Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, mac_h8r1, Nemesis
Starfalcon wrote:looks like someone was holding out on me
Starfalcon wrote:Well was watching linus tech tips tonight, and they showed TR on their webcast, and my thread showed up for 10 secs in the hot threads before they scrolled down
Starfalcon wrote:More stuff is up, working my way through what is left...made a decent dent in it today. I will be very happy when this is done, i hate trying to figure out what stuff is typing part numbers into google.
ozzuneoj wrote:After googling model numbers countless times I've resorted to defacing cards with a sharpie or if it's something more valuable I put a sticker on it giving the real name and specs of the card.
I still have a boatload of hardware I promised myself (and my wife) I would sell off. Mostly 3dfx cards. I also have a bunch of ancient MFM hard drives I'd like to re-home but it seems like the availability of modern flash based replacement drives has made the value of authentic vintage drives drop since I came upon these.
The Egg wrote:Even as a fan of vintage hardware, I have very little love for old hard drives and their shenanigans. At this point, you have to assume that any of those drives could go into cardiac arrest at any given moment, so if flash adapters are viable and generally work without issue, I'd be fine with going non-authentic for storage.
The Egg wrote:ozzuneoj wrote:After googling model numbers countless times I've resorted to defacing cards with a sharpie or if it's something more valuable I put a sticker on it giving the real name and specs of the card.
I still have a boatload of hardware I promised myself (and my wife) I would sell off. Mostly 3dfx cards. I also have a bunch of ancient MFM hard drives I'd like to re-home but it seems like the availability of modern flash based replacement drives has made the value of authentic vintage drives drop since I came upon these.
Any collection on the level of Starfalcon's should have a labelmaker in heavy use. They also come in handy for tagging DC adapters behind the TV (or wherever), since they often look identical.
Even as a fan of vintage hardware, I have very little love for old hard drives and their shenanigans. At this point, you have to assume that any of those drives could go into cardiac arrest at any given moment, so if flash adapters are viable and generally work without issue, I'd be fine with going non-authentic for storage.
ozzuneoj wrote:Many old hard drives are quite hardy. There's a 3.5" MFM drive in my IBM 5150 that was installed in the late 80s and it works great after lubricating a couple of things (the system was stored in a garage for 20+ years). The data on them is so coarse and they are so "mechanical" that it honestly feels like its harder to mess them up vs with newer drives. They add so much character to an old system that an entirely flash based retro system would seem somewhat lacking to me. There's nothing like listening to the floppy disk reading "brrngg brrnng brrrrrrngg brrrng" then seeing the HDD LED turn on and have it go "DIT DIT DIDIT DIT" as data is copied. You can almost hear the data being transferred.
I guess at some point you have to decide how authentic you want the experience to be (vintage keyboard, vintage monitor, real floppy drives, period correct sound hardware). In some cases a modern port or an emulator is fine... but in other cases you may want the whole process to be authentic, all the way from pulling the floppy out of an old plastic disk caddy from the 80s.
Starfalcon wrote:2nd edit A lot of my drives are barely or never used so they are in good shape, all the 8 and 10 gigers came out of OG Xbox systems from when a friend of mine modded the systems back in the day. Since he couldn't get rid of them, he just gave them to me as they work great with old systems. I have plenty of old rigs with drives from the 90's that work fine to this day, older hard drives seem a lot more forgiving then newer ones they cram tons of data in smaller and smaller spaces.
ludi wrote:Hmm...was digging through dusty workbench drawers this weekend and discovered a PCI card with vintage 3DFX logos and a cryptic inscription of "Creative CT6670" on the back. The Internet says it's a 12MB Voodoo2. I thought I gave that entire stash to Starfalcon, but guess I saved one for myself after all.
NeonSun wrote:Do you have any 24" Widescreen CRT displays?
Starfalcon wrote:Are you starting a museum?Well I had some time today and added more things to the list.