Show off your old and retro computer parts

[Brian McKee]

My Wyse wy-60 dumby terminal.

 

Working from home

[da na]

Just now, Brian McKee said:

My Wyse wy-60 dumby terminal.

 

Working from home

Great terminal (and gorgeous picture)! 

What do you have it plugged into? 

[Brian McKee]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

Great terminal (and gorgeous picture)! 

What do you have it plugged into? 

Only the wall, it has some very basic functionality like word processing and calculations but can not save anything. I have plans for it at some point to hook it up to a raspberry pi to use it as a terminal for my server.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

Only the wall, it has some very basic functionality like word processing and calculations but can not save anything. I have plans for it at some point to hook it up to a raspberry pi to use it as a terminal for my server.

Good luck with that, then! 

Wyse is one of those rare companies that's been around for what, 40? 50? years and haven't changed their business model. I work with their thin clients a little. 

[BrianTheElectrician]

Woah it's been a while since I've been on here. We're in the middle of Reno's and moving though so have been very busy.

 

A shot of *most* of my old machines staged to go up to the interior. We will be somewhat space limited for the next couple years but we will eventually be building a new place, which also means a new workshop. The container were storing a lot of our stuff in I'll probably be converting into my new computer workshop.

 

[Bitter]

13 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Good luck with that, then! 

Wyse is one of those rare companies that's been around for what, 40? 50? years and haven't changed their business model. I work with their thin clients a little. 

Didn't Dell buy out Wyse and just re-brand them as the Dell line of thin clients?

[da na]

1 minute ago, Bitter said:

Didn't Dell buy out Wyse and just re-brand them as the Dell line of thin clients?

Now they're sold as Dell Wyse. 

[da na]

[SimplyChunk]

Question:

I've got a 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drive on it's way and a 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive on the way.  If the system i have is compatible with both of those.  (one has the edge connector the other the standard floppy) and i get a cable with both those connectors on it.  Will i be able to use the one lead and plug both of them in to the floppy header on the board? and have it set as A: and B: ?  I remember that how you had to set up multiple IDE HDDs back in the day but have never done it with floppy drives before.  Will there be jumpers on the drives to set a master/slave priority like with said IDE HDDs?

 

Edit:

This is the lead i have coming:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005JY6UQU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Dabombinable]

14 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

Question:

I've got a 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drive on it's way and a 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive on the way.  If the system i have is compatible with both of those.  (one has the edge connector the other the standard floppy) and i get a cable with both those connectors on it.  Will i be able to use the one lead and plug both of them in to the floppy header on the board? and have it set as A: and B: ?  I remember that how you had to set up multiple IDE HDDs back in the day but have never done it with floppy drives before.  Will there be jumpers on the drives to set a master/slave priority like with said IDE HDDs?

 

Edit:

This is the lead i have coming:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005JY6UQU/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've got shitloads of the very same cables - as long as you stick to the 5.25" FDD plugged into the first edge connector, and have the 3.5" FDD on the last standard connector (aka after the twist) everything will be fine. If you are using boot discs (eg Win95 boot disc) you must have the 3.5" drive at the end as A - found that out the hard way yesterday.

Because of the twist in the cable there are no jumpers needed. You will need to change the settings in the BIOS regarding the installed FDD manually - I personally haven't seen a board with a BIOS smart enough to auto detect FDD.

[Mitko_DSV]

Here's one long post...

So last week Monday I think it was I randomly opened a Bulgarian website similar to craigslist. Decided to browse the ads that show up on the homepage of the webiste and saw an inetresting ad - a guy was selling 4 PCs for 10 lv. each (~$5.31 USD), said they were imported from Germany and he was selling them how he got them (untested). Two of the PCs I found interesting (there were only pictures of the outside) and decided to buy them. So with shipping I spent a total of 37 lv. (~$19.66 USD), shipping says they are 22 kg in total. I recieved them "packaged" with little packaging foil on the sides and that was it, though they had no shipping damage which is good. So what did I get?

Well, neither had a GPU or HDD. The orange one (on the sticker on the front in the middle it says 'Powered by ASUS') had no RAM either, the black Medion had a single stick 1GB DDR2.

This case has some rust and this is the worst of it:

And the Medion:

And there's a place for an axternal HDD on the top of the case? Is this what this is? I have no idea.

On this one I imideately noticed two things - the PSU has been opened (not the right screws) and it had two bad caps.

