Show off your old and retro computer parts

[luckybob77]

15 hours ago, Bitter said:

I was going to guess took "burning a CD" too literally.

#RIMSHOT

 

Its kinda sobering, thinking about all the computer knowledge I have that is practically worthless.  Nevermind burning a CD.  I'm talking about putting a 2nd notch in a floppy disk so you can use the other side in an Apple II.  Jumper settings on pre-pentium motherboards, if you didnt have the manual, you were FUCKED if you wanted to swap CPUs.  Hell, just setting IRQ/DMA settings for cards before plug-and-pray.

 

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.

 

P.S.  - whoever decided COM1 should be IRQ4 and COM2 is IRQ3 deserves an assbeating.

[Kilrah]

I mean I did have fun "burning" a CD with a slightly bigger laser than usual at some point...

 

 

 

[Bitter]

1 hour ago, luckybob77 said:

#RIMSHOT

 

Its kinda sobering, thinking about all the computer knowledge I have that is practically worthless.  Nevermind burning a CD.  I'm talking about putting a 2nd notch in a floppy disk so you can use the other side in an Apple II.  Jumper settings on pre-pentium motherboards, if you didnt have the manual, you were FUCKED if you wanted to swap CPUs.  Hell, just setting IRQ/DMA settings for cards before plug-and-pray.

 

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.

 

P.S.  - whoever decided COM1 should be IRQ4 and COM2 is IRQ3 deserves an assbeating.

I remember when you had to jumper for your ram type, fp dimm, edo dimm. I remember when you could get a CPU cache card. I remember a few things. Not as much as you remember.

[luckybob77]

I dont recall jumpers for RAM type there were bios settings on all the boards I recall.  That said, I have an early Pentium 2 board from TYAN that had jumpers for 3.3v and 5v simms.  Most simms were tolerant in the switch, some were not.  That said, 808x and 286 machines used jumpers to set memory size, and if you had an add-on memory board, it became an ordeal and a half with all those jumpers...  

 

I recently had a new cache card made for my 486.  https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=61847  - i got a pair of 1MB cards.  It makes almost zero performance difference between 256kb and 1024kb - but the disk waving factor coupled with the near zero price difference...  (at least for new cards, the cost difference was like $5)

 

 

[SimplyChunk]

3 hours ago, luckybob77 said:

I dont recall jumpers for RAM type there were bios settings on all the boards I recall.  That said, I have an early Pentium 2 board from TYAN that had jumpers for 3.3v and 5v simms.  Most simms were tolerant in the switch, some were not.  That said, 808x and 286 machines used jumpers to set memory size, and if you had an add-on memory board, it became an ordeal and a half with all those jumpers...  

 

I recently had a new cache card made for my 486.  https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=61847  - i got a pair of 1MB cards.  It makes almost zero performance difference between 256kb and 1024kb - but the disk waving factor coupled with the near zero price difference...  (at least for new cards, the cost difference was like $5)

 

 

there were jumpers for everything at one point.  it was like christmas inside an early computer

[Bitter]

Jumpers to select which rows of jumpers were in use, if you had dip switches boy did you have a fancy motherboard.

[Fr33K!e]

Dip switches at the time they first came about were a god send! I remember one of the first PCs I had, it was 486 SX25 and the amount of jumperss on the motherboard was insane considering the CPU was soldered to the board and it had an upgrade socket!

[8tg]

Y’all wanna talk jumpers?

here’s some jumpers to select between sockets 754 and 939 on the jetway gtdual

[Beerzerker]

I've one at least that has dipswitches AND jumpers you use to configure the board with.

And with a Socket 939 DFI LanParty, mind where a certain jumper is or you might fry your RAM.... Unless it's a certain kind of DDR that can handle 4.0v's+ of course.
Yep - Got some of that here too.

[Dabombinable]

5 hours ago, 8tg said:

Y’all wanna talk jumpers?

here’s some jumpers to select between sockets 754 and 939 on the jetway gtdual

Jetway objectively made the most compatible boards available.

5 hours ago, Beerzerker said:

I've one at least that has dipswitches AND jumpers you use to configure the board with.

And with a Socket 939 DFI LanParty, mind where a certain jumper is or you might fry your RAM.... Unless it's a certain kind of DDR that can handle 4.0v's+ of course.
Yep - Got some of that here too.

Setting the jumpers incorrectly by accident on a board - aka getting what were 1 and 0 wrong, getting an undocumented 112MHz FSB (BIOS is where increments are supposed to be set)...and damaging the core of a recently purchased GF2 MX "400" due to the FSB multiplier defaulting to low (what it'd use for 66MHz not 100 or 133).

Such fun. Card sucked though ("3G Graphic" was the brand) and its replacement was well worth the cost (has diagnostic LED).

[SimplyChunk]

Jumpers is how people started to over clock CPUs.  Got a P60? Try the jumper setting for a P75.  Simple as 

[Bitter]

I remember when jumperless was the big buzzword and selling point on motherboard, yeah....jumperless until you lock it up and have to use the clear BIOS jumper lol.

