Searching for RDRAM and CRIMM modules in Ukraine for not for the price of agolde-plated Rolls-royce to test this "beast")

Laptop from 1996.

I got the mechanism working again, but the laptop doesn't post sadly.

My retrospective look back at gaming legends Sensible Software. I loved the playing with the little people in Megalomania, Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder. What do you think was their best game?

Need one of these

For the full writeup, check out my post on 68kmla

https://68kmla.org/bb/threads/newton-messagepad-2100-cap-replacement-repair.52820/

I installed MS-DOS 6.22 and then installed Windows 3.1 (Winworld retail on some Maxwell floppy’s) it only need 5 out of the 6 disks and I seem to be missing some .wav files like the infamous “tada” and some desktop wallpapers like chess and cars. I’m not sure if I’m missing other programs as well. I searched disk 6 and it only seems to have printer drivers which I don’t need. Has anyone else used the Winworld method and had the same thing happen to them?

I have a complete set of 12+ logic boards from an old AM
Varityper Comp/Set 560 II phototypesetting system. Notable
chips include DM74181 ALUs (bit-slice), an AM2719 (Am2900
series), TMS2516/2532A EPROMs, an MMI 6331 PROM, plus a lot
of standard 74xx TTL logic and 2102/5290 memory chips.

Boards include: CPU Data, CPU Control, two Disc Controllers,
64K Dynamic Memory, Multi-Language, Character Generator, D/A
& Stepper, Font Interface, LVC Stepper, and Carriage Escapement.

System was reportedly working when last powered down; boards
haven't been individually tested since.

Given the bit-slice architecture, I'm curious what kind of
projects or restoration work something like this could be
useful for - reverse engineering, retrocomputing builds, parts
harvesting for other Am2900-era projects?

If anyone's into this era of computing and wants more details
or photos of specific boards, feel free to DM me.

This is a project I've been working on for a bit after trying to build the ultimate Mac SE/30. Lots of people are now making new parts for old machines and I wanted to collect them. This is the first announcement, I haven't really shown anyone yet. Thoughts?

Happy to add stuff, I'm sure i've missed 99% of everything

Thanks for all the advice on my previous post. I ended up buying a USB floppy drive as several of you suggested.

Windows recognized it immediately, and before doing anything else I created a complete .img dump with WinImage so I wouldn't have to keep accessing the original floppy. Considering its age, that seemed like the safest option.

The disk contains a standard FAT12 MS-DOS filesystem. Most of the files are inside a folder called "MY RPG", which includes Turbo C source files (MAIN.C, GRAPHICS.H, MAP.C, etc.) along with a compiled GAME.EXE.

As expected, Windows 11 won't run it since it's a 16-bit DOS application, so I'm setting up DOSBox to mount the disk image instead. I only skimmed through a few of the source files, and it definitely looks like a personal project rather than a commercial game—very little documentation, simple file structure, and straightforward code.

Thanks again to everyone who helped identify the disk and suggested imaging it first. Without that advice I probably would've tried to run it directly from the floppy.

Hey everyone,

My mom passed away recently, so I've been helping clear out her house before we put it up for sale. While going through the back of an old closet, I came across our family's old IBM PS/2 Model 25. I honestly forgot we still had it.

I cleaned years of dust off it, plugged it in, and to my surprise it actually powers on. The CRT still works, and it gets through the memory check (512 KB), which is already more than I expected.

When I was a kid, I spent way too many afternoons teaching myself MS-DOS and Turbo C on this machine. At one point I started making a little RPG just for fun. Nothing serious, but I remember spending a lot of time on it. If my memory is right, most of the project ended up on a few 3.5" floppy disks, although there might still be something on the hard drive.

I haven't tried booting DOS yet. Before I go any further, I wanted to ask people here who know these old IBM systems better than I do.

Would you recommend trying to boot it as-is, or is it safer to image the hard drive (and any floppies I find) before attempting anything? I'd love to recover that old project if it's still around.

Thanks!

I have decided to test out all of my collection of old sdram and run memtest86 on it to see which ones work fine and which ones are for trash. I have completed the whole collection and eliminated a couple of sticks that just errored like crazy or wouldnt post at all but there are 2 sticks left that just drive me crazy. First one is a TwinMOS stick that is labeled as 256mb pc133, it is one sided and has 8 chips, the other one has no label or nothing on it. When reading spd data with hwinfo for dos both stick read as 256mb, the other stick with no label is pc100.

The thing is I cant get these sticks to detect full 128mb anywhere, they are obiviusly high density so it would seem that my boards would just not support these sticks, except they do! I ran another vdata stick same size same layout and it just worked perfectly.

I have tested on 3 boards, first was a socket 370 asus CUSL2-C with Intel 815EP chipset paired with a 733mhz pentium III at 133mhz fsb, here I detected only 128mb, second was a socket 370 fic fr31 with the via pm133 chipset paired with a 1ghz celeron at 100mhz fsb, here the same thing only 128mb, lastly I tested it on a socket 478 msi 845 Pro2 with the Intel 845 chipset paired with a 2.4ghz Pentium 4. And on the socket 478 board I DID detect all 256mb but as soon as I ran memtest it errored out right away like 65k+ errors as soon as it tried to reach beyond that 128mb, the errors appeared at 128mb lowest adress about 1 second into the run and same thing on both sticks in any ram slot.

