What retro things have you done today?

almoststew1990 said:
That's ridiculous. A dual core i7 is probably going back a few generations too (maybe to 6 or 7?)

I'm looking for inspiration to build something having spent all my holiday not really doing anything retro related. Maybe a Pentium M or something
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Build a 'bespoke arcade machine' I reckon someone could build a bettre one than on that site for a fifth of the price
 
I got a professionally made arcade cabinet based on an actual 1980's Jamma cab for £700 some years ago, with lighted coin buttons and a button layout to my design. This was way before Arcade1Up started doing replicas. I spent another couple of hundred upgrading it and putting in an old Q6600 PC inside instead of the 60-in-1 board, and it's lasted years. I've seen similar pre-buiilt models going for over £2000, but £6000 is taking the mick!

 
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after about 60seconds of google I came up with this

Wooden DIY cab kits. £70+ (ebay)
Joystick kits £35+ (ebay)
Add an old monitor. Plenty of non 1080p panels now for free or £10 max..(FB market)
Add anything with a cpu. Possibly free but lets say £10 max again. (FB market)
Old 2.0 speakers to use or tear apart and fit in the cab. £5 (FB market)

So for somewhere ~ £130 you can make a 6k cabinet :D

Or even simpler just get a Pi and Pimeroni set up, smaller and a little more expensive but easy to make.
 
Pi4, Bose speakers all good quality sticks and buttons + cabinet would only be not much more than 1k surely. People must buy them for there to be a website, jesus
 
Guest2 said:
Pi4, Bose speakers all good quality sticks and buttons + cabinet would only be not much more than 1k surely. People must buy them for there to be a website, jesus
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Pretty sure you see them on most episodes of "Cribs" where someone has a games room :P

Would only need to sell a few each year!!

We are in the wrong jobs
 
I decided to work on an old Compaq EVO this morning its a Pentium 4 has 256MB RAM running Windows 98SE It suffered from video playback issues and I thought I'd get it out on the kitchen table see what I can do. It would have the same issues playing CD's or any format of music or video it would always sound like its jumping and there was a lot of games the computer refused to play as well. Its either the video card wasn't right for the machine or the driver had issues. Anyway nothing I could do about the driver because it was a download and the only download I could find.

The Compaq EVO also needed a new CMOS battery so I ordered a some of those I need a few more for some other retro PC 's I have anyway.

I had bought a motherboard bundle some time ago it was very cheap 10 pounds which also included a GPU so I thought you can't go wrong for 10 pounds. I mainly bought it for the GPU more than anything. I sometimes buy parts on the off chance when they are cheap for later builds so I don't always test things. The seller said it was all working so I took his word for it.... I was going to use that GPU on the Compaq EVO but the GPU was dead. So I had to use a different one that I was saving for another retro build. I got duked on that bundle because the motherboard was no good either so I spend 10 pounds on scrap. I bought it a couple months back from ebay.

Anyway back to the Compaq EVO I had to change over the mounting bracket to fit the other video card and then I will need to hunt down an AGP Radeon 9200SE 128MB driver. So that is as far as I have got with it for now. Once I receive my new CMOS batteries I will finish it off. I will hunt down the video card driver later on tonight. Hopefully that should solve the video/audio playback issues I've been having on the Compaq EVO.
 
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Happy New Year one and all!

Been out of the loop for a while with illness, work commitments and other such annoying "adult" stuff lol

This years plans starting today.....
- The saga and search for a sensibly priced 6800LE / GT begins again (Yeah right!)
- Dreamblaster S2 for the Yamaha in the P1 machine
- Socket 754 Rebuild in a more period fitting case
- Core2Quad SLI or Crossfire Build
 
The cheap budget TINY PC from 1998. A bit of a story. I bought a TINY PC a couple of months ago that was on ebay. I mainly bought it because I was desperate for a sensibly priced Pentium II / III board or whole computer, anything... I wasn't prepared to pay rip off prices for old tat. This TINY PC shows up on ebay 15 pounds collection only. It had a socket 370 motherboard with an Intel Pentium III processor. RAM and a working CD ROM drive and that was it. No IDE cables floppy or hard drive. I was buying this mainly for the board.

Well the deal was done outside of ebay I went to collect the computer and paid in cash. I knew the risks I was desperate and I didn't ask too many questions. I got the computer home. I took the cover off and I immediately saw that almost the tops of every single electrolytic capacitor on the board was bulging. Amazingly the board still posts and I was able to do a Windows 98 test install but lots of drivers were missing, not just the usual Graphics,Audio, LAN but many other drives missing as well and the display was flickering the whole time which isn't surprising by the state of the board I'm amazed it even powered up let alone anything else but there you go.

