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1990s and 2000s Nostalgia

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Computers Thread Fellow Time Traveler 08/21/2020 (Fri) 04:41:24 No.803
Looks like none of the images in the catalog work. Let's get a fresh thread in here, focused on computers! I don't have pictures at the moment to share, but I got lucky today and picked up a nice big beige computer case. I'm assembling a new personal computer from parts that I got deals on, found in the junk heap, or that I was given by friends. So, I guess it's not really a /retro/ computer, but it will be in a /retro/ case, and I plan to get an adapter which will let me use a 3.5" floppy disk drive in there. The adapter plugs into the floppy pins, and presents a USB interface to the motherboard. That adapter is under $10 USD. In fact, I've seen an adapter card that will do the same but for 5.25" floppy disk drives. So, when I have more money, I should be able to have not only a 3.5" FDD, but a 5.25" FDD in my system, running alongside new solid state drives, Blu-Ray disc drives, and of course a few regular hard drives. It should be pretty fun. Again, no pictures yet but I will share with you guys when I can. For now I'll just post one from my collection. What have you guys been up to?
>So, I guess it's not really a /retro/ computer, but it will be in a /retro/ case, Sounds neat. I was actually thinking about how viable doing something like that would be lately. It seems like it would be hard to find beige accessories to match the case completely like I'd want. I remember thinking that black computers looked cool, but nowadays I'm kind of sick of them and miss the old beige look.
>>812 Yeah I'm tired of black computers too. But most of my things that go in are black. I have a couple blu-ray drives, which are black, and my only floppy drive with a beige front panel is broken, and the panel doesn't fit my working one. So the floppy drive I have in there now is also black. I think I may paint them later on, though. Should be easy to get some satin white or ivory spray paint and paint it yourself.
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Dunno if relevant to the thread but I've always wanted to try a horizontal PC case instead of a vertical one. It looks more practical as both my monitor and case are right in front of me, and the monitor is elevated to be directly in my line of sight while sitting upright... Sadly I never personally found any PC models that supported horizontal placement, I can always build my own but I'll probably mess it up big time as I have no experience with that. A bit of an unpopular opinion: chrome-colored PCs from the 2000s are much sexier than the 90s beige ones.
>>815 Check out the Checkmate A1500 Plus and the Cryorig Taku.
>>815 are you sure about this? I'm pretty certain plenty of PC cases are sturdy enough to support a monitor when they're lying on their side. I can sit on my cases, too. So I'm pretty sure they could handle a monitor, and an LCD? no sweat. Don't really like the images you posted there so much, I'm more of a beige guy myself. My LCD monitor does have a silvery bezel and I like that, but it has a black body behind that. I think a silver bezel with a beige body would be nice. I will say that the Vaio image you posted it really nice though, that one does the color much better than the others IMHO. >>803 Still no pictures to share really, I am struggling to fit a 120mm fan in the back of this case. I am 3d printing parts to get it to sit in there nicely and I'm cutting a bit of sheetmetal as well.
oh shit guys, I might get a C64 soon, I know someone who is getting rid of one. it's in bad condition but I will see if I can fix it!
>>827 Cool. Recently I've got one for relatively cheap at a local store since apparently they couldn't get rid of it (!). Cassette reader was broken tho.
>>827 Even if you can't it makes a good case.
>>828 nice, funny they couldn't get rid of it haha. >>830 Yeah, or even perhaps a keyboard. I think it will probably work, though. These things seem to hold up quite well. only thing is, I don't have my CRT anymore. seems kind of lame to hook it up to an LCD.
>>833 >I don't have my CRT anymore. seems kind of lame to hook it up to an LCD. Yeah, I wish there was a decent replacement for CRTs nowadays. I have some old TVs for playing games on but would probably only keep one if there were a good way of replicating that look straight away.
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Guess what I just got guys...
>>836 Gnarly.
