Show off your old and retro computer parts

[SimplyChunk]

Abit BH6 1.02 motherboard on freshly painted motherboard tray

 

[luckybob77]

8 hours ago, Schnoz said:

Found a DayStar II Mac upgrade card! Not too sure on the specifics, but I think it looks super neat! Does anyone know more about this thing?

 

 

I dont know exactly what macintosh 2 is goes into, as every adapter is different - that said, I follow this channel, and he made a video about it:  

 

[Mitko_DSV]

19 hours ago, da na said:

I heard that this thin client is good for DOS games... but that's not particularly interesting. Of course it is, DOS will run on damn near anything with a power cord. So let's step it up a notch and push this S3 graphics chip as hard as we can*.

*The CPU is the bottleneck here, funny enough - whether at 1280x1024 max settings or 640x480 16-color and minimum settings, the game runs the exact same. However, in a less CPU intensive game (Unreal Tournament) it'll push 10+ FPS at 1920x1200, and 30 or so at a more reasonable resolution like 1024x768.

I think GTA SA ran a bit better on my eMachines eTower 466i - Intel Celeron 466MHz, 512MB PC133, nVidia GeForce FX5200 128MB PCI, which I find surprising, at first I didn't expect it to run at all, let alone be playable. I actually found the videos I have of it, they are from 2014/2015 and here's a short part of one of the latest ones. Please try to ignore the music, also the game was heavily moded - basically all vehicles replaced and a bunch of other mods added, so I'm guessing the original unmoded game would run much better. I did compress the video, so I could upload it here. Still own this PC, but the GPU isn't in it anymore. Might install it and unmoded GTA SA, just to see how it would run when I have a lot of spare time.

[SpecVengeance]

Just had a customer drop this off to my office to recycle. I have no idea if they were using it, but this thing still works. It's crazy, it has a 2400BPS modem and a 30mb HDD with a non standard connector. This thing is just to cool. 

[OhYou_]

I really hope you rehome it at minimum, surely someone out there wants one of these

[luckybob77]

oh yea, I have a soft spot for IBM machines.  I'd be interested in it.  My first modem was 300 baud.  I remember upgrading to 2400 and getting an AOL installed for the first time.

 

watch your PMs.  ^.^

 

Looks like an IBM PS/1 model 2011

https://oldcrap.org/2021/08/30/ibm-ps-1-model-2011/

[Dabombinable]

On 8/23/2023 at 6:39 PM, Schnoz said:

Found a DayStar II Mac upgrade card! Not too sure on the specifics, but I think it looks super neat! Does anyone know more about this thing?

The potential of early Apple Mac when it comes to upgrades, is just insane.

[Stephen Harris]

My 1984 BBC Micro, still working!

 

If you look very carefully at the last episode of "Secret Invasion" you might see one of these (well, not this model, but it looks the same) in the Russian base!

 

Since I moved to America I got it a few friends...

[Crunchy Dragon]

7 minutes ago, Dabombinable said:

The potential of early Apple Mac when it comes to upgrades, is just insane.

I'm still considering hunting down a 2010 Mac Pro. Those are still touted as the most upgradeable Mac Pros ever, akin to their iMac counterparts from the same year.

 

Back in the good old days when everything was socketed in one way or another....

[Dabombinable]

8 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I'm still considering hunting down a 2010 Mac Pro. Those are still touted as the most upgradeable Mac Pros ever, akin to their iMac counterparts from the same year.

 

Back in the good old days when everything was socketed in one way or another....

Question is though - beyond upgrades, can you really do anything fun with a 2010 Mac Pro?

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Dabombinable said:

Question is though - beyond upgrades, can you really do anything fun with a 2010 Mac Pro?

I would pretty easily be compelled to buy one just so I can set up a RAID array on it and let it be a Time Machine backup server for my other Macs, but that fun would die pretty quickly once I figure out how to make Time Machine back up to my Windows workstation.

 

Beyond that, you would still be using macOS with a regular mouse(unless you bought or own a Magic Trackpad), so probably not.

