What retro things have you done today?

jennidc · 20 Dec 2024 at 21:25

I installed the aliexpress app on my phone and got offered a 500gb batocera kinhank hard drive for £3.49 with free shipping - I paid more than that for hungry horace on tape for the spectrum

Needless to say I ordered it and can't wait to try it out on my laptop.

NickK · 22 Dec 2024 at 04:20

jennidc said:
I installed the aliexpress app on my phone and got offered a 500gb batocera kinhank hard drive for £3.49 with free shipping - I paid more than that for hungry horace on tape for the spectrum

Needless to say I ordered it and can't wait to try it out on my laptop.

Not sure I risk instaling anything for a “bargin” seems suspicious to me.

NickK · 22 Dec 2024 at 04:22

mid_gen said:
Doing some clearing out. got a draw full of hard drives, was about to start dismantling and binning them.....but one is a 36Gb WD Raptor, any interest to retro nerds?

10K rpms.. I have a load of HDs sitting around including a raptor. i had two ind RAID0 back in the day.

jennidc · 22 Dec 2024 at 17:50

NickK said:
Not sure I risk instaling anything for a “bargin” seems suspicious to me.

Sites like Temu and Aliexpress always offer great new customer deals as they play the long game and figure you will order again. I'll scan the drive anyway before installing anything but there are loads of reviews of the product on YouTube so I'm sure it will be fine.

Armageus · 27 Dec 2024 at 11:02

Coolermaster Musketeer! (Amongst other things like a Socket 7, 370? and maybe Slot 1 board - maybe ABit AB-BE6?)

HUGE COMPUTER JOBLOT | eBay

USEDUSED CONDITIONSOLD AS SPARES OR REPAIRSSOLD AS UNTESTED AND SOLD AS SEEN 2X WINDOWS VISTA LAPTOPS (NO HARD DRIVES) 1X ACER ALL IN ONE TOUCH SCREEN PC, INTENDED FOR WINDOWS 8.1 OR ABOVE. INTEL CORE I3, 8GB RAM (NO HARD DRIVE, UNSURE OF CPU...

www.ebay.co.uk

LewisRaz · 27 Dec 2024 at 13:35

Armageus said:
Coolermaster Musketeer! (Amongst other things like a Socket 7, 370? and maybe Slot 1 board - maybe ABit AB-BE6?)

HUGE COMPUTER JOBLOT | eBay

USEDUSED CONDITIONSOLD AS SPARES OR REPAIRSSOLD AS UNTESTED AND SOLD AS SEEN 2X WINDOWS VISTA LAPTOPS (NO HARD DRIVES) 1X ACER ALL IN ONE TOUCH SCREEN PC, INTENDED FOR WINDOWS 8.1 OR ABOVE. INTEL CORE I3, 8GB RAM (NO HARD DRIVE, UNSURE OF CPU...

www.ebay.co.uk

Could be fun, can see some bent pins on that 775 board tho so thats probably toast

LewisRaz · 27 Dec 2024 at 13:37

Picked this up today: Never owned a Mac before and its a bit of a fixer upper but at least is known working

Vintage iMac G3 Grape Working But Some Faults Inc. Original Discs And Keyboard | eBay

Please see photos for the spec, condition of this Mac and all the bits it comes with. It works… but, it has some faults. A CD is stuck in the CD slot (so you get a bonus disc of Age of Empires 2). I’m sure it’s an easy fix for someone more tech minded than me. 3 keys...

www.ebay.co.uk

lovelyhead · 31 Dec 2024 at 15:35

I installed the Torapu / Buttersoft Edge Enhancement mod to greatly improve the visual quality of my blurry Super Famicom 2 chip console. Here are some before and after comparison photos of the difference this mod makes:

You can learn more here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/snes/comments/1hplzqn/torapu_buttersoft_edge_enhancer_mod_a_great_cheap/

!bluetonic! · 13 Jan 2025 at 05:05

Here's a flavour of what's going on recently in my retro life. It's a bit untidy, but I'm still processing and tidying things up. I'm trying to keep things out of the garage which needs an overhaul, but there's not enough room for everything.

I have the Voodoo3 based P3 700Mhz setup on Windows XP. It's connected to a Sound Blaster Extigy and still rocks s mechanical HDD. DVD playback is taken care by the Creative DXr decoder card.

On the shelf is varying awesome PCs. The 386 will probably be brought into play next.

The SNES is a bit flakey, but I'm looking a recapping costs, which seems expensive.

So many things, such little time..

LewisRaz · 13 Jan 2025 at 17:43

I've spent the last 2 weeks tidying up almost everything I have stored, sorted all the cables and so, so much assorted crap I was holding onto for no reason, almost 3 black bags full of ewaste in the end and I am still not fully done.
Got about 50 IDE cables

Feels quite nice to finally have it all sorted and organised, I think I am more likely to tinker with things again now that its not such a mess.