>>837 damn right dude, I got it for free and it cleaned up pretty well. Gonna need a new power supply so that's going to set me back some cash, and I'm out of a job so it'll have to wait a little while. But once I get that I should be in business since it looks like it's in good condition
>>815 Thank you. I just about cried, it's so nolstagic lol
Any /tech/ meets /retro/ lads here? I'm a NEET shit so the only actual "retro" hardware I have is a laptop from 2002 that I got in... 2002. And a bunch of floppies to go with it. Recently I installed OpenBSD on it and used the floppy installer to get the job done, only because all other methods failed. But when it comes to software, that's easier to do. The sheer awesomeness of the first book cover made me pick up 8086 assembly on DOS with that exact book. It's an excellent programming book that I recommend to any programmer, it has a lot of valuable lessons outside assembly for a dead machine and OS. I'm using FreeDOS inside qemu and emulating the text mode with a terminal to get nice font rendering, so the way I'm doing it is not truly period correct, although the experience is much of the same. If I manage to finish this book I'll make something with its knowledge, like write a sudoku game for DOS or something, all in assembly.
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>>878 Yeah, until very recently (lost due to a fire :( also that's why I only have pics of the screen) I owned a beige Powermac G3 with a Macintosh Color Display. This computer really made me appreciate 90s Apple, because without Steve throwing shitfits over the looks they really could design the thing to be as serviceable as possible. Literally, unscrewing only one thing gives you access to every component of the system, the whole computer is divided into sections on hinges, which you can just flip over (like a flipout book) if you want to go deeper, it's truly amazing. The software is still shit though, so I wanted to replace it with NetBSD, but apparently the drive controller on this thing is wonky and just writing the bootsector took half an hour to finish, not to mention random framebuffer glitches. Eh, maybe it's good that it's now gone.... >The sheer awesomeness of the first book cover made me pick up 8086 assembly on DOS Oh fuck, I also wanna get into it. Demoscene and cracktros always looked like so much fun and it can't be that hard, right? I'm not even talking about size competitions, just making some fun stuff move at the screen.
>>882 The hardest part so far has been figuring out the right programs to use on FreeDOS to replace the tools recommended in the book. You can just pirate MS-DOS and Microsoft's programmer tools if that's troublesome. I pirated the book itself from libgen. 8086 assembly looks like C and BASIC had an autistic child, in fact if you know either you already know most of the concepts behind assembly. The book doesn't deal with graphics and sound if you want to do demos, but I doubt any introduction will have those subjects anyway.
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There's a sizable collection available of The Computer Chronicles. https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles?tab=collection
>>892 Oh fuck yeah, thank you! IA is the definition of a goldmine.
So after watching the C-64 episode, it seems that it was still very popular years after it's introduction. WTF happened to it then? Why would the company just pull and then die as a result? Did They kill it or what /retro/?
I watched this BBS documentary series a while ago and found it interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddbe9OuJLU&list=PL7nj3G6Jpv2G6Gp6NvN1kUtQuW8QshBWE
>>899 Basically anything Jason Scott puts out is great. Speaking of /retro/, I think Geocities is still on The Pirate Bay...
>>815 >I can always build my own but Go for it! It's not hard, and a fun project.
>>957 Not him but you're right, projects are great. I haven't been on here in a long time. Think we can revive this place?
>>964 >Think we can revive this place? Not him, but I hope so. Every day I look to see if there's any activity on here and try to do what I can to increase it, even if my posts aren't necessarily all that great.
>>966 Well, the only way to keep this place alive, like any other imageboard, is to browse other retro-oriented forums and to send invites to this place. It's hard to maintain a constant stream of posters when the only people who might even know of the board are those who know of Alogs. Sure, Alogs is indexed on the Search Engine That Must Not Be Named, but I don't really think people go out of their way to look for retro aesthetic websites unless they already know where to look for. Maybe participating in the /icup/ may yield some more publicity.
>>964 No we can't. This site is dead and looks pretty much abandoned. We haven't had a bo in like a year. And the board is in a terrible shape too, there is no way the files will ever get restored. We should have moved to anon.cafe when julay ended to start over.
