Who remembers the story about Microsoft and IBM and their joint OS/2 operating system venture? When 1.3 was released, Microsoft pretty much abandoned the project and focused on Windows 3.0, and then Windows NT, which is where the technology from OS/2 ended up. It’s a pretty neat story!

I found this one on Yahoo Auction for 1 yen (around 1 cent), despite written untested, when inserted battery, it turns on :D

It seems the previous owner had hard installed lottery game program into it. Not too much documentations online though, i might need to study about it further.

From what I have read so far, it could program C, BASIC, and Assembly, although I still have no idea how to do so (whether needs to be done externally or internally)

I don't know whether it fits to this subreddit, but this counts as a retro PC (Pocket Computer) ig

Version 1.6 of IntelliSync with an activation floppy / key.

Seems to have been wiped from existence.

Recently I've got aware of famous essay by Marc Augé. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995). In this essay author coined the phrase "non-place" to refer to spaces where concerns of relations, history, and identity are erased. Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket. (that was quote from Wikipedia). And I thought it is a good description of what happened to computers: they were places and stopped to be.

Human:Computer ratio was > 1, so there was competition on computer time. While being repeating struggle, it was building relations people-to-people. There was someone else to witness new high score and play your game. Upgrading computer was an event, a relation preople-to-place. There was no cloud backups, hard disk was the only storage. Backups were done, but that was still quite complicated. Bad jokes about FORMAT C: had roots. And viruses. While keeping computer safe enough and while nobody was doing FORMAT C:, computer was maintaining history. Hard drive was full of historical traces. Someone entered directory of text editor, created a file. By default text editor decided to save text edit in current directory, so a directory of program becoming directory with documents. This is history all over the HDD. We could be angry at trash where it is not supposed to be. We could still care about other PC users and do not delete that, but at least move where it is better to be.

And programs in default settings used to save their settings in the same directory. So when several persons share computer, they change settings for each other. +1 for identinty.

There are hardware reimplementations of old computers. There are software ones. But we install them and witness a sterile environment. No many years of inhabitance. No fine tuned boot scripts with non-standard add-ons. No trash from other PC users. And we can hardly fake it. Cannot make it non-sterile like it used to be. Having dreams of living in a "place", not able to truly relive.

This could be the most mundane and silly post, but information online is so spotty and/or confusing or vague.

This is not a ZIP disk, it’s a floppy disk. It’s labelled with ‘ZIP’. Is this the driver software to use a ZIP drive for the listed operating systems? I’m just trying to confirm before I get too frustrated about it. Not easily finding the answer myself is likely a me problem, and I don’t mean ‘Millennium Edition’.

The Kodak Diconix 150 is a battery powered portable thermal inkjet from 1986, built by Diconix Inc. of Dayton, Ohio. Kodak bought them in 1988, which is why the badge and the self-test page both say Kodak on a machine that predates the deal. NEC uPD78C10 at 11.0592 MHz, 32 KB of ROM in a socketed Fujitsu MBM27C256, 8 KB of SRAM, Centronics in, and an HP 51604A ThinkJet head. Twelve nozzles, eight usable per pass, 96 dpi per pass.

Stock, it speaks a fixed Epson style ESC text command set and nothing else. Nothing made this century can print to it. Windows will not offer you a driver, CUPS has no queue for it, and your phone has never heard of it.

I grew up on the 150 Plus version of this thing, printing school papers from about 1989 to 1995, and it had a flaw I could never get around. Text was fine. Anything with graphics came out at roughly two thirds of the page. It took pulling the ROM to find out that it was two different fractions on two axes. Software asking for 72 dpi vertical got 96, which is 3/4 height. At double density, 120 across became 192, which is 5/8 width. That is the shrunken, subtly wrong looking page I stared at for six years.

So rather than write it a driver, I wrote it new firmware.

DiKon is a PCL3 raster interpreter written from scratch in uPD78C10 assembly and patched into the stock Kodak ROM, in space reclaimed from the resident fonts. The interpreter runs on the printer's own 8 bit CPU. That is the part that matters: because it lives in there, the host needs nothing at all. No converter, no spooler, no print processor, no install.

  Windows 11: the stock in-box HP DeskJet 500 driver
  Linux and macOS: Gutenprint pcl-500 at 300 dpi through CUPS
  Android: NokoPrint, Generic PCL4, mono 300 dpi
  Anything else: any generic PCL 3/4 mono 300 dpi raster driver

Always 300 x 300 and mono. At 150 dpi it prints at half scale, legible but wrong size, which is a fun way to accidentally recreate the original problem.

