r/vintagecomputing

This lot haven’t been powered up in a while so it’s time to get them going again. I’ve probably got too many Compaqs-are you a Compaq fan? What’s your favourite one?

My DOS environment including heavy prompt and DIR customization and custom menuing all made possible with 4DOS**.**

I found this in my grandfathers garage.

Found a 5.25" floppy of Little Big LAN V1.0j by Information Modes — Internet Archive only has V1.0q (Jan94) so I may have an earlier version worth preserving.

Currently reading it fine on:

- Dual P2 400MHz MS-6120 / Win2K

- TEAC FD-1550F 5.25" 1.2MB drive

What's the best tool to image this under Win2K?

It was a computer we used to control the production machine. It was scrapped in 2015.

From my understanding, these seem to be old cards for communication (since nr. 2 and nr. 3 has telephone inputs) And some for video output. Though nr. 3. Has some weird port, that blue input thing.

If you would’ve seen my other post in here, there was also an old ESDI half height drive, and it looks like these PCI cards come from the same PC/Server.

I’m overall just looking for an explanation on what era these were in, and what ran them. Also if you could answer what type of connections they use, they look abnormally longer than a normal PCIe slot.

(PS. nr. 1 doesn’t have an output on the other end, it’s just blank)

Picked up from trash (well, actually electronics recycling bin). Doesn't boot or even beep. 25MHz oscillator, processor with heatsink, so i think it is 486 DX2-50. It was "fully loaded" too, which was nice surprise.

Really excited to have picked up a LORD poster of fb marketplace today! BBSes and Legends of The Red Dragon was a big part of getting me interested in computers and eventually IT networking in which I have made my career.

I believe these were sent to BBS owners who had licensed the full version of the game. The gentleman I bought it from said he got it when he ran a BBS in the 90s here in TN. I believe he called it the White Castle BBS?

This is going to go in my game room / computer museum / shrine of half-dead beige beauties.

I was very lucky to be given a 560e which arrived to me today, but I’m realising that working with it will be a bit more of a challenge than my usual choice of portable computer.

I don’t have the original external floppy disk drive, and it doesn’t have any usb ports. There’s a proprietary floppy disk drive port, vga, pci serial and parallel port, as well as 1 ps/2 port.

(It’s also a japanese model with windows 98 in mandarin, but that bit is just cool/fun. Changing the location from china to the UK didn’t change the display language, but I’ve changed the input to English(UK) now at least)

My initial assumption is to use a CF card in a pc card adapter for the majority of moving data over to it? I have no clue if there are external drives that use a standard serial port, but ebay is flooded with so many USB models that it feels like a waste of time to dig through masses of irrelevant listings if they don’t exist. The floppy disk drive the model originally came with is a bit rare, and the pricing is a little dear…

I’m guessing that cloning the 2.5” IDE HDD would be easiest externally with another computer and adapter to usb? I want to make sure it’s backed up with all the OEM drivers, even though the HDD seems healthy. I’m hoping what looks like polariser burn and the mild beginnings of vinegar syndrome worsen slowly enough that I can enjoy it for a while before the display is a goner.

Do let me know if you’ve had similar experiences. I love this thing already, and want to make sure I’m not making unnecessary extra steps for myself with it. I never really know where gaps in knowledge are until they catch me unaware, so I thought it was best to ask.

The photo is post cleanup both externally and internally. Still thinking on whether to vinyl wrap the lid ;)

I have this Compaq Presario 5102US and I’ve been trying to upgrade it with top of the line equipment from the early 2000s. I’m trying to work around the motherboard with of course is old.

My biggest hangup is finding a AGP GPU that works with it. So far I’ve tried a Radeon 9600 Pro that would crash the PC on startup, and a Radeon HD 4650 that would give a display, but would crash the pc after trying to update the drivers.

Could anyone help me find one that would work without a shadow of a doubt? I would prefer if it was at least capable of DVI. Here’s the boards specs. Any help is greatly appreciated!

A few days ago, my father found this old spare keyboard still in its box. It is an early model F, destinated to a System/23 Datamaster keyboard. Since the internal assembly is the same for both the 5322 and 5324, it is impossible to know for which specific model was made. That being said, it is dated from 1983, months after the initial model, the 5322, had been discontinued. The conservation state isn't the best, and the keyboard has rust in it. Still, this was an awesome find and, considering the low impact of the System/23 in Spain, this one might be one of the last Spanish units found in its original box.

The System/23 keyboard is based around an Intel 8048 with a mask ROM inside. At the same time, the component reference was offuscated in order to avoid third parties to clone it. Years later, the model F-XT type 2 keyboard would reuse a similar matrix but would employ a serial interface instead of the 7-bit parallel one of the Datamaster.

The keyboard is a mandatory element for a System/23 during its IPL process. Test 35h during POD/PID-1200 consists in the motherboard strobing the reset signal of the keyboard and waiting for a sequence of values to be received. If the keyboard does not send the correct values due to malfunction, absence or pressed key, the test would fail and the computer wouldn't be able to reach the BASIC screen.

My trusty Cherry MX80-5000 from 1995. Still in daily use (I’m lucky to have 2) at home and at the office.

I have yet to find a better keyboard. Only requires 2 adapters to connect to a USB port 😉

EDIT: AT to PS/2 adapter, active PS/2 to USB adapter.

I have this super simple digital camera that my grandfather once got as a gift with his national geographic subscription sometime in the 00's. back then I used it a couple times, the pictures were very bad quality but at least I know it worked back then. Ive been trying to get it to work on my laptop that runs on windows 11 and it recognizes there is a camera in the usb but it cannot install the driver automatically and unfortunately I have lost the cd with the driver install files. Ive been able to find the photo editing program used to import the pictures onto a computer but it does not work if the laptop does not recognize the camera.

does anybody know where I could find the driver for this camera?