>>964 >>966 >>967 >>968 >This site is dead and looks pretty much abandoned Its main activity is the most notoriously known board on the webring /cow/ which probably repels anons. I think /sw/ and /ita/ are also quite active, but that's pretty much it, Julay World died a long ago and now Alog.space is just a husk of it. >We should have moved to anon.cafe Considering how it have quite few related boards unlike here, it would be much better choice. Maybe someone can become a BO over there?
>>969 Oh, and in case anyone interested there's 90'-00's nostalgia thread on antares.chan , but it's pretty dead too - http://l2sv2h6eoxdu6y6s.onion/misc/res/617.html
>>966 >>967 >>968 After the board got nuked, and then julay became alog, all that crap, it really killed off this place. Anon.cafe seems alright, maybe we should move there. Not sure. >>969 Yeah that stuff is really weird and I don't even understand what it's about. Looks like anon.cafe might work. What do you guys think? No hate for julay of course but maybe we could move. Then again, how many of us are there? three anons? lol. I doubt there were many posters even when /retro/ was not kill.
>>969 >but that's pretty much it, Julay World died a long ago and now Alog.space is just a husk of it /ita/ here, I must say that it's a sad reality. Robi's an alright admin but this site just doesn't attract many anons because they assume we're all /cow/boys and don't ever look into our threads, outside of maybe some lone wanderer. The overboard is also kind of fucked up. Plenty of unspoilered porn by the three-four obsessed /cow/ users. >>970 Antares' still up? Well I'll be. Not much of a TORpedo, how popular is it? >>971 >Anon.cafe seems alright, maybe we should move there. I would advise against it. Anon Cafe is a great website but it tends to be unstable on a weekly basis. Could it just be my rotten luck but that's how it always feels like. Also apparently they're strapped for space, though if the Fascists leave they could have an open spot.
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You guys would fit right in with the laid-back demeanor of Anoncafe. Just ask the site Admins there for a new board on the /meta/ thread would be my advice. Maybe they can also craft a script of some kind to help you migrate if you choose to as well. Since they both use Lynxchan IB software (and even Robi's frontend code too, by the looks of it) should be pretty straightforward. Also, I have about 1'000 of your files, 1GB in size, scraped together using my archiver program. > I don't have much to offer you guys here on /retro/ but I've enjoyed seeing how the history of computer tech happened though. I wish you all well. >>972 >though if the Fascists leave they could have an open spot. They are gone. Anoncafe Admins deleted the board March 20th, as promised.
>>967 /retro/ does seem kind of out of place being on this site. >>969 How did /cow/ end up declining so much? I lurked /cwc/ back in the 789chan/888chan days, and /cow/ used to feel like a true continuation of those sites. Then after a while they just started focusing on boring streamer personalities instead of funny lolcows, and I ended up parting ways with them. >>971 >this place. Anon.cafe seems alright, maybe we should move there. Not sure. I like that idea. Isn't anon.cafe invisible from the tvchan webring list though? They get a lot of traffic, but I guess a lot of people don't even seem to bother looking at the list of other boards though. >>972 >I would advise against it. Anon Cafe is a great website but it tends to be unstable on a weekly basis. Could it just be my rotten luck but that's how it always feels like. True, but it might be worth the tradeoff. >>974 >Also, I have about 1'000 of your files, 1GB in size, scraped together using my archiver program. Nice.
https://archive.org/details/computes-programming-the-commodore-64-the-definitive-guide-revised-edition Found this book about programming the Commodore 64 which goes from learning BASIC all the way to 6502 assembly, opcodes, and expanding BASIC with assembly. I'm the anon who was doing 8086 assembly on DOS, I ended up dropping the book because the last chapters are very borying copypasta, but it taught me valuable programming lessons and experience.
>>972 I haven't had any issues with anon.cafe in the past few months, but yeah it used to be pretty unstable.