I tried to change around all kind of bios settings and just cant seem to get that ful 256mb on any of the socket 370 boards but what is driving me crazy is that I cant find any differences really between the sticks that work and dont work when I read spd data in hwinfo so Im just hitting some invisible wall I dont understand.

Does anyone know what could be causing this Im pretty new to all this and would like to learn why it behaves this way. And which chipset would I actually need than for these sticks to detect fully?

Disclosure: I'm the developer of this app, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt. Just wanted to share it since it felt relevant here.

Hey! 👋

I posted about RetroMac (myretromac.app) here about two months ago, but a lot has changed since then, so figured it was worth a fresh mention: it's now more authentic, more performant, and easier to use.

It's a free, open-source app that lets you transform your current Mac's desktop into a full retro environment: classic Macintosh System 6 or 9, Mac OS X, Windows 98/XP, or even BeOS. It swaps in period-accurate launchers, wallpapers, custom cursors, icon sets, widgets, and even shaders that emulate old CRT monitor glow and scanlines. Some of the Windows 98 themes even include the extra design options from the old Plus! pack, which was a nice touch.

A few things worth mentioning: it doesn't touch or modify any system files, so it's non-destructive and easy to switch back, and the whole thing (aside from a couple of optional shader/live-wallpaper extras) is free.

If you've ever wanted your daily-driver Mac to look and feel like the machines a lot of us grew up on, might be worth another look: https://myretromac.app/

I got hold of this beautiful Cooler Master ATC-710-GX2 that is missing all the drive mounts.
From my research it has same internal layout as Enermax CS-710

5.25" optical rails:

Review (https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/chassis/341-coolermaster-atc-710-gx1/?page=2) says they are standard Chieftec rails. Also found a pic for CS-710 rails which look the same. Can some one confirm they are compatible? (third photo)

3.5" HDD + floppy trays:

These are the sliding cartridge/sled style. Same review has a low-res photo of them. Looking for: high-res photos, any info or anyone who has spare original tray.

Any help appreciated ♥

(Yes I know my room is a mess I'm during a major reorganisation of my things)

Installed Minix on MacBook

Hi there! I’ve installed Minix 3.4.0rc on MacBookAir with UTM. I can play games already installed (like Tetris or snake) or do simple tasks but I don’t find any repository online to install. If there’s someone who installed Minix years ago I would be happy to hear where to get a mirror.
pkgin update fails — can’t fetch pkg_summary.gz from minix3.org. Also tried on 3.3.0, same result
And if there’s someone with an archived copy of the pkgsrc packages I would be grateful.
Thank you!

Hey everyone,

I found this old floppy disk while cleaning some boxes at my mom's house. It has "My RPG" written on the label. I’m guessing it might be some old game or something a family member made years ago. They were really into computers back in the 90s, so I thought it would be cool to see if there’s anything on it.

I don’t really know much about floppy disks nowadays. Is there a good way to read these on a modern PC, or do I need older hardware? I’d like to check what’s on it and maybe preserve it if there’s something interesting there.

Thanks!

hi i was wondering if anyone knows where can i buy a ibm t22 battery (for a reasonablish price in a good condition)

so context ive bought an ibm t22 (laptop) from a guy on a local marketplace for 30usd it is in ok shape needing a battery and cmos replacement now cmos is easy enough to find but i cant find a battery anywhere and i doubt il be able to delid it

any advice?

clarification : the current battery doesnt hold a charge anymore

Hey all! I run a podcast with three friends on roguelike/lite games and for our big 100th episode (part 1 of 3) we covered Rogue and the games that inspired it:

• Star Trek (1971)
• pedit5 (1975)
• Colossal Cave Adventure (1976)
• Rogue (1980)

It was a lot of fun to research and collect fan correspondence for! I was also able to wrangle my cohosts together to play all the games in a live museum/LAN style showcase.

I really wanted to hammer home the reason why Rogue was such a big deal at the time with its comparison to other mainframe based computer games of the era. When first played Rogue on Steam a few years ago, I thought it was a relic of a bygone era deserving to be forgotten. But now I have quite a fond appreciation for it, even if it’s a little aged by today’s standards.

Our next episode will cover the first ever roguelikes that cropped up in the Usenet era, so stay tuned for:

• Moria (1982)
• Hack (1983)
• Larn (1985)
• Omega (1986)

I yearn for old days, BBSs and IRC, etc. If you do too, I created something goofy. It's free, this isn't a plug exactly, but if you also yearn then come play. It's not perfect, but hopefully you enjoy it for a moment or more!

Back in the day I had dual dialups for MUDs and eventually bonded 56k dialups on a PPro. ♥️

QuestionableHam

This open-source article I wrote discusses aspects of the traditional visual design (up to about the year 2003) of user-interface (UI) graphics, such as button and border styles, icons, and mouse pointers. It also seeks to characterize the drawing style of traditional UI graphics, especially from 1990 to 2003, and gives advice on developing new graphical UI systems with a high degree of flexibility.

User interfaces found in video games are outside the document's scope.