/tech/ - Technology★

I don't have much space to store stuff, but I have kept hardware for reading old media. VHS, film scanner, Zip, optical, floppy readers, misc flash readers, SCSI and IDE cards, etc. One item I wish I had kept was an Apple floppy drive. I didn't realize at the time it was a different format than standard PC floppies.

>>1005479

What are the brands/names of the equipment you have? This is one of my interests but I want to look for things that will actually work for reading/converting old media.

>>1005487

that is a valid point, although my internet is slow as fuck + thick walls make it even slower. I will check out Debian though, its current OS isnt compatible with fucking anything lol.

Now that is fucking cool! how does it smell?

>>1005493

It looks incredibly dusty, have you tried giving it a good strong can of air? or maybe wipe it gently with a dry paper towel?

>>1005495

with that much shit on it it's a surprise it didn't short out even more components

also a quick question about the imac, I don't have a USB stick but I do have disks, I tried booting ubuntu onto it with the disk drive thats built in but it doesn't read disks unless its on, which at that point it does nothing in terms of OS setup

>>1005471 (OP)

>old as shit pc that is effectively obsolete

Is it a PPC (usually as in the picture; the webcam model didn't sell well) or x86 (with webcam)? If it's PPC, I'd keep it as-is to run old Mac software; that's why I have mine. On PPC with the "classic mode" Mac OS 9 sandbox, you can run practically anything Basilisk or SheepShaver would but more accurately and without the headaches, lag and whatnot.

For anything else, the old 2 GHz PPC runs slow and hot due to the architecture. It's an early-to-mid P4 in terms of processing power. A 2005 laptop pulled from a trash container will give you better performance for less electricity.

>>1005496

>I tried booting ubuntu

You did use the PPC version? Standard x86_64 iso won't boot no matter what medium you use. http://mac.linux.be/content/booting-open-firmware#hard_disk You can try even booting over network, but you'll need to set up a TFTP server.

>>1005498

It's an oldy, no webcam, 17" screen, do you have any links or resources where I can get basilisk and sheepshaver? I can only find anything relative on the macintoshgarden website but even then I cant figure out how to make them work, I think its running OS X, so its a little more dated than say snow leopard or what have you

>>1005503

I think you're conflating a few things, correct me if I'm wrong.

Basilisk/SheepShaver: emulators for older (pre-X) Macs that run on Windows/Linux/OS X

OS X: Term that includes both PPC OS X and the newer and current Intel/x86 OS X

The latest OS X for PPC is 10.4 I believe. What exactly are you trying to achieve right now?

>>1005507

Well at this very moment it has Mac OS X 10.5.8

the processor is 1.8ghz PowerPC G5 with 1gb DDR SDRAM

It is incredibly slow and it is incompatible with many web pages and applications. The only thing I can really think of using it for is 1. emulating old mac games, 2. browsing old BBS/image boards, or 3. installing debian and turning it into a home server, and I know nothing of 1 and 3

>>1005471 (OP)

am currently running an a6 3650, AMA

>>1005511

For 1, emulation is unnecessary because Apple provided a way to run a bare metal sandboxed OS 9 within OS X PPC. You just need to get a OS 9 directory in the right place to activate "classic mode" compatibility. You'll have to look up how, I'm phoneposting at the moment. 2 and 3 are doable (I think "Ten Four Fox" is the FF rigged up for PPC) but hardly worth the trouble.

>>1005481

The tape stuff is all Sony. Film scanner is Nikon. The other stuff is miscellaneous LG/Samsung/Sony/Teac/Adaptec/Iomega. The flash card reader is some generic $20 job I got from BestBuy that reads CF,Sony,MMC, in addition to SD and micro SD.

>>1005518

>For 1, emulation is unnecessary because Apple provided a way to run a bare metal sandboxed OS 9 within OS X PPC

there doesnt seem to be much quality information about this, are there any tutorials or ways I can figure out how to make this work?

>>1005524

My understanding is that you need to put the OS 9 "System Folder" in the root of your OS X partition. The following site concurs and provides a more detailed how-to: https://www.cnet.com/news/tutorial-installing-classic-over-a-current-mac-os-x-installation/

I have a OS X system that's never seen OS 9 so I'll test it out.

>>1005493

Wash it with isopropanol, its near impossible trying to get dirt off well without a liquid to help pull it away. And use a small toothbrush as well to get rid of ths gunk. Rinse it again with isopropanol multiple times. Its volatile so ot evaporates fast and leaves no residue, so its better than just water

>>1005536

>just water

I'm no scientist but i'm pretty sure putting water directly onto/into any electrical device would corrode/fry it. 10/10 Do not recommend

>>1005540

Distilled water then.

>>1005541

I think its more along the lines of "conducts electricity" that will fuck with it famalam

since we're on the subject, if you want to use some kind of electronic/computer for an aquatic application (ex; RC boat/submarine) you can waterproof the circuits and cables by putting on a liberal layer of petroleum jelly when I was a kid I took apart my RC boat and the entire circuit board + propeller shafts were covered in a thick layer of the stuff, so it "should" work

>>1005544

I don't think distilled water is conductive. Besides, even the most conductive material won't do anything if there's no electricity. Just dry it off.

>>1005548

Often times there is still a charge within the capacitors and that could be enough to make it pop and sizzle

>>1005556

Never had a problem with that back when I was repairing TVs, VHSs and stereos. They're pretty tough.

I have an old FX-8350 build. It's practically an antique.

>>1005567

Me too. Don't see a reason to upgrade, I even got cheap ECC Ram.

>>1005567

pics? also how does it run? what are the stats on it?

>>1005586

It's on CL for $30.

>>1005587

do it

sounds like good fun + /tech/ memays + nostalgia

I have so much useless junk accumulated that I've picked up from people throwing them to the curb on trash day. There is no good use for old desktops that can't be done better and more efficiently with a cheap SBC. It's sad really that perfectly good hardware doesn't have a use to anybody. Maybe there's some spic or slav charity I can give it away too. It's probably a waste to give it to Africans.

>>1005633

homebrew botnet?

maybe you can configure it in some way like the enigma machines so that in a post-shtf world you can distribute them to trusted people to communicate securely on

>>1005633

do you any that look like >>1005586? I will fly to you and pick it up if so, no joke and no homo

>>1005592

i think i’m gonna, i like the look. easy to gut too since it looks like an ATX standard case

>>1005633

At least you've got PCI slots and might not have to worry about IME, Spectre, and Meltdown.

>>1005633

> There is no good use for old desktops that can't be done better and more efficiently with a cheap SBC

in all honesty if I had a shitload of old PC's laying around I would probably disassemble them all and try to build a super frankenputer out of them, with several TB from all the stacked HDD with the maximum amount of memory possible and to top it off use any graphics cards to really boost it, and of course use the PSU to the highest degree necessary, the rest I would either sell to like minded individuals online at fair prices or sell for its scrap value (copper, gold, etc)

Thoughts?

>>1005633

If it's used infrequently enough the power usage doesn't really matter from a cost or environmental perspective.

I gave my grandpa a trashpicked 1st gen Athlon about 10 years ago. He still uses it a couple hours per week to check emails and news, and all I've had to do is replace an old gNewSense install with Debian that whole time. All the peripherals are from his old IBM PS/2 model 30. Performance hasn't been an issue because he hates autoplaying vids and uses NoScript. I should probably show him lynx considering he preferred "the DOS way of things".

>>1005767

I spent most of my childhood through college doing this. Just keep it away from your bed if you plan on running at at night and you're golden.

My daily driver is a PDP-11/70 with 4MB RAM, quad RL02s (10MB HDDs), RX02 (dual 8" floppy), and a VT52 terminal. Runs 2.11BSD as god intended, none of this modern Linux or FreeBSD CoCkery.

Daily reminder that your hardware is proprietary if it didn't come with gate-level schematics. Maybe one day I'll upgrade to a VAX...

>>1005774

Is that an ATAPI Zip drive with black bezel? I didn't know they even made them in that color. Nice 5.25" floppy drive too. Looks like a highly useful computer.

>>1005777

I would have lost my mind if my family this stuff away.

>>1005717

Nope.

>>1005761

They're all late 90s - 2000s computers, so it's before IME at least.

>>1005767

Even if you built a computer from these using the best parts possible, you would end up with something that's barely usable this decade. There's a method for separating the gold, but I don't know how much you'd get and I'd rather not.

>>1005768

Nobody really wants them, not even kids. They have tablets and phones to do that stuff. Most anything I'd want to use it for would necessarily have to be active most of the time, like a NAS drive, or hosting my own website for the lulz. Only thing I can think of right now, which I might do is built a few machines dedicated to emulating old console games. It's all the rage with normalfags these days, so maybe it'll prevent them from buying the next 'mini' console for 200 dollars.

>>1005776

>>1005774

>>1005777

comrade I am sorry for you, may your new collection protect what remains of the previous

>>1005782

I had to give up almost all of my old computers when I moved. I had a Sawtooth G4 that could boot MacOS9. I saved a Powerbook G4 forgetting it can only do MacOS9 in OSX classic mode. I also got rid of my IDE/Floppy/AGP/ISA motherboards along with my two boxes full of cards. I had boxes stacked to the top of my closet both inside and outside. At least now I can open the closet door to get inside. :^)

>>1005782

the simple fact along that you collect funs and computer stuffs is enough to assure me that the hive mind exists, tell me anon, what do you think of the JQ?

