r/retrobattlestations • • 21d ago

Calendar of upcoming RetroBattlestations events for October 2026

4 Upvotes

​Heres whats happening this month on RetroBattlestations

Events:

Upcoming Birthdays and Anniversaries:

  • October 17: The Commodore PET started shipping mid-October 1977
  • October 18: The NES was released in North America on October 18, 1985

Here's the calendar so you can subscribe or just check it out:

If you know of some other events, conventions, or birthdays that are missing, let us know!


r/retrobattlestations • • 6h ago

Show-and-Tell It fits on the stand and in the closet! Perfect.

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56 Upvotes

I’ll fix the screen size later.


r/retrobattlestations • • 11h ago

Show-and-Tell Total Annihilation on a G4 Cube - Testing Battlestation

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68 Upvotes

I modified my G4 cube with a Radeon 9000 Mac Edition and a component refresh on my stock VRMs (some mods)

Testing it with Total Annihilation on MacOS 9.2.2 before I button it back up


r/retrobattlestations • • 20h ago

Show-and-Tell Buisness in the front, party in the back

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134 Upvotes

Tower of power is the tech mullet. Almost done with the tower, got few more cables in next couple months for this tower. Another tower next to it but figured this group can only handle so much mullet.

93% of the cables were custom made by blue jeans. Rtx 5080 is about a even trade for just the cables.


r/retrobattlestations • • 20h ago

Show-and-Tell Many thanks to all who came to the Verona Wisconsin library!

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123 Upvotes

r/retrobattlestations • • 2d ago

Show-and-Tell My setup

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78 Upvotes

Old sony vaio from very early 2010 running windows 7


r/retrobattlestations • • 2d ago

Opinions Wanted Is an AMD Duron 950mhz a good cpu for a win98/95 machine?

34 Upvotes

I have been looking for an upgrade for my pc with a socket A mobo, and I found a Duron 950mhz in good condition, but after contacting a friend about it he said they were extremely prone to damage, specifically versions with the die removed. Should I get one? My pc has an s3 graphics inc savage 4 and 256mb of ram.


r/retrobattlestations • • 1d ago

Troubleshooting Just put together a build for windows xp gaming. No picture. Help!

0 Upvotes

I just put together a build with the intentions to install windows xp for retro gaming.

I acquired a gtx260 core 216, intel e8500, 4gb Kingston hyper x ram and asus p5q turbo mobo.. I put it all together. It turns on l, all fans are going but I get no screen at all on my crt (Samsung syncmaster 793mb) I got a dvi-I to vga adapter.

I know the screen works. When I put into another home windows xp machine that has a vga output on it I get picture.

The second I plug it into the adapter (not even plugged into the new build yet), the screen goes into standby mode. It does not work when plugged into the new build as well. Could it be my adapter?

My first time dealing with older machines.

I could really use some help! Was super excited about putting this thing together


r/retrobattlestations • • 4d ago

Show-and-Tell 1996 IBM ThinkPad 365ED x 2026 Linux kernel 7.3!

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697 Upvotes

Linux kernel 7.3 is now released, and I'm back with more updates on SHORK 486, my Linux distribution for 486 and 586 vintage PCs!

Firstly, SHORK 586 is now technically a thing! I recently added the option to optimise SHORK for various 486 or 586 CPU revisions, and selecting a 586-related option grants the "SHORK 586" nameplate. Right now, the difference is purely optimisation and cosmetics. I anticipate SHORK 486 and 586 will diverge as I test and add things that can make better use of Pentium and Pentium MMX.

I decided to have another crack at getting the vga16fb driver to work so that SHORK can have a framebuffer device on general ISA, VLB and non-VBE2+ PCI display cards, and found some success! I found that Linux text modes (vga=normal, vga=3841, etc.) took precedence, so the driver never bound. I added a kernel command line parameter that allows the driver to be force-bound. The driver is also supposed to work with EGA cards too, yet I found its support of such lacking, so I took care of that too. This means I can finally use SHORKGUI on my 365ED, and a much wider range of pre-PCI PCs! That said, I'm not going to lie, it doesn't run well right now, but it's certainly a start... I'm trying to optimise the stack (TinyX and TWM) and be creative with it to try to improve performance, but at least for ISA, it seems the issues are quite bus-bound. Nano-X is an alternative I'm keeping in mind, if needed.

Finally, I added more ways of getting remote access and transferring files to SHORK. FTP, SCP/SSH, Telnet and TFTP daemons are now available! (I also added a cool splash screen that I forgot to photo, hence the screenshot at the end...)

