Show off your old and retro computer parts

[SimplyChunk]

4 hours ago, WhitetailAni said:

Ooh does it have the silly 59 or 60-pin connector for running 2 monitors?

 

I wonder if some manufacturer created a dual screen display type setup thing that just had a DMS-59 or whatever the 60 pin one is called connector on it, instead of requiring an adapter.

 

 

On an unrelated note, my Pentium 3 PC has received some upgrades!

  Hide contents

The old optical drive wasn't working properly in Windows, and my backup never spun up discs. So I have this monster of a drive now. CD and DVD burner.

It's not period accurate, but neither is the 5.25" floppy drive right below it.

 

I also got an LS-120 SuperDrive. I wanted to get an LS-240 but there aren't any available... sad. I wanted to try out their ultramegahigh density formatting of a regular 3.5" floppy - apparently it uses some form of SMR to squeeze 36MB out of the things? There was only ever one model sold in the US, which makes them really difficult to find... This one was only $55 at an antique mall.

I also have a Zip-100 right below it. Wanted 250 but 100 was free. It does the job.

 

The empty bay will be accepting a V2000Si Jaz drive. I have a 2GB Jaz disk with mystery contents, and I always wanted a Jaz drive.

 

I also removed a random 8.3GB hard drive that was in there with... nothing but the files to install a DirectX runtime on it. It just has an 80GB drive now - I needed to make space for the Zip drive.

 

I can't remember if I mentioned this but I also upgraded it to an 800 MHz Coppermine P3, from a 500 MHz Katmai. It also has a WinTV PVR-150 though I don't have drivers yet (optical drive was broken last time I turned it on).

 

 

I did finally figure out some of what was wrong with the NEC drive... but in the process I accidentally broke it.

The mechanism to load/unload a disc caddy is triggered by a button. Button pressed: mechanism go. Button released: mechanism stop. At some point the button had been pushed just a bit too far up and so it was being held for just a bit too long... which triggered the mechanism to release the disc caddy and so it just loops continuously.

I pulled the button out and attempted to manually operate it, which did work - I was able to get a disc caddy down onto the reader. However, something with its detection is broken as it never spins up the disk or attempts to read it.

 

I then went to put it back together, but the button that triggers the disc caddy mechanism broke (it's handled by a spring, and the spring snapped...) and so it's not really useful anymore...

 

On opening it up a capacitor fell out, so I'm guessing there's damage somewhere on its logic board - but I can't figure out how to take it apart. I put its pieces into a cardboard box for the future, but it's probably dead

That Zip drive is sexy.  You're in the states aren't you?  I have a couple of period correct CD ROM/burners if you'd want to pay the postage on them.  Frog isn't quite period correct either don't worry about it.  I got a 5.25" drive on a PIII running strictly DOS 6.22 at the moment.  So much so that the momentary power button on my case doesn't turn the thing off cause dos doesn't know what to do with it.  It just resets  

[WhitetailAni]

59 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

I have a couple of period correct CD ROM/burners if you'd want to pay the postage on them.

It's fine! I'm building this machine to be an ultimate compatibility machine vs more period correct. I have a softmodem from like 2007 in it. That's why the 5.25" is there

[Pccooler7506]

On 4/23/2024 at 3:09 AM, WhitetailAni said:

Ooh does it have the silly 59 or 60-pin connector for running 2 monitors?

 

I wonder if some manufacturer created a dual screen display type setup thing that just had a DMS-59 or whatever the 60 pin one is called connector on it, instead of requiring an adapter.

 

 

On an unrelated note, my Pentium 3 PC has received some upgrades!

  Reveal hidden contents

The old optical drive wasn't working properly in Windows, and my backup never spun up discs. So I have this monster of a drive now. CD and DVD burner.

It's not period accurate, but neither is the 5.25" floppy drive right below it.

 

I also got an LS-120 SuperDrive. I wanted to get an LS-240 but there aren't any available... sad. I wanted to try out their ultramegahigh density formatting of a regular 3.5" floppy - apparently it uses some form of SMR to squeeze 36MB out of the things? There was only ever one model sold in the US, which makes them really difficult to find... This one was only $55 at an antique mall.

I also have a Zip-100 right below it. Wanted 250 but 100 was free. It does the job.

 

The empty bay will be accepting a V2000Si Jaz drive. I have a 2GB Jaz disk with mystery contents, and I always wanted a Jaz drive.

 

I also removed a random 8.3GB hard drive that was in there with... nothing but the files to install a DirectX runtime on it. It just has an 80GB drive now - I needed to make space for the Zip drive.

 

I can't remember if I mentioned this but I also upgraded it to an 800 MHz Coppermine P3, from a 500 MHz Katmai. It also has a WinTV PVR-150 though I don't have drivers yet (optical drive was broken last time I turned it on).

 

 

I did finally figure out some of what was wrong with the NEC drive... but in the process I accidentally broke it.