>>972 Robi seems like a good admin. But yes this site is I guess not the best because of what appears to me to be severe autism that is so incomprehensible it borders on the extraterrestrial to me. >>974 I think you're right about the demeanor thing. >>975 Also agreed, /retro/ is the only board on this site I ever use. I tried /tech/ once and some guy just blew up on me about some meaningless thing so I left. >>976 That's pretty cool, I guess I'll download that. I still haven't sourced a new power supply for my C64 so it's still dormant right now
>>975 >I like that idea. Isn't anon.cafe invisible from the tvchan webring list though? Anoncafe had 404'd their webring.json file to help gain cover from the potential shitstorm that evil cakefat asshole on 8moe stirred when (((HBO))) interviewed him. I had the impression they would reenable it if a webring meltdown didn't ensue. >Nice. It's primarily for the benefit of preserving the site, not as entertainment solely for myself.
I'm gonna request a board on anon.cafe again, lets see what happens.
>>979 >Anoncafe had 404'd their webring.json file to help gain cover from the potential shitstorm that evil cakefat asshole on 8moe stirred when (((HBO))) interviewed him. I had the impression they would reenable it if a webring meltdown didn't ensue. Got it. That makes perfect sense. >It's primarily for the benefit of preserving the site, not as entertainment solely for myself. Thanks for doing it either way.
>>982 >Thanks for doing it either way. A pleasure. Just in case you ever need it, drop me a line over in >>>/robowaifu/8492 . I may miss it here or Anoncafe. Cheers /retro/ !
>>981 Good job, it looks like you succeeded.
>>984 Oh shit, nice. I can add volunteers if anyone wants to help out, just make an account on anon.cafe. >>974 Awesome, can you upload it?
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Really glad you guys are alive, i thought you had all broke apart some months ago, still i think i replied to some of you in other boards and sites over time. But still, now we can post like in the early refugee days. Also not to be an asshole but... i told ya we should've moved here after the dolphin attack, being on the IRC i knew things were fucked and this place had similar anons
>>992 found my way here too. let's see if it takes off again. My only gripe with anon.cafe is that there's coomer pr0n shit on this site. I wish there were chans without any of that garbage.
>>992 I'm glad the BO took the initiative in bringing the board over here. Hopefully we can get posters here who aren't the tiny handful of us who were posting at the previos board by the end. >>1024 I have no problem with it.
The January 1968 issue of this magazine has an excellent article on reading Hexadecimal on the PDF's page 47: http://www.bitsavers.org/magazines/Datamation/196801.pdf
>>1077 >a little schizo about data are you? Stopped reading there, what the hell is IB lingo doing in a 1968 magazine.
>>1159 It's spook lingo, the CIA was well-known to use certain strong words and phrases to cast certain people as outsiders since the days Kennedy got killed.
Netiquette RFC: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt >Always say goodbye, or some other farewell, and wait to see a >farewell from the other person before killing the session. This >is especially important when you are communicating with someone >a long way away. Remember that your communication relies on both >bandwidth (the size of the pipe) and latency (the speed of light). That one fag who would only log off the MMO after everyone said goodbye just had good netiquette.
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>>815 I've always liked the chrome cases, they always had that 2000s aesthetic to me. my first case was a full ATX ABS (remember them?) prebuilt from 2003 that weighs like 20 pounds but is solid metal with a huge plastic panel on the side. switched to a new one for practical reasons, having a microATX motherboard in a case like that is a waste.
>>1769 I wish we had PCs the way they thought we're gonna have PCs in the 80s and 90s.
>>1772 I just wish we had an Internet sans Steve Jobs, and the hordes of NPCs he unleashed on the world via the fagphone. Oh well, the past is in the behind. Best play the shit hand we've been dealt.
>>1774 Internet was getting mainstream'd even without Jewbs. Every console was getting online, everything was getting online. It was inevitable.
>>1767 That reminds me of this watch, it looked so cool. Fuck I miss those mini analog tvs so much.
>>1775 Heh, which timeline you on Anon? Cause in this one, that event was the bursting of a inglorious dam that within just a few years turned the entire Internet into the open cesspit of Marxism it is today.
>>1777 Learn to read.
>>1776 >watch with tv There was such a thing?
>>1776 I remember an episode of Columbo (believe it was 'Columbo Goes To College') which had a plot based around these. >>1780 Probably not affordable to most ordinary people.