>>1005787

may your old /tech/ find rest in robot heaven, sometimes change is good>>1005787

>>1005796

you and I are one in the same

may the gods smile upon us in the tumultuous years to come and may we have funs, freedom, and all the oldie but goodies tech stuffs imaginable

Gott Mit Uns Bruder!

>>1005781

I don't necessarily disagree with that article on the whole. I just think that the relevance of the "four freedoms" is diminished by the sheer size and complexity of modern software. In 1986 users were for the most part still expected to be programmers, and it was still possible to understand the entirety of your computer if you took the time to study it. Read the rest of that guy's site and you'll probably come to the conclusion that microprocessors were a mistake.

>>1005791

I didn't get rid of everything, but I did have to prioritize. My computer hardware is down to a 5 shelf edsal rack. My closet has no clothes and is completely full of banker boxes and consoles with decades of various media and games. My NTSC CRT TV set, VHS, and Wii are stacked on my dresser. My brother had no room in his place for some of my dad's old stuff so I have a tube amp and speakers sitting underneath my computer desk with old laptops sitting on top. I can't even put my legs all the way under, but I just cant part with my dad's dynakit.

>>1005796

>I mean, what good is a 1.2GHz computer now?

For me, it's all about being able to access old media. I have quite a bit of MacOS (not macOS) software that belonged to my dad. Unfortunately MacOS emulators are in a very poor state. To further complicate things, MacOS spanned 68k and PPC.

>>1005800

I screencapped most if not all of his posts, I haven't read them all yet but I do agree, it was mentioned that Power PC processors were essentially the peak of high-tech high-security processors, things have now switched to super-tech low-security, at least in the case of "if they wanted to, they could", to my knowledge old PPC processors physically couldn't have a back door, because they were just too simple

>>1005805

Hmm, true, I suppose. My main system (the one with all of the disk drives) was built around 2008 or so, and while it's a pain that it's only fit for DDR2 and maxes out at 8GB, it works with a lot of hardware, making it rather useful. I keep forgetting that my system is within the interim category of "not classic" and "not modern". I find myself hunting for mid to late-nineties Macs, not only to replace the ones I had, but to bridge the gap between the newer and older systems. HFS formatting a SCSI HDD for use in a Mac Plus takes a particular set of equipment that I now lack.

>>1005580

it's an "8 core" processor that is slower than most quadcores

I have the G4

>>1005868

All you need is a SCSI PCIE card with the right backward adapter and hfsprogs on Linux. The floppy disks are more of an issue because you can't read them on regular PC floppy drives.

>>1005783

>Even if you built a computer from these using the best parts possible, you would end up with something that's barely usable this decade. There's a method for separating the gold, but I don't know how much you'd get and I'd rather not.

Disconnect from the botnet and suddenly it's usable again and will be until it breaks. No working part is always worth more than its gold value, even a 64MB SDRAM stick or a shitty Celeron will get you $5-10 on ebay.

>>1006070

>No working part is

*A working part is

>>1006060

>cannot open it without a long-blade T15 driver, which I have yet to source

don't let your dreams be dreams https://www.aliexpress.com/item/cool-fleshlight/32888457329.html

>>1006099

I was half-assedly trying to get one stateside so I wouldn't have to wait a month for a plastic envelope from China, and since I only need a T15, I'll keep costs low and just hunt for a single driver/bit. Annoying that the handle alcove is so badly designed that I can't fit a regular T15 driver into it.

>>1006099

this isn't chink shit general?

>>1006126

Sounds really cool

Can you tell us more

>>1006146

Nice. I was considering getting one to get my Dreamcasts online, but fucks in my area want hundreds for them and don't provide any information about exactly which one they're selling.

>>1006158

If you are willing to spend money I would just get an 824 then.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-KX-TA824-Advanced-Hybrid-System-Cabinet-3-Lines-x-8-Station-W-Cover/352536840124

Dreamcast -> PBX -> *nix machine with modem running pppd -> internet.

>>1006160

>Is there anything specific you do to convert those bitmaps into a format usable by the Apple II?

I just convert them to gif then kermit them to the //e. "iigif" is the a2 image viewer I use.

>>1005781

all of the arguemnts i read in that pic are extremely easy to dispute, the author's an idiot and im not even a freetard

Give me some of your old hardware ideas.

Here are mine.

<HTPC

Easy to do. If you have smart TVs you can turn one laptop as HTPC plus you don't get the subtitles fucked up by the native smart TV player. Use mpv which is by far the fastest and works on both linux and windows (if you're having trouble with audio over hdmi).

<Universal LCD driver/controller board

recycling old and working displays from dead laptops

the problem is the colors are likely not calibrated so invest on a calibration profile colorimeter such as X-rite, Pantone, and Spyder.

Monitors cost a lot and if you manage to get a lot of universal controller board you'll get around $0-$30 per screen and it can be used for a multiple monitor setup (with even less bevel) and also for some SBCs lying around (because SBC monitors are expensive).

<Old laptop hdd + a new hdd to usb scsi controller board (usb 3.0)

Laptop hard drives if they have no bad sectors yet (and other severe smart stats) are good for storage. Most laptop drives are immune to certain shock

<DVD r/w

These optical drives aren't usually broken and can be tested if it works and you can go find a controller board if you still use them (so you don't populate usb ports or accidentally disconnect when on a live OS) .

<web cam

Maybe set up a CCTV all over your place. That is if you find a controller board to make it useful at all or make one yourself.

Also, there's a huge amount of good screws and rubber that is very useful. Try to get as much as you can.

<RAM

Old SO-DIMMs are extremely rare if they're in perfect condition despite being old since no one's manufacturing them right now. Some recent SO-DIMMs can be used with server boards.

>>1005493

>monitor smell by far the worst

I wouldn't suggest smelling that. It's likely mercury vapor leaks and it is a complete health hazard. This is existent on older fluorescent-lit panels.

>>1006184

>I wouldn't suggest smelling that. It's likely mercury vapor leaks and it is a complete health hazard. This is existent on older fluorescent-lit panels.

There is mercury inside CRTs? I know there is lead and phosphors, but mercury? As far as I know there is only vacuum inside the tube. Phosphor coating on the front is what emits light.

>>1005496

Do what >>1005499 suggested and make sure you're using a PowerPC build of Linux. PowerPC Macs are completely incompatible with x86 operating systems and software. Try using the ppc64el build of Debian.

>>1006256

>This is existent on older fluorescent-lit panels.

>>1006337

the fuck is this chink shit faggot

What counts as "old hardware"? More than 10 years old (i.e. any pre-Core-i system and contemporary components/peripherals)?

>>1005761

>Spectre

To dodge Spectre you'd need to go as far back as a Pentium MMX 233 MHz. Not much use in such a system in #currentyear.

>>1006344

Fuck you faggot.

If installing XP to a Core 2 system, is there any point at all in bothering with getting it to install/run with the SATA controller in AHCI mode, or should one just stick with IDE mode?

>>1005567

Keep hold of it. I just bought a new FX-8350 to build a new system with. It's still got plenty enough grunt for most applications, and it's the last (practical) desktop processor before AMD followed Intel and kiked their chips with PSP. There is the FX-9xxx series of course, but with mental 220W TDP and water cooling mandatory, I don't consider them a viable solution. Beyond that, the only possible non-botnet upgrade is Opteron server hardware (which I'll probably acquire when used prices drop sufficiently).

>>1006456

What if you'd like to multi-boot XP, 7, and a few contemporary Linux/BSD systems? Three options present themselves

>install XP in IDE mode and the others in AHCI mode, and bother to switch to IDE mode in BIOS to boot XP and switch back to AHCI to boot any other OS

>make the effort to have XP work on AHCI mode too, thus not needing to touch the BIOS setting

>not give a fuck about AHCI at all and install and run all OSes in IDE mode

What's the best ATA HDD producer? My 15 year old laptop's hard drive finally gave up the ghost.

>>1006479

With that being said, don't bother spending boatloads of money on a mSATA SSD, something like a 120GB Kingston UV500 will suffice.

>>1006479

>>1006480

I didn't know these were a thing. Thank you.

>>1005471 (OP)

>>imac G5

>>old as shit

I daily a powerbook g4. Anon you're (probably) running macOS 10.4, maybe 10.5. If you're running 10.5, it may be faster on 10.4. There's all kinds of things you can do with them, other than run debian.

LibreOffice is still supported.

So is TenFourFox, and if that's too slow try out Camino, which is unsupported (security vulnerable possibly, beware) , but super fast on PPC and does well with low-JS websites.

Also, Halo 1 and 2 run natively on them.

Man, I'd kill for a G5. My dream is to get one of the Dual Core ones and have a macOS/ Gentoo dual boot.

I'm currently looking towards a GNUstep build on my g4. I think I'll just start with Debain, but after I get the hang of it I'm gonna do a BSD kernel. Supposedly, there was a GNUstep on Darwin project once upon a time. Now that would be cool.

>>1005496

You did smash cmd+"c" as you were booting, no? If not, look up some quick OpenFirmware commands and boot into that. Fun fact, OpenFirmware is written in Fourth and you can run any Fourth command from the OpenFirmware shell.

>>1005498

There is no "classic mode" for anything newer than a g3. However, you can run SheepSaver at near-native performance because it is still PPC. Also, in terms of heat, new thermal paste and maybe a fan-mod will go leagues towards improving performance and sustainability.

>>1005507

10.4 was PPC. 10.5 was PPC and Intel. Actually, on any 10.5 mac is binaries for PPC _and_ Intel. Including every program! How wasteful!

>>1005511

Lots of mid-2000s games had mac ports that will run great on it. Many have been forgotten about. Try to look for really old (>2006/7) forum posts.