I opened the PSU and there was a loose screw inside it, though except missing or wrong screws everething else seems normal, it works fine.

I decided to test them. First I tried to test the Medion, installed a GPU in it, but it didn't boot, just beeped. I decided to change the caps later and try again. Went on to test the orange one (put the RAM and GPU from the Medion in this one). Plugged it in and nothing, no signs of life. PSU semeed questionable.

So I decided to test with a different PSU.

And it works.

Plugged in power to the CD drive and put a Hiren's boot CD in it. CD drive works as well and it booted just fine. Floppy doesn't work though.

So far so good. Took the Medion's motherboard (it's a MSI MS-7502). So I tried to change the bad caps with goods ones from another dead motherboard. It didn't go as planned....

When I tried desoldering the bad caps they fell apart and I decided instead of struggling to unsolder the pieces, just to solder the 'new' caps on the bottom, it seemed there was plenty of space in the case there. Well, yes and no. The cap on the left in the picture fits perfectly fine, but the other one didn't fit, so I had to modify the case a bit. It doesn't look good, but it works (both for my soldering and the modification of the case).

Of course before I went on to modify the case I tested if it works. Changed the CMOS battery as well and it works.

So I installed it in the case. The PSU it had when I bought it I put in the orange PC and in this one I put a FSP Group 250W PSU. The PSU it came with, while it works, is definitely not from this PC, it didn't even have SATA power, the FSP one has.

I also put a 250GB HDD with Windows 11 installed (it was in a different PC I built out of spare parts to test Win11 when it came out). Turned it on and it stared booting.

After about 3-4 minutes it had booted and even had installed all the drivers (the GPU I took from the PC I took the HDD from so it already had the GPU driver). Also it is not connected to the internet.

I decided to try the sound (it doesn't work, though drivers are installed), when I clicked the sound icon and the menu opened I noticed something strange - a WiFi button active. Does this thing have WiFi? It does and it works, didn't expect this.

So Windows 11 installed all drivers for this PC (except GPU driver) without internet, that was kinda unexpected. Though with a Dual-core CPU, 3GB DDR2 RAM and on a HDD, it won't be the best experience. For testing if this PC works at all, it did great. Tested the DVD drive as well and it works.

Honestly I'm happy I bought these PCs. The Medion I will definitely keep, but the other one I'm not sure (will probably sell the motherboard + CPU and keep the rest). Maybe I'll keep everything, not yet sure, but I have plenty of PCs, definetely more than I need. On the last three pictures the monitor is running at 85Hz and my phone's camera couldn't sync to it, when it ran at 60Hz picuters turned out great. Unfortunately, I remembered this too late and didn't have time to take new pictures.

Actually, is the Asus P5B motherboard worth keeping (the one in the orange PC)? Does anyone know what the orange case even is?

[SimplyChunk]

11 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

I've got shitloads of the very same cables - as long as you stick to the 5.25" FDD plugged into the first edge connector, and have the 3.5" FDD on the last standard connector (aka after the twist) everything will be fine. If you are using boot discs (eg Win95 boot disc) you must have the 3.5" drive at the end as A - found that out the hard way yesterday.

Because of the twist in the cable there are no jumpers needed. You will need to change the settings in the BIOS regarding the installed FDD manually - I personally haven't seen a board with a BIOS smart enough to auto detect FDD.

Look like i got some fun and games coming then.  I'm hoping once we've recovered all the Data from the floppy discs he's gonna wash his hands of it all like he did this HDD dock.  So i'll have a banging XP or 98se machine in the collection

[Dabombinable]

5 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

Look like i got some fun and games coming then.  I'm hoping once we've recovered all the Data from the floppy discs he's gonna wash his hands of it all like he did this HDD dock.  So i'll have a banging XP or 98se machine in the collection

As it happens - me ordering a 5.25" FDD recently was because of these (the Chinon drive I was given years ago had a destroyed head):

[Bitter]

Nice, that orange/red case is a Cheiftec Dragon or whatever it got branded as there. A lot of companies used that chassis for custom builds, I have one from Koolance with an integrated water cooling system. Absolute UNIT of a case and built to last. It's worth repairing the cosmetic damages or stripping it to part out, it's hard to get the parts for them these days. I lost so many bits and baubles from mine that I wish I still had.