The mechanism to load/unload a disc caddy is triggered by a button. Button pressed: mechanism go. Button released: mechanism stop. At some point the button had been pushed just a bit too far up and so it was being held for just a bit too long... which triggered the mechanism to release the disc caddy and so it just loops continuously.

I pulled the button out and attempted to manually operate it, which did work - I was able to get a disc caddy down onto the reader. However, something with its detection is broken as it never spins up the disk or attempts to read it.

 

I then went to put it back together, but the button that triggers the disc caddy mechanism broke (it's handled by a spring, and the spring snapped...) and so it's not really useful anymore...

 

On opening it up a capacitor fell out, so I'm guessing there's damage somewhere on its logic board - but I can't figure out how to take it apart. I put its pieces into a cardboard box for the future, but it's probably dead

Indeed it does have a 59 pin connector. Never seen one anywhere else, not a cable for it lmao

[da na]

15 minutes ago, Pccooler7506 said:

Indeed it does have a 59 pin connector. Never seen one anywhere else, not a cable for it lmao

Called DMS-59. Common for low-profile cards before DisplayPort came around. 

Unnervingly fragile. 

[Pccooler7506]

23 minutes ago, da na said:

Called DMS-59. Common for low-profile cards before DisplayPort came around. 

Unnervingly fragile. 

Huh neat

[da na]

12 minutes ago, Pccooler7506 said:

Huh neat

There's a deep rabbit hole you can get into that all starts at DMS-59. Look into it a little more and you'll start finding cables like this:

 

Some cards actually used two DMS-59 connectors and two graphics dies on the same board for four display outputs on the same card - EG. NVS 440.

Spoiler

FireMV 2400 took a similar approach, but with a far superior connector. Four displays on a low profile card was unheard of at this time

Spoiler

Nvidia finally one-upped them all with the NVS 420. Low profile, two graphics chips, and a single video connector that breaks out into FOUR DVI ports. This card is the source of the aforementioned wacky cable.

Spoiler

 

[da na]

Might as well post this here, too - gave LightScribe a shot, pretty impressed with the results.

I still install all of my OSes from DVDs, since every one of my laptops is old awesome enough to have an optical drive. I much prefer having a stack of DVDs and pulling out the one I want instead of writing an ISO to a flash drive every time I need to install one of the eight OSes I might need. Labeling these discs with a nice graphic will help me find them faster.

These few I created with the LightScribe Template Labeler, which nicely curves the text around the radius of the spindle. These did not turn out quite as nicely as the scan of the Windows 7 disc, but they are certainly still more interesting than a typical DVD.

Shows a nice progress indicator as you're printing - you'll be tapping your foot for a while, each disc takes 30-40mins on highest contrast setting.

The difference between Normal and Enhanced contrast is quite visible on images with dark backgrounds.

Neat seeing the data track which is read by the additional sensor in LightScribe drives. This is, in essence, a barcode wrapped around the spindle, and it communicates LightScribe-exclusive information to the drive. This track is on the top side of the disc, not the data side, so it is read when the media is placed face-down for laser inscription. This additional sensor LightScribe drives have seems to be very simple - I believe it is just an infrared emitter and receiver placed right next to each other. Seems quite logical - inexpensive to implement in the drive, but can still read a barcode just fine. I would think the reflective lines are "1s" and the non-reflective are "0s", and the pattern on the disc just stores a very simple piece of data - probably just an integer - that is read by the software to determine the disc type.

It's slow, impractical, and the disks are expensive - but the results are quite cool.

[atxcyclist]

20 minutes ago, da na said:

Might as well post this here, too - gave LightScribe a shot, pretty impressed with the results.

 

I still install all of my OSes from DVDs, since every one of my laptops is old awesome enough to have an optical drive. I much prefer having a stack of DVDs and pulling out the one I want instead of writing an ISO to a flash drive every time I need to install one of the eight OSes I might need. Labeling these discs with a nice graphic will help me find them faster.

These few I created with the LightScribe Template Labeler, which nicely curves the text around the radius of the spindle. These did not turn out quite as nicely as the scan of the Windows 7 disc, but they are certainly still more interesting than a typical DVD.

 

Shows a nice progress indicator as you're printing - you'll be tapping your foot for a while, each disc takes 30-40mins on highest contrast setting.

 

The difference between Normal and Enhanced contrast is quite visible on images with dark backgrounds.

 

Neat seeing the data track which is read by the additional sensor in LightScribe drives. This is, in essence, a barcode wrapped around the spindle, and it communicates LightScribe-exclusive information to the drive. This track is on the top side of the disc, not the data side, so it is read when the media is placed face-down for laser inscription. This additional sensor LightScribe drives have seems to be very simple - I believe it is just an infrared emitter and receiver placed right next to each other. Seems quite logical - inexpensive to implement in the drive, but can still read a barcode just fine. I would think the reflective lines are "1s" and the non-reflective are "0s", and the pattern on the disc just stores a very simple piece of data - probably just an integer - that is read by the software to determine the disc type.