>>1005536

Do NOT use just any isopropyanol alcohol. Either use distilled water, which has a 0% chance of fucking with anything (>>1005556 is talking out of his ass), or use a very, very pure ethanol alcohol. Never, ever use denatured alcohol. Many store-bought cleaning alcohols have additives making them toxic to humans, so you throw them up before the alcohol kills you. These added toxins leave residue on electronics that can really fuck with things, especially where contact is made. Water is the best cleaning solution for powered-off electronics. Just dry it with a towel/ hair dryer (beware of heat exposure).

t. A guy who's broken a lot of shit by doing stuff the wrong way

>>1006440

First gen iPods had a mechanical spinner wheel instead of a touch wheel.

>>1006488

can you post a pic of one, preferably black, i knew someone who had one a long time ago and ive been looking for one that matches it (it also had the mechanical spinner) and everything coming up on google is either just buttons or the touch wheel

>>1006484

it is currently on Mac OS X 10.5.8

do you know of any good resources/tutorials? like specifically how to install basilisk and sheepshaver and also where to find said games, currently i only know of macintoshgarden

>>1006502

im slightly confused, isnt there supposed to be a whitish semi clear ring that rotates around the buttons?

>>1006506

How about you just click the link he provided.

I have bad new comrades, there is a possibility that my dad has thrown away a box of miscellaneous electronic components, chief among them being some old RAM cards, along with some laptop screens and other bits. it contained the parts out of at least 2 laptops of varying age. may we have a moment of silence for all /tech/ and /tech/ accessories that have been lost to the ignorance of normies.

>>1006556

F

A moment of quiet rage, perhaps, but not a peaceful silence.

>>1006556

>RAM cards

DIMMs are sticks, not cards

>>1006576

>>1006574

no comrades, it was a handful of old thinkpad sticks/cards ranging from 1gb to 4gb and worth between $20-$30 bucks online

>>1006479

Never knew about this. I was about to suggest IBM pATA IDE but those are currently hard to find.

>>1006479

>operating systems you would install on that kind of machines obviously assume HDDs

>let's shove SSDs there anyway

How is it going to work (TRIM etc)?

>>1006501

There is a PPC mac app store. https://ppcappstore.wordpress.com/

Also, there's another website http://powerpcsoftware.com/

Not sure how dated this stuff is. Check out homebrew and tigerports (linux-like package managers). They install from source iirc.

>>1006660

>>lets shove SSDs there anyway

The OS is hardware agnostic, it merely needs a certain protocol (IDE). Many SSDs have hardware TRIM anyways, and lack of TRIM shouldn't be a worry with such small and lightly-used SSDs.

>>1006660

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/15169543/Elpamsoft_SSD_Tweaker_Pro_v3.7.0

Anybody do anything with consumer hardware here? Seems like everything with a cartridge slot has flash carts for it, some even with a way to communicate with a host pc. Quite a few also run code (the supercard dstwo, and sd2snes are the 2 I can think of)

>>1006671

OSX went to shit the day they appstore went live. If you have a PPC Mac and you want the OSX experience, get Final Cut Pro Studio, Adobe CS2, Maya, and MS Office and call it a day.

>>1006720

I want to get some of the original games but it takes literal hours to download > ~1gb

and some of the games need to be downloaded in 3 parts of similar size, plus the downloads "fail" frequently and need to be restarted, so its a lot of time with no guarantee of success

>>1006671

seems like a useful resource, thank you

>>1006720

Anon, this is an "aftermarket appstore". Just a good place to find PPC software! Also, everything about the switch to Intel was ashit. That's when apple went from the king of (home) computing to just another x86 player. Their OS was still decent till El Capitan imho --remember, you've never _had_ to use the app store.

>>1006799

Anon, maybe look for torrents and torrent it on a different pc? At the very least, download it on another computer with some kind of sequential dl manager.

>>1006801

No problem anon. Wish I had more for you. Some day when I'm a little more settled and not on my school's shitty network, it'd be cool to have an ftp server for PPC software, maybe even develop a binary repository. Nevertheless, the software is out there somewhere. It'll be a lot quicker to find if you search on a quicker machine, tho!

>>1006799

I have no idea what that had to do with what I said unless the games you want are shovelware shit only available on appstore.

>>1006915

no i mean like the old games, like the ones found on macintosh garden, i dont want any of those mind-numbing repetitive shit (((games))) they offer

my biggest trouble is 1. trying to download games whose file sizes are bigger than 500mb and emulating pre-PPC mac games

>>1006805

I just cracked open my powerbook and looked over the software. Currently building irssi, and it's probably gonna take all night. Anyways, PPC Media Center is the only way I'm able to watch Youtube (and download!) on the thing. It works very well for SD video, and it may even play HD well on the G5 you've got. VLC works alright for media, but at least the G4 does not do h.264 at all (and the G5 still doesn't have hardware h.264 acceleration). It'd be neat to get mpv working on it, but I haven't looked into it yet.

>>1006680

>The OS is hardware agnostic

In another thread (I think the stickied question one) someone was asserting that "new OSes are made with SSDs in mind".

>>1007080

Would need sauce on that. Only thing I can think of is block sizes.

>>1007201

Alignment and TRIM.

>>1006805

would it be easier to just reinstall a new copy of OS X 10.4 to emulate older games? at the moment its saying that sheepshaver and basilisk are no longer supported and I don't have the knowledge base to be going into partitions and all the other shit required for emulation

In college now, a couple days left until I head back home to the bay area. Damn, if I could have been born a few years earlier I wouldn't have missed out on all the cool stuff that went on, now its just apple and google.

This year I had a rough time coping when an electronics warehouse closed down. I used to driver there often after school when I was still in high school and pick up stuff to mess with. Now thaf I have money to get all those thinkpads and IBM PCs they had, they're gone. I curse my luck every time I think about this. Hoping to visit some recycling centers in the area, and I really hope I'll be able to find some neat stuff and that they don't stop me from taking any junk. It hurts to see them scrap old stuff when I'd gladly pay for it. If only I had infinite time I'd save all the old hardware and let them live a cage-free retirement.

Anyway, I'm thinking of putting together a DOS PC. Everyone talks about gaming and stuff, and I guess I'd play some games on it if I put one together, but I'm interested in getting one online and using it for telnet and IRC. Even an early 80s processor can handle that. It would be really cool.

>>1007208

Since Vista Windows used a megabyte alignment rather than the legacy cylinder alignment, and NT5 Windows (2k/XP/2k3) will happily work with megabyte-aligned partitions if installed to a disk which was prepartitioned that way (contrarily to Windows 9x which will crap itself with partitions which are not cylinder-aligned). Anyway, partitioning is not a hardware thing, but a software thing which sits between the raw disk device and the volumes (which are instances of a file system which exists within the bounds of a given partition/logical disk).

>>1007391

Relatively decent PCI video cards are quite expensive by now, let alone ISA ones.

>>1007297

Hey anon, sorry I mispoke earlier. Classic Mode is (was) supported on 10.4. If you're looking to play old mac system 9 games, that'd be your best bet.

I picked up four huge projection tvs the other day I am looking forward to playing with.

>>1007307

> If only I had infinite time I'd save all the old hardware and let them live a cage-free retirement.

I want to laugh, but where is the lie?

>>1007425

any pointers to where I can find the ISO image download?

I found this

https://archive.org/download/Apple_MacOS_X_Tiger_Install_DVD

But im not sure if this would work or if it would just fuck up my computer

>>1007536

Pretty sure most stuff on Archive is good. I've installed stuff from WinWorld without issues on the other side of the fence, and WinWorld is a less reputable site. I've yet to hear of dodgy Mac OS images fucking people's computers up.

>>1007548

alright I'll give it a go

>>1007518

>projection TV

Why?

I've got this LinkIt Smart 7688 Internet Of Things device which I'm keen to connect to my TRS-80 Model 100. I already have it communicating over the serial port. The 7688 is a small Linux machine that runs DD-WRT and while it only has like 8Mb of free space on the flash drive, you can rehome root to the Micro SD port for as much storage as you like. It has Wifi and will take an external antenna with a teeny tiny antenna connector. The whole thing's about two thirds the size of a stick of gum. It's even powerful enough to run Emacs at a comfortable pace and does extremely well with lighter weight software.

I want to put it inside my Model T but connect it to the serial port, so I can access the device from the comms package built into its ROM, but the sticking point is battery consumption. It will rapidly deplete the batteries of the T if left on all the time, and since it takes a little while to boot the T and get the terminal ready I would like it to start only when the T is turned on. This will be easy enough, but I also want the 7688 to initiate an orderly shutdown automatically when the T is turned off. Any ideas on how to do this? Would it be easier for the 7688 to sense when it's probed by the serial port and simply turn on then, and off when there's no serial activity for some time? Bear in mind while I'm willing to modify the Model T I don't want to butcher it, any mod must be small and durable. I don't want to mod the case at all, the 7688 will fit in the expansion slot on the bottom easily as is or it could be secreted into the case leaving the slot free.

So that's my project. Also I got a very fancy Laserdisc player working again recently so that's nice.

>>1007553

>Why?

Why not?

>>1007536

No, the mac cannot boot from an iso. You'll either need to find a dmg or try to convert the iso (I've never had good luck with that)

>>1007586

Just burn the iso to a dvd and boot off that.

>>1007596

You fucking idiot. It doesn't have a bios to boot like that. You need the proper type of image. PPC =/= IBM-like PCs.

