Show off your old and retro computer parts

[SimplyChunk]

Yeah, as i suspected.  It's got a proprietary motherboard and cooler.  ATX sized PSU. motherboard will take standard PSUs.  It's got a Q6600 from '05 in it and 4x1GB DDR.  Think i'll harvest the Quad for my Retro PC and dump the rest 

[Skyesgaming]

14 hours ago, ChonkerFox said:

It may have a Quad in it

Windows Vista 

[Bitter]

2 hours ago, Skyesgaming said:

Windows Vista 

The PC that runs our alignment equipment at work runs Vista.

[SimplyChunk]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

The PC that runs our alignment equipment at work runs Vista.

I keep hearing it was good.  I skipped it and went from XP to 7.  I think it was mainly fighting against the fact that XP 'just worked' and apart from Crysis there wasn't many games that used Vista's selling point of DX10

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, ChonkerFox said:

I keep hearing it was good.  I skipped it and went from XP to 7.  I think it was mainly fighting against the fact that XP 'just worked' and apart from Crysis there wasn't many games that used Vista's selling point of DX10

Thankfully this machine is fully stand-alone, no internet or network connectivity. I know the alignment software can run on newer OS's like 7 and 10 but there's some special drivers for the attached hardware. I'd love to throw an old Haswell i3 system in there (I have plenty of hardware like that laying around) running Win10 just to speed up the system performance but without the install software I don't dare to tinker with it and I need a board with a serial connection or an add-in card for serial. I'm pretty sure I have a Haswell board with serial on it but again blocked by not having the software. I might look into it someday but the odds of the hardware dying are low since it's used so sporadically and not left on for very long. I did swap the HDD to a SSD to reduce the odds of vibration and shock causing a failure. System is just as slow with the SSD since the single core low end AMD CPU and SATA 150 are bottlenecks.

[Dabombinable]

8 hours ago, Bitter said:

The PC that runs our alignment equipment at work runs Vista.

And it would be running on appropriate hardware with good drivers. Something that can't be said for the vast majority of Vista machines right up until 2008 (OEMs killed Vista the same way they did Me - bad hardware configs and bad drivers).

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, Dabombinable said:

And it would be running on appropriate hardware with good drivers. Something that can't be said for the vast majority of Vista machines right up until 2008 (OEMs killed Vista the same way they did Me - bad hardware configs and bad drivers).

It's some old old Dell with whatever their version of a Celeron is and 1 or 2 GB of memory. It literally runs ONLY the alignment software. Sempron maybe? The board can take a dual core CPU but it's not worth the $15 to buy one.

[Dabombinable]

Read it and weep. The Asus P2L97 despite its 440LX chipset has the microcode for Coppermine Pentium III, as well as the processor serial number option. Voltage is good as well, 1.7V instead of 1.65V:

[Dabombinable]

Celeron 300A for comparison:

[BakaPetra]

My Pentium 3 and IBM Socket 370 Terminator

[Bitter]

Direct die cooling lol.

[da na]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

Direct die cooling lol.

Would be fun to delid my K6-2... but it doesn't have a heatsink so that is probably a horrible idea, it would melt itself

[Bitter]

The alignment PC. Vista Home Basic, SP1.

[BakaPetra]

2 hours ago, da na said:

Would be fun to delid my K6-2... but it doesn't have a heatsink so that is probably a horrible idea, it would melt itself

the good old days when 7 different manufacturers ( Intel, AMD, IBM, Cyrix, IDT, Rise, ST ) used the same socket, so you only needed to swap CPU, and not the whole platform to upgrade.

[BakaPetra]

Got a peroid correct case for the Pentium 3. Thermaltake fan controller, LCD display with temperature sensors

[luckybob77]

Thats more of a late Pentium 4 case, than a P3...  its still neat

 

[Bitter]

 

 

[da na]

9 minutes ago, Bitter said:

 

 

not much has changed, people still seem about that adept at navigating a filesystem

[Bitter]

15 minutes ago, da na said:

not much has changed, people still seem about that adept at navigating a filesystem

And installing a printer hasn't gotten any better, at least on the software side of things. If anything worse with Wifi printers.

[Beerzerker]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

And installing a printer hasn't gotten any better, at least on the software side of things. If anything worse with Wifi printers.

Don't remind me - I have a project for dad that will have me determining if his printer is dead or not.
He thinks it's done but wants my opinion about it, which to me will lead to the same conclusion.
In most cases a printer works or it doesn't, there isn't too much you can repair about them without it not being worth the effort to do so, replacement being the best option.

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

And installing a printer hasn't gotten any better, at least on the software side of things. If anything worse with Wifi printers.

I miss the dot matrix that I was given along with my mum's first PC. Up until my stepdad killed the PC when moving I actually used it due to loads of spare printer ribbons (my Mum saw the writing on the wall with those) and reams (meters of?) of foolscap paper.

[Beerzerker]

On 5/5/2023 at 11:35 AM, da na said:

Would be fun to delid my K6-2... but it doesn't have a heatsink so that is probably a horrible idea, it would melt itself

Yeah - My Cyrix chip would be happy about that.... NOT.

 

[Bitter]

39 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Is that screwdriver your cursor? gotta share it mate, it's the law (?)

I'll see if I can figure out how to export the cursor/style pack. It's part of the Snap-On software for the aligner or something. If you link me a how-to I can see about getting the files this week and sharing them.

[flibberdipper]

4 hours ago, Bitter said:

And installing a printer hasn't gotten any better, at least on the software side of things. If anything worse with Wifi printers.

As someone who has to deal with these godforsaken piles of shit on a semi-regular basis, HP is by far the worst in a surprise to absolutely nobody.

 

Also as someone whose entire job revolves around a Xerox D95 and C70, fuck anything that isn't a non-HP laser printer. If I ever have to get a printer for personal use I'm absolutely just gonna find some dingus Brother unit that does color and B+W.

[da na]

8 minutes ago, flibberdipper said:

If I ever have to get a printer for personal use I'm absolutely just gonna find some dingus Brother unit that does color and B+W.

My main printer is an ancient Brother inkjet from like 1880 that I pulled out of ewaste. It's all I could ask for - no WiFi, instead uses a serial port, which my workstation has (and yours should too). I have never had a single issue with it.

...though getting toner for a 30-year-old printer may be an issue eventually.