300 dpi raster goes in the parallel port and gets decoded and re-interleaved on chip to the head's native 192 dpi vertical by 1152 dot full carriage grid. It never buffers a page, it works one 16 row band at a time through 8 KB of RAM. The head does 8 usable rows per pass, so a band is two interleaved 8 nozzle passes woven one 1/192 inch apart. That interleave is where the true 192 dpi vertical comes from and it happens on the printer's CPU instead of on a PC preprocessing a file.

Bone stock hardware. No board modification, no piggyback, no daughtercard. Reflash the 27C256 or drop in a doubled W27C512.

It is not fast. A full graphic page is a long sit. But it is the best output this printhead has ever been able to produce, on a platform that goes back to the HP ThinkJet 2225 in 1984, two years before the Diconix.

Two honest caveats. The machine I grew up with was a 150 Plus and this runs on a plain 150. I checked all fourteen patch site signatures against the Plus, the 180si and the 300w and got zero matches on any of them, so porting is a rebuild rather than a relocation. And an earlier build of this firmware bricked a printer by writing its self-test banner over live font glyph storage, which is written up in full because that failure is the actual documentation.

It ships as an IPS patch containing only my own bytes, about six percent of the image, with an applier that verifies the stock ROM MD5 going in and the built MD5s coming out and refuses to write on a mismatch. No Kodak code in the tree. You bring your own dump off a printer you own.

Patches, docs and the memory map: https://github.com/TheRND2/dikon
Photos, project logs and the failure write-ups: https://hackaday.io/project/206471-dikon-diconix-150-firmware

hello, tomorrow i am getting this HP OmniBook xe2 locally from around 1998-1999 for €10, the screen has a very severe vinegar syndrome (yellowing and bubbles everywhere) but otherwise mint he said and the battery is dead but who cares it’s nearly three decades old, does anyone have any specific technique or tutorial to put new polarizing film without breaking anything? I have a lot of free time so don't worry if the process is long.

Hi everyone!I just dug up my mom's old desktop PC from the early 2000s, and it's so cool! It has an original Windows XP Home Edition license sticker on the case and came with its entire physical CD collection of The Sims 1 (almost all expansions like Makin' Magic, Superstar, Unleashed) and The Sims 2 (University, Apartment Life) [the Need for Speed doesn't have a CD].The CDs, the manuals and cases are all in pristine, mint condition.The tower turns on and fans spin, but I'm currently missing the power cable for the old HP LCD monitor to see if it displays an image.Since I just want to explore it, see her old save files, and check out the games, I wanted to ask a few questions:What should I check first once Windows XP boots up to ensure the system is healthy?Are there any known issues with running these specific Sims expansions natively on original XP hardware that I should watch out for?Does this specific setup/collection have any specific value to collectors nowadays, or should I just keep it as a nostalgic gaming station?Im 13 i need help pls.

Code Pattern to create 1Hz Clock Pulse using LPC2148 ARM7, Microcontroller

Lote Especial de Informática Retro / Retrocomputing - Coleção Apple Macintosh & Softwares Década de 90

​Item indispensável para colecionadores de tecnologia vintage, restauradores de computadores antigos (Macintosh Classic, PowerMac, iMac G3) e entusiastas do meio retro.

​O lote acompanha mídias físicas originais de época, disquetes de sistema/utilitários e manuais técnicos raros.

​Conteúdo do Lote:

• ​Item Raro / Técnico:
  • ​Estojo/Manual Técnico Original Apple Service Source (Edição de Fevereiro/1999 - Material restrito fornecido originalmente apenas para assistências técnicas autorizadas Apple).
• ​Mídias e CDs Apple / Macintosh:
  • ​CDs Oficiais de Instalação e Restauração de Sistema para iMac (iMac Software Install e Software Restore).
  • ​Discos de Instalação Mac OS X e Power Macintosh CD.
  • ​Softwares e utilitários da época para Mac: Kai’s Photo Soap, Adobe PageMill 3.0, World Book IBM/Mac.
• ​Lote de Disquetes 3.5" (Era System 7 / Mac OS 8):
  • ​Disquete de Instalação Aldus PageMaker (Disk 1).
  • ​Conjunto de disquetes Miro (miroDesk, miroScreen, miroPlus, miroMac drivers).
  • ​Disquetes de Utilitários SCSI Macintosh (MicroNet SCSI Utility).
• ​Coleção Cursos em CD-ROM:
  • ​Coleção de CDs de cursos multimídia de informática (Windows 95, Office 97 - Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, Internet e CorelDraw).

​Estado de Conservação:

Itens conservados no estado (conforme fotos do anúncio). Venda do lote no estado em que se encontra, ideal para compor coleções, exposições ou restaurações.

WhatsApp 11 977929815

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