Show off your old and retro computer parts

[flibberdipper]

I'll add in another "IDE cables can be flaky as hell" comment. I've got a pair of black ASUS cables, and with the P3TDDE in my XP rig it just absolutely refuses to acknowledge a drive over 30GB with them properly, both on the onboard IDE controller as well as RAID. Sucks though because those are some nice looking cables, so now I've just got an Alienware blueish purple? one kinda hidden underneath the shortie I use for the DVD drive.

[atxcyclist]

Man, I have so many IDE cables sitting around, rarely use them anymore but occasionally the need arises. I find the 80-conductor ones to be significantly more reliable than the 40 conductor, but that probably has to do with the age of them more than anything.

 

I have an Intel desktop board that I set up as a nearly universal hardware tester and data recovery tool, it's last time I fooled with an IDE cable. DG31PR: has an IDE controller, floppy controller, SATA with AHCI mode, PCI-express, and a few PCI slots. I have a 1.44mb 3.5", IDE DVD burner from long ago, and the board has a Core2Duo and 2x2gb of 800mhz DDR2 (I believe) running Windows 7. If someone digs up a 3.5" diskette or an IDE hard drive they need something off of, it's available to me.

[Corrupt_Liberty]

On 2/27/2021 at 1:01 AM, Hakemon said:

I was getting tired of USB floppy drives all performing poorly.  Now while this solution still doesn't give me double density support, I did build my own USB floppy drive out of a OWC enclosure, and one of those Amazon USB FDC controllers (they use a Teac FDC controller and work well if you feed the drive external power, and not USB power).  I also cleaned, and refurbished this lovely black with amber LED Teac drive I purchased on eBay and put new white lithium grease on it.

 

Now I have a USB floppy that performs quite well and reads all my high density disks with ease and good reliability.  Why am I using this?  No real reason, just nostalgia and I like putting some stuff on floppy disk.  lol  And play my original copies of my old games.

 

 

 

On 2/27/2021 at 10:42 AM, FakeKGB said:

That's what I did for my floppy drive. The first one I got didn't let me write to disks, but they sent us another for free and that one worked.

I'm currently using USB power because (unlike what the Newegg listing said) the GM-750 doesn't have floppy power, but it works fine right now.

I'd like to switch it away as soon as I can, though.

 

My floppy solution is a little different...

 

I am using a Panasonic LS-120 SuperDisk drive I salvaged out of an External Parallel enclosure.  It was IDE internally so with a PCIe IDE controller card it works great in Windows 10.  I have full support for HD Floppy disks and SuperDisks (Windows just calls it Large Format Floppy), and I can read DD floppies.  Still can't Format DD floppy disks, Windows dropped support for that long ago.

 

Still can't get USB support to work in Windows 10 for my Panasonic PV-SD4090 Camera.  I was able to create an XP VM and pass the USB through to the virtual machine and read disks from the camera that way.  Kind of a clunky work around but it works.  I also use these disks with a PCMCIA drive on a Compaq LTE 5400 running Windows 95.  Makes it easy to transfer files.  Still on the lookout for an IBM Thinkpad with a Native SuperDIsk drive.

[flibberdipper]

3 hours ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

My floppy solution is a little different...

 

I am using a Panasonic LS-120 SuperDisk drive I salvaged out of an External Parallel enclosure.  It was IDE internally so with a PCIe IDE controller card it works great in Windows 10.  I have full support for HD Floppy disks and SuperDisks (Windows just calls it Large Format Floppy), and I can read DD floppies.  Still can't Format DD floppy disks, Windows dropped support for that long ago.

 

Still can't get USB support to work in Windows 10 for my Panasonic PV-SD4090 Camera.  I was able to create an XP VM and pass the USB through to the virtual machine and read disks from the camera that way.  Kind of a clunky work around but it works.  I also use these disks with a PCMCIA drive on a Compaq LTE 5400 running Windows 95.  Makes it easy to transfer files.  Still on the lookout for an IBM Thinkpad with a Native SuperDIsk drive.

Great, now I want to find a black ZIP disk drive for in my XP rig, some bigger (maybe 250MB?) disks for it, and then a USB one I can use on my regular desktop.

