Retro / Vintage PC computers

[Clockwork Cupcake]

Anyone want to talk about retro PC computing?

I've been watching way too much LGR, Techmoan, Technology Connections, 8-bit Guy, Cathode Ray Dude, and the like on YouTube.

Now kicking myself for literally binning all my old tech 20-odd years ago, including loads of ISA cards, AGP, and PCI. What could now be worth potentially thousands of pounds.

So far I've gone a bit crazy on eBay and now have an AMD Athlon K7 Socket A system, and an LG775 Intel Q6600 system. Annoyance being that I sold a Q6600 bundle for like £14 years ago and have now spent £45 to buy one back. Oh well.

Still got most of my old laptops, though, so have been playing around with a Thinkpad 240, a Compaq nx6110, and an HP Elitebook 6930p. Also still own an old ThinkCentre S50 8183 although its SFF makes it of limited use.

Recently sold a Dell Optiplex 7020 slim PC. It was too old to be useful and too new to be interesting.

Edited by Clockwork Cupcake on Saturday 19th October 15:03

[Mr Penguin]

What do you do with them?

[dundarach]

I've kept my Spectrums (and game boys (and psion stuff)) everything else I run through emulation now.

However wish I'd kept my Amiga1200 however!!

I've an old Latitude I5, I've binned the DVD drive and have a HDD caddy so that it has Linux Mint to run virtual machines Dos to Win7 and then on the other drive I've installed Win7 32bit and use that to emulate everything else.

Sheepshaver - MacOS to 9
Winuae Amgia
A risc emulator etc

On the TV I've a small PC running Batocera for everything up to game cube console wise.

I do like the original stuff, however emulation is just so much easier.

And I've some Pi's doing various things, including running a BBS if that's your kind of thing, let me know and you can telnet to it

[Clockwork Cupcake]

Mr Penguin said:

What do you do with them?

Not much. Most of the fun has been in building them, finding drivers, getting it all working. Then I tend to think "Ok, now what?"

[dundarach]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

Mr Penguin said:

What do you do with them?

Not much. Most of the fun has been in building them, finding drivers, getting it all working. Then I tend to think "Ok, now what?"

Virtualbox is great, go and build all the odd systems, OS2 Warp, Plan9, Android X86, Aros (Amiga OS x86), Hackintosh, there's loads to try and mess about with

[Clockwork Cupcake]

dundarach said:

I've kept my Spectrums (and game boys (and psion stuff)) everything else I run through emulation now.

I still have my 48K Spectrum and ultra-rare DISCiPLE interface.

I also have a "museum cabinet" of my original PalmPilot, Palm Vi, Palm Tunsten, Psion 3a, and various other similar stuff. And a Fallout 4 Pip Boy.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

dundarach said:

Virtualbox is great, go and build all the odd systems, OS2 Warp, Plan9, Android X86, Aros (Amiga OS x86), Hackintosh, there's loads to try and mess about with

For sure. Emulation is definitely the way to go if you just want to run old software.

LGR did a collab vid where he asked people what they used for retro gaming and emulation is deffo a viable option.

I'm kind of like those people on Bangers and Cash who will restore a car then not drive it / will sell it.

[MesoForm]

How retro are we talking? I’ve got a socket 1150 i5 4590 system with a GTX 970 from 2014 that’s about to go to the tip as it struggles with newer games.

I couldn’t see anyone paying any money for a mid-range system from 10 years ago, especially a desktop.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

MesoForm said:

How retro are we talking? I’ve got a socket 1150 i5 4590 system with a GTX 970 from 2014 that’s about to go to the tip as it struggles with newer games.

I couldn’t see anyone paying any money for a mid-range system from 10 years ago, especially a desktop.

Break it for parts and put them up on eBay. You would be surprised. Selling on eBay is free for private sellers now too.

That GTX 970 has value, although as I recall they were very power hungry.

Or bung it up in the loft for 10+ years as an investment.

Just do not throw it all out. Such a waste!

[ThingsBehindTheSun]

Clockwork Cupcake said:

Mr Penguin said:

What do you do with them?

Not much. Most of the fun has been in building them, finding drivers, getting it all working. Then I tend to think "Ok, now what?"

I used to love building PCs in the early 90s, but working in IT for nearly 30 years has long since killed that desire.

I can personally think of nothing worse than trying to get a load of old PC bits working in my spare time. As others have said, what on earth do you do with them?

Nowdays I just want stuff to work, I have enough of fixing broken stuff at work to want to do this at home as well.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

I used to love building PCs in the early 90s, but working in IT for nearly 30 years has long since killed that desire.

I can personally think of nothing worse than trying to get a load of old PC bits working in my spare time. As others have said, what on earth do you do with them?

Nowdays I just want stuff to work, I have enough of fixing broken stuff at work to want to do this at home as well.

Each to their own. A professional gardener might like to tinkle the ivories and a professional pianist might like to grow some veg, yet each might be aghast at the other's choice of hobby.

Some people like to restore classic cars but wouldn't dream of driving them regularly.

Retro computing is definitely a thing though.

[Mr E]

I’ve got an A1200 in the loft and boxes and boxes of discs.
Hard drive, clock doubled 68020, additional 4mb of chip ram in the trapdoor.

I’m sure all the caps are dry and it’s worthless.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

Mr E said:

I’ve got an A1200 in the loft and boxes and boxes of discs.
Hard drive, clock doubled 68020, additional 4mb of chip ram in the trapdoor.

I’m sure all the caps are dry and it’s worthless.

I am absolutely sure it is not worthless.

[FourWheelDrift]

Mr E said:

I’ve got an A1200 in the loft and boxes and boxes of discs.
Hard drive, clock doubled 68020, additional 4mb of chip ram in the trapdoor.

I’m sure all the caps are dry and it’s worthless.

It's the battery on the board that leaks and corrodes that you need to check. I had an A500+ (with extra RAM) opened it up, it had leaked, it could be cleaned up and but it needed work by someone who knew exactly what they were doing so I just took photos of it opened up, explained that I hadn't tried to turn it on and sold it on Ebay for £100. Sold games off separately.

I have an A500 Mini for Amiga memories now.

[Mr E]

I have a rasp pi and various emulators

[Clockwork Cupcake]

Mr E said:

I have a rasp pi and various emulators

Emulators is legit. I was not yucking anyone's yum

[mike9009]

I am sure my dad still has his 1986 PC.

Highlights I remember were MS DOS 6.something, Gem desktop, Word perfect for DOS, 5 1/4 inch floppy, 20MB hard drive, 8086 processor (?) and 640k memory. Seemed like a spaceship when we got it, with VGA monitor and dot matrix printer.....

Is that actually worth something....I think it was retired rather than broken.....with a 486 something or other......

[Clockwork Cupcake]

mike9009 said:

Is that actually worth something....I think it was retired rather than broken.....with a 486 something or other......

Definitely. Decent original 486 systems are like £200-odd now.

Not a vast sum but not zero either

[williamp]

Years ago I had a hard which I was able to "split" and run win98 on one pat, and Win 2000 (the then current version) on the other part.

Can this be done with a modern hard drivre? Then you can do old games with good memory and processing power.

[eltawater]

Mr E said:

I’ve got an A1200 in the loft and boxes and boxes of discs.
Hard drive, clock doubled 68020, additional 4mb of chip ram in the trapdoor.

I’m sure all the caps are dry and it’s worthless.

Worth between £250-£300, will likely need a recap and a bit of TLC.

The trapdoor expansion can easily be swapped for a pistorm32-lite which opens up a whole new world of performance.