on the path to be a career troubleshooting/problem solver. So, even though the PS/1 sucked, it helped me out a lot.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Gj...AA#v=onepage&q=ps/1 286 no hard drive&f=false

 

[JeepinEd]

This thread just reminded me that I also have an old Vectrex that still works great. It's still fun to sit around and play games on it.
I don't know of any other vector graphics based game system. Pretty cool stuff.

 

[Rastus]

I have a slide rule but it won't boot.

 

[Nohr]

I had that same POS. It had a 286, no hard drive, and DOS 4.01 built into a ROM chip to boot off of. I had to swap floppies like every 5 minutes to connect to AOL (actually Prominade, a precursor to AOL). You couldn't even add cards to it because it needed a $160 "riser card" to allow up to 2 ISA cards to be added, or one of IBM's crappy MCA cards (MCA- micro channel architechture- was a card interface that never took off).

What it did teach me is how to get around hardware limitations and set me on the path to be a career troubleshooting/problem solver. So, even though the PS/1 sucked, it helped me out a lot.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Gj...nepage&q=ps%2F1 286 no hard drive&f=false

I grew up with a PS/1 also. It was a great machine for the time. My parents sprung for the optional 30MB HDD and 1MB of RAM which helped a lot. Plus 256KB VGA color graphics! *ooooohh aaaahhhhh*

It was strangely built though. The PSU was inside the monitor.. I guess they did that so you would only have to press one button to turn it all on.

Did a lot of BBSing on that bad boy.

Edit: Currently the oldest computer I own is a 386DX 25 stuffed in a closet somewhere, but it still works. Oldest computer still being used is a Pentium 100 for when I want to fire up DOS games.

 

[KLin]

I still mess with that bad boy every now and then.

 

[Insomniator]

The image that really old low resolution monitors display really creeps me out, I don't know why. I don't like looking at 640x480 on a modern monitor either... not because of usability but it just scares me for some reason.

Really weird i know

 

[JeepinEd]

The image that really old low resolution monitors display really creeps me out, I don't know why. I don't like looking at 640x480 on a modern monitor either... not because of usability but it just scares me for some reason.

Really weird i know

640X480? We could only dream about that resolution, back in the day.
Try 176 x 184 in 16 colors max, on the Vic-20.

 

[mmntech]

I find vintage electronics in general fascinating. Especially the old vacuum tube stuff. I own a Rogers Batteryless radio from the 1930s. Still works and still has all it's original parts other than a new antenna.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Well, a part of my history is going to the recycler tomorrow. I am taking the first PC I ever built (most of the hardware is intact) to be recycled tomorrow. I also cleared out a bunch of older cards, power supplies, CRT monitors, etc.

No Commodore stuff is leaving, however.

 

[BoberFett]

The oldest thing I own is a Mac SE with an addon 40MB Mirror (that's the company name) SCSI drive.

It still works, but there's little reason to actually power it on.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

The oldest thing I own is a Mac SE with an addon 40MB Mirror (that's the company name) SCSI drive.

It still works, but there's little reason to actually power it on.

Almost as amazing as vintage hardware is the sheer number of companies that no longer exist. Companies like Rodime, Micropolis, Connor, Hayes, USR -- the list goes on and on.

 

[ultimatebob]

I had that same POS. It had a 286, no hard drive, and DOS 4.01 built into a ROM chip to boot off of. I had to swap floppies like every 5 minutes to connect to AOL (actually Prominade, a precursor to AOL). You couldn't even add cards to it because it needed a $160 "riser card" to allow up to 2 ISA cards to be added, or one of IBM's crappy MCA cards (MCA- micro channel architechture- was a card interface that never took off).

What it did teach me is how to get around hardware limitations and set me on the path to be a career troubleshooting/problem solver. So, even though the PS/1 sucked, it helped me out a lot.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Gj...nepage&q=ps%2F1 286 no hard drive&f=false

I remember asking for one of these from my Dad when I was around 13. I ended up getting his old IBM PS/2 Model 50Z from work instead. It's case design was awesome... practically tool less. It almost makes me wish that MCA architecture caught on... almost.