 

Do I have any use for it? Absolutely not.

[WhitetailAni]

3 hours ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

My floppy solution is a little different...

 

I am using a Panasonic LS-120 SuperDisk drive I salvaged out of an External Parallel enclosure.  It was IDE internally so with a PCIe IDE controller card it works great in Windows 10.  I have full support for HD Floppy disks and SuperDisks (Windows just calls it Large Format Floppy), and I can read DD floppies.  Still can't Format DD floppy disks, Windows dropped support for that long ago.

 

Still can't get USB support to work in Windows 10 for my Panasonic PV-SD4090 Camera.  I was able to create an XP VM and pass the USB through to the virtual machine and read disks from the camera that way.  Kind of a clunky work around but it works.  I also use these disks with a PCMCIA drive on a Compaq LTE 5400 running Windows 95.  Makes it easy to transfer files.  Still on the lookout for an IBM Thinkpad with a Native SuperDIsk drive.

That was my original plan but then I got three old computers, each with a HD 3.5" floppy drive.

If I do find an LS-120 (or LS-240, yes there were 240MB SuperDisks) I'll be swapping them (and buying an IDE to SATA adapter because I don't have any spare IDE controllers).

[Dabombinable]

11 hours ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

 

 

My floppy solution is a little different...

 

I am using a Panasonic LS-120 SuperDisk drive I salvaged out of an External Parallel enclosure.  It was IDE internally so with a PCIe IDE controller card it works great in Windows 10.  I have full support for HD Floppy disks and SuperDisks (Windows just calls it Large Format Floppy), and I can read DD floppies.  Still can't Format DD floppy disks, Windows dropped support for that long ago.

 

Still can't get USB support to work in Windows 10 for my Panasonic PV-SD4090 Camera.  I was able to create an XP VM and pass the USB through to the virtual machine and read disks from the camera that way.  Kind of a clunky work around but it works.  I also use these disks with a PCMCIA drive on a Compaq LTE 5400 running Windows 95.  Makes it easy to transfer files.  Still on the lookout for an IBM Thinkpad with a Native SuperDIsk drive.

Your drive might be the reason you can't format DD disks:

 

I've been mounting it in DOS box so I can use it as I would my old 386 (some of my games only ran on it).

[Corrupt_Liberty]

2 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

Your drive might be the reason you can't format DD disks:

Not sure what you mean.  I don't know of any drive that will format DD disks under Windows 10. I could be wrong but I've never seen it. 

[flibberdipper]

15 minutes ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

Not sure what you mean.  I don't know of any drive that will format DD disks under Windows 10. I could be wrong but I've never seen it. 

I've literally got a run-of-the-mill Dell branded TEAC USB drive that formats them perfectly fine lol

[Corrupt_Liberty]

2 hours ago, flibberdipper said:

I've literally got a run-of-the-mill Dell branded TEAC USB drive that formats them perfectly fine lol

Interesting.  I may have to try a couple more USB drives then.  I've never been able to get one to format 720K.  

[Dabombinable]

2 hours ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

Interesting.  I may have to try a couple more USB drives then.  I've never been able to get one to format 720K.  

You said double density. Older 720K floppies are a different story - I went straight from 5.25" to 3.5" DD. Never even touched a 720k disk.

[Mitko_DSV]

On 3/13/2021 at 7:17 AM, atxcyclist said:

I have an Intel desktop board that I set up as a nearly universal hardware tester and data recovery tool, it's last time I fooled with an IDE cable. DG31PR: has an IDE controller, floppy controller, SATA with AHCI mode, PCI-express, and a few PCI slots. I have a 1.44mb 3.5", IDE DVD burner from long ago, and the board has a Core2Duo and 2x2gb of 800mhz DDR2 (I believe) running Windows 7. If someone digs up a 3.5" diskette or an IDE hard drive they need something off of, it's available to me.

