>>2597 Interesting, I was a bit affraid the lack of softwares (some anon told me there are not as much as in Void Linux) but the default repository is well supplied. At least enough to fulfill my needs for this old laptop. I started to read some docs about programming for Haiku and I think if there was more dev at work, it would be a serious OS competing Linux disros. Also, I may not be accustomed to it but the window management is not very instinctive. I tried to tweak it to dark mode but I'm not totally satisfied with some details, after a read on the forum, I think I will try to build my own theme from source. Hehe, more things to play with ;)

>>2599 As I read things here and there, just stumble on Serenity OS : ''A graphical Unix-like operating system for desktop computers! SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix-like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s *nix.'' Does any of you use or know it ?

>>2600 >Does any of you use or know it ? I build it from time to time to try it out. The UI used to have some charm, like the little arrows on the scroll bars, etc. but with recent changes it's nothing more than an unstable Windows 2000 clone. The "Unix-like core" or base OS isn't very interesting and most would be better served by a Linux or BSD. I don't understand why they're rolling a custom kernel for this.

>>2601 >I build it from time to time Could you upload an ISO? I want to try this.

>>2602 It builds onto disk image and auto runs itself in QEMU. No ISO.

These past few months I've been working on a little program called octaPNG, it basically converts any file into a PNG and back. I wrote it mainly for imageboard use so anons can easily share arbitrary files without leaving the thread they're on... For the longest time the program was CLI only, but yesterday I released a GUI version of it using SDL2 and it looks quite /retro/. It was mostly unintentional though. Since the program is a very basic converter I wanted something simple for the GUI, just some text and a couple of buttons. I figured there's no need to depend on a full blown GUI library (Qt/GTK and friends), I can just open a window and draw the text manually, SDL2 will do... But then I ran into the beast that is text rendering and TTF fonts and decided that that would be too complex, so I resorted to good old bitmap fonts but scaled up to fit 21st century screens. The result was pic related. Someone told me it looks like a C64 program!

>>2671 Looks cool anon, I thought it was a TempleOS program for a moment there.

>>2671 I think the Tk toolkit might be worth looking into, it's supposed to be on the minimal side and maintain a native look.

>>2700 I looked into Tk and it's very lightweight indeed, however it's too closely married to Tcl making it painful to use with other languages. I programmed octaPNG in C, and while searches reveal that there are ways to use Tk from C, all the projects allowing this are either deprecated or too convoluted... After too many fruitless searches I just gave up on Tk completely. >>2675 Honored to hear that!

Last summer I went to a retro computer expo at a local farm. I took a bunch of pictures and have a couple movies of what it was like looking around and walking through the main barn. I'll upload what I have tomorrow; I'm mostly making this post so I'll have a clearer memory of things and I won't forget as I have before.

For those interested, here's a site run by a bongistani selling old SGI equipment. http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/sgidepot/

>>2772 Looking forward to see the photos! >>2774 Man, seeing these devices really brings me back... I love how this website is designed as a literal "virtual store" with shelves and labels, such a simple idea brings some much needed life to an otherwise barren page.

>>2775 I sincerely have no idea how the fuck more than a week went by. I'll have the pictures and my experience at the computer show up this week, I promise.

>>2781 No worries anon, looking forward to it.

There was a retro computer expo in my city last August. I took some pictures to document the occasion but I hadn't gotten around to posting them until now. Funnily enough, it actually took place in a barn that was located on a farm where I'd gone to summer camp as a kid. I arrived a bit late since I missed a turn getting there, but I arrived with plenty of time to explore and take pictures.

>>2790 Some of the animals were friendly enough to let you pet them, like the sheep here. It was a really warm day out so I imagine these guys were feeling it under all that wool. I considered walking around a bit more and seeing how closely my childhood memories matched up with the modern property, but I decided against it. Apologies for the awful white balance in some of the outdoor photos. I was using my phone camera, which in the true spirit of this board is a nearly-decade old device that I have installed Linux onto. I found the last photo particularly emblematic of the coronavirus panic in Canada in 2021. A bunch of old dudes were walking around and talking to each other, but an event for kids/teens would need music piped in via video chat. I really hate this country sometimes.