>>1007681

An ISO a binary disc image. There's nothing special about Apple's DVD readers or discs that dd-ing on any combination of functioning hardware would yield an incomplete image or disc. DMG is basically an Apple container for the data an ISO (or other image files) would contain, adding facilities like compression and in-OS behavioral metadata. None of this container's added features make it onto a burnt disc.

>>1007391

Luckily I have a 3.5" floppy drive at home, somewhere. I made sure to pack my stuff away labeled so my parents wouldn't throw it away while I'm gone. I'm not sure it works, though. I think it does. I have some old video cards as well, but I think those are PCI and would probably be best on newer machines.

I got a reply from one of the recycling centers I emailed, and they say people are not allowed to pick up junk. stupid state regulations, they're destroying stuff people would pay for.

That's pretty impressive for a 386 by the way.

>>1007532

you'd do it too, wouldn't you?

I have a Mac Pro (don't remember if it's 2,1 or 1,2?) with like 32gb of DDR2 ram and used to have like 4TB before I ended up using the HDD for something else.

It's neat, but since it can't really install Linux and only an older version of OS X that can't run anything it's kinda useless. It also lags like a bitch, can't tell if it's the GPU being a shithead or the CPU also being a shithead.

If I can't get it running Linux and being sort of useful again I'm gonna either switch out the internals completely to build a Hackintosh or just sell everything as parts.

That's my blogpost of the day enjoy ciao

>>1007761

>they say people are not allowed to pick up junk

I assume that was either a state-owned center, or a corporate center.

Most private recycling centers will let you pick shit up if you get cozy enough with the owner or slip some bribes, especially if they're normally closed to the public. The easiest to get into are generally smaller ones owned by computer shops. You could even just go to a regular computer shop and try to get into their dump pile. There are two I go to semi-regularly. One will let me pick up whatever I want there, and the other has little restrictions, letting me pick up whatever hasn't been earmarked for someone else. The trick to getting to these places is with the leather of your shoes. Go to prospective sources and talk with the people there one-on-one. Sooner or later you will be able to come to a deal where you can look through their recycled goods. It's also best to be upfront about your desire to collect old shit, because it'll send the message that you're not trying to do some shady shit. I remember on one occasion I walked into a cheap cellphone shop for the first time, had a thirty-second conversation with the clerk, and was immediately granted access to their trash pile which yeilded a couple of carphones. If I wanted to, I could have easily walked away with all the still working smartphones in there, but didn't because another place I go to already offers unlimited free phones.

Depending on the laws of the state you live in, even a state-owned center could still be potentially useful. Over where I live, I can legally pick up anything that was dumped by the state itself, with the only restriction being against privately dumped stuff. Even then they'll look the other way if it's something insignificant.

>>1007536

Heh, I remember the special GNAA release of OSX Tiger.

>>1007775

I generally try to talk to people when I go to these places. Back in high school I was close with kids on the robotics team, so when they had ewaste drives I'd come by and really clean up. Boomboxes, pentium machines, loads of monitors and keyboards, hard drives, boxes upon boxes of IDE cables and the like. Actually thats where I got the 3.5" floppy drive thats in my closet. I technically wasn't allowed to do that either, but they were going to get rid of dozens of large boxes of stuff, all for a measly 200 bucks. Working microwaves, office printers, VCRs. If they had sold even a 10th of the stuff they would have made more than 200.I'm just glad I saved some of it.

How do you find privately owned centers? I thought they were all state regulated or something like that. Either way I'll definitely try asking around in person when I get back home.

>>1007802

All recycling centers are governed by regulations, but how many of the rules they actually follow varies.

Some computer shops will have small recycling centers built in. There's one I go to owned by a local place, and I know of a Small Dog that does this, but you need good connections to get in that one.

You don't need to find one with a recycling center though. Pretty much every computer shop, especially those that do repairs or used sales, will have a dump pile that will occasionally be shipped out to a recycling center. If you're having trouble getting into any proper recycling centers, then you can just go straight to the shops that throw the stuff away in the first place. The shops won't have as much, but they'll usually be poorly educated on the laws governing that stuff, plus they'll generally be easier to weasel into.

Individually owned places are by far the easiest and safest to get into, because you can almost always talk your way in and nobody watches them. With corporate or state shops/centers, you'll often have to get good connections and/or bribe the right people, and even then you might run the risk of being found out.

>>1007761

>you'd do it too, wouldn't you?

if only I could, I would save all the things :(

>>1007681

>It doesn't have a bios to boot like that. You need the proper type of image. PPC =/= IBM-like PCs.

Wrong.

Burn that .iso to a DVD.

If its an new world mac reboot it and hold down "C". It will boot.

While it is booting I suggest you read up on the ISO9660, ISO/IEC 13346, and ECMA-167 specifications.

>bios

After you read up on what a .iso is I suggest you read up on what OpenFirmware is.

>>You fucking idiot.

The only idiot here is you.

>>1007852

Classy. Or, as they would say about 20 years ago, fexxay.

>>1007852

Nice. I've got a sony clie running palm software that I use regularly, and also a casio digital diary that I don't use so much anymore. The clie syncs with my XP laptop and also works with USB pass through to a VM. Palm Desktop is my favorite calendar software.

>>1007827

I'll try this out, thanks. I don't suppose just straight up dumpster-diving is an option?

>>1007852

Clusters server when?

>>1008010

It is, but you should be careful. The laws on dumpster diving differ between states, so there's a good chance you'll want to be sneaky about it.

>>1005471 (OP)

BlackBerry playbook checking in. Still works with modern web, but some things are a bitch. For instance, it tries to download the 8ch CAPTCHA page PHP file instead of redirecting new to it.

>>1005774

Damn, fuck those neighbors.

>>1008444

>Damn, fuck those neighbors.

The neighbors weren't the sinners, it was my own damned family. The house I got the Amiga from was a stranger's house. It kills me that I had rescued it, only for it to have been junked behind my back. Same thing happened to my Thinkpad. I restored it from a pile of broken mess, and some asshole fucking stepped on it when I was running scandisk with the lid closed.

>>1007852

Do you have the rumored pocket linux N950?

>>1005633

>There is no good use for old desktops that can't be done better and more efficiently with a cheap SBC.

Enjoy your 6MB/s raspi network->usb transfer speed while I'm getting 40MB/s with a server board I found on the side of the road from the 2000s. Good luck doing any kind of network backup, it's the difference between overnight and almost a week.

>>1005777

Disown your family, they are horrid people and do you no good.

>>1009440

Oh, I have. Through my brother and my mother, I made it clear that I would never forgive this, and now I collect guns, particularly the scary black kind with those high-capacity assault clippazines they kvetch about on CNNPC.

Buuut being a law-abiding gun owner and a staunch proponent of the 2A, I can't do or say anything to make people less angry than me look bad.

A friend of mine had me hold onto his A500 and his Colecovision, the former in the box, and I want to see if I can trade him something for them. I have an assload of Transformers and game systems that I could use to sweeten the deal.

>>1009435

Most SBCs don't have the RPi problem, and instead have dedicated Ethernet port. Quite a few of them even have GigE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_single-board_computers

>>1009444

Yeah, that's not where the bottleneck is, notice I said network->usb. The only SBC that could be possibly useful is one with 4+ sata ports on a decent controller. Good fucking luck.

>>1009470

Most SBCs don't route the Ethernet through USB, and instead have a dedicated controller.

>>1009519

I never thought I'd see a PCIe card with jumpers on it.

>>1010608

The thing is, any system in which that's the only feasible option is likely to be either ancient or extremely low-end. I suppose some of those ITX Intel Atom boards could work out though.

>>1011892

According to:

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/03/ibm-jx-pcjr-20.html

The PC Jr. 4863 monitor should be compatible. The monitor connector has sound pins, though I'm sure with the pinouts, a splitter could be devised to separate the audio and video to different plugs.

>>1005567

Still have mine, thinking of buying another honestly. Last pre-PSP AMD CPU.

>>1007307

> I'm interested in getting one online and using it for telnet and IRC

Wouldn't that be insecure as fuck?

>>1006060

We listing our machines now?

Dhell Precisions:

>Precision M40 (needs a new lid, works fine however, bought this one in Germany)

>Precision M50 (top end model from 2003 with Quadro4 700 GoGL and Pentium 4 2.0, chassis fucked, needs a HDD and backlight failing)

>Precision M6400 (on sale because it's disgusting as fuck and a low end model)

>Precision M6500 (fucking love this thing!)

ThinkPads:

>T22 13.3 (my first ThinkPad, bought it with a long gone 310ED at a thrift store in 2015, suffers from BoD and failing backlight)

>T22 14.1 (second T22 I bought for parts, ended up restoring it, BoD issue but in good condition otherwise)

>T23 14.1 (awesome condition for it's age, modded with a WLAN antenna on back)

>P50 (daily driver in a dock on my nightstand, got a new chassis and motherboard under warranty because of a charging issue)

Toughbooks:

>CF-19 Mk7 (bought with a cracked lid, lid has been replaced and now it's my car diagnostics machine)

>CF-M34 Mk7 ("accidentally" won a bid on eBay USA for this one, even had a rebuilt battery from BatteryRefill, with a SSD it's remarkably fast for a nearly 15 year old Pentium M device!)

>FZ-G1 Mk4 (traded my 31 Mk3 for this one, love the IPS screen, dislike the fact that it doesn't have a keyboard)

All my devices have SSDs, that's what makes even a Pentium III equipped T23 fast in daily tasks.

Does Core 2 count as "old hardware" and its discussion belong here?

>>1010608

Unusable on old systems due to huge (for their CPUs) driver overhead.

