[QUOTE=Genericenemy;42236439]My college as a matter of fact has a 486 motherboard and the actual chip to go with it in the room I get taught hardware in. Unfortunately the chip is bent beyond repair and the motherboard is probably good as gone as it's probably safe to say it hasn't been stored correctly.
It seems to be a thing that while everyone can probably see the value in keeping a Spectrum or a BBC Micro the IBM Compatibles don't even get half that.[/QUOTE]
Assuming you can pick up at Cambridge, we might have a spare 486 at the museum, I don't do stuff there anymore because I had to go to Uni recently, but if you swing an email to jason here [url]http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/1777/Contact-Us/[/url] and say what you're after I'm sure he'll be able help you out. Oh and offer a small donation too, it is a charity too :>
[QUOTE=icemaz;42236516]Assuming you can pick up at Cambridge, we might have a spare 486 at the museum, I don't do stuff there anymore because I had to go to Uni recently, but if you swing an email to jason here [url]http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/pages/1777/Contact-Us/[/url] and say what you're after I'm sure he'll be able help you out. Oh and offer a small donation too, it is a charity too :>[/QUOTE]
Cambridge is miles away from me unfortunately.
Apple Lisa needed its keyboard rebuilt. Needs special capacitive foam pads with a mylar contact surface. Made new ones from a party balloon and door seal.
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On to the next project.
The Lisa 1 and Lisa 2/5 (just an upgraded Lisa 1) do not have internal support for the Widget Drive. Even though the new bezel and old drive cage can fit one the wire harness lacks the needed power cable and parallel port cable. Because I'm still fighting the drive controller I decided to just add power and relocate the Lisa Lite board so I could install the Widget.
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Why is that old Apple machines tend to require quite a bit of repair before they can be used? Were the parts Apple used really poor because a lot of other hardware from the era by other companies seems to just carry on without any issues despite their age.
Apple's idea to be innovative caught up.
Stuff like surface mount capacitors were all the rage in the 90's (and still are) but we're learning now that after ten or more years they fail and leak and require repalcement
Most pwer supplies also need raps due to aged and dried out electrolytics.
Really what has happened in the last five or so years is that everything that was to have a 5-10 year life is in some cases is now about to hit 30 years and maintenance on components which fail due to age are needing to be replaced. In the process we are discovering devices like the Widget should of gone through maintenance 15 years or so ago because for example if the platters demagnetize before you can get in a low-level format there's no way currently to otherwise reformat the drive.
However mac people being mac people, they like to keep shit powered off and in their original boxes until the last possible moment, at which time they discovered things like the PRAM battery leaked and ruined the logic board or the hard drive has seized up from little to no use.
Edited: Speaking of which, the Widget I spent all that time installing in my Lisa and I knew worked.....died once it was installed and ready to go. [img]http://68kmla.org/forums/images/smilies/sadmaccolor.gif[/img]
Nope. False alarm. Just a bad connection and a ROM incompatibility......I think.
Wow. I hit a legal wall.
Okay, so I have a SCSI card for the Lisa. You used to be able to buy the board as a kit and then you added the chips and ROM. Mind you this did not mean you could boot from it. For that you needed the QuickBoot.
[img]http://lisafaq.sunder.net/images/lisa2.com-Quick-Boot-ROM.jpg[/img]
(I'm posting that image to be an asshole by the way. I'll explain later)
It's a ROM replacement that has one ROM chip with another piggybacked on top. That's what you need. Currently the only place to find the ROM is on ebay from a schmo who wants $190 per chip. Well fuck that. I'll ask around.
Then I get the message. The seller is threatening me with legal action for using one of his photographs and trying to ask people to pirate the chip. Said that the developer makes his living off the sale of each chip.
I call bullshit. You're just a douche who doesn't want people working around him and his overpriced ebay listing. Anyways, back to square one.
My parents just gave me an old laptop they've had lying around for a while inside a bag. It's a Zenith Data Systems Supersport 286. They said it was apparently running MS-DOS but since they couldn't ever find a mains adapter they don't know. They don't even know if it still works. Does anyone know where I could find a mains adapter for it?
