retrocomputing

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27380000

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27362288

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.

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

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.

This is the Pulp Fiction of telephone law narratives.