>>1014776

Yes? Core2 is about 10 years old now (3600days).

>>1015004

Did you really mean to answer that post and not th one prior?

Anyway, progress has not been what it had been. A 10 year old 3+GHz quad-core processor can still run most latest games with enough RAM and a somewhat recent graphics card. Now imagine trying to use a 10 year old computer in 2008/2009 for anything remotely (then)recent - it was utterly unusable.

I'd recommend to keep a Core 2 system around, especially if it's a relatively decent setup - it's probably still quite powerful for most tasks, and is not the botnet (ME/AMT/UEFI etc.) ridden garbage like the stuff of recent years have been (in exchange for dissapointingly meager performance gains).

>>1015014

Be careful about what mobo you use though, newer ones with Intel chipsets are likely to have the ME.

>>1015004

>3600days

That's only as much as there are seconds wihin an hour. An hour is not much, is it. Do you know how much is much? For instance, a ~3GHz CPU has about as many clock ticks wihin one(!) second as there are seconds in a century(!). Think about for a second (and then think about how during that one second you've been thinking about it, a ~3GHz CPU had about as many ticks as seconds have passed since 1919).

>>1015017

That's exactly one of the Core 2 platform's main strenghts. While ME was pushed on mobile platforms since about halfway that era (for instance, Thinkpad T60 had no ME, while T61 and later had it), almost all desktop LGA775 boards are ME-free.

>>1005548

It isn't, but it can dissolve gunk and other mystery materials while cleaning with it to make it more conductive. High volatility solvents (IPA, EtOH) are your best bet. The closer to 100% conc. the better, otherwise you'll have issues like >>1006484 mentioned

t. chemist

I use an old Cyrix MediaGX for Pixel art and late DOS/early Win9x gaming. It's a thinclient I pulled out of the trash. Had a few blown capacitors. Had it up and running quickly no sweat and gave it an IDE-DOM. No fans, completely silent. Very low power consumption. (~9W) It has room for one expansion card and I thought about adding some YMF-based sound card or an early 3D capable Matrox but I use the inbuilt SB16 emulation and graphics the Cyrix and its companion chip has instead. The SB16 emulation while working perfectly is not great quality wise but it feels right using it, somehow. The graphics are fine. It runs on a shitty 800x600 screen, so no sweat anyways.

There's no program with which you can bash out pixel art as effectively as with Deluxe Paint and it's keyboard shortcuts. (Amiga or PC Version) Yes, I tried the new ones. Most are garbage, especially the ones "geared" at pixel art. Asesprite gets honorable mention for redrawing the entire screen every frame (even if there are no changes) and bringing my low-end, modern integrated graphics possessing 1,4 Ghz AMD to it's knees for a job a computer with 8 Mhz and an ISA EGA card could do fluidly. The absolute state of current programming. The only good "modern" one is GrafX2 which actually runs fine in Win98 on that Cyrix, but it is not as efficient as DPaint for me. (although undo and layers are nice)

I like the Cyrix MediaGX because it's an early x86 SoC. Way too slow when it came out but perfect for that low end stuff, also only uses little power which a lot of old computers don't.

I also have a whole splattering of Amigas, from an A2000 with 060 Accelerator and graphics card (that thing runs classic 68k MacOS faster than any real 68k Mac, even played stuff like that ST:TNG adventure game and Full Throttle on it, yeah I just didn't want to let go of the Amiga - it runs MacOS side-by-side with AmigaDOS, sort of like a VM - yes you can switch back and forth) to some A1200s and A500s with all kinds of accelerator and odd expansions cards. The A2000 also has some australian video card that goes into the expansion slot and com es with it's own program. It lets you look at and draw 24-bit color depth pictures. It does so by overlaying it's picture cleverly onto the Amiga graphics signal. Weird tech.

Got all that stuff back in the 90s when all the Amiga stores closed down and the businesses basically threw it out. Wasn't a collector back then, just a poor kid that suddenly could afford all the things he dreamed of before. One of the weirdest cards I have is a small 286 add on PCB you clip on the CPU socket in an Amiga 500, comes with some FPGA and real 286 CPU. Your Amiga can run a 286 in emulation then, even faster than the real 286s of that time. There were a few cards like this.

I feel bad for wasting electricity when I run these old machines, some of these machines burn 100W just sitting there and doing nothing, so I'm always happy to find something low powered. I want to set up a pixel art Amiga (because software for Pixel Art was the best on them) but not sure what I'll go with. The A1200 has the advantage of supporting 256 colors in it's chipset natively, although I like the effective 32 color limitation the old-chipset amigas have. Maybe I'll kit it out with an 68030/50 Mhz accelerator or something. I should even have a soundcard for it which has acceleration built in to play mp3s. Would be cool while drawing.

In modern old tech, I got some old ARM developer board I actually intend to use as a daily, console-only Linux driver. I'm all giddy already about it. Somebody doing that on some old machine? Also somebody else finds that such restricted environments are actually very good for creativity and concentration? I get more pixel drawing done on that garbage Cyrix than I ever did on any modern computer, just because I couldn't switch over to the browser while doing it.

>>1017291

>The SB16 emulation while working perfectly is not great quality wise but it feels right using it, somehow

Well, it is period appropriate. In the realm of "WinDOS", it was a minority of users that had original, reference and/or fully compliant hardware. Most ended up with inaccurate clones or bootlegs, and even some "reference" hardware wasn't up to spec. Heck, the only time I got to hear anything beyond a PC speaker was on my father's prebuilt, at least until he handed it down to me because of issues upgrading to Windows 98 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compaq_Presario_2200#Technical_issues). Loved that thing. Shame it got stolen.

>Also somebody else finds that such restricted environments are actually very good for creativity and concentration?

While I don't do anything useful on older PCs, I have been holding off installing a display server on my GNU&Linux because I find working with the framebuffer terminal more zen and productive than my desktop setup. I also remember reading that the Game of Thrones writer (I assume the book series rather than the show?) uses a DOS word processor for his work. I'm sure there's at the very least some positive psychological effect when it comes to not overloading your brain with stimuli.

>>1017252

I know right, fellow zoomer. I can access reddit, instagram and facebook with just my iPhone. Watch my twitch, I'll show how easy it is. PCs are for old fags and I don't buy the bs that they are using them for coding. No one codes anymore. It's all been done lol. Like, why would I make a website when my audience isn't on the web, they're on facebook. Like, am I seriously going to handcraft HTML when instagram is already done for me. PCs are stupid and laptops are too heavy for me. literally no one at my hacker space uses one.

>>1017696

idiotic boomer detected

>>1005495

>>1005494

>>1005487

You can wash circuit boards with soap and water, as long as they are powered down and you make sure they are completely dry before powering up. I recommend 409 cleaner / soft brush for the cig smoke deposits, then rinse with water, drip / shake dry, then immerse in 100% isopropyl (if you can find it, if not, 901% will do). The isopropyl will absorb remaining water, then allow to dry for a few days or if impatient use hair dryer.

>>1017729

I would avoid any kind of physical brush. You're just begging to snap off some tiny little surface mount component that way. Better to stick with soap and water alone.

All that said, washing the circuit board is a horrible idea. When it's first soldered the flux used remains behind and coats the solder joints, making a gross shiny protective layer that guards against oxidation and wear. Detergent soaps can dissolve that all away. Just leave it alone, unless something is shorted out by debris it'll be fine and last longer.

I've put old boards in the dishwasher, no kidding. Nothing happens as long as they are dry when you turn them back on. Think about it - when they're off they're just a collection of materials that all have in common that don't even really react that well with water, nothing that would break them. Also they look like straight-out-of-manufacturing new when they come out of the washer. It's impossible to get them that clean by hand, especially bigger ones.

You just have to be careful that there are no corners where water can be trapped. It is a "from PCB to pCB" decision really. The heat of the water doesn't bother them either. They went through much worse in manufacturing and the materials are rated for high temperatures. For a lot of parts, water literally can't get that hot.

40C is also more than enough, which every dishwasher has as a setting.

I did it in a dishwasher (normal, commercial dishwasher) that was at the place I worked on and not used for anything coming in touch with people. Be very aware that dishwashers have a reservoir where they collect water in between washes. Wanna do a dry run afterwards, you don't want to wash your dishes with the same water that came in contact with that stuff. Do at your own risk, obviously.

If you're too skittish or don't have a dishwasher, you could probably just put them under your shower too.

>>1017696

Trolling obviously but the truth is I've made an android system with one of those meme < 100$ development SBCs and use it for all my multimedia consumption exclusively. PCs are shit at that, no matter the OS but Linux especially because in pure Linux everything with graphics is kinda broken to some degree. It's easier to do it that way than to try to beat Linux into doing stuff as decoding videos well. It's a sad state of affairs.

>>1017846

Video codecs are stifled thanks to patent law that covers software implementations.

>>1017861

Not only that but also the software written is simply better/there is more of it. I tried to install gentoo (no joke, actual gentoo) on the same SBC and it was a pure mess, even with the prorpietary driver blobs. The manufacturer even offered forks of common linux stuff to make it work better with the graphics drivers. It did not help much. It was (and most of all felt) slow, memory ran out in next to no time, nothing about it was enjoyable. It make the ARM computer feel pretty weak and shitty and browsing was out of the question.