[QUOTE=TheCactusman;42744616]My parents just gave me an old laptop they've had lying around for a while inside a bag. It's a Zenith Data Systems Supersport 286. They said it was apparently running MS-DOS but since they couldn't ever find a mains adapter they don't know. They don't even know if it still works. Does anyone know where I could find a mains adapter for it?[/QUOTE]
Behold Google: [url]http://www.zdsparts.com/acadapt.htm[/url], updated in '09, and lists a Supersport 286 adaptor for $30. If you're going generic, the site also provides [url=http://www.zdsparts.com/zwl-200.htm]the majority of the specs you'll need[/url] save (and now of disproportionate importance) for the physical connector used.
[QUOTE=HubmaN;42745333]Behold Google: [url]http://www.zdsparts.com/acadapt.htm[/url], updated in '09, and lists a Supersport 286 adaptor for $30. If you're going generic, the site also provides [url=http://www.zdsparts.com/zwl-200.htm]the majority of the specs you'll need[/url] save (and now of disproportionate importance) for the physical connector used.[/QUOTE]
I saw that website but I'm trying to source one in the UK to avoid extremely expensive postage costs.
[QUOTE=pentium;42560796]Then I get the message. The seller is threatening me with legal action for using one of his photographs and trying to ask people to pirate the chip. Said that the developer makes his living off the sale of each chip.
I call bullshit. You're just a douche who doesn't want people working around him and his overpriced ebay listing. Anyways, back to square one.[/QUOTE]
Did the guy even write the code that resides in the ROMs? He doesn't have a leg to stand on if he's selling copies of firmware he didn't make and is just spewing shit out his ass. There are plenty of scrubs on the interweb that do this so they can corner the market and bend everyone over a barrel if they absolutely need whatever they're hoarding to themselves.
[url=http://cgi.ebay.com/181258512344]I really don't like spending this much money on computers. I makes me feel like the camera snubs who pay hundreds or thousands for lenses.[/url]
Oh well, I finally have a suitable machine to put my high-end MCA cards in.
I quite admire the PS/2's case. It looks quite durable and looks satisfyingly tall. It's one of three IBM items I probably will never get my hands on (Others being a 5150, and a original Model M)
NeXT's Magneto Optical drives are mysterious. At 25 years old they were the first commercial MO drives on the market but they all died mysterious deaths. Even unused ones were dead out of the box.
Finally, the first attempts to resurrect these artifacts have met with mixed success.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap8bjJAA1rk[/media]
i posted this in the CIPWTTKT&GC thread but i also thing is belongs here too. i built this computer out of four different scrapped PCs. i had intended to run windows 98 on it but i could only find ME and 2000 drivers for the hardware. i didn't exactly want to run on NT, but if the alternative is ME, then i'm happy to skip it
[img]http://i.imgur.com/wi7UXZm.jpg[/img]
The Apricot ate the boot floppy. Wrote a backup to another floppy, pried the disks open and swapped the media because my OCD wanted to keep the original disk.
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[QUOTE=FFStudios;43008578]i posted this in the CIPWTTKT&GC thread but i also thing is belongs here too. i built this computer out of four different scrapped PCs. i had intended to run windows 98 on it but i could only find ME and 2000 drivers for the hardware. i didn't exactly want to run on NT, but if the alternative is ME, then i'm happy to skip it
[img]http://i.imgur.com/wi7UXZm.jpg[/img][/QUOTE]
Give me the motherboard model and video card model and I'll see what I can do.
[QUOTE=GiGaBiTe;43064729]Give me the motherboard model and video card model and I'll see what I can do.[/QUOTE]
Agreed. I can dig through my sources and see what I find.
*sigh*
Merry fucking christmas....
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He packaged it with antistatic bags....
The card inventory is a cached SCSI card, Token ring, XGA-I, Stallion X.21 interface and the Type 2 CPU complex with what appears to be the IBM branded version of the DX2-50 in the upgrade socket.
The memory error THANKFULLY seems to be a case of missing ram. There's also a hard drive so I at least have a set of rails.
The back will be pretty easy to fix with epoxy but the front might take some work since that cornered has shattered into pieces. I'll be talking through paypal for my money back....
