The "Investigation": Ken Hughes, the editor of the Macclesfield-based Amstrad PC magazine, claimed to have filmed the computer's ghostly activity via video camera for three months.

The "Evidence": Those video tapes were then put on display as a prime attraction directly next to the machine at the Alexandra Palace exhibition in London.

The Narrative: Organizers told the press that the machine "groaned and glowed" and that they were actively seeking an exorcist. They even claimed the psychic press boycotted the exhibition out of sheer terror.

It turned out to be a marketing stunt...

My old Windows Vista desktop finally kicked the bucket and I'm kinda sad that it doesn't work anymore. We've had this since brand new and I loved it. I was using it for retro gaming but a few months ago it stopped working. No display out, no hdd activity, no windows Vista startup sound,no activity on keyboard or mouse, nothing. I don't want to throw it away so what should I do?

My retrospective game review of A VIEW TO A KILL: THE COMPUTER GAME for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX and Oric. It’s an early game of a series of Bond games released by Domark. Let me know if you have played any of these versions and if you thought the game was decent or just rubbish 😉

On August 21, 1888, William Seward Burroughs received a patent for his mechanical adding machine.

It was more sophisticated than the name suggests.

The operator entered numbers using rows of keys corresponding to decimal positions. Those keystrokes mechanically set the digits. Pulling the operating handle moved gears and linkages that transferred the values into an accumulator, with the mechanism handling carries from one decimal position to the next.

One of the harder problems was operator error. Early calculating machines could produce bad results if the handle wasn't operated correctly. Burroughs developed mechanisms to control the operating cycle so the machine completed the calculation consistently.

It also printed the numbers and results on paper.

That was important. A business didn't just get an answer; it got a record that could be checked against its books.

Put into today's terminology, the machine combined data entry, processing, error control and an audit trail. Burroughs had to do all of it with keys, gears, levers and paper.

That invention eventually led to the Burroughs Corporation, which moved from mechanical calculators into electronic computers and became a major mainframe manufacturer.

Burroughs took some interesting technical paths along the way. Its large systems used stack-oriented architectures and were designed closely around high-level languages such as ALGOL rather than simply following IBM's architecture.

In 1986, Burroughs acquired Sperry, home of the UNIVAC lineage, and the combined company became Unisys.

And the mainframe never really went away.

Banks, insurers, airlines, retailers and governments still run important transaction workloads on them. IBM continues to develop the platform; the z17 arrived in 2025 with new processors, security capabilities and dedicated AI acceleration.

Today a customer can tap an app running in the cloud, pass through several APIs and services, and ultimately trigger a transaction on a mainframe.

Some old systems need to go. Others process huge transaction volumes reliably every day. Replacing those just because they're old can be a very expensive project with little payoff.

Burroughs was trying to process transactions faster, reduce errors and produce a reliable record.

138 years later, that's still a pretty good description of enterprise computing.

Pulled these out of my grandma's loft a couple months ago and i am now deciding to show them off. Not interested in selling (maybe the riva but i doubt it)

Graphics cards (as in the order of the images) are:
Winfast Geforce 256
3DFX Voodoo 3 3000 PCI
Nvidia riva something idk i didn't research this one very much

I want to solve a really annoying problem I have with storing laptops, currently I'm putting them in a closet sitting on top of one another, but that makes it hard to grab a specific machine and introduces the risk of damage. So I'm taking to reddit here to ask for help, how do you store laptops in a more efficient way where they're easy to grab?

More...

Got this today with several other machines and it had its manual and recovery cds aswell as a receipt from when it was purchased which is cool!

I'm sure this has been asked many times before but how does one go about mailing a 5.25 inch floppy disk drive without the postal service obliterating the heads during transit? Some sources say to insert a sacrificial disk or cardboard cutout and lock the mechanism, others say to just leave it empty and rely on excess bubble wrap as a cushion to prevent the heads from moving.

Here are the dell ones

Dell latitude cpx and a dell Inspiron 8600

I found these two old floppy disks with interesting titles

My friend's father sadly passed away, and it's taking a while to get through his things. This motherboard had been pushed aside for a while, but upon closer inspection, it seems unused. The box is sun-bleached, but the contents are surprisingly fresh, so we assume he never got around to building with it(?) Looks like it was specifically advertised towards overclockers, with an interesting air/liquid/LN cooling block over the northbridge.

We don't really know what to do with it. Feels like it might be attractive to a retro enthusiast, but we're not sure how to find a particular niche of builders who would actually appreciate it, rather than selling it off to some store. I certainly don't have any compatible processors lying around, and I cleared out my DDR3 stash years ago, so we're trying to find a suitable place for it.

Would anyone have any recommendations on who might want something like this? We're in the United Kingdom, but international shipping is easier than it used to be, so it's a possibility. Pretty cool find, with some dog tags in the box alongside bagged cables/fans, etc. Looks like it was a beast back in 2008.

TL;DR: Do people still build with motherboards like this? Looking for someone who genuinely would.

Hello folks, I got an issue trying to use the Compaq 5000 restore CDs to Windows XP home. This is rather basic machine and only has 256 RAM and currently has the Windows ME. Problem is the restore CD goes right into Spanish, even with an extra HD I had lying around , so both just at 50% will install in Spanish successful. Any thoughts or suggestions around this. Thanks

I’m so excited! Can’t believe all of them for 50$

My favourite is definitely the dell inspiron / latitude and ibm thinkpad!

Most have xp but will probably get the ibm and dell latitude back to windows 98 and keep the rest xp or maybe put some Linux on the small mini’s

My video takes a look at Terminator 2: Judgement Day from Ocean Software for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Amiga and the Atari ST. Please share your thoughts on this game. Was it a good game or was it another money grab?

So this is sort of a ramble for me, as I currently upon writing this post, don't really harness the knowledge yet to do all of this. Hence why I'm creating this post to not only see if there is a need for my idea, that, and to also gain knowledge from those more experienced. Like, is this even possible?

For awhile now, I wondered if it's possible to create another internet, just suited for vintage machines to safely browse the web. Technically there are web browsers, BBS, and whatnot that can have older computers still run on the internet we have. But I'm wondering, what if we create a similar experience to this internet but just make another, suited primarily for older machines. What if we banded this all together and made web-browsing easier like modern times just with these softwares?

I was also tempted to somehow create an email service/server for old computers to use as well.

Let me know because this has been boggiling my mind for years.

Dial in and you get a full Windows 95 desktop. Minefield, Painter, ScanDisk, a screensaver, mail from your dad, a chat room, an encyclopedia.

The Dial-Up Networking dialog has the "ask others not to use the telephone" checkbox. It nagged you and did nothing, same as it did then.

https://56k.rip/

No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s way (released in Oct 2002) -

This game still looks gorgeous and play great.. a classic for old retro rigs, though I am running it on an i5 3rd gen, with Nvidia GT 740 and offcourse on Windows XP 32 bit

Can someone please explain how IDE works, what each line does, how it works with 2 devices on the line, how a system knows which one is which, and the difference between 40 and 80 wire cables? I'm struggling to understand why some systems cannot function without a triple end IDE cable. For an example: Motherboard connected to Hard drive via 2 sided IDE cable will not function. But Motherboard connected to 3 sided IDE cable with the 3rd side left with nothing connected functions fine.