[Stephen Harris]

2 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

once I figure out how to make Time Machine back up to my Windows workstation.

If you can run docker then odarriba/timemachine works for me (at least on Linux docker).  I have 2 older Macs backing up to it without issues.

 

% cat docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
services:
  timemachine:
    container_name: timemachine
    image: odarriba/timemachine
    volumes:
      - /BACKUP/TimeMachine:/timemachine
    environment:
      - TZ=America/New_York
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "548:548"
      - "636:636"
    environment:
      - AFP_LOGIN=_username_
      - AFP_PASSWORD=_password_
      - AFP_NAME=TM
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, Stephen Harris said:

If you can run docker then odarriba/timemachine works for me (at least on Linux docker).  I have 2 older Macs backing up to it without issues.

 

% cat docker-compose.yml
version: '3'
services:
  timemachine:
    container_name: timemachine
    image: odarriba/timemachine
    volumes:
      - /BACKUP/TimeMachine:/timemachine
    environment:
      - TZ=America/New_York
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "548:548"
      - "636:636"
    environment:
      - AFP_LOGIN=_username_
      - AFP_PASSWORD=_password_
      - AFP_NAME=TM
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000

I'll have to look at that.

 

I'm in the process of building a server that can take over NAS duties from my workstation and I'm looking to virtualize it to be more efficient, so it might end up working out that I can just run a Docker container and not have to jump through any weird convoluted hoops to get Time Machine backing up to an NTFS drive.

 

Buying a Mac Pro and setting that up as the backup server was honestly just the easy way out, and I really don't expect I would ever use a Mac Pro for anything else when a Mac Mini with a Thunderbolt RAID enclosure can do the same thing in a much smaller footprint.

 

Thanks for the note about Docker, I'll definitely check it out.

[roxsonixx]

I don't have anything nearly as impressive as some of what I have seen here. The oldest thing I have is a 3570K with 16GB of Corsair DDR4 running my NAS/Plex box. Used to have a GTX 570 in it but it didn't play well with Linux so I just use the integrated graphics. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

53 minutes ago, roxsonixx said:

I don't have anything nearly as impressive as some of what I have seen here. The oldest thing I have is a 3570K with 16GB of Corsair DDR4 running my NAS/Plex box. Used to have a GTX 570 in it but it didn't play well with Linux so I just use the integrated graphics. 

That'd be DDR3.

 

Either way, Ivy Bridge is almost old enough to qualify as retro and it's certainly old.

[da na]

6 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

That'd be DDR3.

 

Either way, Ivy Bridge is almost old enough to qualify as retro and it's certainly old.

Everything Core 2 onward has aged quite gracefully, I will say - it is incredible how usable 3rd/4th gen i5s still are.

For encoding streams from my retro (GeForce 6800 and FX 4800 SLI) systems I use an Ivy Bridge 16-thread Xeon, does not feel like a decade-old CPU.

[Crunchy Dragon]

2 minutes ago, da na said:

Everything Core 2 onward has aged quite gracefully, I will say - it is incredible how usable 3rd/4th gen i5s still are.

Haswell is probably the oldest I would go for a system that has to be reliable, and that's saying quite something considering Haswell is now 9 years old.

 

Heck, Westmere-EP is still kicking perfectly fine and that's an 11 year old platform by now.

[da na]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Haswell is probably the oldest I would go for a system that has to be reliable, and that's saying quite something considering Haswell is now 9 years old.

 

Heck, Westmere-EP is still kicking perfectly fine and that's an 11 year old platform by now.

I'll go pretty far back. 

I prefer the higher clocked ones, under 2.2ghz can feel pretty sluggish sometimes. However this is my thin-and-light Latitude E4200, so I'll forgive the slightly slower CPU for a 2008 laptop that is so tiny and cute.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, da na said:

I'll go pretty far back. 

-snip-

I prefer the higher clocked ones, under 2.2ghz can feel pretty sluggish sometimes. However this is my thin-and-light Latitude E4200, so I'll forgive the slightly slower CPU for a 2008 laptop that is so tiny and cute.