Now I have the same system running android nougat and browsing works faster and smoother than on my all open-source PC workstation (which has better hardware specs). I even use it's splitscreen functionality and have clover running on the other side of the screen. It's smooth and the screen is consuming far more power than the computer underneath. I have a normal usb mouse and a keyboard connected and it makes it feel like a normal pc, for most purposes (even though the tablet/phone crap still shines through here and there)

Is the ARM hardware better? Hell no. The software is better optimized though and there are more developers. This ties in with the retro topic because I've seen OSes and whole home computer systems die that way. A lot of (now defunct) companies had to learn that the best hardware is not doing you any good if nobody writes software for it. Seen it way too often. I see the same happening to the PC desktop platform right now, although slower as the general IT world has gotten a lot bigger. Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely not what I want computing to be, but I'm afraid it's happening nonethless.

>>1017861

Not only that but also the software written is simply better/there is more of it. I tried to install gentoo (no joke, actual gentoo) on the same SBC and it was a pure mess, even with the prorpietary driver blobs. The manufacturer even offered forks of common linux stuff to make it work better with the graphics drivers. It did not help much. It was (and most of all felt) slow, memory ran out in next to no time, nothing about it was enjoyable. It make the ARM computer feel pretty weak and shitty and browsing was out of the question.

Now I have the same system running android nougat and browsing works faster and smoother than on my all open-source PC workstation (which has better hardware specs). I even use it's splitscreen functionality and have clover running on the other side of the screen. It's smooth and the screen is consuming far more power than the computer underneath. I have a normal usb mouse and a keyboard connected and it makes it feel like a normal pc, for most purposes (even though the tablet/phone crap still shines through here and there)

Is the ARM hardware better? Hell no. The software is better optimized though and there are more developers. This ties in with the retro topic because I've seen OSes and whole home computer systems die that way. A lot of (now defunct) companies had to learn that the best hardware is not doing you any good if nobody writes software for it. (same goes for OSes btw.) It also works the other way around, if you have a shitty platform and lots of developers, it will bloom. (See how long the C64 lived in europe, also look at the current Pi compared to other ARM SBCs - the hardware is crap but it doesn't matter as it has a huge community constantly optimizing) Seen it way too often. I see the same happening to the PC desktop platform right now, although slower as the general IT world has gotten a lot bigger. Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely not what I want computing to be, but I'm afraid it's happening nonethless.

>>1017846

Yes but how does that <$100 SBC handle high resolution high bitrate chinese cartoons?

>>1017883

No idea, but seeing that most modern ARM SoCs do 4k@60Hz in-hardware video decoding, probably better than any PC running some Linux distro.

>>1017884

>most modern ARM SoCs do 4k@60Hz in-hardware video decoding

But have you even tested those claims yourself or do you just watch YIFY rips and Netflix? You have to understand, I'm interested in this idea but also extremely skeptical based on my own experience playing demanding video on even just regular laptops.

>>1017891

Farthest I've gone is downloaded youtube 4k videos which ran fine and decoded in hardware on my 4k PC screen and looked great. My SoC is limited to 30 fps with 4k but I don't really care because the screen it's normally connected to is 1080p and small so you still get a nice PPI ratio. Also some screen elements in some apps really go weird and blurry at 4k, 1080p is really still pretty much the reference resolution.

The biggest bitch is getting a SoC where the manufacturer keeps pushing Android updates reliably, as most companies abandon their SBCs straight after pushing them out of the door. Get something with a big community, maybe even a Pi. Android is botnet anyways. Just embrace the botnet for multimedia and internet, and go all rms on your small console-only linux box. Don't attempt to buid a system that does both. This strategy saved me A LOT of headaches.

>>1017921

Maybe it's my age or I finally learned to love big botnet but I just got tired of all that and wanted to live in the present. Sometimes it's important to let go of past things.

Also the Termux API has nice scripting possibilities so you could still take advantage of that better functioning hardware by pushing downloaded files to that android box and starting playback automatically. (all possible with Termux and scripting) For my SBC for example I use the Text-to-speech engine to give me some voice notifications from my linux boxes, but Termux can even send you normal notifications, and even do fancier stuff like scriptable pop-up selection boxes and such. All via SSH/scripting/Termux-API. Under all that Java veneer and blobbing, Android's still Linux. Also you're not forced to let that android box on the net at all, even your local net. Many have an USB-OTG Port which basically means you can forward some of your machine's ports to the android system and vice versa via USB which is pretty speedy for pushing files, no need for the ethernet or wlan even. It's like a serial connection on steroids which USB pretty much is. I was and am very skeptical too but these android devices actually can get kinda fun if you look past that GUI and google bullshit and start seeing them as reasonably powerful linux computers. Just don't put sensible stuff on them. Also don't install the appstore or the google backend. Means lots of apps won't run, but many of these are apps that you don't wanna run anyways. I use F-Droid as exclusive source and never had an google account in my life.

I also have another, weak arm machine on my local network (running gentoo) which serves as telnet/ftp servers for my old computers. (As no matter what platform, Telnet/FTP is something all of these old machines can usually do at least) So I can take my old Mac Performa 475 for example and remote connect into it and from there bounce into the web and make ssh connections and share files with other systems. It's fun. Good use for those ARM things.

>>1017958

That pic makes me think how we got used to have these huge fucking screens into our faces all the time. Sometimes several of them. (and let's just forget about the cancer that is 16:9) Why is 14" not enough anymore. A nice 14" eInk 4:3 screen for text work only. I'd pay a premium price for it. (Don't link that chinese eInk screen now, I did some research and it's utter garbage)

>>1017958

>>2019: Virgin Tranny LARPer gets PTSD from >>Microaggressions seen on a websight

>>1983: Virgin Computer Nerd gets >>macroaggressioned in the face by 5 bigger kids >>during lunchtime.

prob the same person in both cases, too

>>1018059

nah, the '83 kid probably has a well-paying job, wife, and kids. The 2019 kid has nothing but a noose in his future.

I wanted to transfer vinyl to MP3 only to realize none of my modern computers had line-level audio inputs. Had to stick audacity on an old XP machine to get the job done. Worked really well though, just had to get an adapter to take the RCA jacks to 3.5mm. USB turntables are for dumbshits who like wasting money when a $8 adapter and a stereo/turntable set literally out of the garbage get the job done with higher fidelity.

>>1007307

My universities surplus still has early-2000s comps at it on occasion. At one point they renovated the basement of a building that had gone unused for some time. Out came a 1972 or so MATS computer system. This fucker was massive, used for testing mechanical strain I believe. I talked to the guy in charge of the work site, and for a case of beer it was mine. I actually got the keys to it. The keyboard had a locking lid over it. Went to pick it up a few days later when I had wrangled a pickup... wasn't there. I inquired. Guy further up the chain said it was a safety hazard for it to sit in the work site. They led me to the scrap dumpster it was sitting in, a large air compressor dropped on top of it. The two built in monitors were smashed, the paper from the built in dot-matrix printer unspooled like its guts. When I get back home on break I'll post a picture of the keys if you guys like. It's all I have left. Leaves a knot in my stomach to think of it. Very, very good chance it was the last of its kind.

>>1005774

A man after my own heart. I'm saving up two grand or so to convert an RV into junk storage (fuck property taxes).

>>1005788

Add one to the hive mind, also those digits are very related to the question being discussed.

>>1007518

Girlfriend's parents are trashing theirs soon, and I don't have the room for it. Convergence IC is out which I know I could fix, but they've already replaced it was a flat screen they got on black Friday.

>>1008391

For a few weeks during the uni basement cleanout mentioned above I would hit the dumpster they put smaller items in. It was garbage, not scrap as much of the contents was paper, furniture, and wood products with electronics and metal materials mixed in. Pulled a few hundred pounds of scientific instruments out, much of it vacuum tube gear at that. I tried to keep my presence non-obvious, but they noticed. First sign: a really juicy box of scrap was left just on the edge of the dumpster. Obvious fucking bait, didn't take it. After that they started perching bits of scrap pipe precariously on the edge where I'd climb in to see if I had been in. Took them down, put them back. Finally, since it was obvious they knew I was there and didn't want me, I took one evening and organized the dumpster. Dumbshits had no idea how to properly pack it, so I went through this 30yd rollout and fucking repacked the whole thing (and carried off another car load of choice bits). You would think they would be grateful for the fact I just cleared a third of the space they had been using up as it would save them money by not having multiple dumpster pickups, but instead they just started fucking smashing everything before throwing it in.

In my country (eurocuck) they completley forbade people taking stuff from the trash as sandniggers would pick a bunch of stuff to sell as scrap and then drop the parts they don't need randomly into the enviroment. Was completly fine before that. Sandniggers ruin everything.

Old, non-x86 personal computers are of special interest to me. Ive wanted to get one of the PPC Thinkpads or a late 90s UNIX workstation, but those are expensive and I dont have any money.

>>1019284

Would highly recommend a PowerBook G4.

>PPC processor

>UNIX-like OS (comes with bash, zsh, sh, and a few others)

>Great build quality

>Real excellent screen

>Firewire, USB, DVD, DVI (w/ analog stabilizers)

>>1005471 (OP)

Anyone member when macs were more than an iPhone meme? And we had REAL iPods??? I miss those days.

>>1006860

holy fuck I have that 6-pack

>>1019632

Computers with vacuum tubes are my fetish.

I've got a few 8088/286/386s that I cleaned up from battery damage and which work fine now, just can't find nice looking cases for them. Anyone know any good source/manufacturer of cases that do the classical beige, bonus points if it's the desktop (as opposed to tower) form factor? Slight modifications so I can fit the board I could do. It just feels wrong to stick them into some gay atx tower with window and stuff.

>>1019616

That computer's design looks like a children's toy, like something V-Tech would make. Was it at all popular at the time?

>>1011892

Can't you use composite?

