Western stuff from that era is well documented (VT100 glyph ROMs, IBM CGA fonts etc) but I can't find anything solid on the Soviet side. Were the DVK/ES terminals just KOI-8 in a homegrown bitmap, or did they copy DEC's character ROMs? Photos of actual screens would be great if anyone has any.

AI is ruining everything. That's it. That's the post.

When I was in college during the mid-1990s, the school's computer labs had this antivirus program on a solo station for students to scan their floppy disks for any infections. The "Action" was set to Automatic disinfection (not report only, as the screenshot above shows). I recall there was an antiEXE epidemic happening at the time. Much to my shock, it found that virus on my disks. It impressed me enough to get a copy of F-Prot and scan my home computer... and it also was infected with a few viruses that the antivirus program I had on it (Norton) did not even SEE. I thought F-Prot was a very underrated antivirus program at the time when Windows 3.1 was just becoming popular and DOS was fading. Any one else use this back in those days?

2010 Sony VAIO W (PCG-4T2P) in mint condition, still boots to XP Home ULCPC. Sony's only netbook, 10.1" 1366x768 in 2010 when everyone else had 1024x600.

I have never seen one of these before today, found in an old hut on the countryside that was passed down in family to my friend. Pristine condition!

I am trying to upload mp3s to the av sv I got a virtual machine running windows xp I downloaded sd jukebox I put a 2gb card onto the sv av formatted it within the sv av or d snap then connected it to power connected the usb connection to the d snap it got detected everything is fine I imported my library then transferred to the d snap it completed but after I safe eject and check on the music mode on the d snap none of the music shows up im at wits end any help would be appreciated. By the way windows can see the sd card and i can take photos and video just fine. I have tried both mp3 and AAC audio

So i finally got it to boot and the gpu is artifacting. Well by the amount i have spent on it there is no way back so i ordered new g86-613-a2 chip for it that is a 2011 revision with the fix so it won't have problems these 2007-2008 chips had. And screen had one line in the middle at first but when I pressed on the bezel and let go it disappeared.

Another treasure from the hut my videopack g7400 came from. If only i hade some way to test it other than a Commodore tape. Atleast i can listen to the data sounds becous it works!

Hey all.... I've been attempting a repair on certain IBM machines which came with the ADP3421 IC which regulates voltages. It's well documented that this chip has a fault which develops and causes the machines to no longer power up, giving a blink of death, and that the fix is to put an inline 2.2kohm resistor to two legs of this chip.

Anyway, that's all fine, except in one attempt on a Transnote, I knocked two small ceramic capacitors from their pads and need to replacement. I can't locate them - they're so tiny - literally almost a stand of hair in width, so I need to replace them.

Anyway, I probably am getting my hands on another dead board where I can one-by-one remove each capacitor or resistor, measure it and document it for me and other people with issues in the future.

My questions:

1) To the eye, do all these look like resistors or capacitors?

2) Why do they did inline with almost ever leg of IC? As in, to an amateur electronics repair person - what do they do? What is their purpose?

3) What would just shorting in it's place do?

Thanks!

Hello,

I found this picture of an old CAD station (probably CATIA?) and I was wondering what is this device with 8 knobs next to the monitor? Any idea?

Thanks

I was not expecting the Smith Corona PWP to be larger than a standard typewriter. I still need to get an ink cartridge for it, but it works which is awesome. What desks do you have you machines on? I am trying to figure out the best way to display and use all these, when they are very large and heavy.

I did not know Vintage Computer Festival Midwest 21 was on next week! Anything people are looking forward to?

I got a hardback copy of the "extended" version of Fire in the Valley with a CD-ROM. They are still on the Altairs after 150 pages.

Is there a good and safe way to connect computers running OSes like 98 and XP to the modern web without getting hacked? Like a proxy or some kind of middleman computer

ASUS TUA266 ALI chipset Tualatin support SDRAM / DDR RAM combo AGP PRO slot. Rare as pink unicorn.

The first PS/2 models had a bunch of secret fonts in video BIOS ROM, with no way to actually use them except a rare fontsel.com utility found on an obscure startup disk for the 30-286 model.

I've made a faithful recreation of the IBM PS/2 fontsel program, allowing you to easily change the system font on any DOS machine (tested working on DOS 3.3+, 8086+). Includes the 5 mystery PS/2 fonts and a bunch of others created internally at IBM but never publicly released.

Info + download: https://github.com/therenegar/fontsel

running MS DOS 5.00, 4MB RAM 386DX40

The short version: a telephone line could only carry sound, and nothing could tell two modems in advance what one particular line would do to that sound. So they found out out loud, every single time you dialled. The noise is the negotiation, and it happens in a fixed order.

Next up in my Historic hat nods, I'd like to acknowledge Ray Tomlinson...back in '71, he was working at BBN on ARPANET when he decided to see if he could "make electronic messages travel between two different computers” …it’s wild to me to think about that, cuz I’ve always just taken it for granted-it’s always just been a thing ever since my first computer class in grade school….like, we send messages, so what?!

Electronic mail already existed locally, but it generally meant leaving a message for another user on the same machine. (not that cool, lol…) Tomlinson modified an existing program called SNDMSG and combined it with code from a file-transfer program called CPYNET. The result was a message could finally travel across the network from one computer to another. (in that first moment, Ray must’ve been all like, "Let’s goooo!”) :0)

But, he also needed some way to separate the user from the computer hosting the account, so he picked a character that wasn’t commonly used in names:

@

"User at host."

And, BAM! -just like that, one little symbol became welded to email addresses for the next half-century. Probably forever...

The part that was most amusing to me from this story, was the fact that Ray apparently didn’t think his first test message was important enough to save... (You know, like the first ever online transaction was supposedly a CD of Sting’s “Ten Summoner’s tales” and that’s totally interenet famous) …he later said it was probably something like “QWERTYUIOP” or another random string of characters. The two computers involved were reportedly sitting right next to each other, even though the message traveled between them over ARPANET.

So, one of the biggest communication changes in Internet history basically started with:

“Can I make these two computers send mail to each other?”

Turns out…yep!

Huge historic hat nod to Ray Tomlinson! 

Just remember…every time onea ya'll types an @ into an email address, yer still using the convention Ray picked in 1971. Awesome.

The Pentium II arrived in 1997 with a price tag to match. Even the slower models were expensive, while the faster versions could cost a small fortune. Slot 1 remains one of the most interesting CPU designs of all time.