I have set-up something similar, except that mine has a Asus M2N motherboard, AMD Athlon64 x2 4600+ 2.4GHz, 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM single stick (used to have 2+2x1+4 sticks, so total 8GB, but had some issues with that setup, works fine now) and a nVidia GeForce 9500GT 1GB since no integrated GPU. Though I have another Asus M4N68T motherboard that basically has the same features, but a AMD Phenom II x4 B40 and uses DDR3 RAM (I got from a friend when we upgraded his PC). Was thinking to swap the Athlon64 x2 to the Phenom II x4, but I have no practical reason to, I'll find a beter use for the Phenom one day I guess. Honestly can't remember if I've prosted pics of my Athlon64 x2 build, though I'm sure I've never posted the Phenom motherboard and CPU combo.

[Corrupt_Liberty]

8 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

You said double density. Older 720K floppies are a different story - I went straight from 5.25" to 3.5" DD. Never even touched a 720k disk.

Double Density 3.5" Disks are 720K.  High Density 3.5" disks are 1.44M.  I have no issue with High Density disks.

[Corrupt_Liberty]

10 hours ago, Hakemon said:

Make sure you do it from the command line, not from the gui.  The gui won't present you with the option, but the command line options will.

That may be my failure with my existing setup.  I'll give it a try.

[8tg]

They showed up, power adapter pooped out but I found a replacement lying around

The XPE works, the other does not and is spare parts 

[lboolaka_33]

Went to the thrift store to try and find a laptop for refurbishing and then daily use. 

Didn't find that, but I found this ThinkPad 700 for $25. It's seen better days, but I'm willing to bet it will turn on when I get ahold of a charger (if I get an xx30 ThinkPad or older as my daily, the charger will be compatible). 

The hinges are in surprisingly good shape!

This thing was built in 1998 and came with a DVD player! 

I plan on refurbishing it, which means I might not get a total clunker as my daily so I can focus on fixing this. 

Spoiler

There's a good chance that my mother worked on the motherboard of the laptop. It'd be cool if she did!

 

[Kilrah]

Eh, Thinkpad time it seems

 

Nice small and light X21 here with its docking station, P3 700, 256MB RAM, 30GB HDD 

The plastic/coating ages really badly on these though  won't be easy to clean

 

[sub68]

oh lala

thinkpads

[sub68]

here is my moms

T23 thinkpad that survived a celling falling down

Spoiler

T23 beside my old lenovo thinkpad 11e chrombook 3rd gen

 

 

[Kilrah]

Interesting, took my optical drive out of the dock and it's also DVD, but CD-RW too

 

Laptop was manufactured in 06.2001 it seems, but the HDD and ODD are from 2003, wonder if the dock was bought later and the drive upgraded, would have been somewhat unlikely someone would buy a 2 year old model back at that time...

 

 

Previous owner had installed an SD to IDE adapter (but supplied the original drive as well) and that unsurprisingly doesn't work like any other I've tried before, it's recognised but I can fdisk it all I want, it's blank again on next boot. I've put the drive back in for now and might replace it with a CF-IDE since I have one laying around. 

[gamermcplay]

Hi I have An Asus P5kpl-AM mainboard A pentium e5200

2gb Ram Ddr2 No gpu and a 1tb of hdd. its slow what upgrade do i need?

[Bitter]

41 minutes ago, gamermcplay said:

Hi I have An Asus P5kpl-AM mainboard A pentium e5200

2gb Ram Ddr2 No gpu and a 1tb of hdd. its slow what upgrade do i need?

If it'll take it you could drop in a Core2Quad and 4GB of RAM but it'll still be pretty slow.

[BuckDatFitch]

My upgrade path...some of you might remember these. The windforce is a 760 OC. It was a warranty replacement for my second GTX 570. Just waiting for a new card for my latest build. Currently sitting on a 1070ti. Tell me what you think.

 

[Andythebatch]

These are my oldest bits, back from around 1986...

 

 

 

 

and finally the lady herself

she still works, or at least she did last time I plugged her in.  I also have the old printer, floppies for word and excel and some manuals, guide books

 

 

[CorruptedTech]

Only thing I have is a 2013 chromebook.

[KaiserG3]

Fixed my fathers old PC and found his old Pc hardware stash.

 

A 8800 GTX, a Sound blaster live and a promise fasttrak100 raid controller. There was more but I didn't think it was that intresting.