>>1793 >Probably not affordable to most ordinary people. I'm more baffled that it was technologically possible back then.
>>1794 90s smartwatches are just as impressive
>>1804 Damn, now that looks like true future.
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>>1775 >Internet was getting mainstream'd even without Jewbs. True, but many technologies had not matured to the level where they were accepted by the public. For example WebTV was released in the USA in 1996, but the concept did not actually become successful until much later with the "smart device" generation. Not completely related, but never the less interesting. The founding members of WebTV were all Jews, and one went on to co-found Carrier IQ, which was used on feature phones. It has a very interesting story associated with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_IQ
>>803 Man the Audrey got robbed. If it had come out only a few years later then they would have taken off.
>>1895 That's a neat one, I've never heard of it before. Having read it came loaded with QNX, that seems noteworthy. Blackberry bought that OS in relatively recent times. It's one of the few microkernal based OS around, maybe the only proprietary commercial one I can think of.
Oh man I can't believe that no one has posted this magnificent thing yet. The TAM, Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. It was really an exercise in over engineering at the time. Note that big Bose subwolfer. It is not optional because it contains the power supply for the whole computer.
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>>1934 I don't understand the reasoning for that computer, it appears to be the three major components of a laptop (screen, keyboard, and base), rearranged to meet the form factor of a desktop. The aesthetic of the later PowerMac Cube is by far, much better. Although, it was released four years later, which is significant for the high-velocity state of change in the mid to late 90s.
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>>882 I agree, the Outrigger case is a wonderful Mac design, probably the best of the beige ones. The use of translucent and colored plastics with the iMac G3 was a neat change when it happened, but the weird shapes they used, e.g. puck mouse and clam shell laptop, are cringe. The subdued rib texture on some of the surfaces, face plates, is still a very pleasing aesthetic all these years later.
>>974 Mind you to share which chan archiver you use? If selfwritten, are you willing to share source + setup instructions?
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Posted this on zzz/v/ but i'll repost it here, I got my Win2K machine up and running and I am loving it. >AMD Athlon XP 2600+ >MSI KM4M-L >Sapphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro >80GB WD Caviar HDD >40GB WD Caviar HDD >2x512MB DDR >Creative Audigy SoundBlaster 2 >WinFAST TV 2000 XP Tuner Vidya includes: >Rise of Nations >SimCity 4 >Far Cry >Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 >Deus Ex: Invisible War >Clue >Scrabble >Diablo >Diablo II + Lords of Destruction and a bunch of others that I'm forgetting. Either way it's running much smoother now that I've applied new thermal paste to the CPU and GPU (although I still named it Housefire). Also made sure to install all the extras that came on the CDs like XFire and GameSpy.
>>2021 Nice. How well does Rise of Nations run? I was playing it on a computer running XP at the time but don't remember the system specs.
>>2021 >zzz ewe! that site is fucking lame did you know its run by a 40 year old postal worker
>>2022 I haven't gotten to it yet, but I assume it would run fine. Everything I've thrown at the Radeon has held up so far.
>>2025 >did you know its run by a 40 year old postal worker What's wrong with that?
>>2025 >did you know its run by a 40 year old postal worker Could be way worse, especially in the imageboard circles where it has been bad often. The problem are the mods and the users.
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>>2025 >did you know its run by a 40 year old postal worker so?
>>2027 >>2030 >postal worker I take it you've never interacted with one
>>815 Chrome was okay as long as it was brushed and not glossy. The case should be nondescript and not reflect light everywhere. Though reflecting light is still better than shining it everywhere like that RGB stuff of today.
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Have you ever performed cablegami?
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I was curious and looked up "what was the fastest 8086 clone?" I found this blog post: http://www.z80.eu/blog/index.php?entry=entry190310-150623 Apparently it was the 8086 in this NEC machine.
>>2069 I wish I had seen this 25 years ago.
>>2047 Black and matte silver have been mainstream since the mid 00s. Even new computers are black, silver, white or some combination of those shades. The colour tinted metallic ones are pretty unique, like the Sony Vaio, or HP used smokey translucent plastics. You do not normally see that anymore on desktops, but maybe on some laptops.