>>2791 Pinball isn't really a retro computer thing, but it's definitely an old man thing. The guy in pic 2 was trying to sell one of those "creativity for kids via computer programming" kits that have become popular in the last couple decades (my reference point for this is Lego Mindstorm - maybe that should get its own thread?). I'm not sure how well he did by the end of the event since there were almost no actual children that I saw, just teenagers and (men old enough to be) their dads. The man in the green shirt was trying to get something set up when I walked past him. I don't know what it was, and I don't think I circled back to check - or perhaps I did and didn't find it interesting enough to document. Pic 4 shows two old computers: the Mac was just for show, I think, but the Commodore had been updated with a modern Linux operating system. It had a trackball mouse and everything, and I believe basic internet browsing would have worked too.

>>2792 By far my favourite part of the expo was an actual video game someone had developed for the SNES. Some basic searching tells me he got it crowdfunded, which was successful enough to pay for a port to the NES - a funny and strange development pipeline that I imagine almost no actual games have gone through in real life. There's some more information here: https://www.collectorvision.com/games/sydneycod.php https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/439982171/new-snes-game-sydney-hunter-and-the-caverns-of-dea >but how does it play? Very well, actually. It felt pretty smooth to control despite the aged controller I was using, and the level design was short and sweet without being too simple. The game looked good in motion too: the animations were understandably rudimentary but the way they came together on the screen never made me feel like I was playing a "retro game," just a game with the appropriate level of detail. If I had been a kid at the event, I definitely would have spent all my spare time trying to beat it before my dad dragged me away.

>>2793 Assorted computers, monitors, and keyboards. Nothing much to say here except that some of these were in really good condition considering they were older than I was. The keyboards lacked modern features like cherry switches or ergonomic design (I've been spoiled by my mechanical keyboard, honestly) but they were mostly functional and I could imagine myself typing large amounts of code or text using them. In pic 4, the game on the left was some obscure old fighting game whose title I cannot remember for the life of me, but the real attraction was the bizarre controller. It was a U-shape, with a D-pad on the left and four buttons on the right. Everything felt extremely chunky and unsatisfying, and the buttons were so worn out I had no idea if I was actually pressing one. Oddly, the middle system was running a platformer that you controller with an arcade joystick, and although that type of device is terrible, it worked better because the stick was solid metal and I could tell what I was doing better.

>>2794 I don't recall what the guy on stage was setting up for. It may have been some live circuit board demo, judging by the screen, but I can't say for certain. In pic 3, you can see a long set of tables with junk piled on top of them. This was actual retro hardware being sold by the guy in the blue shirt. He seemed to know most of the regulars at the expo, and I figure he was known as a hardware guy. I considered buying two things: a keyboard and a hard drive. The keyboards were some of those lovely, blocky, off-white-yellowed-with-age plastic that were everywhere in office buildings in the 90s. But the membranes had all worn out and the action was terrible, so there really wasn't any point in getting one. The hard drives boasted some impressive storage size (one of them was nearly a terabyte, I think, and it would have been under $40) but they wouldn't have been compatible with a modern operating system without significant tinkering, and my computer case is full enough as is. The Macs in pics 4 and 5 were running some old software, but that was it. I actually used some Macs that were nearly this old in my school's computer lab when I was a kid; it's kind of weird seeing things I have clear memories of be consigned to the dustbin, but everyone on this board knows that. >wrong answer or expired captcha >flood detected STEPHEN LYNX IS A NIGGER

>>2794 Here's a closer look at the controller which I forgot to include in the appropriate post. Just absolute garbage to hold and use. >>2795 Wedged in the far corner was a vendor table. I didn't have any need to buy anything from them, so I didn't look closely at what they were selling. Their table was nearly barren, so I'm not sure what they were actually trying to sell or promote. Next to the vendor table was a circuit board display for the Buffee hardware accelerator. I remember speaking to the guy who was making these and asking him what they were about, but it was pretty involved hardware stuff dealing with assembly language and down-to-the-metal things. The developer advertised his project on an Amiga enthusiast forum, for perspective: https://www.amigalove.com/viewtopic.php?t=1739 https://www.buffee.ca/about/ The board look nice, at least. I can't recall the last time I saw a circuit board that wasn't the usual metallic green or orange.