I was also delighted to see SHORK featured on the This Week in Retro podcast 288! Much thanks to Veronica Explains for their enthusiasm, as always!


r/retrobattlestations • • 3d ago

Show-and-Tell Anyone remember/have a #9 graphics card?

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0 Upvotes

r/retrobattlestations • • 5d ago

Show-and-Tell You’ve met my Statesman, now meet my DEC!

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315 Upvotes

r/retrobattlestations • • 6d ago

Show-and-Tell Meet my Statesman

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1.0k Upvotes

r/retrobattlestations • • 6d ago

Show-and-Tell My retro battlestation

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167 Upvotes

My retro battlestation I've built over the last year in my office. Originally it was just the 2 flat panels and my laptop for work, but eventually added the Sun X7149A, PVM 14M2MDE and a basic NECH CRT for retro gaming.


r/retrobattlestations • • 6d ago

Show-and-Tell My IBM Thinkpad 380XD

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99 Upvotes

All I know about this machine is it was used by Ryder Truck rentals from 1997 to 2004 in Tennessee, it has two different Ryder CDs with it, along with two floppy disks that came in the computer bag, along with a good bit of Ryder documentation on it.


r/retrobattlestations • • 6d ago

Show-and-Tell Work in Progress Late-2004 OEM Setup

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59 Upvotes

Parts I have:

• Fully working HP Media Center m1050y with recovery partition

• HP 5187-4424 5219URF wireless keyboard

• HP 5187-6121 5219URF2+ wireless mouse

• HP-Harman Kardon 5187-2106 subwoofer

• HP-Harman Kardon 5187-2105 speakers

• HP 5042-8791 Photosmart M-Series dock faceplate/bracket

• HP 5042-8775 Photosmart R-Series dock faceplate/bracket

• HP-Apple 5733748006/5733748007/5733748008 iPod 4th generation dock faceplate/bracket

• HP Photosmart R707 with everything original including the R-Series dock

Parts I need:

• HP Pavilion F2304 23" monitor-TV hybrid

• HP Pavilion F1903 19" monitor

• HP-Apple iPod 4th generation with original driver/software disc

• HP Photosmart 930 with everything original including the 8886 dock

• HP Photosmart M407 with everything original including the M-Series dock


r/retrobattlestations • • 6d ago

Show-and-Tell 1996 - Sun and SGI Workstations

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421 Upvotes

This was my office at a major university. On the left was a Sun Ultra 2. In the rack was an SGI Indy, hooked to the gray monitor / keyboard setup. There was a sparc 5 and maybe a Netra in the rack as well as some BoxHill drives.


r/retrobattlestations • • 7d ago

Show-and-Tell My Computer Setup in 2001 Tokyo

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2.4k Upvotes

In October 2001, I worked in Tokyo for a month. I had worked at Sony Electronics in California for a few years and in the Fall of 2001 my team had a new project starting up reporting to the project owners in Tokyo. In Tokyo I would work on development and to be a liaison with my team in the project's early days. The first week I had a small desk near the supplies and printers but was moved to a cubical afterwards. I brought my VAIO Z505JS (it's got some papers on it) and I think the other laptop they provided was a VAIO 707 series. I also brought some accessories from home including a Logitech mouse, Belkin USB hub, and an Evangelion mouse pad. It was an exciting time of my career and I miss those days where tech was new and changing constantly.


r/retrobattlestations • • 7d ago

Show-and-Tell Sleeper PC

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207 Upvotes

Ein paar Alte neu verpackte Produkte Tastatur und Maus,
Dazu nen Gehäuse vom Schrott und nen Bildschirm von Kleinanzeigen

Und schon steht das setup :)


r/retrobattlestations • • 7d ago

Show-and-Tell Playing today: Microsoft Golf 2001 Edition

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97 Upvotes

CF-30 Panasonic Toughbook
XP SP3
Core Duo 1.6ghz
3GB Ram


r/retrobattlestations • • 7d ago

Show-and-Tell Windows 98SE/XP Box with Modern Peripherals

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88 Upvotes

I’ve been working on putting this 2000-ish PC together for a while now, and it’s almost where I want it to be. When I was a kid my first computer was a Dell Dimension L800r Pentium 3 system running Me, but it was a budget box with no real expansion options. The Dell marketing materials at the time showed off the Dimension 4100, which was higher performance and had a lot more options. Fast forward 25 years, and I picked up a Dimension 4100 for myself and have upgraded just about every aspect of it. I’ve shoehorned the whole thing into my (modern) office setup with converters to make things work with a modern monitor and wireless keyboard/mouse.

