r/retrocomputing

I visited my old job today to pick up a printer and the staff (whom I’m on great terms with) asked me if I wanted some old computers that a customer had dropped off for donation/disposal. I said “yes please” as soon as I saw the Apple II and it just got better from there. Full original docs for the Apple II, an eMate 300 with original docs and stylus (alas, no power supply), a PowerBook 3400c… Everything’s in excellent condition, and all of it for $0. Gonna see how much of works this weekend.

I just thought I’d share my little project I’ve played around with over the past few years. I always wanted to try to access some bulletin board systems on my old TRS-80. After watching a video years ago where someone dialed into a BBS on a TRS80 with a rotary phone and an acoustic modem I was so fascinated. Shortly after I found a nice model 4P on Ebay and played around with it a little before losing interest for several years.

After moving into my new place I decided to have a go at configuring a VOIP landline over my Starlink. I got an Obidata gateway and pulse tone converter and dove down the rabbit hole of trying to get it all working. I was eventually successful and immediately set up my two old rotary dial phones and even bought an old cassette tape answering machine. I was so stoked.

Shortly after I decided to get back into trying to get my old TRS80 online. After many attempts and a fair bit of research I was eventually successful but only while using my internal dial up modem. It was finicky at best but I was beyond stoked. Shortly after I scooped up a few old acoustic coupler modems from Ebay and began further attempts at accessing some BBS’s with Rotary dial phone. I found this to be considerably more finicky and unreliable than the internal modem which was pretty bad to begin with. Also being a 90s kid, this is all a bit before my time so I’m sure I still have much to learn but nevertheless I was able to get it to work on few occasions and was sure get some photos and videos of it all. I thought y’ll might find this to be pretty neat. I know I did!

planning on making this a youtube vid and will update and post here. this is the first time I have ever installed 95 without needing a cpu patch. With these specs I "should" use 98 but am using 95 for its glory and already have a 98pc.

The laptop turns on, but there's no image or any other signs. Nothing on an external monitor either. the components work normally: the disk spins, the DVD drive ejects, generally the components get warm when they are running for a while. The laptop doesn't respond when I turn it on without RAM, I think it should beep normally then, could it be the motherboard's fault? I would be grateful for any advice!!! The laptop model is Medion MD5400

Running Windows3.0 and PacMan and Frogger on these pictures.

I can take better pictures this weekend.

To make a long story short im now in possession of a 486 PC from about 1992 if my research is correct. Its a Zeos machine that according to the previous owner was used for CAD in the early 90s? I wanna use it to play some DOS and early Windows 95 games but im not exactly sure what im able to upgrade on this system.

Right now it seems to have the following hardware installed

• A Zeos motherboard (This is also a Zeos system if that helps)
• An Intel i486 DX 50MHz
• An unknown amount of ram
• No L2 Cache
• A Diamond Speedstar 24 (Which from what ive been able to gather is a really good ISA 2D video card? So ill probably leave that as is seeing as I dont have PCI or VLB)

I wanna upgrade it to be closer to something around 1994-1995 in hopes that it might be able to play Duke Nukem 3D and possibly Quake? But im not sure what if anything are drop in replacements.

I was thinking about putting in

• A Cyrix 5x86 or Pentium Overdrive (Seems like a drop in replacement for this 486???)
• A Soundblaster Awe-32 or Soundblaster pro 2.0
• Some amount of L2 Cache
• and a Roland Mpu-401 compatible card to use with an MT-32 or something

Not sure how much of this is possible but thats why I figured id ask here since you guys probably have more knowledge about this than I do

Got this cool ibm dasd film head paperweight FOR FREE at an antique mall parking lot sale! Pretty cool piece of history!

A quote from an interview about programming dBase with C. Wayne Ratliff back in the heyday of the PC Revolution.

Waiting in a 90+ minute line for Kings Island's "Flight of Fear" proved doubly rewarding as we neared the entrance to the loading area. Took me a few minutes to determine the identity of the HP 1615A logic analyzer and they also have a Technoart (Technopart?) PC tower and an ITT monitor of some sort. Also got to learn about logic analyzers in line.

The queue area has a Cold War alien invasion theme that's a little cheesy but the ride itself was awesome. Would be even better if it was completely dark but that wouldn't fit the theme either. Impressive what they could fit into a confined indoor space, one of my favorites that we rode there.

My dad brought this down from the attic to show me. We plugged it into the TV but sadly it was all blocky, so he's promised to fix it next spare weekend he gets. I just love the case design and the clicky noises from that joystick, and I couldn't believe it when he told me that the cassettes were not music but programs!

We took our baby to IHOP, and this game was on the kid’s placemat. Like… “old-timey artifact to distract them with!”?

“Old Boring Movie”? Lol. This is a weird game.