>>2796 In addition to all the computer hardware, there were some typewriter enthusiasts at the expo as well. This red Selectric had a really neat design that used "golf balls" of letters that would be spun around and pressed onto the page as opposed to the standard mechanism of pressing individual letter blocks. It was very satisfying to use, I have to say: the high-pitched click of each keystroke was pretty similar to the mechanical keyboard I've been using for the last decade, and it had a pretty fast rate of action when I tried to type longer sentences with it. Pic 3 is my attempt at typing a greeting to /retro/, but the R key and a couple others were broken so it didn't turn out well. It's probably for the best the photo is too blurry to make out. Pic 4 is a wider shot of the corner with the typewriter. I find the juxtaposition of computer hardware and horse-drawn buggies to be really fun.

>>2797 The last individual thing I thought stood out from the sea of beige plastic was this monster of a machine, the Three Rivers PERQ. It was larger than my torso and probably thrice the weight, and came with a warning not to get too close to the magnetic tablet. I would have spent more time learning about this machine and its history if it weren't for the fact the guy promoting it was a tranny (I'm like 90% sure, anyway; it's possible there's some frumpy, autistic woman with a receding hairline who obsesses over this thing but I find it unlikely). Modern poz aside, it's really cool to see a workstation billed as "3M: 1 Megabyte of memory, 1 Megapixel display, 1 Million instructions per second" from this time period, because it was an absurdly expensive $45,000 USD ($140,000 today). I'm pretty sure the smartphone I took this on has better specs than that. Pics 4 and 5 are details I couldn't fit anywhere else. I went to theoldnet.com as mentioned in pic 4, and it's a neat distraction but basically a simple frontend that fetches Wayback Machine versions of webpages from the 90s and early 00s. So, if you wanted to see what Nintendo's website looked like prior to the launch of the N64, you could do that.

>>2798 Here's a video of the entire barn area to get a sense of the chatter and how crowded it was.

>>2799 GOTTA GO FAST

Very nice anon, thanks for sharing. While I personally prefer stuff from the late 90s/early 2000s these meetups still seem to target boomers that grew up in the 70s and 80s as their primary crowd. Maybe 20 years down the line we'll be those boomers.

>>2790 Amazing photos and greatly detailed reporting, thank you so much for sharing anon! There's something weirdly comfy about being in a barn surrounded by nature and having all this modern technology in front of you, it's like the best of both [natural/indsutrial] worlds. >>2791 So did you pet the llama or nah? >>2792 Isn't that Chrome running on the Commodore? It's impossible for a Commodore to run that unless it had its guts rearranged replaced to be much higher spec. Very impressive though, I wonder what the owner uses the machine for. >that sticker Oh the memories... >>2793 >Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death Looks fun, I'm always impressed by games/demos made for older systems. I tried to find a ROM for the NES version to play it but no luck. >>2795 >it's kind of weird seeing things I have clear memories of be consigned to the dustbin, but everyone on this board knows that. You grew up in a time of great technological advancements, arguably the last time consumer technology was actually consumer-first. It may suck to get old but you still have those comfy memories. >>2796 >Here's a closer look at the controller Jeez, and I thought the N64 controller was clunky... >>2798 >I would have spent more time learning about this machine and its history if it weren't for the fact the guy promoting it was a tranny Should have spent the time anyway, machines like this are very interesting to learn about. Either way the wikipedia page has some more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PERQ >1 Megapixel display High resolution is nice and all, but useless without truecolor or at the very least highcolor. I guess people used all this screen real estate to type documents/sheets and nothing more. >raffle form Did you write your name? >>2799 (checked) Cool place, and so nice to see the attendants are all just regular old people and technology enthusiasts. I know I'll be one of them someday. >0:28 Is that fucking Terry Davis?

>>2803 >So did you pet the llama or nah? I believe I tried, but it wasn't the petting type. The sheep were much more easygoing. >raffle form No. I had no use for any kind of vintage adapter like that so I figured it should have a better chance of going to someone who will actually use it. >Terry Davis You didn't think he actually died, did you?

>>2802 On the software side of things I prefer the early '90s through the early 2000s, but it would be more interesting to me to see earlier hardware in use than someone running Windows 95 or whatever. '70s and '80s computer technology often seems strangely futuristic to me in a way that later computers don't. >>2803 >It's impossible for a Commodore to run that unless it had its guts rearranged replaced to be much higher spec. That's what I was thinking too. >Jeez, and I thought the N64 controller was clunky... Are you some weirdo who only has two hands?

When I was a kid, my family's computer had Windows 98. I remember it having a shutdown sound that incorporated a stock recording of laughing children and was just about to ask you guys if anyone knew what I was talking about, but I just managed to find it. It turns out the computer must have had the Utopia sound scheme as the default one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUXtZcnso20

>>2810 Good find. I remember that sound too.

