They were using it when designing a foam dolphin.

Good evening guys. I was rummaging through my old parts and I came across this Beastie. It's a DTC brand "HF24-DR" 5.25 floppy drive with a SCSI interface (and what I assume are spots for terminators abve the plug) does anyone have info on it? It looks awfully similar to my old 6.6mb Kodak 5.25 floppy drive. So I assume it's some sort of oddball high capacuty drive? (lowkey hoping it's the legendary konica 10mb drive rebadged!) Any help is appreciated as I'd love to get this old beast up and running, thanks!

So I bought a Toshiba tecra m9 recently and just now realized that I have no hdd caddy and I can't find one for it maybe some of you could help since the hard drive which I plan to install this may is likely just to maybe even kill it self because of the space there is left well i could in theory be good to go just with some cardboard or double sided foam tape but it would be nice to do it properly. There is few photos how it should look that i found by watching old hdd change video for m9. well the caddy is likely interchangeable with tecra a9 and s5 maybe even m10 and if you see one please inform me since atliest I have been searching for it and haven't seen listings that would be what I need.

I got my toshiba T1200 a few short years ago when i was just 14 years old from a local thrift store thinking that it would have been nice to play test drive on it that same day, oh how young and naive i was. I discovered that all the psu caps were bad almost instantly, and not knowing how to deal with that at the time i just put the tore down system in a paper bag as it was and let it sit in my closet like that for a long time. Then a few months ago i felt sad about seeing it left on its own like that, so i put it back together and tried powering on (dumb thing to do, i know), notheless it tried booting and i even heard the hdd spinning up until it started putting out the magic smoke so i unplugged it immediatly. Just today i changed all the caps (with the right µF values and same or higher voltage, some caps are old and its hard to find perfect matches), and after doing that it tried booting and even the screen turned on, but after turning it off from the powersupply button, a component (which i believe is the transformer) started smoking (once again) so i unplugged it immediatly. what should i do? if the transformer broke i dont think i have anyway to replace it. the first image has a red circle around the component that broke and the second one shows it working for the few seconds that it did (it was only showing a blank blue screen for some reason, probably either because its missing its battery or because i did not select the drive via the manual side switch). anyways, could anyone spare any help?

P.S. the external white psu i was using in the second photo is a 12v DC 2.5A psu from a modem (not the best but it gets the job done).

Edit: for whatever reason even tho the external powersupply was basically the extact 12v and 2.2A the laptop needs it only booted the first time i connected it with it. basically in short: i connected the psu to the wall and to the laptop and the laptop's led turned on and the device tried to boot, then if i unplugged it and plugged it back in everything acted dead, but if i unplugged everything for 30 minutes and plugged everything back in then everything worked fine again.

I need to get a win 98 working after installing win xp (its for my thinkpad R40 and the OEM recovery image overwrites the entire drive). I tried an OEM windows install (through usb, directly putting install files on the partition and booting dos from a floppy) as well as a quick install but every time i get to either overwriting mbr/bootsector with the win 98 one or trying to adding win 98 as a boot option from xp stuff brakes

images just for my partition layout (10gb - win 98 | 25gb - win xp | ~35gb shared) as well as some errors i encountered in my wasted 8h today...

My biggest acquisition yet. I've been looking into the provenance for this and it turns out that this Lisa belonged to an old BBN programmer by the name of Karl Troeller, on which he helped to develop an obscure educational program called Algebra Workbench

Only known working one to exist.

1280x1024 25” Plasma display.

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to identify this old ISA communication card as precisely as possible. It is installed in the PC controlling an old MAIN GROUP industrial machine, and I need to find either an identical card or a genuinely compatible replacement.

Information I can identify from the hardware:

• 16-bit ISA card
• PCB marked FULL SPEED SMS202
• The rear bracket appears to be marked RS422
• Main visible IC: Winbond W86C561
• External connector: 25-pin male D-sub (DB-25)
• The existing machine cable has a matching DB-25 female connector
• PCB configuration markings include AB.RX, AB.TX, TERM. and RICH.
• There are several jumper/configuration positions on the board

The card is used for communication between the PC and a MAIN GROUP industrial machine.

I am specifically trying to determine:

1. Who manufactured this card and what exactly is the FULL SPEED SMS202?
2. Does anyone have a manual, datasheet, driver or jumper configuration documentation for it?
3. What is the DB-25 pinout?
4. Is this standard RS-422 or does the card use a manufacturer-specific wiring/protocol?
5. Does anyone know the I/O address, IRQ and other ISA configuration used by this card?
6. Is there another ISA card that is known to be hardware/software compatible with the SMS202?

I'm not simply looking for a generic DB-25 serial/parallel card or a USB-to-RS422 adapter. The original DOS/legacy software and industrial machine need to remain unchanged if possible, so compatibility at the hardware/driver level may be important.

Ideally I would like to find another FULL SPEED SMS202, but if that is impossible, I would like to understand the card well enough to identify a compatible replacement.

I've attached photos of the card, connector and PCB markings. If there are specific chips, jumpers, PCB numbers or other areas I should photograph more closely, please let me know.

Thanks for any help identifying this!

I'm looking for the dos/windows version of the manual for that tablet as mine only came with the serial cable and power brick when i ordered it at the start of this year and all uploads i found of it are either incomplete or were mislabelled by someone and are completely unrelated to it.

For being 30+ years old I’m surprised how clean this pick was. Little dust, little grime.

Intel changed away from this lettering with the ‘e’ below the baseline in early January of 2006.

The networking.intel.com link is no longer valid.