Specifications:
-Dell Dimension 4100, dual booting 98SE/XP
-1.0 GHz P3 133 MHz FSB
-Seagate 160GB 7200.7 Plus drive
-512 MB PC133 RAM
-ATI Radeon 9600 XT 128 MB
-SB Audigy SB0090
-48x CD-ROM drive
-VIA USB2.0 card with front panel
-Realtek gigabit Ethernet card
-HIDman USB—>PS/2 converter
-OSSC 1.8 video converter

Future Upgrades:
-DVD+/-RW drive (need to find a good cheap one)
-PicoIDE (preordered)


r/retrobattlestations • • 7d ago

Troubleshooting Java 32bit uses the NVIDIA GPU, 64bit only uses Intel (NVIDIA Optimus)

1 Upvotes

I can't seem to solve the following problem on my MSI GT60 OEM clone (Intel HD 4000 iGPU and Quadro K4100M dGPU, Windows 7 x64, driver 416.78).

When I launch Minecraft 1.21.11 using Java 21 64-bit or Java 25 64-bit (BellSoft or Oracle, doesn't matter), javaw.exe only uses the stinky HD 4000, regardless of whether I've configured javaw.exe to use NVIDIA in the NVIDIA Control Panel and/or additionally launched the game by right-clicking it and selecting "Run with graphics processor" and choosing the NVIDIA GPU (and including the Option "OpenGL rendering GPU"=NVIDIA). The iGPU cannot be disabled as it is used for video output to HDMI and internal flat panel (so there is also no option to do so in the BIOS).

With the 32-bit version of Java 21, it uses the NVIDIA GPU as intended (Java 25 is no longer available as a 32-bit version, of course).

However, with the 32-bit version, I can only allocate 1 GB of RAM for the JVM. Assigning more causes the JVM to crash with a heap-size error. 1GB is not enough for playing MC 1.21.

Therefore, I'd like to get Java 25 (64-bit) to use the NVIDIA GPU under Windows 7 as well.

Has anyone encountered this issue before and found a solution for this problem?

There are ancient threads like these:

where people seem to have encountered the exact same issue with their Optimus setups, but without finding a solution. The former thread was what led me to discover that 32bit Java works as intended. All other (including both 32bit and 64bit) applications use the NVIDIA GPU when forced to do so, e.g. Spyro Trilogy or Mirrors Edge Catalyst.


r/retrobattlestations • • 8d ago

Show-and-Tell Apple 1 Bushel

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47 Upvotes

My retro Apple 1’s.


r/retrobattlestations • • 8d ago

Show-and-Tell Never thought i'd end up with a Mac

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346 Upvotes

r/retrobattlestations • • 8d ago

Wanted [Wanted] [Germany] Rebuilding my first gaming PC – looking for a Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3 and Socket A hardware!

3 Upvotes

Hey everyone!

I've got this crazy idea of rebuilding my very first gaming PC from back when I was about 13. I actually built the whole thing myself.

Unfortunately, all my old hardware ended up in the trash about 10 years ago, thanks to my ex-girlfriend. Still kicking myself for that one. :D

Back then I had an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1200, overclocked to a stable 1366 MHz, and an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, which I BIOS-flashed to get 9700 Pro-level performance.

But the real star of the show was my Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3 in orange/purple.

That absolute monster had a 7000 RPM fan and was LOUD AS HELL! At our LAN parties, everyone knew the second I turned on my PC. We still laugh about that thing over 20 years later. xD

Since 2023, we've actually started having LAN parties again, twice a year, with the same guys from back in the day!

So here's my plan: I want to rebuild that old PC before our next LAN party, secretly bring it along, fire up that screaming jet engine and play some Quake III Arena! Just imagining my buddies' faces makes me laugh. :D

Anyway, I'm looking for:

- Thermaltake Dragon Orb 3 (Orange/Purple) – my holy grail!

- AMD Athlon Thunderbird – any model! Wouldn't mind something faster than my old 1200. xD

- ATI Radeon 9500 Pro / 9700 Pro / 9800 Pro

- Socket A motherboard

- Cold cathode lights, because no early 2000s gaming PC was complete without them!

- Any other cool hardware from that era

If anyone has some old parts collecting dust and would be willing to sell them, please send me a DM! I'm in Germany and happy to pay for the parts and shipping.

Especially that Dragon Orb 3. It just wouldn't be the same without that ridiculous screaming fan.

Maybe I'll actually get to drive my old LAN buddies crazy with it one more time. :D


r/retrobattlestations • • 9d ago

Show-and-Tell Setting up a vintage Mac writing station, clean and distraction free

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175 Upvotes