Anyone into vintage computing?

[Z15CAM]

Cassette drives or bust.

Man you're SICK - Do you think you can still run one - LOL

 

[IndyColtsFan]

You guys and your old PC clones - get out of here! The real classic stuff is Atari, Commodore, TI, Tandy, and I'm sure a couple of others I've forgotten.

 

[Z15CAM]

I loved playing B52 Bomber and Sky Roads with a Matox Marvel PCI GPU on a Megatron 286SX ;o)

The Embedded Cyrix 386DX (War Birds) sold me with Win95B - Played with the 486DX for a while (Disapointed) then I was hooked on the Intel 586 - WOW and haven't stopped since!

 

[dabuddha]

Are you capable of answering the question as to why someone would want a vintage computer or just ad hominem attacks? Because if it's only the latter, that would assure quite the disappointing discourse wouldn't it?

Same reason people collect vintage cars or vintage lighters or vintage war memorabilia or baseball jerseys or matchbooks or baseball cards or pencils or (I could go on and on)

 

[Z15CAM]

I gotta say my old ASUS Slot 1 P3V4X HOT ROD running at 1800Mhz with WinSE and a Socket Celron 370 PPGA , MSI Vided Converter Card and VZ150Mhz Dims can can still boot and surf the Web with no issues with say a Radeon 9700 to 2900 XT AGP and run DX3 at just a little more then ONE Pixel at a time - LOL.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I gotta say my old ASUS Slot 1 P3V4X HOT ROD running at 1800Mhz with WinSE and a Socket Celron 370 PPGA , MSI Vided Converter Card and VZ150Mhz Dims can can still boot and surf the Web with no issues with say a Radeon 9700 to 2900 XT AGP.

I have an old Pentium Pro system overclocked to 233 Mhz with a Matrox Millennium+Voodoo 2 in my garage, and the thing still works. I hooked it up a few months ago and was shocked when it booted right into Win 98.

My Amiga 2000 has a hard drive from 1992 (52 MB Quantum SCSI) and still boots fine.

 

[Leyawiin]

The most "vintage" thing I have is a DFI Lan Party nForce4 socket 939 motherboard with an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ in it. Fired it up last summer out of curiosity. It choked somewhat on today's websites. Would stutter a bit while scrolling.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I've got a mint TI-99/4a I found in a thrift shop a couple years ago. Haven't done much with it, but I fired it up a couple weekends ago for a round of TI Invaders. It works. Got a nanoPEB for it too, but still haven't gotten the 5v AC adapter I need to go with it.

I wonder if I could run that off of a USB adapter?

 

[dank69]

ugh, had a friend who used those in his 8 bit atari. so slow and always getting messed up.

Yeah, an hour just to find out the data was corrupted.

 

[Z15CAM]

[QUOTEDFI Lan Party nForce4 socket 939 ][/QUOTE]

Agree Socket 340 up until and including the VIA ChipSet nForce KN2 400 Single Core running at 2200Hz Vs the KN8 for a Socket 939 at 32-Bit 4GB Sims Vs a KN8 DDR1 32-Bit Vs a 64-Bit 16GB DDR1 Platform nVidia ChipSet really Rocked. Especially with a the nVidia GTX280 that can run 1400P PLS Displays today.

The KN8 is a great MB and ruled the day with an Athlon Single Core and 2 Core AMD CPU with either a 32 or 64-Bit OS - Lousy SATA support though.

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Forgive my Editing buy I'm 1/2 Blind Old , Dyslectic and can't spell.

 

[bbhaag]

He may not be capable of answering it, but I can. Nostalgia is the biggest reason for sure. While there might be emulators for the C64, Amigas, Atari 2600, and others, it isn't the same. Not even close. Also, by the time the more powerful Amigas were being introduced starting in 1990 (the 3000, for example), I was a poor college kid and couldn't afford one. It is pretty cool being able to restore one and expand it with stuff I could never have afforded back then.

Secondly, people aren't running Commodore 64s in place of modern systems. I have a Vic 20, C64, C128, Amiga 2000, and Amiga 3000. I run them occasionally because it is fun and brings back epic memories but my PC is my main system. Not sure how old you are, but if you're my age (44) or close, you'll recognize the late 70s-late 80s as the golden age of computers and the 90s-early 2000s were, IMO, the golden age of PC (PC clones) gaming.

I knew someone here would get it and you worded it better then I ever could have.
Thanks for the link to the bytecellar I'll check it out. That guys setup looks very impressive but way too into it then I want to get. If you have anymore links or info to share let me know.

 

[Z15CAM]

Anybody remember the EPoX EP-8RDA3 Socket A - nForce2 400R ;o)

I think my ASUS P3V4X VIA Chipped will beat that Intel 440BX - Sorry Abit 440BX, you're not in the same league - LOL

I-Will was a great old Intel 586 MB but they had disappeared by then.

DFI was a great over all contender but never owned one when I went for Slot 1 AGP performance.

The fastest MB's, Processor with 150Mz Dims where running at appox 1.8v's and 418Mhz OC'd x's 4 back then with a either a Single or Dual Core AMD CPU - Intel SUCKED back then - LOL

 

[Dude111]

i still got my commodore 64 hooked up downstairs

Excellent,so do I

 

[Z15CAM]

Both the ASUS and EPoX VIA Chipped Single Core Barton K7N-400 MB's Socket 370 MB's , I highly suggest you play with them if you're into vintage hardware of that era as they are still very capable of using the net today running either WinSE or XP 32-Bit.

Unless you want to go for a KN8 nForce with Dual Core AMD Barton CPU running at 2.7Ghz's with at a GTX 280 PCI-e with DDR1 Dims and run Win7.

