Show off your old and retro computer parts

[Bitter]

6 hours ago, not telling said:

yeah but this one is larger than the one in the link so..  but what if its MSI 8600 GT but with MSI 8500 GT's passive cooler? welp theres only one way to find out. LETS PUT IT ON MY GAMING PC!

There's another way to find out, read the info off the die.

[WhitetailAni]

11 hours ago, Bitter said:

I thought that was a regular Geforce3, not a Tie 500.

I'm not sure if it is a Ti500 (it isn't super clear) but it looks like a Ti500 so it's most likely a Ti500?

I might try and find out for sure later.

[Bitter]

30 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

I'm not sure if it is a Ti500 (it isn't super clear) but it looks like a Ti500 so it's most likely a Ti500?

I might try and find out for sure later.

Hmm maybe it was and I'm wrong. Figure it out and let me know! You should be able to ascertain from benchmarks fairly well what it is otherwise hardware ID can be pulled from the command line terminal in Linux or you can pull the heat sink and look but those plastic clips are fiddly and 20+ years old, they came off once for me to repaste it before you got it but I wouldn't mess with them unless you have new ones on hand. If you do get some, the spring ones are better since you can stretch the springs a little for better contact pressure.

[BrianTheElectrician]

Well, as of yesterday I can begin learning about and experimenting with Atari computers... Picked this up at a local thrift store that I left my number at in case they got in any old computers. A manager actually called me yesterday that one had come in if I was interested and arrived to this GEM. It boots up and has a 720k disk drive, which is working (formatted a 720k disk on it last night). Didn't come with a mouse but have an adapter on order to be able to use a ps/2 one. Not bad for $50

 

From what I can find, its a 1040ST, which is an upgraded 520ST. It has a Motorola 68000 CPU and 1mb of ram. I believe these were released in 1986.

 

 

[atxcyclist]

Rousted this thing from its slumber. 500mhz G3e, 512mb ram, 16mb Rage 128 Pro AGP video, and a 40gb hard drive. It’s been stored in a closet for many years at this point, I used it for a while around 2007 after buying it from a GoodWill. I have no real use for it currently, but good to see it still boots.

 

Just for grins I fired up GLquake on there, still runs alright!

 

 

[da na]

On 8/1/2021 at 3:01 PM, BrianTheElectrician said:

Well, as of yesterday I can begin learning about and experimenting with Atari computers... Picked this up at a local thrift store that I left my number at in case they got in any old computers. A manager actually called me yesterday that one had come in if I was interested and arrived to this GEM. It boots up and has a 720k disk drive, which is working (formatted a 720k disk on it last night). Didn't come with a mouse but have an adapter on order to be able to use a ps/2 one. Not bad for $50

 

From what I can find, its a 1040ST, which is an upgraded 520ST. It has a Motorola 68000 CPU and 1mb of ram. I believe these were released in 1986.

 

 

Holy cow, used to have an up[graded 1040st. Legitimate offer, if you need any replacement ram or replacement drive controller or replacement keyboard controller I have those chips, I believe the 1040 and mine use the same chips for those.

[Bitter]

Waiting for @FakeKGB
to notice the inside of the side panel.

[BrianTheElectrician]

5 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Holy cow, used to have a 1050st. Legitimate offer, if you need any replacement ram or replacement drive controller or replacement keyboard controller I have those chips, I believe the 1040 and 1050 use the same chips for those.

Thank you for the offer, and that's pretty cool. This is my first Atari system and so far it seems to work fine just have to get some software made up for it and waiting on that mouse adapter. In the meantime at least I can hold "alternate" and move the mouse with the arrow keys. I'm surprised no one has noticed my GEM pun/referance yet

 

So far I've downloaded elite for it so excited to give that a try.

 

What is the difference between the 1040 and 1050?

[da na]

14 minutes ago, BrianTheElectrician said:

Thank you for the offer, and that's pretty cool. This is my first Atari system and so far it seems to work fine just have to get some software made up for it and waiting on that mouse adapter. In the meantime at least I can hold "alternate" and move the mouse with the arrow keys. I'm surprised no one has noticed my GEM pun/referance yet

 

So far I've downloaded elite for it so excited to give that a try.

 

What is the difference between the 1040 and 1050?

I believe the 1050 just had a beefier CPU? Don’t know much, mine died to a psu failure that knocked out some other chips and lots of caps around 2016 but my dad used it for music production for a good 5 years and as a hobby machine after that, he bought it in the 80s. Sadly some caps leaked too and I think that’s why the psu went boom, maybe some electrolyte shorted something, sadly it was not savable. But yeah I believe the 1050 was slightly more powerful afaik, from your pics the enclosure looks the same as I remember mine looking. Mine also had 4 sticks of ram, Goldstar, but I believe they were 1mb each instead of 1mb total, don’t know if that was a later upgrade though.

 

Edit: perhaps a beefier VGA card too? Not sure though.

 

edit 2: I believe it must have been a 1040ste or such, there were a few 1040 series. Can’t find anything called a 1050st but mine definitely had the same case but slightly different and more ram, my bad that I remembered incorrectly 

 

edit 3: I remember the upper function key row being a light blue, slightly lighter than ibm blue but not too light. I also remember it having a slightly different internal layout than the 1040. Wish I could remember exactly what it was…

[Kilrah]

Birthday present, powerbook 520c. I already have a 540c but this one is pretty special since I was with the owner when they picked it up from the store back when I was 13 or so, was the first time I got to see a laptop with a color screen! Spent quite a while doing stuff on it and their other macs in the following years.