[QUOTE=pentium;43151970]the front might take some work since that cornered has shattered into pieces.[/QUOTE]
Pah, epoxy, bondo and sanding will make it perfect!
I'm seeing a trend here...
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Finally got my 486 off of ebay to detect the hard drive properly. I ended up having to run WD diagnostics to get the actual CHS settings to put into BIOS. After that, I installed my AWE64, dos 6.22, and WfW 3.11. I wanted to increase the resolution to 1024x768 SVGA, but this happened:
[thumb]http://i.imgur.com/bKQqo9k.jpg[/thumb]
I tried reinstalling the default VGA, but it seems like the floppies I used decided to pull a dick move and fail, so I'm stuck with that for now.
[QUOTE=pentium;43151970]*sigh*
Merry fucking christmas....
He packaged it with antistatic bags....
The card inventory is a cached SCSI card, Token ring, XGA-I, Stallion X.21 interface and the Type 2 CPU complex with what appears to be the IBM branded version of the DX2-50 in the upgrade socket.
The memory error THANKFULLY seems to be a case of missing ram. There's also a hard drive so I at least have a set of rails.
The back will be pretty easy to fix with epoxy but the front might take some work since that cornered has shattered into pieces. I'll be talking through paypal for my money back....[/QUOTE]
I'm laughing at the sellers stupidity, but I know that I shouldn't be laughing at all. :(
I did manage to repair it but it took nearly three weeks to do. There's a lot of epoxy and acetone that was used.
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Speaking of time....
A little over a year ago I invested in a group buy for a pile of mixed DECtapes in the hopes I could use them whenever I was using the machines at Seattle's Living Computer Museum. They were all in the process of being archived and there was no use for the tapes once complete so they were selling the tapes for a few dollars each. It was a fair deal since they usually go for about $30 each on ebay so I ordered a random pick of eight tapes, sent the money and waited.
Yesterday a package arrived from Bethesda MD with my tapes. Unfortunately Seattle is now seven hours away but I got tapes anyways.
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Holy shit, LINCtapes. Seven of them! I was expecting DECtapes as they are designed for the more common PDP-8 and 11 systems using the TU56 drives. LINCtapes on the other hand are for an even more curious breed of older machines called the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC]LINC[/url].
LINC's are impossible to find in the wild now but you have (slightly) better odds finding a PDP-12 which was a PDP-8 and the LINC in one computer (and you could run code for both at the same time!).
[t]http://www.rcsri.org/collection/pdp-12/pdp-12-front-2.jpg[/t]
I think I've mentioned them before. If there was anything other than a PDP-8/e I would want it would be the 12. It's the wonders of two worlds and being a lab exclusive machine it has enough analog I/O connections you could probably call it the ancestor of the Arduino.
[b]In fact, I would be willing to trade away large amounts of my collection just to get a PDP-12.[/b] Now between the teletype machine and my pile of LINCtapes (you can't use them in place of DECtapes as the drives operate in reverse) I have even more demand to find one since I would not have to hope on finding the RK disk option to have some form of storage.
Also, these tapes are literally bulletproof. You can punch holes in the tape and because it has multiple timing and ECC tracks you can still read the data back. They also go a step beyond conventional 9-track tape and put the oxide coating between layers of protective mylar instead of just one side. This makes them readable after nearly 50 years of poor storage. Some of mine are water damaged and they were STILL readable.
They were essentially treated and operated like floppy disks.
[QUOTE=pentium;43504157]
[t]http://www.rcsri.org/collection/pdp-12/pdp-12-front-2.jpg[/t]
[/QUOTE]
Man, I love the way the PDP-12 looks. Those green keys are just too awesome.
Almost as if cued, a PDP-12 popped up on ebay. That's the first time I've ever seen one there.
Through the mailing lists it appears that two museums on the east coast, an unnamed private collector in the midwest and Google (yes, Google) are locked in a massive bidding war for the machine.
Suddenly as the predictions pass $10000 I realize even the shirt on my back wouldn't help get one of the machines in a trade. Oh well.
Quick sell your apple computers for $7000 each!
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