What retro things have you done today?

LewisRaz said:
Sounds like a plan! I am going to try it first and see if its enough for my needs.. It probably is I just feel a little annoyed as I currently have 3 ebay issues right now after not really having any of note before.
I also had surgery on tuesday so cant lift anything for a week or 2. So my XP machine is way out of reach for the minute :(
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There's no rush, I'll be off for the next two weeks too. I hope you get better soon.
 
Anyone using an older mac here? I've been a bit partial to watching older mac's being restored lately, after thinking of one a friend used to have. I wish I'd bought it off his parents back in the day, as the PSU (or something) had failed.
Used to have a lot of fun playing some terrible games on there. Don't remember what model he had, it was a smallish beige desktop system, non-tower.

A lot of them seem to go for silly money, but there are some models that don't have that cult status, and I'm not looking for a fashion accessory, just something old and rubbish to mess around with. :D
 
Emlyn_Dewar said:
Anyone using an older mac here? I've been a bit partial to watching older mac's being restored lately, after thinking of one a friend used to have. I wish I'd bought it off his parents back in the day, as the PSU (or something) had failed.
Used to have a lot of fun playing some terrible games on there. Don't remember what model he had, it was a smallish beige desktop system, non-tower.

A lot of them seem to go for silly money, but there are some models that don't have that cult status, and I'm not looking for a fashion accessory, just something old and rubbish to mess around with. :D
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I think there has been a few vintage mac users popping in and out of the thread. Cant recall any names tho.
My latest purchase arrived today. Packed well but apparently not DPD proof :(
The motherboard tray is removable and somehow had been shunted back about 15mm and also upwards. So it was fighting against the PCI and ISA cards. My main concern was the motherboard might have cracked as the 4 screws holding it in are the only points between the tray and the case.



Fortunately I was able to take it apart and bend it all back to the right shape and it booted straight up! :D
Next up was to see how my luck was with the dallas chip.. Socket or not..
Well I was lucky again as it was socketed. But while removing is something odd happened that I have not seen before. The cap of the chip popped off exposing the battery inside..


That should make modding it to take a CR2032 very easy :D
 
LewisRaz said:
I think there has been a few vintage mac users popping in and out of the thread. Cant recall any names tho.
My latest purchase arrived today. Packed well but apparently not DPD proof :(
The motherboard tray is removable and somehow had been shunted back about 15mm and also upwards. So it was fighting against the PCI and ISA cards. My main concern was the motherboard might have cracked as the 4 screws holding it in are the only points between the tray and the case.



Fortunately I was able to take it apart and bend it all back to the right shape and it booted straight up! :D
Next up was to see how my luck was with the dallas chip.. Socket or not..
Well I was lucky again as it was socketed. But while removing is something odd happened that I have not seen before. The cap of the chip popped off exposing the battery inside..


That should make modding it to take a CR2032 very easy :D
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I never knew it was a coin battery inside, why did they even bother using the extra space and materials to cover it?
I hope you will get well with the project, the case looked a bit beaten up, but it makes it a bit more interesting to restore it :)
 
I would say the case is pretty good to be fair! The plastics are in really good shape but in desperate need of a clean. The metal cover should polish up fairly well. I’ve managed to mod the battery although it took me a very long time because I snapped the leg for the positive side clean off so spent ages trying to get some solder to stick to the tiny part of metal still on show.

Specs wise nothing fantastic.
Pc chips m530 socket 7 motherboard.
Intel 166mmx
32mb of EDO. 2 x 16mb sticks.
S3 trio64 with the memory expansion slots filled.
Yamaha YMF ISA sound card
It has a 16x cd rom too and the floppy drive works nice.
I’ve added a 6.5gb hdd and windows 98 is installing.

Really pleased with it actually. A good AT case will normally sell for more than I paid for the lot so that’s good too.

I’m going to hopefully film the restoration on the case and get a video up over the next few days.
 
Today I finally swapped the PAL mainboard and GCLoader into my Spice Game Cube shell.
E078EDE5-0679-4348-A30F-09F3727250D3.JPG
 
Thanks!
They’re plug and play, just takes a while as there’s around 9000 screws inside!
GCLoaders are hard to buy, might be better looking at PicoBoot. Very new mod using a Pi Pico that will let you load games from serial port using an SP2SD and not requiring a boot disc / functional optical drive
 
GeX said:
Thanks!
They’re plug and play, just takes a while as there’s around 9000 screws inside!
GCLoaders are hard to buy, might be better looking at PicoBoot. Very new mod using a Pi Pico that will let you load games from serial port using an SP2SD and not requiring a boot disc / functional optical drive
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I'm happy to wait for a GCLoader, although might look into the Pico Boot, guessing what might hold me back is soldering.
 
GeX said:
Thanks!
They’re plug and play, just takes a while as there’s around 9000 screws inside!
GCLoaders are hard to buy, might be better looking at PicoBoot. Very new mod using a Pi Pico that will let you load games from serial port using an SP2SD and not requiring a boot disc / functional optical drive
Click to expand...

I was going to mod one of my GameCubes with the picoboot this week since annual leave, didn’t get the time!
 
Made a little video on my that machine I purchased

youtu.be

Exploring a Vintage PC: Cleaning Up a Cheap eBay Find. 40QuidPC (Part 1)

In this video I am taking a look at a recent eBay purchase. Seeing exactly what I have got and giving it a clean. I am also taking a new approach to my video...
youtu.be youtu.be

Not perfect but I think its ok and gives me more confidence to film some projects in more detail soon :)
 
I'm currently on an XP gaming fix and I'm playing through some of those 2000 to 2006 games I missed when I had a PS2. I'm playing through FEAR atm on a bog standard e8500 / GTS240 (which is basically a 9800GT, which is basically an 8800GT come on keep up) / Audigy 2 system, and I'm actually running XP for once for those EAX sound effects. I'm tempted to get an ATX board so that I can have my GTX285 and a sound card working together, there isn't enough space on my m-ATX board ATM.
 
JoeBoi said:
I'm happy to wait for a GCLoader, although might look into the Pico Boot, guessing what might hold me back is soldering.
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Should have done a few pics of doing the Pico Boot to mine last month, it's a really easy job to do! Getting the 60mhz mod on my mega dive was miles more frustrating to do... There's two points to solder onto chip legs (just need a bit of care to not bridge them) then 3 others that are super easy to get to on the board. Take about 2 mins to sort the pico boot and the mini sd card thing works exceptionally well :)
 
After seeing an old advert for Silica I remembered the software pack which came with my A500+ originally, so bought a copy on Ebay. I have no intention of actually doing anything with it but its nice to have a copy for nostalgia reasons :)



 
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