[luckybob77]

Or ibm microchannel. 

 

No jumpers, but if you so much as looked at it funny, you had to redo the configuration with special floppy disks.

[da na]

Let's just say, past couple days have been excellent.

 

I'll be sure to post some photos when these rare systems arrive....

Spoiler

 

[da na]

XPS M2010 makes a 17" laptop look reasonable...

...and makes a 12" look like a scale model.

HDX Dragon/Pavilion 9300 is similarly massive - and all of that space is used well.

Its subwoofer alone is fist-sized.

 

 

Back to the XPS M2010, it unfortunately suffers from optical drive problems, keyboard problems, and horrendous backlight bleed.

As for the optical drive, the awesome raising/lowering mechanism works well, just the slot loading drive inside does not want to eject.

As for the keyboard, its internal rechargable battery is totally dead, and unfortunately that means it's a brick. Will try to replace it.

As for the screen, well... 

 

I can put up with the flaws of the XPS M2010 and HDX Dragon though, they're both remarkably performant machines with odd designs and I wouldn't be surprised if fewer than 1000 working units of each are still out there.

[da na]

The entire HP Pavilion Entertainment Series line is complete, from the 11" Mini 311 upto the 20" HDX Dragon.

Left to right: Mini 311, DV3000, DV2000, DV6000, DV9000, HDX 9300

Of course, the larger they get, the more interesting.

Although not a Pavilion by name, I'm including the Mini 311 netbook as it shares the same styling and multimedia features as the Pavilion series.

And this lineup is excluding the late Core 2 Duo / Turion Ultra refresh (the DV3/DV4/DV5/DV6/DV9 series) and the late HDX models (HDX 16, HDX 18). I own a Turion/Radeon DV4 and HDX 16 w/GeForce 9600 but those are excluded, not belonging to the original Pavilion line. 

 

And of course, all of these are fully functional and get used on a weekly basis. Although they can be bastards to service, Pavilion line is a constant favorite of mine. They always deliver 110% on aesthetics and quirks, eg remote control in the ExpressCard port. Gorgeous glossy displays and Altec Lansing soundsystems across the whole line is really the big appeal for me though; the multimedia experience is unmatched.

[Average Nerd]

This IBM System x3655, equipped with 2 dual core AMD Opteron CPUs (1 2216 HE and 1 normal 2216, both are clocked at 2,4 GHz), 32 GB of registered DDR2 RAM, a IBM RSA II (which took me a while to figure out how to get going) and a ServeRaid 8K-I RAID Controller is now completely up and running again.

After repasting the CPUs with the last drops of thermal compound I had left, it ran 35% faster (went from 612 points in Cinebench r23 to 937) which made it significantly less terrible (I also installed a hard drive in one of the hot swap bays, which cut the boot time from 6 minutes to 3,5 minutes).

 

[da na]

1 hour ago, Average Nerd said:

This IBM System x3655, equipped with 2 dual core AMD Opteron CPUs (1 2216 HE and 1 normal 2216, both are clocked at 2,4 GHz), 32 GB of registered DDR2 RAM, a IBM RSA II (which took me a while to figure out how to get going) and a ServeRaid 8K-I RAID Controller is now completely up and running again.

After repasting the CPUs with the last drops of thermal compound I had left, it ran 35% faster (went from 612 points in Cinebench r23 to 937) which made it significantly less terrible (I also installed a hard drive in one of the hot swap bays, which cut the boot time from 6 minutes to 3,5 minutes).

 

Rad. That sure is a lotta fans

[Average Nerd]

1 hour ago, da na said:

Rad. That sure is a lotta fans

You can probaby imagine how loud this thing can get...

[SimplyChunk]

 

[Average Nerd]

38 minutes ago, Zahra Batool said:

look at these RAMs 

Now you just need a laptop to put them in

[da na]

1 minute ago, Average Nerd said:

Now you just need a laptop to put them in

I almost guarantee those came from a late 2000s MacBook - they tend to use smaller capacities and pitifully low clockspeeds from what I've seen

[flibberdipper]

1 hour ago, da na said:

I almost guarantee those came from a late 2000s MacBook - they tend to use smaller capacities and pitifully low clockspeeds from what I've seen

Can confirm, my mid-2009 MBP came with 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3. Not that the speed really matters here since 1066 is the fastest the C2D supports.

[8tg]

I have wanted one of these ever since I traded away my previous indy years ago

1993 SGI Indy with IRIX 6.5

 

this one has been restored fully, sd scsi emulator, rebuilt power supply, replaced cmos battery with a modern 2032, recapped all around, even has a pin arctic psu fan

 

downside to this psu rebuild is it loses the molex, not sure why, normally this has two molex connectors 

which I previously just used on my last Indy to put cold cathodes in there so I probably don’t need them anyway 

[flibberdipper]

Got this 16GB iPhone 5S with a pristine display... but beat to hell body. Not sure what I'm gonna do with it, right now it just runs a clean wipe of 12.5.7. iPhone SE2 for scale.