retrocomputing

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27263478

I love saving these old parts from the landfill, and this stylish little Amber monitor was destined to be recycled, so let's fix it.

via https://hackaday.com/2025/03/22/the-fastest-ms-dos-gaming-pc-ever/

After [Andy]’s discovery of an old ISA soundcard at his parents’ place that once was inside the family PC, the onset of a wave of nostalgia for those old-school sounds drove him off the deep end. This is how we get [Andy] building the fastest MS-DOS gaming system ever, with ISA slot and full hardware compatibility. After some digging around, the fastest CPU for an Intel platform that still retained ISA compatibility turned out to be Intel’s 4th generation Core series i7-4790K CPU, along with an H81 chipset-based MiniITX mainboard.

I thought these vintage tablet PCs were going to suck...but they're actually good?!

It's a widely known problem with roots in urban legend: Devices with motherboards failing in the early 2000s with a sudden pop, a gruesome spill, or sometimes a burst of flames. And it was allegedly all due to one guy who didn't copy a stolen formula correctly.

The "capacitor plague" of the early 2000s was real and fairly widespread among devices, even if the majority of those devices didn't go bad at the same time or even in the same year. The story of this widespread failure, passing between industry insider stories and media reports, had a specific culprit, but also a broad narrative about the shift from Japanese to Taiwanese manufacturers and about outsourcing generally.

The Asianometry channel on YouTube recently dug into the "capacitor plague" in a video that asks, "What happened to the capacitors in 2002?" and comes to some informed, broad, and layered answers. It explains the specifics of what's happening inside both a working capacitor and the faulty models, relays the reporting on the companies blamed and affected, and, crucially, puts the plague in the wider context of hotter chips, complex supply chains, counterfeits, and, sure, some industrial sabotage.

"We will never know what exactly happened, but let's try," the host says at the start. It is recommended you follow along.

Last week I made a post asking if I should buy an old vintage monitor.

Well, I went back to the recycled goods store this week and it was still there, so $30 later I have it, and it seems to just work*

There's very little about this monitor on the internet, so I'm thinking of documenting as much as I can about it, especially as it's Osborne branded so there could be some interesting history behind it.

* The power button is stuck on, and it does an occasional unsettling arc sound and the image slightly distorts for a millisecond. I believe the latter is fairly common among old CRTs but I don't know much more than that.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27142326

This is the Pulp Fiction of telephone law narratives.

Let's install MX Linux on a dual Pentium 3 Kayak workstation from 1999!

Today was our bimonthly meeting of the Robin Hood Amiga Group in Nottingham, UK.

Today's presentation was delivered by team behind the DeMoN project, which is a reverse-engineered and upgraded Action Replay 3 cart with tons of cool new features. Here is their demo unit plugged into a stock A500.

There was a diverse range of wonderful machines on show, including a CD32, Vampire standalone, A1200 PiStorm setup, a retro console table and a gorgeous A1000 setup.

We also had a visit from the Who Dares Wins Amiga BBS team, which is an oldskool 90s BBS that has been brought back to life by the original operators.

One of our members was showing off his progress on a ZX Spectrum clone project using the Tang Nano FPGA board.

A couple of cool homebuilt Amiga CD32 joysticks were on show.

Also, two of us were there showing off our work-in-progress Denise ITX Amiga builds.

Specs-
MOBO: Intel D875PBZ board
CPU: Pentium 4 3.0GHz
RAM: 512MB DDR
GPU: Nvidia 6800 GT
Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy SB0090

Keyboard: IBM KB8923 Mechanical Mouse: Microsoft Intellimouse Optical

Display: Compaq S710 CRT 1024x768 @ 85Hz

I have the whole thing connected to the Belkin SoHo KVM with my Windows 11 PC (behind the cabinet on the left) and my NUC that I use as a home lab server (on top of the Blu-ray drive on the right)

A blog post on the build will be forthcoming but feel free to suggest games and software I should load onto or AMA about the system.

It was a really fun project

via https://oldbytes.space/@flexion/114154723957087861 <- there’s a higher quality version of this photo there