>>2811 I noticed years ago that the sounds I heard in YouTube videos didn't seem all that familiar to me and got confused, and it wasn't until now that I started looking and going through a folder of sounds I just downloaded. I was about to give up until I stumbled on a startup sound that seemed strangely familiar, and once I heard the shutdown sound I knew I'd found it. It was apparently the default for HP Pavilion models at that time, which makes sense since I remembered having some kind of Hewlett-Packard computer. Nostalgia aside, I like the standard Windows 98 sounds better. That startup sound is glorious.

>>2812 >Nostalgia aside, I like the standard Windows 98 sounds better. That startup sound is glorious. Yes, agreed. And seemingly bizarrely, many things today are being intentionally uglified. Globohomo art for instance (not the evil globalist-kike Globohomo, but the art-form they commissioned & established, from which their modern-renaming as an evil imperium derives from). It's an abomination to the senses, and it very-much is intentionally-crafted into something that represents the exact opposite of beauty.

>>2813 nigga wat we're talking about old windows startup sounds

>>2813 >it's a grand conspiracy that some random manager with bad taste decided the sound was old lol

>>2813 THE JEWS STOLE THE WINDOWS 98 START UP THEME. HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO US?

>>2896 Stop shilling nigger, also >managing to brick your Wii U Are you retarded or something?

>>2897 >Stop shilling nigger, also Alright as you wish anon >Are you retarded or something? I don't even own a U, the last time I owned a Nintendo game console was when I was seven and had a DS, still got it burred somewhere but it needs a new hinge since those things where out after a while and honestly I'm just surprised stick drift isn't the first mechanical failure it had but I'll order jew joysticks too for when those inevitable degrade too. I was merely sharing the link as a means of preventing E-waste of which we've gotta lot of these days. Also because it was posted in an alternative to Jewoogle. I figure WiiU's where kinda sorta retroish enough to be relevant here but it appears the Jannies feel different.

>>2898 >I figure WiiU's where kinda sorta retroish enough to be relevant here The console launched in 2012. >but it appears the Jannies feel different. You spammed the exact same post in three different threads with nearly identical images.

>>2774 >ask guy a couple of questions related to buying a SGI box for the first time >sends me a whole wall of text answering every possible question I could've had and then some what a nice guy

>>2910 Sounds like a good seller. If you decide to buy one anon I'm sure /retro/ would be interested in some OC.

>>2910 Post the pasta ITT, I wanna read this.

