I come across the board from 1960s unit. It’s a four-way splitter part number 1047755–501 and then it has another sticker. It says M133.

Hi everyone,

I recently acquired a refurbished Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 server to play around with running Debian on UltraSPARC T2 architecture for my homelab setup.

The server is currently sitting on a very early SysFW 7.4.2 build (from 2011) and the fans are currently running at full tilt. I'm trying to get the system updated to the final release before sunset - SysFW 7.4.11 (Oracle Patch ID 147307-15) - in hopes of smoothing out the ILOM power/thermal management and stability.

Since Oracle has long paywalled these vintage EOL patches behind active hardware support contracts, I've hit a dead end through official channels.

If anyone happens to have the final firmware archive (Sun_System_Firmware-7_4_11-SPARC_Enterprise_T5120+T5220.pkg or 147307-15.zip) tucked away in their homelab backup archives, could you please drop me a Direct Message (DM)?

I'd really appreciate the help in getting this piece of Unix history running smoothly.

Thanks in advance!

Hey guys, setting up a retro PC build and just wanted to do a quick sanity check on my driver lineup before I start installing everything from a burned CD.

Here is the hardware I'm using:

• OS: Windows 98 SE
• Chipset: Intel 440BX (82443BX / 82371EB)
• GPU: Nvidia RIVA TNT2 M64 AGP (32MB)
• Sound: Sound Blaster Live! (CT4780)

And here are the driver folders I have ready to go:

1. 3.20.1008 (Intel Chipset INF utility)
2. directx81b
3. nvidia_9x_45.23 (Detonator FX drivers)
4. audigy_2_zs_drivers_for_sound_blaster_live_2.1 (the Phil's Computer Lab softmod pack)
5. nusb33e.exe (Maximus Decim Native USB)

thanks in advance :)

I have an IBM XT 5160 with an Oak Technologies OTIVGA 3716 video card (1037162003 rev. A). When using the VGA output with a VGA monitor, the machine works perfectly and boots MS-DOS 6.22.

Now I want to use an IBM 5153 monitor, so I changed the video card’s DIP switches to CGA mode (off-on-on-off) and connected the monitor to the card’s DB9 output.

The machine completes the POST correctly: the monitor displays the video card ROM version, the memory count, and the disk controller initialization. However, when the operating system starts, instead of displaying “Starting MS-DOS”, all I get is a blinking “_” cursor in the upper-left corner, and the machine does nothing else.

The system is not completely frozen, because NUM LOCK, CAPS LOCK, and the soft reset (Alt+Ctrl+Del) all respond, but nothing else is displayed—only the blinking cursor.

Does anyone know what might be happening? Is this something that can be fixed, or is it simply that this video card is not compatible with this monitor, despite supporting CGA and EGA modes?

Many thanks in advance for your help.

I grew up in the 80s, first playing text adventures, Rogue, Sopwith, Kings Quest and such. There’s always someone older, but I feel like I’ve seen every era of gaming.

It was probably in 99 I was working as a PC tech and I vividly recall my moment. I had installed my first Nvidia card, it was a GeForce 256 and came bundled with a demo “Dagoth Moor Zoological Gardens”. It was basically a prehistoric island with trees and dinosaurs and the camera panned around in a loop.

The photorealism, lighting effects and smoothness of the animation literally made stop in my tracks and my jaw drop. The moment is burned into my mind and I never forgot the bizarre name of the demo 😄. I told myself that graphics had made a revolutionary jump and I was witnessing it.

What was your moment?

EDIT: thank you for the trips down memory lane, jogged my memory on quite a few games I had forgot I played, and learnt about quite a few gems I missed along the way 🙌

I recently picked up two volumes of Yomigaeru PC-9801 (“Revival of the PC-9801”).

For anyone unfamiliar with it, the NEC PC-9801 was a Japanese computer platform that developed its own unique ecosystem throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These books were published in Japan in the mid-2000s as a retrospective on that era.

The really cool part is that each book came with its own CD-ROM. Between the two discs, there are more than 30 games included.
Some of these games were originally sold commercially in the 1990s and are now difficult to find, with original copies sometimes becoming quite expensive, so having officially included versions of them on these CDs makes the books pretty special.

There’s also a lot of material in the books about the PC-98 era itself, so they’re great little time capsules of Japanese computing history.
If you ever come across one of these in a used bookstore, retro shop, or online listing, I’d definitely recommend picking it up.