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>>2021 Hell yeah! Excellent choice with Win2k and an Athlon. They make for fantastic retro development workstations and gaming machines. I just cycled from an OC'd Pentium MMX @ 300MHz to a K6-III 450 to an underclocked tbird at 600MHz before discovering that sandisk CF cards don't work well with udma on older boards. >although I still named it Housefire Athlons run hot regardless of your cooling. Since that rig is overkill for most of your games, you might want to try underclocking/undervolting the CPU a bit. The tbird I'm using is rated at 1200MHz@1.75v, but it runs over 20C cooler at 600/1.55v.
>>878 /retro/ /tech/fag reporting in. >>882 >Oh fuck, I also wanna get into it. Here are some useful resources if you're still interested: http://textfiles.com/programming/dostech.pro ^ comprehensive set of interrupt lists, memory maps, and technical documentation for DOS and the PC. http://textfiles.com/programming/CARDS/8088 ^ quick instruction set reference card. Useful for some operations, though complex instructions like mul, div, stos/cmps/movs/lods, etc. aren't covered very well. http://textfiles.com/programming/ibmbios.txt ^ covers IBM BIOS interrupt handlers. http://textfiles.com/programming/ports.lst ^ common I/O ports and addresses. Use unless contradicted by dostech.pro http://bitsavers.org/components/intel/8086/9800722-03_The_8086_Family_Users_Manual_Oct79.pdf ^ what it says on the tin. https://www.plantation-productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/DOS/AoADosIndex.html ^ online archive of the Art of Assembly Language Programming. You can find PDFs of the book as well. >>888 If you don't want to pirate, then jwasm is available on freedos. It's masm/tasm compatible and includes newer masm features like high level conditional macros and invoke statements. You can also use macro packages like nasmx, though masm compatible assembler is more or less the gold standard for IBM compatibles. It might be helpful to make a retro development thread. Thoughts?
>>2202 >It might be helpful to make a retro development thread. Thoughts? Sure, but I probably won't be of much use because all the programming I do is in C and for the modern unices. BTW, I ended up dropping Peter Norton's book. It feels like he gave up in the last few chapters: they're a lot of copypasting with little to no explanation. The parts before that were some of the best programming lessons I've had though.
>>2204 >It feels like he gave up in the last few chapters: they're a lot of copypasting with little to no explanation. That's a shame! Was there anything he missed or was it to the point where the topics didn't really need to be included anymore? >all the programming I do is in C and for the modern unices For the most part, same here, buuuut the portability that C offers isn't exclusive to the present or future. I recently wrote a really shitty terminal snake game (which was itself sort of a port of a DOS assembly implementation) on a PPC mac running tiger. It was then possible to get it running on my modern linux box with IIRC two or three small changes that didn't break back-portability to the mac. More complex graphical applications would definitely be harder, but there are widget libraries like XForms that have been stable for decades now.
Tried to retro-theme. I'm happy with it.
>>2208 >That's a shame! Was there anything he missed or was it to the point where the topics didn't really need to be included anymore? The interface was ready and the program was reading from a hardcoded disk sector, what was left were the menus to let the user pick which sector to read and the screen editor for editing those sectors before writing them back.
>>2213 Oh god, UI is always a bitch when you can't just fall back on some pretty defaults and widget libraries. >>2209 Looking good! The title bar text is fantastic.
>>2031 kek, the ones at my local office are literally like Newman. they're all extremely disgruntled and do a terrible job. The other day I went in around 11am and I hear the fat bastard behind the counter mumbling about how he wishes the day would be over already, before lunch even started. And a couple weeks ago this postal worker came blaring some typical junk on a speaker he was carrying (take a guess what this guy looked like), so I reported it to the USPS and the next time I saw him, he was wearing earbuds.
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have this
>>878 Gotta love Peter "poosy deestroyer" Norton
>>2254 Imagine the cost of the computer they're using. It feels strange to see 3D CGI when the average computer from that time barely had 2D and mainly used text mode for everything.