Armageus · 13 Jan 2025 at 17:45

LewisRaz said:
Got about 50 IDE cables

Oddly for something so ubiquitous back in the day they are oddly quite hard to get hold of nowadays. (Which is about right given how many I've previously thrown away

)

LewisRaz · 13 Jan 2025 at 17:59

Armageus said:
Oddly for something so ubiquitous back in the day they are oddly quite hard to get hold of nowadays. (Which is about right given how many I've previously thrown away )

They are one of those things... Its crazy how much stuff we discarded back then thinking it would be useless in the future! I have no idea how I have ended up with so many to be honest
But some of the stuff I had kept all of these years... Drive cages that only fit specific cages that are long gone.. cathode tubes from the spell in the 00s when pc modding was a madness! random fan grills.. manuals for the most mundane things (wifi cards, printers)..

!bluetonic! · 17 Jan 2025 at 15:49

P3 700 update.

The DVD playback is done via the Creative DXr card. This unit has a Sound Blaster card inside, but, me being me, I had to do things differently with the Extigy.

With DVD playback, there was no sound playback. The original solution is using an internal cable to hook the decoder card to your sound card. However, with the Extigy, I bought a digital coax cable; where there's an output on the decoder card and I plug that into the Extigy.

Since then, the PC hangs on booting. Very strange. Unplug it, and all is fine. Edit: it was the USB hub..

I've tried a few GOG games and it's hit and miss on this. Being a Voodoo3 machine, I'm trying to utilise Glide games.

I'll open it up when I get the chance and continue to tinker.

Also, loving LGR reviews on Computer Chronicles at the moment. Two favourite worlds collide.

almoststew1990 · Saturday at 08:32

Has anyone had much success with an xp era laptop? I am without retro space for a good few months and I have the itch to do xp stuff but I generally steer clear of laptops because of how fiddly, loud and slow they are compared to a late xp desktop. I've found a laptop with an ati x2300 I think it is but this seems pretty basic.

!bluetonic! · Saturday at 09:18

almoststew1990 said:
Has anyone had much success with an xp era laptop? I am without retro space for a good few months and I have the itch to do xp stuff but I generally steer clear of laptops because of how fiddly, loud and slow they are compared to a late xp desktop. I've found a laptop with an ati x2300 I think it is but this seems pretty basic.

Give it a go. On the Internet Archive, there's these XP driver CDs with tons of drivers.if it's missing anything. I guess the fun is trying to extract the most from it. I would install the XP version of ScummVM and work my way through the point and click adventures.

On my XP unit above, I installed Virtua Tennis. And it wouldn't load, citing DirectX initialisation issues. The old me would have spent the next seven years trying to get it to work. I ditched it after 10 mins and then installed and played USA Racer. I've never played this before, but it held my attention nicely for 30 mins, working perfectly.

Ninco! · Saturday at 20:03

almoststew1990 said:
Has anyone had much success with an xp era laptop? I am without retro space for a good few months and I have the itch to do xp stuff but I generally steer clear of laptops because of how fiddly, loud and slow they are compared to a late xp desktop. I've found a laptop with an ati x2300 I think it is but this seems pretty basic.

I own an IBM ThinkPad X31 and it's a nice bit of kit. It plays many Windows XP games well. The only issue is the 12" XGA screen shows signs of age, has pressure marks. It was annoying me as I'm a bit pernickety with displays! So, by chance I picked up a second one thinking I might be able to make a good one interchanging parts, but both exhibit the same issue.

I have a Dell XPS L502X sitting in a drawer and recently tried to install XP using Easy2Boot. All looked well until the XP setup screen switches off the screen, so you end up with a black screen. Installed Windows 7 instead! Windows XP on the Dell would be awesome; it's got a lovely screen.

Ninco! · Sunday at 19:12

Lazy afternoon with a couple of hours playing Day of Defeat against Bots (Sturmbot). It instantly took me back 25 years!

DoD version is one of the early pre-Source versions, which is my favourite period of the game with really good maps of the time. Overlord etc.

One of three games I was hugely hooked on back in 2000! Counterstrike and Team Fortress Classic were the other two culprits. Got an early version of CS working with bots and it's great! Now installing FoxBot to relive the Team Fortress experience.

Akagi · Sunday at 21:14

I bought a magic box and dug out my PS2.

Akagi · Monday at 07:50

I wanted a copy of Silent Hill 3 for the PS2... Imagine how shocked I was to see prices ranging from £60 to £120... :eek:

I managed to get a bare disk for £28 (obscene!) and a cover for £5. £33 without a booklet, that will do! Jeepers.

!bluetonic! · Monday at 09:36

Ninco! said:
I own an IBM ThinkPad X31 and it's a nice bit of kit. It plays many Windows XP games well. The only issue is the 12" XGA screen shows signs of age, has pressure marks. It was annoying me as I'm a bit pernickety with displays! So, by chance I picked up a second one thinking I might be able to make a good one interchanging parts, but both exhibit the same issue.

I have a Dell XPS L502X sitting in a drawer and recently tried to install XP using Easy2Boot. All looked well until the XP setup screen switches off the screen, so you end up with a black screen. Installed Windows 7 instead! Windows XP on the Dell would be awesome; it's got a lovely screen.

After reading this, I went hot-headed into eBay to look. The ThinkPad is a great bit of kit and reasonably priced. I saw one with a docking station; but then found that docking stations are cheap and this price wasn't the bargain I thought it initially was. I then remembered I had 20 other retro projects to tend to, and that I can keep blowing money on things like this, so I reluctantly walked away.