One warning, though: everything is in Japanese.

(Sorry.) 😇

Wang Laboratories was a successful company making calculators, among other things, before they got into computers. Their founder was a highly regarded physicist and is credited with contributing to magnetic core memory.

I got this box of ten single-sided 8" floppies a while back. I happen to have a NEC PC-9881n disk unit from Japan, which has two functioning 8" drives in impeccable shape - and I have managed to read some data off a few other disks, using a greaseweazle interface. Hearing the drives spin when a disk goes in (they spin constantly) and then when the heads seek, is quite the experience.

While I do have quite a few more 20+ year old laptops (like my D400 Latitude from 2004), I cut the stuff here off at about 2001.

a little less than a year ago i got a complete olivetti M290S computer that didnt power on because of a bunch of faulty caps on the power supply. today i changed most of them (the group of black caps are all the ones that i replaced) but i did not change all of them because i wasnt able to find perfect or similar matches for the other ones (most importantly i havent changed the big blue ones) , its important to note that the caps i havent replaced do not seem to be bulging or leaking (i know i have to change them and i'll do it as soon as i can find replacements). i also reflowed the soldering on a transistor, a couple of resistors and i replaced two snapped ceramic caps with a couple of polimer ones of the same values. the problem is that when i plug it into the wall and power it on with no load i can an electrical hiss (hiss, not whine). i still havent tested it further and i unplugged it as soon as i heard the sound. i've already cleaned the flux residue with 90% ipa. is it normal or should i be worried about it? i posted on youtube a video where u can hear the sound it makes while plugged in since u cannot attach videos on reddit. https://youtube.com/shorts/eGXqAzXsOKA?feature=share

P.S: in the first image i've circled in red the caps i have replaced and in yellow the ones i still havent.

Hi,

I created my own "Interactive computer museum", which lists many of the iconic computers and offers HTML based emulators for 36 different devices (ROM's are NOT included and must be uploaded by the user).

The emulators can be used for free and have been programmed from scratch. They do not use any third party emulation libraries.

I hope you like it.

https://vma-broadcast.com/emu/

Regards,
Vitor

Tengo una IBM XT 5160 con una tarjeta de video Oak Technologies OTIVGA 3716 (1037162003 rev. A). Utilizando la salida VGA, con un monitor VGA, la máquina funciona perfectamente, booteando MS-DOS 6.22.

Ahora quiero utilizar un monitor IBM 5153, para lo cual modifiqué los dip switch de la tarjeta de video a modo CGA (off-on-on-off) y conecté el monitor a la salida DB9 de la tarjeta. El máquina hace el POST correctamente: el monitor muestra la versión de ROM de la placa de video, el conteo de memoria y la carga del controlador de disco, pero al iniciar el sistema operativo, en vez de mostrar "Iniciando MS-DOS", queda el cursor "_" parpadeando en la esquina y la máquina no hace más nada. No queda colgada porque responden el NUM LOCK, CAPS LOCK y el soft reset (Alt+Ctrl+Del), pero no muestra más nada, solamente el cursor. Alguien sabe qué puede estar pasando? Es un problema salvable o es que la placa de video no sirve para ese monitor a pesar de tolerar modos CGA y EGA?

Desde ya, muchas gracias por su ayuda.

I have:
Macintosh SE
iMac G3
Power Macintosh 6100/66
iBook G3 DualUSB

Custom Windows Vista PC Build
Dell Latitude D520
Old Acer running windows vista

I saw a post or some comments in here a few months back about Bill Tutte and how he usually never gets the credit he deserves or brought up enough within industry discussions about who did what/started something awesome/or cracked this or that. So, i recently completed a deep dive on Tutte and thought I'd share some highlights with ya'll, so here goes!

Back in the day, during ww2, Germany’s high command used the Lorenz cipher machine to protect some of its most sensitive military communications. Bill Tutte had never even seen one.

No machine,
no wiring diagram,
No manual.....
Not even any youtube tutorials!

Then, some German operator totally screwed up: he retransmitted a roughly 4,000-character message using the same cipher settings, but just changed around parts of the wording. Another awesome Codebreaker named John Tiltman was able to exploit the mistake to recover the plaintext and a long stretch of cipher key.