I was searching for a clear trackball mouse and found a good thread. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pre-and-post-imac-g3-uses-of-translucent-plastics.2308014/
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>Alpha Architecture, lecture by Richard L. Sites and Dirk Meyer https://invidious.namazso.eu/watch?v=klg1FtHADso Excellent lecture. Makes a lot of correct predictions of the future and explains some good goddamn design.
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I have been considering semi-seriously getting an SGI Indigo or Onyx to aid in making 3D models that are true to the Y2K aesthetic. Because these machines are MIPS they can't really be emulated, as well as their proprietary OS (some people have booted IRIX in Qemu but it's completely unusable). They're also insanely priced because of scalpers and the retro community, so each machine could cost $500+ at a minimum, and that's for ones in a beat-up state. People are even selling the mouse it came with for $100. Would something like this even be worth it? Or should I just get an old version of Blender instead?
>>2510 >Would something like this even be worth it? It would be a cool piece of computing history but probably not worth it just to model /retro/ stuff. >Or should I just get an old version of Blender instead? You don't even need an old version, the 2 main parts of retro CG are technique and rendering. For instance you can do CSG with primitives just fine and the POVRay 3 addon just needs to be enabled in the settings. If you wanted something less advanced than Blender then there's always Wings 3D (which is readily packaged in various distros).
>>2511 >If you wanted something less advanced than Blender then there's always Wings 3D (which is readily packaged in various distros). Not that guy, but that seems relevant to my interests now that I've looked it up. It's got POV-Ray support and everything.
>>2510 I'd recommend not doing that yet and instead first trying something like 3D Studio (not MAX, get it on winworld or vetusware) for DOS or Lightwave for the Amiga line of computers, to see if that fits your needs.
>>2510 If you want one, you had better act quickly. They've entered the bad part of the bathtub curve. You're probably aware of Nekochan. You should consider using Izware Nendo which Wings 3D was inspired by.
>>1077 What a fascinating article! It's true: every programmer should learn that table. I'll reproduce it here: Hexadecimal-Binary-Decimal ¦ Digit Conversion ¦ hex binary decimal o 0000 0 1 0001 1 2 0010 2 3 0011 3 4 0100 4 5 0101 5 6 0110 6 7 0111 7 8 1000 8 9 1001 9 A 1010 10 B 1011 11 C 1100 12 D 1101 13 E 1110 14 F 1111 15
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I got an early 2000's Dell laptop, the Latitude D400 running Void Linux but I plan to try Haiku OS on it. Haiku OS as a really retro feel and I think it will fit that bad boy very well... Will dig in it soon as I haven't much free time right now. I can't wait.
>>2583 The icons definitely do have a 2000s feel to them.
>>2583 Looks fun. The interface graphics remind me of a cross between Mac OS 7 and the classic Windows look.
>>2099 I love that version of Kings Quest. The graphics are much better than the original, but not ostentatious.
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>>2583 My bad, it's a Latitude D610 (I wasn't at home when writting this). Just finished the install and updating packages right now, it's pretty fast compared to Void Linux on this old laptop. First impression : it's fast, lightweight, comfy and pleasantly /retro/. I'm impatient to dig more in it. Will try to rice it up a little (without altering the retrostyle), tweaks some things and learn the basic features. Just rebooting after update, it's daaaaaaamn fast ! Web browser is fast to. On Void I used Falkon (a lightweight KDE browser) and it was slow and tend to crash. I'm happy, like a kid with a new toy discovering a new OS and new things to learn. And most of all a friendly OS that I can use on my old computer.
>>2591 I've ported programs to Haiku. It has its original C++ API, but also, it has a C POSIX programming interface with a few extensions that are common in the free world. It's easy to write programs for it as if it was any Unix because it is one as far as the C programmer is concerned.
>>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 ;)
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>>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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>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.
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>>2798 Here's a video of the entire barn area to get a sense of the chatter and how crowded it was.
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>>2799 GOTTA GO FAST
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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.
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>>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.
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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.

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