Yeah, there gets to be a point where clock speed really is king. Usually I like 2.4 as a minimum, with 2.6 being ideal.

Once you've been above 3-4Ghz for so long, it eventually hurts to back down to anything below 3 xD

 

Especially with older CPUs with fewer cores, you really do want the clock speed to make up for low corecount, I feel. I think I'm well beyond using Windows 10 on anything smaller than 6 cores for practical use, though.

I'm really excited for the rest of the parts I need for my home server to come in so I can start messing around with that:

 

[da na]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Yeah, there gets to be a point where clock speed really is king. Usually I like 2.4 as a minimum, with 2.6 being ideal.

Once you've been above 3-4Ghz for so long, it eventually hurts to back down to anything below 3 xD

 

Especially with older CPUs with fewer cores, you really do want the clock speed to make up for low corecount, I feel. I think I'm well beyond using Windows 10 on anything smaller than 6 cores for practical use, though.

I'm really excited for the rest of the parts I need for my home server to come in so I can start messing around with that:

 

I love the 3ghz T9900 on my Latitude E6400 laptop, it is incredibly fast. Same with the Q9100 on my Precision M4400 15" - but that chip can blow through a 98wh battery in under an hour, thus I use it less frequently.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, da na said:

I love the 3ghz T9900 on my Latitude E6400 laptop, it is incredibly fast. Same with the Q9100 on my Precision M4400 15" - but that chip can blow through a 98wh battery in under an hour, thus I use it less frequently.

Yeah, power efficiency(or lack thereof) is pretty wild.

 

I'm amazed I still get as much battery usage out of my MacBook Pro as I do. Apple marketed these as up to 11 hours back in 2019, and I'm still regularly getting 8-10 depending on what I ask it to do.

[iHardware Shelden]

For me Core 2 stuff is more than usable for content consumption, internet browsing and even for some Minecraft. My personal rig I only upgraded due to the soal purpose of being bored and since it won't "safely" run Windows 11.

 

I'm really not looking forward to Windows 10 EOL. I hated feeling like I needed to upgrade my motherboard and CPU just due to security reasons and not performance.

 

Now I have a perfectly good x99 CPU/motherboard collecting dust >_<

[da na]

1 minute ago, iHardware Shelden said:

For me Core 2 stuff is more than usable for content consumption, internet browsing and even for some Minecraft. My personal rig I only upgraded due to the soal purpose of being bored and since it won't "safely" run Windows 11.

 

I'm really not looking forward to Windows 10 EOL. I hated feeling like I needed to upgrade my motherboard and CPU just due to security reasons and not performance.

 

Now I have a perfectly good x99 CPU/motherboard collecting dust >_<

I hope the MS Store does not become incompatible with Windows 10 once it goes out of support - I purchased my video editor from the Store...

[iHardware Shelden]

7 minutes ago, da na said:

I hope the MS Store does not become incompatible with Windows 10 once it goes out of support - I purchased my video editor from the Store...

I almost garentee it. It's like how steam looses OS support once the operating system is no longer getting security updates, so unless you happen to have a version installed or go out and get an older version and make it work, you can't run it on say Windows XP anymore even if the game supports it.

 

I've always loved physical media, never been obsessed with it, but recently taken it more seriously. Every show I watch I buy the DVD or BluRay box set vs streaming it. It's a lot harder with software now

 

[Bitter]

I was using a Pentium M laptop daily for WAAAAY too long, jumped to a 1st gen i3 then upgraded to an i5 and now an 8th gen i5 low power. It's been such a huge leap each time I upgrade my laptop. I'm still blown away I can use it for over an hour OFF the charger and it's literally 100% faster than my last laptop was strictly in Cinebench. Graphics, double the RAM, and NVME aren't even part of that 100% faster. Crazy. Even the screen is an absolute massive upgrade, I think that's the biggest leap from laptop to laptop. Screens have gotten so so much better.