>>2912 Here you go: Hi there! :) Sorry for the delay! I was away over the weekend, a road trip to collect some stuff from 500 miles away, which kinda wiped me out. :D > I am half-jokingly, half-seriously considering buying a SGI box, most likely an Indigo > or Indigo2 primarily for the purposes of experimentation and 3D modeling, animating, and > rendering. Do you know what model and configuration would be a good choice for this? Do > you have any advice for a first-time purchase of an SGI box? I guess the first thing to ask is, do you have a preference for any particular system for aesthetic reasons? I was wondering why Indigo or Indigo2 appealed above others. Setting aside visuals for the moment, Octane (or Octane2) offers the best value in terms of raw performance, especially as regards responsiveness for running animation programs like Maya, but there's no need for a top spec system, even a midrange setup like a 400/V6 will run nicely, or if one isn't bothered about having hardware texture mapping then stepping down to an SSI or SSE will lower the cost (naturally at the expense of speed). Octane also has the best expandability and the best value in terms of included RAM capacity based on cost (ie. larger RAM sizes for other systems are more expensive). Likewise, even a lower CPU option like an R10K/250 will still feel decently snappy. Note I did mention value when citing Octane; Fuel can obviously be a faster system, but it's become too expensive in more recent times, for various reasons (it's mainly continued commercial demand from PCB manufacturers which still use them). I'll briefly mention O2; it is a more feature rich machine, with texture mapping and MJPEG processing included as standard, but its raw 3D performance and fill rate are much lower than Octane; however, doing video stuff with Octane is a lot more complicated, so in that sense I guess they compliment each other. The down side of O2 is that a good spec O2 is expensive, especially something with a decent amount of RAM (which is vital due to the way O2 functions, ie. its UMA design). O2 is also far less snappy or responsive as Octane, even if it can keep up with Octane for various synthetic benchmarks, especially integer tasks like code compilation. For rendering, Octane is way quicker, and of course can utilise dual CPUs. Some though do like O2 for its low noise output, small footprint and low power consumption. Indigo2 can have 3D performance options which overlap the best of the original generation of gfx options for Octane, ie. MaxIMPACT/TRAM is akin to MXI in Octane, but MaxIMPACT for Indigo2 is very expensive (and nowadays is a nervy option to have because heat has become a problem for the continued functionality of IMPACT gfx options, at least High and Max anyway). For reference, SolidIMPACT in Indigo2 is akin to SI in Octane. Indeed, any decent gfx option for Indigo2 is rather pricey. Even if price wasn't a factor though, a bigger issue is system reliability, ie. IMPACT PSUs for Indigo2 are now very flakey. I intend refurbing some as soon as I can, but until I have some refurbed units available I would advise caution about getting an IMPACT Indigo2. By which I mean, I have IMPACT systems that appear to work ok atm, but I have no idea how long their PSUs will last, and it's best to assume that, unless modded with at least a cap replacement, an IMPACT PSU will go wrong eventually. Indigo2 also has older/slower base technologies vs. Octane (Ethernet, SCSI, memory speed, etc.), but it's certainly popular for other reasons (it's my favourite SGI, perhaps because the first SGI I ever obtained was an R4K/250 Elan), I'd say just make sure you understand the differences before deciding. Certainly, an R10K/195 SolidIMPACT would be a good entry point in general, but it's wise to have realistic expectations, eg. examine my benchmarks page for performance results using Inventor, Maya, Alias, etc. Or you could cross over the tech, something I'm actually doing for a guy who asked about Indigo2 recently, ie. he's going for an R10K/195 Extreme; the gfx is slower, and uses the older IrisGL API, but it's more reliable than IMPACT, and much cheaper - he can always upgrade later (though ironically due to the different design Extreme is actually not that bad for wireframe modelling, but it does fall behind SolidIMPACT for shaded mode). One thing though, the PSU issue with Indigo2 doesn't apply to the original teal version, so something like an R4K/200 Extreme is very reliable, infact I'd say it's the most reliable desktop SGI ever made. However, it is of course quite a bit down the relative performance scale compared to other SGIs, including R10K Indigo2, and especially for rendering for which R10K is more than twice as fast. Have a look at the Maya and Alias render results (note that the Alias test is strongly affected by how much L2 cache the CPU has, whereas the Maya test isn't). For real-time 3D, but check my Inventor 3D results, see if you can guage what level of model complexity you want to work with, note which systems can meet said requirement: http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/perfcomp_GFX1_Inventor_singlebuf.html If it's more for fun than doing serious productive work, then a system that can cope with a complexity level somewhere between the SpaceStation model (Test M) and the Underwater Camera model (Test A) is usually about right. And apologies btw, there are still a number of configurations I've yet to test, including SolidIMPACT and SI in Indigo2/Octane. Until recently I was rather tied up with family matters, but this year I should be able to get back to doing such tests again. I don't know your budget atm of course, but if a matching Indigo2 IMPACT is too costly then something like an R10K/250 Octane SSI would be a good alternative. Or if Indigo2 is a preferred system then an Extreme with whatever CPU (note R10K does have the advantage of supporting much more RAM, which helps a lot for running hefty programs like Maya). I would though advise against IRIS Indigo; it's popular for aesthetic reasons but it's way down the performane stack, while its slower base technologies mean it's even less responsive than Indigo2, plus it has PSU issues typically worse than IMPACT Indigo2 (working R4K Indigos are expensive because of the PSU). Like Indigo2, I intend refurbing some PSUs for R4K Indigo when I can, but that will be some weeks or months away. So I guess it depends where your focus errs, a particular system for aesthetic or other reasons, or pure performance, or a better upgrade path, or some combination. There is a lot of crossover between different SGIs in terms of performance, but there are also many feature differences, especially with systems like O2. Years ago it was a no-brainer to recommend getting more than one system upfront in order to have a balance of things, eg. an Octane for modelling plus an O2 to handle video tasks, but these days the system costs typically preclude buying multiple systems, at least at first anyway. Please feel free to ask any further questions you may have! It's all a bit of an info blast at first I know, but a Q&A back & forth helps to narrow down what makes the most sense for a particular user. May I ask, where are you in the world? If you're outside the UK then of course shipping cost is another factor, likewise import duty if you're in the EU. If you happen to be in the UK though, note I do have a quite ridiculous Onyx2 deskside available. :D Total overkill and also expensive (lol), but hey, who else will have such a thing for running Maya? Hehe. :D Oh, I didn't mention Tezro as I assumed it would be overkill wrt price and performance, and likewise Indy because really it's not suitable for serious 3D work, like IRIS Indigo it's just too slow. One thing though, if you don't much care about cosmetics then I could do a basic O2 pretty cheap, which is one way of getting some initial idea of where you might want to head next in terms of something more potent. Cheers! :) Ian.