 

Was really filthy after having been used for 8 years or so, so it got a full teardown and cleaning. Took the hinges apart to remove the hardened grease and relube as well as reinforced the plastic around the screw posts where they attach on the screen casing with epoxy since those are well known for becoming brittle and breaking, wanted to try and prevent that since there was no damage so far.

 

Disk imaged, wiped, and System 7.5 reinstalled from the 7 floppies and it's all good except for the built-in speakers not working for some reason... I have a feeling I might simply have forgotten to plug them back in, at least I hope that's it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Isnert]

I recently found out my grandfather had a NCIX PC for years and years until we recently got him a nice laptop, and I was wondering would anyone be even interested in holding on to this? I saw a video on LTT a while ago with a NCIX PC that was found on "the side of the road" so I think I might already have my answer, but y'know lol. I think it's cool to still have one of these but I'm going to move soon and I'm considering recycling it at an E-Waste facility.

 

 

[Isnert]

15 minutes ago, Schnoz said:

I'd be definitely interested in holding onto this, refurbishing it, and keeping it out of the e-waste. Would you like to send me a direct message so we can work out further details?

yeah sure

[WhitetailAni]

4 hours ago, Schnoz said:

I noticed that it has a SCSI hard drive. Wasn't that a premium interface for HDDs (like SAS is now) back in the day? 

It was, but Apple used SCSI for pretty much everything then. You had SCSI HDDs in your SE/30, your Quadra 700, etc.

[da na]

4 hours ago, Schnoz said:

I'd be definitely interested in holding onto this, refurbishing it, and keeping it out of the e-waste. Would you like to send me a direct message so we can work out further details?

Beat me to it... But yes, keeping anything out of the e-waste bin is good. Especially when it's something unique like this. Fun fact, my HD 4870 x2 was bought at NCIX.

[Kilrah]

5 hours ago, Schnoz said:

I noticed that it has a SCSI hard drive. Wasn't that a premium interface for HDDs (like SAS is now) back in the day? 

Yup, and Apple used that exclusively until the PowerPC era. An SCSI bus could connect 7 devices, so it kinda made sense given that a lot of macs were limited in expandability internally and there was no other good external interface. This mac used to be connected to a CD drive, a Syquest and a scanner chained on the external SCSI.

 

Also some explanations in here: 

 

[da na]

4 hours ago, Isnert said:

yeah sure

Do you know, by chance, what the specs of the system are?

[da na]

2 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Yup, and Apple used that exclusively until the PowerPC era. An SCSI bus could connect 7 devices, so it kinda made sense given that a lot of macs were limited in expandability internally and there was no other good external interface. This mac used to be connected to a CD drive, a Syquest and a scanner chained on the external SCSI.

 

Also some explanations in here: 

 

Yeah, SCSI was a great standard. It was a quite clever solution to get around limits of number of ports.

[WhitetailAni]

Neighbors across the street are selling their house, and I got some things.

Spoiler

The spindle has a bunch of blank DVDs and the Gateway thing has a bunch of software and games such as Microsoft Works Suite 2000 and Microsoft Golf 1999 Edition.

[da na]

2 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

Neighbors across the street are selling their house, and I got some things.

  Hide contents

The spindle has a bunch of blank DVDs and the Gateway thing has a bunch of software and games such as Microsoft Works Suite 2000 and Microsoft Golf 1999 Edition.

That PC card, is that a Wi-fi card? Also what port does the train go in? Been trying to find that one for years...

[WhitetailAni]

2 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

That PC card, is that a Wi-fi card? Also what port does the train go in? Been trying to find that one for years...

Ye, it's then 802.11g CardBus card. Now I can give my XP laptop double 802.11g power!

[Isnert]

23 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Do you know, by chance, what the specs of the system are?

So it was an i7 system made in 2010 (so i think a 920) but it had some bad hardware issues beyond what i was willing to deal with so i gutted the inside and what lies inside right now is a motherboard supporting intel from 2012 (it had an i7-2600), 12 GB of RAM, and the cooler mounted loosely. It belonged to my grandfather in Port Moody BC who used it to basically check emails for years and years. We bought him a 10th gen i5 laptop about a year ago so i thought it would be cool to keep the case at least. Glad people are interested!

[that one new pc builder]

On 8/1/2021 at 5:12 PM, Bitter said:

There's another way to find out, read the info off the die.

yeah. it was a joke. but i decided to put it on my pc and the pc did not recognize it.

[piemmm]

This (busily being restored, but with a new backplane because the old one was corroded toast). 

Most of it is done now, front panel is restored (the picture shows the condition it arrived in, all corroded and missing switches).

 

It's an 8080 processor - a predecessor to the 8086 and 8088 (kinda like the Z80 which is basically compatible).  Though you can now get up to a 486 in the chassis as someone was mad enough to design the board for it over on the S-100 forums.

[8tg]

New in box Syquest SparQ external drive system.

 

[luckybob77]

@piemmm

 

Now THAT is a retro system.

 

Its a thing of beauty.  If I ever hit the lottery, I've always wanted to build a S-100 system.  Cherish that computer.