>>1017695

can you make anything that isn't totally obsolete by todays standards or can you make it work?

>1020366

A lot of these old systems (VIC20, C64 etc.) have been used in roles like the Raspberry Pi etc. are used today for. They have a Userport that's basically usable as GPIO (just as any PC parallel port is really, people act like the Pi came up with GPIO or it's some new and exciting concept to control external electronics with computers or something) They have been in control of a lot of industrial machines and even signage at train stations and such. I'd not be surprised if you could still find some C64 somewhere (in some 3rd world country perhaps) running things. I still remember a news blurb about a C64 controlling some stuff like lighting in some cities' popular meeting spot about 5-6 years ago. Contrary to the Pis and other ARM SBCs, they are also a lot more simple, easy to modify and robust. You could burn an EPROM with the program you'd want to run on them. Contrary to shitty SDCards, an EPROM will last 20+ years, barring some very bad luck pretty much guaranteed. You could still use them for that today, and again, it'd probably be actually more robust in that role to use comparted to a Pi. If you don't need an idiot-proof, IoT, blockchain, cloudbased, blah-blah, faggot-shit solution, that is.

>>1020440

I've seen photos of C64 in use in POS/cash register systems at mom and pop type places within the last 5-6 years.

>>1020575

NASA has a bunch of documents on the 486 because thats what the hubble runs. Just goes to show how long lasting this stuff is

>>1020697

>SNES painted to look like a Genesis

GENESNES is gay but otherwise I like the color scheme Did you do it yourself?

>>1019914

The keyboard may look childish, but is in fact a very esteemed and honoured mechanical one. Sturdy and long lasting. Some have lasted over 50 years.

>>1019557

Looks somewhat less ridiculous to maintain than a clamshell. Likely still a pain, though.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iBook+G4+12-Inch+1.33+GHz+Hard+Drive+Replacement/703

vs

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iBook+G3+Clamshell+Hard+Drive+Replacement/116

>>1020696

Mouse emulation in Linux is intolerable cancer. That is why.

>>1020767

iBook hard drive replacement is a pain in the ass. Replaced one on my iBook G3 900 MHz Dual USB a few weeks ago, and it took nearly an hour.

>>1020769

Based on the image, I imagine he was asking why you're running 10.5 (Leopard) instead of 10.4 (Tiger).

>>1020772

Better software compatibility

>>1020885

Give me a good reason to switch, and I'll do it.

>>1020923

he gave you one: ten four fox only runs under ten point four.

>>1020933

The caps can be replaced though, right? I think I saw a vid where someone replaced the caps on a board. Might be infeasible if they were buried.

>>1020767

I just replaced the HDD in a Powerbook G4 with an SSD, it's a tiresome process but still better than those glued together pieces of shit they sell today.

>>1020767

Good lord. I thought hard drive replacement on MacMinis was ridiculous.

>>1020951

What was trashed was the stuff in >>1005777

>>1020944

>They started using something in them that cause them all fail. (((Planned obsolescence))) i bet.

Capacitor plague, likely due to industrial espionage. China imitating Israel.

>>1021097

The powerbooks are a breeze, relative to the ibooks. I've replaced hard drives on iBooks on numerous occasions, and honestly wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

The advantage of the AGA computers is that they run a few pixel art programs that can take advantage of the 256 colors offered, but yeah, they were cheaply put together units and they could not hold up with SVGA on the PC side. Ignoring the whole cap thing, the A1200 and A4000 both suffer from power supply problems on their +5V rail pretty much by design, (the A3000 does too, but it's not an AGA) and the A1200 is a super moody computer because Commodore equipped them with a mix of chipset revisions that all had their particularities working with each other and had some bugs. People find complicated to locate bugs and problematic interactions to this day. The OCS/ECS systems on the other side were rock solid. I especially love the A2000. Such an expandable and nicely built machine, only system where Commodore also didn't fuck up the power layout.

It's a pity the graphics cards in Amigas always have been a hack. Both on the hardware and software side. Besides the early Retina, (which was slow as fuck, some NCR chip) all graphics cards on the Amiga have a PC chip with a PCI/ISA bus implemented in GALs/PALs on the card to communicate with the Zorro Bus which never saw native graphics chip implementations as the "professional" Amigas had no market share for companies being interested in doing chips for Zorro. It was slow, it was prone to error and on the software side, P96 and Cybergraphix (or whatever it was called, I barely remember) also had their particularities. No program written for the chipsets (both AGA and OCS/ECS) could properly support the additional colors these cards had to offer. It's a huge pity.

I have some video card here for the big box Amigas (not graphics card, video card) that has an in-hardware MPEG decoder. Guranteed botnet free, I guess. It's purpose is to be connected to a TV via SVIDEO to watch movies from harddrive. That thing barely sold. I wouldn't be suriprised if there were only a few dozen working ones left. Such cards also existed for PCs but were much more plentiful there.

Some day I'm gonna reactivate my A2000, I have both a Blizzard 2060 (with late revision 060) and that Commodore 030 acceleration card for it.

AmigaDOS/Workbench had some cool ideas, like that filehandler where you could install libraries for specific formats and programs didn't need to be aware of those file formats, as that handler would take care of translating it into something the program could understand transparently. With that you could for example add .jpeg support to programs that don't support .jpeg by themselves.

It's also POSIX compliant so it's not too hard to compile a few command line programs for it. (lua, bc, simple tools like that) Not really all that useful as even a 68060@50 Mhz is about as fast as a very slow Pentium.

(and I made a new post with this content, god I'm old and gay)

>>1022446

btw. is the Amiga community still overrun by crazies, poseurs and hipsters? It got so insufferable that I completely turned my back on it, even though a few people did some interesting stuff.

Also what's the current best and cheapest and solution to implement SCSI for these old systems? I used to use modern SAS SCSI server harddrives a few years ago as they were very cheap to get , had huge capacity and could be connected to the old systems with simple adapters. It was sort of hit-and-miss though, as some Harddrives weren't as backwards compatible as they should've been and their power consumption was sometimes too much for the old machines.

>>1022447

>is the Amiga community still overrun by crazies, poseurs and hipsters?

A significant amount of mainstream attention has turned to retro-everything in the past few years and the hobby has taken in some people that are (at best) miserable to have around. It's also jacked up the prices on many things that I used to find practically for free at flea markets. Even things that are still somewhat of a niche like the Tandy or the Dreamcast have doubled or tripled in price.

>>1022454

Even in east germany, most of these devices were reserved for government use, they rarely ended up in private households, you had to have connections. They weren't very sought after even, most people wanted a C64 from west germany and tried to organize one through contacts they had in the west and the grey market.

I have a Robotron KC85/3, complete with owners manual and a bunch of casettes with games and such. Got it from a flea market a few years ago for five euros. It has a knockoff Z-80 CPU that was reverse engineered and produced in east germany, the design went through the entire eastern bloc. The eastern bloc was quite a bit behind in semiconductors and there were even underhand deals between west german corporations and east german conglomerates to exchange tech. East germany had a big hand in the semiconductor business and development of the east as a result.

The computer is not laid out in an interesting way, everything about it is made very very cheaply, especially the PCB looks very 70s. The power supply would uh, not be made that way these days. Let's leave it at that.

They also would have their own markings for things like RAM and 74xx logic and it made understanding how it's set up a bit difficult.

Some german electronics suppliers as of a few years ago still sold east germany-produced ICs (like 74xx logic, passive components like ceramic capacitors and such) they had lying around in storage and I've gotten a few C64 from flea markets who were fixed with east german parts.

>>1022513

>Who is even buying all these things?

* Existing stock is being depleted as old hardware halts and catches fire and gets either thrown away or shelved as being "for parts" (i.e. it'll get thrown away in 5 years).

* Despite the Amiga being harder to use, there's more people who are coming into the hobby than there are who sell their gear, driving up demand even if some people fuck around with their new acquisition for a couple of days and then forget about it (i.e. it'll get thrown away in 5 years).

* Anything that's collectible has investors so there's some extent of hoarding affecting the market.

* Some actual hobbyists want to hoard hardware before it becomes prohibitively expensive.

If there's enough demand to keep an overproduced, resilient piece of gear like the Epyx FastLoad selling for 30 bucks on Buy It Now, there's gotta be a good volume of actual users.

They collect to have. It's kinda appalling to see how little some of the collectors know about what they have. It's pretty much mindless consumerism, which the whole IT crowd is full of. (too many overpaid people in that field, knowing the price but not the worth and so on) I've witnessed first- and second hand how a lot of rare hardware got damaged because of sheer ignorance. (a lot of that stuff was not as idiot-proof as a modern PC, very easy to for example connect something the wrong way around and let the magic smoke escape)

I've got a bunch of old PC stuff that's barely worth anything to collectors, but it was fun studying it, especially when datasheets were available. (which they often are for old chipsets, especially when they're from companies that aren't around anymore) If you want a non-botnet machine like /tech/ often lusts for, machines from the late 90s are great. Everything is meretriciously documented and the documentation often is easily available online. You can easily find 400-500 page datasheets on some Pentium-era SIS chipsets for example. No blackboxes, nothing kept hidden. There's enough data in them to write your own BIOS for them. Same for many non-intel CPUs of now defunct companies like Cyrix. The demo scene is focused on all the very,very limited 80s machines and while that's cool I have the feeling these later machines are an undiscovered land of sorts.

I also got a cheap 8088 Mainboard (from the later area of the clones) I repaired extensive battery damage of and got into a time-appropriate case and up and running. The guy that gave it to me was about to throw it away. Now it's in very well-kept condition. I like taking care of that old stuff.