 

It's slow, impractical, and the disks are expensive - but the results are quite cool.

 

LightScribe is cool tech, I didn't realize it took that long to put the image onto a disc. I think a few of my old drives support LightScribe, I should try it out sometime.

[luckybob77]

Well, when you do a full-disk image, it takes forever. 

 

A simple amount of text is much quicker. 

 

And a black sharpie is quicker still.  And that's why light scribe was little more than a novelty. 

[Erioch]

7 hours ago, luckybob77 said:

Well, when you do a full-disk image, it takes forever. 

 

A simple amount of text is much quicker. 

 

And a black sharpie is quicker still.  And that's why light scribe was little more than a novelty. 

I had Lightscribe drives and yeah, novelty.  The discs were more expensive as well and took FOREVER.  Sometimes you have to "print" them more than once.

 

7 hours ago, luckybob77 said:

And a black sharpie is quicker still.

This was my go-to.

[da na]

8 hours ago, luckybob77 said:

Well, when you do a full-disk image, it takes forever. 

 

A simple amount of text is much quicker. 

 

And a black sharpie is quicker still.  And that's why light scribe was little more than a novelty. 

A tiny little text label is a big waste of a $2 DVD when you could put an image on it instead...

[da na]

42 minutes ago, Erioch said:

I had Lightscribe drives and yeah, novelty.  The discs were more expensive as well and took FOREVER.  Sometimes you have to "print" them more than once.

 

This was my go-to.

Having to print them more than once... interesting. Does it always start in the same position and darken the existing image, Or does it just make a big mess?

[Erioch]

1 hour ago, da na said:

Having to print them more than once... interesting. Does it always start in the same position and darken the existing image, Or does it just make a big mess?

It knows where it is.  There are markings that it reads to know the position of the disk.

[da na]

9 minutes ago, Erioch said:

It knows where it is.  There are markings that it reads to know the position of the disk.

The LightScribe knows where it is at all times.
It knows this because it knows where it isn't.

 

Didn't know the lil barcode also dictated the disc's position, I will try darkening a few discs this afternoon.

[Erioch]

1 minute ago, da na said:

The LightScribe knows where it is at all times.
It knows this because it knows where it isn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightScribe

 

[da na]

2 minutes ago, Erioch said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightScribe

 

 

Fascinating! Thank you.

[SimplyChunk]

10 minutes ago, da na said:

Fascinating! Thank you.

 

[Erioch]

12 minutes ago, SimplyChunk said:

 

I love that guy's channel.

[luckybob77]

Ya know...  if light scribe was a few years earlier, it would have done a lot better.

[Kilrah]

Mmmh, brand new ribbons for a 40 year old machine 

 

 

 

 

[Bitter]

Only because that's a Japanese brand and Japanese government offices still use it and need the ribbons.

[da na]

25 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Only because that's a Japanese brand and Japanese government offices still use it and need the ribbons.

Casio still makes ribbons, rollers, and paper for their adding machines for the same reason.

[Bitter]

30 minutes ago, da na said:

Casio still makes ribbons, rollers, and paper for their adding machines for the same reason.

It's pretty hilarious. I guess if it works it works but the younger workers coming into those jobs must be absolutely flummoxed that they're using machines as old or older than their parents.

 

It's like the older woman who does some book keeping for us. Bless her heart. She prints the files then scans to files to email the files. I don't know how our account puts up with it. Half the time it's upside down. Everything has to be entered manually.

She's printing spread sheets. I've told her she could just email the spread sheets and they can import them. She doesn't understand how that works. I'd have to end up doing her job for that to happen. Bad enough I'm already IT here lol.

[da na]

9 minutes ago, Bitter said:

It's pretty hilarious. I guess if it works it works but the younger workers coming into those jobs must be absolutely flummoxed that they're using machines as old or older than their parents.

 

It's like the older woman who does some book keeping for us. Bless her heart. She prints the files then scans to files to email the files. I don't know how our account puts up with it. Half the time it's upside down. Everything has to be entered manually.

She's printing spread sheets. I've told her she could just email the spread sheets and they can import them. She doesn't understand how that works. I'd have to end up doing her job for that to happen. Bad enough I'm already IT here lol.

Must also be confusing for new workers to stumble their way through adding machine logic. The calculation process works quite differently from the calculators them kids these days are used to.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, Bitter said:

Only because that's a Japanese brand and Japanese government offices still use it and need the ribbons.

In this case it's apparently that the same ribbons have been used in cash registers etc that are still in use. 

 

But it's kinda funny that looking for one of these ribbons on eBay you find some for $40 a pop as "Vintage! Rare!", then I just googled the model and found... my country's official Epson site, selling them for $1.50 a piece