Now I'm really confused but I got that tower (Given to a friend) that does just that; an ASUS KN8 SLI / GTX 280 / 3 GB of OCZ DDR1 2-3.2-5 IT 400Mhz to 418 Platinum running the AMD CPU at 2700Mhz (Dual Core AMD Barton) and Win7 32-Bit - Would have loaded 64-Bit but the MB only supports DDR1 and 4 GB's of Ram. Them MB's were also available in Dual DDR1/DDR2 and DDR2 only.

Your Storage Buses are IDE but you do have SATA 1 but their are rather Flakey.

Other then that it make me wonder if you can't mount and Boot a SSD on a nForce KN7 or 8 using SATA1 but I doubt the BIOS will ever see an SSD although the OS will - Never tried it.

 

[paperfist]

yep! it's a commodore 1541 5.25".

i bought the whole machine (including disks) from people who smoked, so they still smell like smoke after 25 years.

some of them take a long time to load "*", 8, 1/run. one of the games takes a full 45 minutes just to load which is ridiculous. but it's little computer people, so totally worth the wait.

You need to get an Epyx Fast Load cartridge!

 

[IndyColtsFan]

yep! it's a commodore 1541 5.25".

i bought the whole machine (including disks) from people who smoked, so they still smell like smoke after 25 years.

some of them take a long time to load "*", 8, 1/run. one of the games takes a full 45 minutes just to load which is ridiculous. but it's little computer people, so totally worth the wait.

I have the 1541 with the door mechanism rather than the latch:

It was purchased in the fall of 1984 at Service Merchandise - I remember going with my dad to pick it up. Not sure how well it works now, as I had my 128 and 1571 was what I used about a year ago to test several floppies. I had them stored in my garage and to my amazement, pretty much all except one worked out of the ones I tried.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Yeah, an hour just to find out the data was corrupted.

I have a C2N Datasette somewhere (lost track of it) that I used with my Vic 20 and my C64 until I got my 1541. The only known software I still have on cassette is the software for the Vicmodem - I still have the Vicmodem, its original packaging, and probably every single thing that came in the box, including some of the ISP flyers from the time. Pretty fun looking at that old stuff occasionally. If I had a bigger space, I could make a mini-museum dedicated to Commodore.

 

[bruceb]

I have got an old Northstar Horizon (in the wood case) and also an IBM System 9710 Printing Selectric (wide carriage and also a Pin Feed Roller for it) .. after I get to North Carolina later this year or early next year, I may be interested in selling them. I have all the manuals for both units and some good programs for the Northstar computer.

 

[bigi]

Ninja on Atari 800XL
Spellbound on ZX Spectrum
Cauldron on Commodore 64
Boulder Dash/Moon Patrol, etc

and finally DOOM on 6 floppies compressed with ARJ on 386SX with 4MB ram and Gravis Ultrasound. Good Times.

 

[Tombstone1881]

486's on ebay? Hell, I just dropped off about a dozen 486 clones and P70/75's to the recycling place a few weeks ago. I sat on them forever, not being able to find a way to sell them even for zippo$. After hearing enough nagging, I dumped them. I still have boxes of crap to dump when I get around to it. Modems, misc old cards, ps2 or older kvm's... a bunch of worthless crap.

I could never see selling anything on ebay, because 1)not much value, and 2)even if I had a good working unit, who knows if it would still be working when it arrived to the buyer? If not, how can you fix it? How much are the shipping costs on a big heavy object like an old pc? Too much hassle.

Anybody who wants to play with an old pc can usually find them for practically nothing at the local thrift stores, Goodwill and such. I used to enjoy building clones, so I can understand anybody who likes to tinker. I did too for my first 10 years or so working in computers.

 

[JeepinEd]

I'm in the process of restoring my old computers. I just fixed my Amiga 2000 that had a battery leak. Hearing the 60MB 5 1/4" drive fire up for the first time in over 20 years was pretty cool. I had to flick it a few times to get the platters spinning. Got my old C-64 and 1541 working and am trying to get my Vic-20 to fire up. I still have a bunch of cassettes with programs I wrote in the early 80's.
Also part of my collection:
Timex Sinclair 1000
Vectrex
Original Pong
Atari 2600

It's fun to fire them up once in a while. My son couldn't comprehend how a computer with 3K ram could even exist.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I still have my Amiga 600.

It was sold without HDD and only 1MB chip ram.
It has an internal 2.5" 60MB HDD and a 1MB memory expansion card. I got 2MB chip memory .
I had to buy a new kickstart ROM and a separate HDD aftermarket to get it to work.

I have all my old floppies saved. I hope they still work.

 

[baydude]

Will it have a high resell value? If not, why can't you use current technology to emulate a 486?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Will it have a high resell value? If not, why can't you use current technology to emulate a 486?

You can, pretty effectively. VMs or DOSBox work very well for running mid-'90s x86 software.

True "vintage" stuff is older. Often quite a bit. Emulators aren't always available, or they're buggy. And when the line between OS and hardware was a lot fuzzier, the hardware (which you often modded with your soldering station) was part of the "fun" anyway.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

You can, pretty effectively. VMs or DOSBox work very well for running mid-'90s x86 software.

True "vintage" stuff is older. Often quite a bit. Emulators aren't always available, or they're buggy. And when the line between OS and hardware was a lot fuzzier, the hardware (which you often modded with your soldering station) was part of the "fun" anyway.

This.

386s and 486s might technically qualify as "vintage," but I don't consider it as such. The "true" stuff is much older and radically different in terms of hardware and software. You can get emulators for Amiga, for example, but I've never had a great experience with them. The emulators never seem to get it quite right.