>>2910 NetBSD still supports those systems: https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/sgimips/ Would be interesting to see what you can do on those machines with a modern OS.

I took apart a Dell Latitude today. I'm going to short the BIOS chip to clear the admin password that was left on it. It has a 700MHz Pentium III. After taking it apart, I think that this is the most well-made laptop I have ever seen. It's better than any Thinkpad I've taken apart. All the screw holes are labeled with the type of machine screw that needs to go in. The motherboard is surrounded by a pretty sturdy metal enclosure, all the ribbon cables have large pull tabs for disassembly. No CD-ROM drive but it does have a 3.5" diskette drive and the battery and drive come out easily by pressing on a latch. None of my other laptops have a working 3.5" drive so if this one works it'd be nice. It was still a bit of a job to take apart to get access to the BIOS chip though. Once I clear the passwords there, I'm going to see if I can boot this from a USB drive and try to crack all the passwords for the Windows XP user accounts and see if there's anything neat there, and then after that I'll see if I can get another IDE to msata adapter so I can put an msata SSD in here. It would be nice to multiboot Windows 98se, XP, and something like Solaris if I can get it to work.

>>2984 Looks like a nice machine anon. >try to crack all the passwords That probably isn't necessary, running chntpw from a live Linux distro should let you remove the passwords completely.

>>2985 I imagine I'd have a few issues with running Linux on that computer that I could solve quickly, but I remember using Ophcrack once and it was reasonably quick. That was on a Pentium 4 though, so the pIII may be a lot slower. I just remember Linux being pretty finicky with older computers. When I tried to run it on a T40 thinkpad with a Pentium M I remember having to spend time troubleshooting it with regards to PAE or something and I had to do some weird flag setting stuff that I don't remember now. Although if I plan to multiboot it then it might be worth trying anyway. I just wonder how many operating systems I could reasonably boot on a single computer. I had to get rid of a lot of my y2k era computers so I kind of wanted this one to be a do it all machine. I figure 98se gets me 98 obviously and the DOS mode on that should be perfectly fine. It can run XP and I've found XP to be surprisingly usable for some day to day stuff, so that could scratch my itch for using the oldest possible hardware to do normal things I need to get done or to post on forums. A lightweight but modern linux distribution would also be useful for this but in my experience linux doesn't support some hardware of the era very well, and then I think some older period appropriate UNIX might be neat. I mentioned Solaris because I saw someone mention it with regard to this machine recently; I was looking at forum posts from ~2002-2005 earlier today to figure out how to unlock the BIOS. I still haven't done that yet, I got kind of lazy. I have to partially re-assemble it so I can boot it up while shorting two pins on the BIOS chip, and then I have to disassemble it again, and then put it back together normally. And while it's open I'll probably clean out some stuff, superglue some plastic clips that broke, and put on new thermal paste. But being thorough takes time and effort and that's why I haven't gotten around to it yet. I will post results if/when it works.

>>2987 Solaris was Open Soros'd for a period of time and then the source was closed again, but then people continued working on the open sourced version, that is now an OS called Illumos. Try that, it's maintained. NetBSD is supposed to be really good on toasters, but the kernel panics on boot on the only toaster I have. Alpine Linux would be a good one to try.

>>2997 >Open Soros'd Heh, nice play on words friend but 'Soros' is an evil POS bent on destroying the world today, while 'opensauce' is one of the greatest achievements of mankind tbh. Strange dichotomy there you ask me. :) >Alpine It is a good choice if you're already an expert of sorts. I'd suggest OpenBSD instead if you want an 'alt' OS machine.

>>2998 Should've said "open sores" the canonical heh way to say it on IBs. Because while having the source is nice, there's no guarantee the software is actually good or usable.