Vintage Computers

[The_Librarian]

Apparently the business these microdrives came from (well known retailer back in the day) used them for their payroll and books. Just imagine... A Speccy running your payroll and basic accountancy.

Well, no problem with nasty cryptolocker and other malware there.

If it is possible, I would get a 128+, equip it with an SD card reader and use that for my finances and documents.

Email will not be possible, unless there's a way to get it to connect to the WWW etc... but most probably the schlepp won't be worth the bother.

No more worries about cryptolockers, viruses and the such trying to mess your files up.

 

[The_Librarian]

I see it's on GOG as well

The Lords of Midnight

Mike Singleton's '84 classic Adventure Strategy game, brought to and updated for Windows.

www.gog.com

Forgot about that one. The same was out for Android, but the developer nixed it, because he have to pay Google to keep it on the Play store, not worth it.

This is also a good one, you get an auto-map. It is a leaner version than the WOTS one, but it does not detract from the game or the story itself.

 

[EchoZA]

Anyone else here collecting vintage computers? Especially from the Home Computer era before the IBM PC became pervasive, i.e. from the 70's and 80's era.

Still building my collection but have the following so far:

- Ohio Superboard
- Apple II
- Vic 20
- Commodore 64
- Sinclair ZX80
- Sinclair ZX81
- Sinclair Spectrum
- HP 85
- HP 86
- Osborne 1
- Texas Instruments 99
- Acorn Atom
- BBC Micro
- microProfessor

Still looking for a few systems.

Would love to hear what you've got.

ZX Spectrum 48k in the large case (not the rubber keys)

Looking for an Amiga 500 or 1200, used to have a 2000B but sold it years ago

 

[jannievanzyl]

Don't forget RLL drives Anyone remember the good old ST251. Jeez, that must have been mid 80's

ST251 was MFM (51MB unformatted), the same physical spec paired to RLL was the ST277 (77MB unformatted).

The ST251 still has the best startup sound of all hard drives. They did not stood the terat of time and I find probably 10% of the ones I find still work.

 

[jannievanzyl]

Novell Netware 3.12 was the best.

True words

Got a couple of boxes of different Netware versions here, building an ArcNet, 3.11 Server high on my to-do list.

 

[jannievanzyl]

Some Seagate porn

You don't often see 20MB SCSI drives from that era. Typically SCSI was used on the massive big drives (80MB+ ) in server applications.

By 1990, you could buy a 1GB SCSI drive for around R20K.

 

[jannievanzyl]

Epic struggle indeed. Finding the media is going to be a major ballache.

Maybe look to use a Gotek on it?

I still need to start on my Osbornes

 

[jannievanzyl]

I'm going to need help on the next step with the Osborne Executive.
So far everything checks out and I'm going to connect up this weekend but I will need some software including a boot floppy.

I'm not sure what file system it uses, never mind how to create a new boot floppy eish.

Anyone know if a more "modern" double sided high density 1.2Mb floppy would work? This is a single sided single density drive with something like 160k capacity IIRC.
I'll do some homework...
@jannievanzyl

I assume the Osborne uses a 40-track drive, so the 80-track 1.2MB HD drives will likely not work.

Have a Google to see if a Gotek won't work. Pretty sure I've seen people using them.

 

[Sinbad]

Weren't there two channels for IDE tho? IRQ 14/15 and DMA / UDMA improved speeds dramatically, but yeah, per channel (master/slave) it was limited to taking turns.

Eish... Worked on am ICL elf server at one stage. Dual 486 DX-4/100 CPU, 2Gb RAM, redundant hot swappable SCSI drives... But connecting the drive bay backplane and CDROM in the squashy drive bay... Flip.
And get those SCSI IDs right, not to mention LAN card shared memory add, IRQ and I/O add jumpers right...
Then NetWare 3.12 on the server, Lotus Notes on top and off to the races!
Then 16-64 mbps diginet between branch offices, dial-up to some and IPX-IP gateway and suddenly the world is alive with Netscape/Chameleon browser and MS IRC lol. Comic Sans FTW LMAO

Kbps diginet #justsaying

 

[jannievanzyl]

An update on the Speccy. My new mate Gary brought me some microdrives and a cable from Gqeberha.
What a legend. Hopefully I can get one or two working just for fun. Would be nice to complete the system. Ultimately I want to build or buy an SD reader for the Speccy.

Apparently the business these microdrives came from (well known retailer back in the day) used them for their payroll and books. Just imagine... A Speccy running your payroll and basic accountancy.

I hear a song coming on...
When it's spring again, I'll bring again...
Microdrives from Gqeberha!

Gary is a very cool guy. Huge Spectravideo slut

Those Microdrives typically have an issue with the little felt pad collapsing, maybe see if you should replace it before firing them up?

The Microdrive was a typical Sir Clive concept, ahead of its time / wrong solution for the wrong time / super innovative but really cool

There are a number of SD-based drives for the Speccy.

If you chat to Allan Pead on the FB group, he's the absolute authority on anything Sinclair.

 

[Peon]

I feel bad restoring a Pentium 1 for the old 'Apogee' games.

 

[The_Librarian]

Kbps diginet #justsaying

We had a 16k diginet link once.

Back then web designers optimized their web pages properly.

 

[The_Librarian]

About ARCNet and Token Ring.

These scale better under load.

But they also have their drawbacks.

 

[Peon]

CDMA ftw!

 

[Totempole]

I feel bad restoring a Pentium 1 for the old 'Apogee' games.

Why do you feel bad?

 

[Peon]

Why do you feel bad?

You guys restore and work with more 'senior' hardware.

 

[jannievanzyl]

You guys restore and work with more 'senior' hardware.

People tend to gravitate towards systems that are around the time they got their first real crush on a system. I fell in love with computing in the late 70's, you probably in the 90's. Both are perfectly acceptable.

I always smile at all the arguments on what is the definition of "vintage". Realty is that your "vintage" or "retro" is equally valid to mine.

 

[jannievanzyl]

Thanks, will take a look. The guys are apparently turning 80 track drives into 40 track drives with a low level format using a magnet LMAO.
Looks like the gotek starts at 1.2M. The osborne uses 160k...

The Gotek can emulate large number of floppy formats.

Here it is being used on an Osborne:

 

[jannievanzyl]

CDMA ftw!

With CA or CD?

 

[Peon]

With CA or CD?

Csma/Cd my bad.

Token ring networks. Those 20Mbps worked so well.

Yea Pentium 1 75 MHz started for me. Looking back at it now the whole Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 was a contentious issue. We're a camp that refused 95.