With so many capacitors needing replacing on this board plus the strong possibility of having lots of missing drivers I am wondering if this motherboard is really worth the expense and time repairing it. I don't mind replacing a few leaky/bulging caps on boards but this one has more than 30 bad caps with 7 different values, the cost of buying the new caps then the work involved I'm wondering if its even worth doing or just cutting my loses on it. There is also the issue of drivers so even if I did replace all the caps I'm still not out of the woods as they say. I can do something with the case. Its a bit ugly but with some creativity I can get it looking better. The case itself isn't to bad its just the front panel that is a bit ugly at least then I haven't totally lost on this buy.

10 pounds worth of usable parts...
Intel Pentium III Processor @ 800MHz
CPU heatsink and fan
SD RAM two sticks of odd 128MB total 256MB
Nice Beige Memorex CD ROM drive

All in all that is about 10 pounds worth of parts and if I can fix up the case then I've not done too badly. I can get another socket 370 motherboard for between 10 and 30 pounds with an AGP slot.

Anyway I thought I would share that with you all encase anybody wants a good read.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everybody.
 
Retro6 said:
The cheap budget TINY PC from 1998. A bit of a story. I bought a TINY PC a couple of months ago that was on ebay. I mainly bought it because I was desperate for a sensibly priced Pentium II / III board or whole computer, anything... I wasn't prepared to pay rip off prices for old tat. This TINY PC shows up on ebay 15 pounds collection only. It had a socket 370 motherboard with an Intel Pentium III processor. RAM and a working CD ROM drive and that was it. No IDE cables floppy or hard drive. I was buying this mainly for the board.

Well the deal was done outside of ebay I went to collect the computer and paid in cash. I knew the risks I was desperate and I didn't ask too many questions. I got the computer home. I took the cover off and I immediately saw that almost the tops of every single electrolytic capacitor on the board was bulging. Amazingly the board still posts and I was able to do a Windows 98 test install but lots of drivers were missing, not just the usual Graphics,Audio, LAN but many other drives missing as well and the display was flickering the whole time which isn't surprising by the state of the board I'm amazed it even powered up let alone anything else but there you go.

With so many capacitors needing replacing on this board plus the strong possibility of having lots of missing drivers I am wondering if this motherboard is really worth the expense and time repairing it. I don't mind replacing a few leaky/bulging caps on boards but this one has more than 30 bad caps with 7 different values, the cost of buying the new caps then the work involved I'm wondering if its even worth doing or just cutting my loses on it. There is also the issue of drivers so even if I did replace all the caps I'm still not out of the woods as they say. I can do something with the case. Its a bit ugly but with some creativity I can get it looking better. The case itself isn't to bad its just the front panel that is a bit ugly at least then I haven't totally lost on this buy.

10 pounds worth of usable parts...
Intel Pentium III Processor @ 800MHz
CPU heatsink and fan
SD RAM two sticks of odd 128MB total 256MB
Nice Beige Memorex CD ROM drive

All in all that is about 10 pounds worth of parts and if I can fix up the case then I've not done too badly. I can get another socket 370 motherboard for between 10 and 30 pounds with an AGP slot.

Anyway I thought I would share that with you all encase anybody wants a good read.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everybody.
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I think that's just the ups and downs of this hobby. frustrating as hell at points and you find yourself just having to cut your losses on some stuff :(

At least you managed to salvage some good bits from it.
 
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This was my latest bit of retro tinkering.

I bought the Artigo for £25 on eBay. Result!

I nearly broke the battery holder. The existing battery was stock-glued in that needed replacing.

It came with a version of Linux on it. I wiped that for Windows XP. The MP32L emulates the MT32. In DosBox, this works a treat.
 
Console rather than PC based for me this week but I managed to pick up a RetroBit PRISM HDMI Gamecube adaptor for £32 on eBay

Seriously impressed so far and I have now bought my cube back to the lounge as a main console :)
 
Well its Sunday evening a time when new ebay listings are coming on ebay so I thought time to do a retro motherboard search that I need for an old computer I'm repairing... I had a good look last night when I was unable to sleep and found an I.T Recycling ebay seller. They had lots of interesting motherboards including socket 775's with AGP slot for 20 quid. They also had a socket 370 board I was going to buy but didn't because I was so overwhelmed by the amount of retro stuff they were selling so I needed a bit of time to make up my mind rather than buying what I see lol.

Well this morning I go on ebay to buy a couple of motherboards and I can't find the sellers other items. I added one of his items to my watch list which is the only item I can see. I know they couldn't have sold everything within a few hours plus the item of there's in my watch list is still there but when I click on "see sellers other items" I get 0 results. A glitch on ebay that I'm unable to get around.

Its now become apparent to me that there are an awful lot of listings which are not showing of other sellers too.... so annoying. I also use ebay to buy all sorts of things not just computer stuff so I knew something was up.

I tried many different browsers the glitch is still there.

Thats my retro motherboard hunting evening done. I needed a few IDE hard drives too. Oh well... I'll try again later.
 
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