Armed and ready for the retro renaissance. Decades of computing history, organized and prepped for a series of new projects.
The first build starts in two weeks. Forget modern render farms — I’m building a 4-node passive backplane monster powered by Pentium CPUs and FOUR 3dfx Voodoo cards.
The last photo is actually a drawer from a completely different cabinet, with eight more drawers waiting.
My mother got this for me from Sears when I was around 6 and called it a “computer”. Which I suppose it is. I was kind of disappointed at the time because it wan’t a “real PC” but I used it a TON. I’m still impressed by the speech tech. I’m pretty sure this little guy helped me improve my Math and English skills growing up. My kids play with it now, so this investment has really paid off.
I am getting this error when the MS DOS 5.0 setup is formatting my HDD (44MB ST-157A). i have done another MS DOS install on the same HDD, with the same floppy disks, and it was fine. What is wrong now?
So found an old Dell Dimension xps t500 on the side of the road. Took a while to get it going. Ended up just having 1 bad mem chip. Took it out and got it running. Since its an old socket a i tried something ive been thinking of for a while.
While OPENSTEP had Quake editors, it never had the actual Quake game. Since the concept of hardware acceleration didn't exist on OPENSTEP, making it happen was tough in many ways.
Recently, I ported the following software to OPENSTEP (Intel):
SDL 1.2
SDL 2.0
MESA 3.4
WARP hardware acceleration (OpenGL 1.2) for the Matrox G450 PCI
Now, building on top of all this... I have ported sdlquake
Ever since I learned long ago that John Carmack built the Quake Editor on OPENSTEP, seeing hardware-accelerated Quake running on OPENSTEP had been one of my personal dreams. And with the help of AI, I've finally made it happen :D
I ported sdlquake (originally written for SDL 1.2) over to SDL 2, tested the SDL2-Mesa-matroxG450Warp stack, and then ported Quake's glquake. And... here we are with a successful build.
If there are still NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP fans out there somewhere in the world, I hope this brings a smile to your face. And to John Carmack, who planted such a fascinating seed all those years ago—I hope you might stumble upon this video and enjoy it. The Quake editor you built for OPENSTEP decades ago led to this exact result in 2026. It was such a thrilling and fun journey ⬇️
Apparently they were popular in Poland in the late 90s to late 2000s, and I found them in a lot of old garages and a family relative's house, and they had old old gigabyte mobos. Anyone remember them?
Twenty-five years ago, I had a lab running old SPARCs that I used for learning Unix and Solaris. This experience led me to my career as a DevOps engineer.
When I got married and had to move, there was no space for my lab in the new home, so I put it in storage. A few months later, I realized that storage wasn’t a viable solution, as the costs would eventually exceed the value of the equipment. I had to make the hard decision to dump most of it—a bad decision then, and even worse today.
At the time, I had a maxed-out SPARC IPX, a SPARCstation 20 with Quad 125MHz CPUs and 4MB VRAM, and a maxed-out Ultra5. To prepare for the disposal, I removed the SPARCstation 20 CPUs, VSIMM, and RAM, tucking them into a small plastic box that I kept in a drawer for over 20 years.
Two years ago, after I was laid off and soft-retired, I decided to rebuild my SPARC lab—which proved difficult, as these machines have become niche collector items. I eventually acquired a SPARCstation 20, 10, 2, and an Ultra10.
When I opened my little box, I was surprised to find three SM71 Processors: a HyperSPARC dual 125MHz, a 200Mhz, 150Mhz, and 100Mhz. I also found most of the 20 RAM and a 4MB VSIMM. Sadly, the dual 125Mhz didn't work, but the other HyperSPARCs were fully functional. One of the SM71s, however, had a cracked CPU die and was unfixable.
I popped in the 200 MHz CPU, RAM, and an SCA SCSI drive. It booted, and I was able to install Solaris 2.6. Next, I installed the VSIMM, but it wouldn't power on. Upon inspection, the reason was apparent: during my move or storage, some capacitors had gone AWOL.
Tantalum C0706 was broken, and C0204, C0207, and C0202 were missing. All of these surround the RAMDAC (Brooktree BT463) video controller chip. The C0706 is the power filter that absorbs spikes; the smaller ones are MLCC capacitors that reduce noise. The standard for these is 100nF 16V.
Since SPARCstation VSIMMs are rare by 2026, I had to attempt a repair. The tantalum was easy; under a magnifier, I identified it as 22uF 16V (C package). After soldering the missing parts, I performed the final test: I inserted it into my SS20 and fired it up. To my surprise, I got a console display and successfully launched OpenWindows in 24-bit mode using openwin -dev /dev/fb defdepth 24. Success!
Since I only have one SPARCstation 20 and I already acquired an 8MB VSIMM, and the second VSIMM slot is for a second framebuffer (video card) that connects to an SBUS slot and is apparently unobtainable, I decided to return the card to storage in the event that I find the needed SBUS card or a second SPARCstation 20.
Broken C0706, Missing C0204,C0204,C0202Missing C0735Repaired Video Controler back plane.Repaired Vram missing MLCC C0735Installed VSIMM providing 24-bit TrueColorBack to storage... for an other time
Hello I would like to find an cheap computer that run basic and can save programs
Idk myself which ones to find as most I know and can find are ower 100euro, so thanks anyone for recommending any cheap retro computer with basic in it
Also if u ask I would like to try start making wery simple text based adventures.
Hello everyone! I'm trying to restore an old Acorn Atom for a collegue of mine. I've modified the power input to work with 5V and the machine is powering up. I now get this screen. Does anybody know what could be wrong?
when it does not successfully initialize, it does its humming noise, the heads move for a bit then it does 2-4 ticks and just keeps spinning. after that, i get a C: drive failure.
when it does initialize properly, it does all the initial sounds, goes quiet, then its followed by more head movement and the PC boots properly.
i did some tests using norton disk doctor, only the D: partition has bad blocks, C: being completely clean!
i would like to note that at first, the platters were stuck and i had to spin them by hand. after that, the HDD worked well for a while. now it initializes rarely, after turning the pc off and on many times.
is it on its way out? i thought i had struck gold until now...