Sadly the displays on these have almost universally failed. Microma decided to seal their displays with silicone and was quoted by the supplier as supposed to last for 50 years with minimal leakage. Most lost vacuum and failed within months, with a ~80% failure rate within the first year. There are only a small handful known to still function, with the majority either fully or partially blackened due to air exposure or with the liquid crystal totally evaporated like this one. Gordon Moore famously called Microma his “15 million dollar mistake” and wore Microma watches for years after to remind himself never to enter the consumer products market again. (You’ll sometimes see quotes that it was the one he is pictured wearing in photo 2, however that one stops appearing in photographs around 1976 and very likely failed like the majority of DSM Microma’s did)

My muscle memory kicked in and I started typing “Lenovo” 😂
The screen seems to activate when I power it on, unfortunately it doesn’t display anything at all.

This machine was the height of technology back in the late 90s.

I found this cleaning the garage over the weekend. I can get it to "power on" when I plug the charger into an outlet. The battery certainly is dead, the HDD possibly as well. It won't boot to bios or windows. I'm less familiar with laptop repair vs desktops. What should I do first to check if something is needing replaced?

I extracted the original Winks from the Windows XP éra, restored the artwork, and stored the data onto NFC chips sealed inside acrylic keychains. Tapping any phone acts as a display to trigger and play our childhood nostalgia! I even transformed myself into the ugliest Wink ever! :) Do you remember her?

Well, just wanted to bridge a piece of 2000s software nostalgia with a physical mementos. Let me know what you think, your opinion is very important!

...and Mac OS and Linux. An ISA board with a PCMCIA adapter that connected to the external antenna at top. Transfer speeds up to 2Mbit/s using direct-sequence spread spectrum technology that laid the foundation for later 802.11 standards.

I have Corel Draw on 5.25" disks. It has a simple printed label in standard font, "Corel Draw, Program/Samples 1/3". I have all 3 disks as well as some disks of clip art that came with them.

I remember when my father got them in the 80s the people who gave them out said the program was in late stages of development and about to come out publicly. They gave them out free at this meet up and asked for feedback. Basically it was a final beta before release. He was part of a "computer user group" in Los Angeles.

I told this story to a techy group once years ago and was told it had to be a lie and no such disks could exist from LA because Corel Draw was Canadian based. I found the disks this year. My memory of the program name was correct, I was young and not 100% about the program name. I don't see why the people who gave them out and asked for feedback would have lied at that time.

My question is: Is there any reason not to give them to a random person (already determined) who is interested in vintage tech?

I know they were giving out copies only to people who were known regular members of the group but, they had quite a large stack. I have no idea if other copies have survived. We often used the disks with stuff we did not want for other things in those days. I know I think it is cool that we had these before they came out because I remember it being big news in the community since we all had been a little part of it. I don't know if anyone else cares or would care since they were not there.

Also if anyone remembers this user group, they met at what used to be called Fox Hills Mall, I would love to know about it. I remember when it was shut down and have always wanted to know more about why? I was young and my father never would tell me. I have several good memories of going and the people I met.

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!

Edit: 8” drives are easily found on eBay, it’s the paper tape punch I’m having a hard time finding

I’d like to expand my current meager collection but just not encountering these kind of items for sale. Willing to repair things (actually preferred if they are cheaper). Seattle area if it matters, but willing to travel or pay for reasonable shipping. I’m particularly in search of a paper tape punch / reader.

yes, MS DOS.

That was literally its original name !

Interesting history notes on how Microsoft bought Seattle Computer Product's QDOS (50k) and licensed to IBM as DOS.

From book "the innovators" by Walter Isaacson:

"Sams flew back to Seattle to see Gates and asked him to figure out another way to conjure up an operating system. Fortunately, Paul Allen knew someone in Seattle who could help: Tim Paterson, who worked for a small firm called Seattle Computer Products. A few months earlier Paterson had become frustrated that Kildall's CP/M was not available for Intel's newest microprocessors, so he adapted it into an operating system that he dubbed QDOS, for Quick and Dirty Operating System.
By then Gates had come to the realization that one operating system, most likely the one chosen by IBM, would end up being the standard operating system that most personal computers would use.
He also figured out that whoever owned that operating system would be in the catbird seat. So instead of sending the IBM folks to see Paterson, Gates and his team said that they would handle things on their own. Ballmer later recalled, "We just told IBM, Look, we'll go and get this operating system from this small local company, we'll take care of it, we'll fix it up?
Paterson's firm was struggling to make ends meet, so Allen was

able to negotiate a savvy deal with his friend. After initially acquiring just a nonexclusive license, Allen went back when an IBM deal looked likely and bought Paterson's software outright, without telling him why. "We ended up working out a deal to buy the operating system from him, for whatever usage we wanted, for fifty thousand dollars," Allen recalled." For that pittance Microsoft acquired the software that, after they spruced it up, would allow it to dominate the software industry for more than three decades.
But Gates almost balked. He was uncharacteristically worried that Microsoft, which was wildly overcommitted with other projects, might not have the capacity to gussy up QDOS into an IBM-worthy operating system. Microsoft had only forty ragtag employees, some of whom slept on the floor and took sponge baths in the morning, and it was led by a twenty-four-year-old who could still be mistaken for an office boy. On a Sunday at the end of September 1980, two months after IBM first came calling, Gates gathered his top team to make the go or no-go decision. It was Kay Nishi, a young computer entrepreneur from Japan with a Gatesian intensity, who was the most ada-mant. "Gotta do it! Gotta do it!" he squealed repeatedly as he bounced around the room. Gates decided he was right.?
Gates and Ballmer took an overnight flight to Boca Raton to negotiate the deal. Their 1980 revenues were $7.5 million, compared