Amusingly, even though it was already 3 years old at that point, it was still faster than a PS/1 It also had this crazy expansion card called an Intel AboveBoard in it, which let you add a whopping 8 MB of memory in it.

 

[manimal]

Almost as amazing as vintage hardware is the sheer number of companies that no longer exist. Companies like Rodime, Micropolis, Connor, Hayes, USR -- the list goes on and on.

I miss me some wang!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I miss me some wang!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories

DEC. I forgot about DEC. In the early 90s, everyone was drooling over the Alpha processors and then Compaq bought them.

 

[Fritzo]

640X480? We could only dream about that resolution, back in the day.
Try 176 x 184 in 16 colors max, on the Vic-20.

LUXURY!!!! I had to use my C-64 (my parents sprung for the extra $$$$ over the Vic20) on a 13" B&W TV!

I remember typing 10000 lines of machine code to get a Red Baron game to work. I had to code the compiler called MLC (out of a Commadore magazine), and then they had games you could program into it. The coding consisted of:

23423: 4353534 234234 534345 232456 234242 234233
23424: 5642343 234644 234677 456456 345345 745645....

1000's of times over, typed by hand. One line of code typed incorrectly would cause a crash. We REALLY wanted to play games back then. The game consisted of a red biplane that you could fly through barns and shoot other random planes.

You kids and yer fancy DVD's playing 3D dual monitor high def video---you don't know what it's like to WORK to play a game I tells ya!

 

[Fritzo]

I remember asking for one of these from my Dad when I was around 13. I ended up getting his old IBM PS/2 Model 50Z from work instead. It's case design was awesome... practically tool less. It almost makes me wish that MCA architecture caught on... almost.

Amusingly, even though it was already 3 years old at that point, it was still faster than a PS/1 It also had this crazy expansion card called an Intel AboveBoard in it, which let you add a whopping 8 MB of memory in it.

The PS/2 was the business model- 8MB of memory would have been in the $400 range. The PS/1 was the home model and generally less powerful.

PS/2's were work horses. We had them in our office until around 1999-2000.

 

[JeepinEd]

LUXURY!!!! I had to use my C-64 (my parents sprung for the extra $$$$ over the Vic20) on a 13" B&W TV!

I remember typing 10000 lines of machine code to get a Red Baron game to work. I had to code the compiler called MLC (out of a Commadore magazine), and then they had games you could program into it. The coding consisted of:

23423: 4353534 234234 534345 232456 234242 234233
23424: 5642343 234644 234677 456456 345345 745645....

1000's of times over, typed by hand. One line of code typed incorrectly would cause a crash. We REALLY wanted to play games back then. The game consisted of a red biplane that you could fly through barns and shoot other random planes.

You kids and yer fancy DVD's playing 3D dual monitor high def video---you don't know what it's like to WORK to play a game I tells ya!

LOL, I spent many weekends entering code from those magazines. Then when you type the magical words "RUN" you would get the "Syntax Error" or some other error code. OK, now many more hours debugging.

 

[manimal]

DEC. I forgot about DEC. In the early 90s, everyone was drooling over the Alpha processors and then Compaq bought them.

I wonder if in an alternate timeline compaq decided to dump intel and go PRISM!



hmm..next time I watch fringe ill try to see what kind of processors they are using

 

[bobdole369]

I have one of those arranged into a Superheterodyne array to process RF data between 560kHz - 30.0 MHz.

Ah yes, the best use of electronics. Crystal filter? CW yea or nay?

 

[zzuupp]

Somewhere in a box or two

I still have an Atari 800

I'll be amazed if any of the floppy's are still readable

If she still starts up, those boxes should have some ROM games.

 

[silverpig]

DEC. I forgot about DEC. In the early 90s, everyone was drooling over the Alpha processors and then Compaq bought them.

I remember for a long time some DEC Alpha processors had the best times on Seti@home WUs. Them and Sun Sparcs.

 

[Karstein]

We were pretty heavily into our computing during the 80s/early 90s in the UK. I have a BBC Micro and a couple of C64s back home.

 

[Iron Woode]

I am a huge Commodore fan with a huge collection of stuff.