[SimplyChunk]

25 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

As it happens - me ordering a 5.25" FDD recently was because of these (the Chinon drive I was given years ago had a destroyed head):

I've managed to pick up a black facia 1.2MB Panasonic 5.25" from eBay. the guy was asking a bit much i think but i managed to persuede him to accept offers and saved my step dad 20 quid on it.  Plus he's given me a 14 day moneyback agreement so if it isn't working when it comes i can just get in touch.  I'm guessing if it works out the box it'll last long enough to swipe some CAD files off some floppies.  Only paid a tenner for the 3.5" Sony black facia drive posted.

 

Anything over say, 20-25 years old now isn't cheap anymore is it?

[da na]

On the topic of old cases... anyone who might be willing to adopt this? It's a great case but I lack the space for it, and I'd rather it go to another enthusiast than be scrapped.

Spoiler

It's almost 2x the height of a mATX, around the height of mATX+SFF. Weighs probably 15-20lbs on its own. I probably won't be shipping it. It's a SuperMicro, I forget the actual number though. No clue why it has to be so tall, there's absolutely nothing on the inside above the motherboard.

[SimplyChunk]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

On the topic of old cases... anyone who might be willing to adopt this? It's a great case but I lack the space for it, and I'd rather it go to another enthusiast than be scrapped.

  Hide contents

It's almost 2x the height of a mATX, around the height of mATX+SFF. Weighs probably 15-20lbs on its own. I probably won't be shipping it. It's a SuperMicro, I forget the actual number though. 

I'd love it..but you're...toooo....faaaarrr.......awaaaayyyy... lol

[Bitter]

Is it made for redundant power supplies?

[da na]

1 minute ago, Bitter said:

Is it made for redundant power supplies?

Nope. It's completely empty on the inside above the tray, 1 PSU cutout in the back. It seems to be just for the 5.25 bays but why would you ever need that many? Probably becuase it doesn't have any internal 3.5? 

[Bitter]

22 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Nope. It's completely empty on the inside above the tray, 1 PSU cutout in the back. It seems to be just for the 5.25 bays but why would you ever need that many? Probably becuase it doesn't have any internal 3.5? 

Weird. Maybe from before 3.5 drives?

https://www.newegg.com/fairdog-5-bay-3-cd-rom-drive-to-5-x-3-5-bay/p/1B0-0179-00001

That would stuff some drives in it, if you wanted to use it for a NAS or something or if someone else did. I have similar bays in my Coolermaster which at the moment just hold fans because it's all NVME storage in this PC.

 

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Weird. Maybe from before 3.5 drives?

https://www.newegg.com/fairdog-5-bay-3-cd-rom-drive-to-5-x-3-5-bay/p/1B0-0179-00001

That would stuff some drives in it, if you wanted to use it for a NAS or something or if someone else did. I have similar bays in my Coolermaster which at the moment just hold fans because it's all NVME storage in this PC.

 

Came with a crap ton of drive rails in the 3.5", and an equal amount of hard drives just sitting on the bottom of the case. (Those did not work.) 

Probably didn't predate 3.5", it's a late 90s-early 2000s case and double digit GB IDE drives was probably the target type. I recall no 3.5" except for FDD being a complaint in a review of it I read. It does have an internal 5.25" though, for half height 5.25" HDDs (strange, most 5.25" HDDs are full height) or that one CD you really like. 

[Bitter]

33 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Came with a crap ton of drive rails in the 3.5", and an equal amount of hard drives just sitting on the bottom of the case. (Those did not work.) 

Probably didn't predate 3.5", it's a late 90s-early 2000s case and double digit GB IDE drives was probably the target type. I recall no 3.5" except for FDD being a complaint in a review of it I read. It does have an internal 5.25" though, for half height 5.25" HDDs (strange, most 5.25" HDDs are full height) or that one CD you really like. 

Truly a mystery. A case made to solve a problem that no one had.

[SimplyChunk]

@Mel0nMan @Bitter It may have been full of removeable drive trays at one point.  Quick swap in and quick swap out was quite the luxury back then

[da na]

2 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

@Mel0nMan @Bitter It may have been full of removeable drive trays at one point.  Quick swap in and quick swap out was quite the luxury back then

Might have been an application for this case but with IDE not being hotswap... 

[Bitter]

2 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Might have been an application for this case but with IDE not being hotswap... 

That didn't stop my highschool CAD and Networking lab from using them, just don't hot swap!