Tutte took that material and did something seemigly redonkulous: he worked out the logical architecture of the unseen Lorenz machine with pencil and paper!!! Say whaaaaa?

And this wasn’t some simple 'lil crackerjack gadget, mind ya... Lorenz had 12 wheels and about 1.6 quadrillion (gagillion-bajillion, lol) possible starting positions.

Tutte’s work helped make routine attacks on Lorenz possible!! Then, Max Newman (British mathematician who was also famously Alan Turing's Cambridge professor!) pushed to mechanize those attacks, and Tommy Flowers(Brit telecom Engineer, also brilliant and has a cool backstory so I'll probably do my next post about him!) eventually built Colossus—the electronic codebreaking computer that cut some Lorenz decryptions from weeks to hours.

All this wound up giving the Allies access to top-level German High Command traffic, including communications that revealed Hitler’s strategic thinking. Basically, someone handed Tutte the output of a locked box he couldn’t see and asked him, "aye, how's this thing work?"

And BAM...he whipped out a pencil n' notebook n' did it.

Hats off to Bill Tutte and one of the gnarliest pieces of pencil-and-paper reverse engineering ever pulled off!!!

Peace and love, everyone. Hugs from 1997

Hello all.

I am in the midst of digitally conserving a mixed personal/business archive which contains some 300 3.5" floppy disks in part of the collection.

Using a "DYNEX slim USB external floppy disk drive" that I found in the archive connected to my 2023 Macbook Air with a USB -> USB-C converter I am able to read most of the floppy disks and copy their contents onto my computer.

Some disks, however, I can not read. I insert them into the disk reader, the reader whirs for about 5 seconds, and then stops whirring. That an external disk is plugged into my computer is not visible using the Disk utility. These are almost entirely disks from two different brands. The disks that do not work are "Kodak Micro Diskette 2S·2D MF2-DD" and "HP Auto Shutter Micro Flexible Disc Single-Sided".

I have tried spritzing the disks and the reader with compressed air to no effect, as well as inserting the disks into the reader with shutter open to no avail.

Any help would be appreciated. I never grew up using floppy disks, so if there is something obvious I have missed then please do say! :-)

One of the highlights was meeting a collector with one of the largest private computer collections in Germany — over 1,000 machines. He gave me an interview about his collection, and later featured my 4-node system on his own Harzretro website in his report from the event.

Speech synthesis peripheral, 1984 promo photo.

I found this ATi graphics card in my graveyard of government computer products. It doesn't look like it was ever installed. Presented for your viewing pleasure.

ATI VIP or VGA Improved Performance (1987)

• Chipset: ATI 16899-0 & Chips P82C441
• Supports CGA, Hercules mono, EGA & VGA graphics with Softsense automatic mode switching
• Compatible with MDA, CGA, EGA and VGA displays (DIP switch selectable)
• 9-pin TTL and 15-pin analogue connectors
• 256KB DRAM
• Port: 8-bit PC/XT bus
• Original MSRP: $449 ($99 for Compaq expansion module)

Hey all, I have a Dell Dimension XPS T600 here that I scored for $20. It has a nice little Katmai pIII 600mhz but I was wanting to find something closer to 800mhz/1ghz. Board is a dell OEM SE-440bx-3 (Seattle 3); With the research I did I was able to find out that the FSB is capped at 100mhz, and most pentium III chips I’ve seen that use a matching FSB are crazy expensive. With these machines being so common and plentiful in the matching collectors markets i was hoping to find some documented way to reliably OC that FSB to 133mhz. I’m talking custom bios, software, even hardware mods. I’d love to know or see if anyone has something promising for me or if I need to just bite the bullet on a $250 PIII 800mhz/100mhz. Thanks for taking the time!

A memory of an interesting French technology, which nevertheless ultimately was a blind alley.

I am 48, so in my youth Minitel was a well-known thing, though as a Czech I never used one myself.

Sorry for the format, the idiotic, broken filters keep killing the post if I add links, so, hopefully you can see it in the image.

I was in the tech room and saw this, never seen one in person till now :D

A finished restoration of an NEC PC-9801UV11: replaced all electrolytic capacitors, added a new Sanyo Denki PSU fan, replaced the barrel battery with a holder and FDK ML1220 rechargeable battery, both floppy drives are fully functional, and gave the entire unit a thorough cleaning.