I also picked up one of the old 040 68k Mac pizza boxes cleaned it, gave it a 040 with FPU and replaced all the caps. They're very comfy machines, from the general looks of them to the interface. Also so incredibly maintainable. You can take them entirely apart (and put them back together) in a few minutes without even needing a tool. It's a complete different quality class compared to the shitty PCs and, yes, Amigas of that time which were put together as cheaply as possible and would have either cut your hands to shit or snap plastic pieces off if you got the idea to open them up. Yet barely anybody seems interested in them. It's a pity Apple released nothing.

>>1022578

I guess gaming hardware relates to this. The most egregious thing I've seen is the faggot collector community that hoardes any 32x or 3D0 they can find and just leave it in the dust. For goodnessakes actually care about what you buy.

>>1008445

Fuck, I had a blackberry playbook a few years after it came out. It was my first tablet. What really impressed me about it was it's ability to play flash.

I was a teen so I jerked it to zone flashes in the bathroom. Good times.

>>1022812

The G3 is fairly maintainable despite its form factor. The G4 is when Apple went full-on "fuck repairability and consumers and shit." You'll be OK.

>>1022578

>Mac pizza boxes cleaned it, gave it a 040 with FPU and replaced all the caps.

I had a LCII with a fpu running NetBSD 1.6.2 for years. It ran an ircd and a few other little random things. Would get year long uptimes. Then one day it crashed in a kernel panic and wouldn't reboot. Opened it up and you can see all the caps started leaking.

My T40 went into a coma today. I guess this will force me to get one of those ssd adapters and a 128GB msata SSD for it. If I had more money I'd get a new palmrest, max out the RAM, get a new screen and see if I could use an LED backlight modification, and get a dock and an external floppy drive. The works. But that would cost more than a hundred dollars, so I'll have to put it off for now. I just want it to be happy. I remember when I saved it from the dump when I grabbed it from a junk pile and fixed the fan. Good times.

>>1022859

In my 475, I also replaced the caps in the power supply, some caps in there leaked. You could tell by the very rich, fishy smell when soldering. Apparently not a rare issue either so it's worth to take a look.

The 475 mainboard was easy re: cap replacement, there was some leakage but there wasn't really any damage yet and the caps were easy to replace. I also overclocked it from 25 Mhz to 33 Mhz (wasn't really an overclock, another Mac Model using the same chipset ran at 33 Mhz from factory) by moving a few resistors. The 33 Mhz rated 040 should have a heatsink, so I desoldered the CPU socket and soldered the CPU directly to the board, which made it possible to fit a nice heatsink with a thermal pad (more than enough for chips with such low TDP) on it. I also replaced the very loud (sounded like bearing damage) fan with a much more quiet Papst fan.

The overclock mostly improved graphics performance, it seemed to give the graphics chip a real kick.

I gave that 475 also a network card and one of those SCSI-to-SD converters. (as it's HDD was defective) Equipping and repairing costed much, much more than the computer itself, I think I paid like, 20 bucks for it. I also managed to scrounge an PS/2-to-ADB converter from eBay cheaply. I don't know if there's a cheap solution for that now but then they were very rare. It's nice to use an optical Logitech mouse with such a Mac.

I always thought such a Mac would make a nice distraction- and botnet-free digital typewriter and I wanted to put it up as such with a small 14" 4:3 screen in my bedroom, complete with walnut-cased, self-built mechanical keyboard. The lack of good software and the expenses of the keyboard kinda stopped me though. NetBSD would be a solution there, although I'd rather use something native to System 7.

I made much worse experiences with replacing SMD caps in SMD amigas. The boards are much lower quality and heating very easily lifts the SMD pads and even traces. It's kinda ironic that the Amigas are so expensive and much more expensive than classic Macs today, considering what cheap machines quality-wise they are. I remember a time when computer stores literally begged you to buy their Amiga stock.

>>1022846

I opened it up to dust it and found the front panel connector was damaged from whoever opened it last. just my luck

on the plus side it's pretty clean inside.

>>1007794

>the special GNAA release of OSX Tiger

You mean the one that booted up to the gaping asshole?

>>1023588

Yep, known as Goatse back in the day, li' youngin.

Anyone running a dot matrix printer?

re: exotic, PPC probably works better with linux/the *BSDs than any ARM. That chink shovelware is often poorly supported and even the claimed well supported SoCs have tons of "if"s and "but"s.

>>1023619

Yes, what do you wanna know

early 2000's is now old (and superior in many cases)

i have a bunch of 22" CRTs that go up to 2048x1536 or if you want more framerate: 800x600@160Hz. they're all dying tho :( but at 1600x1200, nothing can even come close to them. need to find moar. also a 50" rearview projection CRT TV

>>1023624

I'm in the market, but I'm not sure what I should be looking for. I'm going used as they're often less than a tenth of the cost. What are the death sentences for these? I imagine print head wear is probably the biggest killer. Should I stick to buying ones where the seller can provide a printed sample, or will luck usually be on my side just buying anything that doesn't look obviously broken?

I'm also not sure about ribbon. Is NOS ribbon usable, or does it just get dried out like typewriter ribbon? In other words, should I limit my search only to machines that ribbon is currently produced for?

Is 9 pins enough, or should I try and get a higher count machine? This will be used almost entirely for text documents.

Do they all support continuous feed, or is that something I need to specifically look for?

>>1023667

I've been using the same dot matrix printer since the 80s and can say the following: I do have a 9 pin dot matrix printer but it's really coarse, doesn't bother me much as it's fine for text but 24 pin will probably make you happier depending on what it is what you want to do. The shelf life on the ink ribbons is infinite when they're still packaged and vacuum sealed. The ribbon is actually silk so it's entirely possible to "recharge" them with stamp-pad ink, similar to typewriter ribbons. I never felt the need as compatible ink ribbons are still made for mine very cheap to buy. (4 eurobucks and they last about 3-4 months of regular printing, more common is about a year) I still kept a bunch of the cartridges just in case I ever need to recharge.

I only had the head fail on my dot matrix printer once, and that was a year or two after buying it. If you decide for a printer, see how the replacement part situation is. Very common printers will still have a lot of NOS floating around. Over the years I stocked up on replacement heads but never needed them. I'm pretty sure at this point that my stock will last me as long as I live. The manufacturers gave all of the dot matrix printers a very conservative MTBF, but in reality they last a lot longer than that.

What absolutely kills them in my experience from back then is running them in a cold environment and not letting them warm up before you start printing, you really want to avoid that. Also use thin paper, thick paper can bend the needles. Endless paper is usually the best and still buyable. You also want to be very careful in case of a paperjam.

The cool thing about these printers is they are connected via parallel port and have their inbuilt fonts, so you can just pipe text to the parallel port in linux and it will get printed. They also have special command sequences you can send. For text-only printing, no drivers are necessary. There was an expansion ROM for mine that delivers more fonts, some day I'm gonna pull the ROM of mine and see if I can make fonts myself, shouldn't be too hard. Just was too lazy to take it apart as it is not easy.

>>1023673

I feel a bit more equipped to hit eBay now. I know some folks find that older machines are more compatible with downscaling from modern word programs leading to poor resolution in the final printout. Anything to this, or does the parallel port solve this? What word processing software do you use? I'm wanting to do some high-volume print jobs. I've got thousands of books and documents that I'm wanting to print for my personal library so my main motivation is price per page.

Have any experience with binding solutions for many page printouts, or do you mainly deal with just a few pages at a time? I thought about getting a burster but simply can not find any for sale, and tearing apart a few thousands pages would be tedious at best.

>>1023687

If that and not the old tech is your motivation you might be happier with a laser printer. These printers strength is to print raw text, literal ASCII code that's sent to them. If you want to print books and technical documents with nice formatting and graphics, a 9-pin needle printer will probably not give you results you'd expect in current year, and a 24-pin needle printer will not look that much better. They're also very slow and loud, keep that in mind if you want to print a lot.

I use the printer mostly for letters and used to use it to stream debugging text and other stuff I wanted a hardcopy of from the terminal. I still do that occasionally but more for nostalgia as that is not really a thing you need with a modern computer. No word processor, just straight .txt with some formatting, this plays into the strength of the printer to just process the send text and output it in it's own font. Everything else is even slower. Older word processors that come with their own printer drivers (like wordperfect) can work with these printers well too, though. Just don't feel the need for all that anymore.

There used to be ring binders for endless paper, but I just used to store them in a file cabinet with folders. That was a looong time ago though. I haven't stored any printouts for any considerable amount of time for at least a decade now.

>>1023704

I do derive a fair bit of pleasure out of putting an older machine to use, but I've got to have something for it to do. I knew from the start that graphics are pretty well a no-go, but that's not an issue as most documents are text only. Generally its OCR of scans so converting to raw text isn't a huge issue. In any case I'll end up getting one eventually and see if I can't put it to use. It'll be a fun experience and maybe save a machine from the landfill.

>>1023601

I'm a big fan of my g4 PowerBook. Make sure you get a high-res one, 15" or 17", and I'd suggest an ssd conversion, as well as max out the RAM. Make sure you keep the 10.4 drive/ dual boot it on an ssd. 10.4 is loads of fun and there's a decent sized community for it! Stay away from iBooks or 13" G4s.

Also, no g4 will natively boot os 9, however "perfect" emulation is achievable on 10.4. I don't believe that is the case on 10.5. Not sure about g5 support for tiger, tho. You'd have to look into that.

The g5 towers are awesome, tho. I don't a dual-cpu variant.

You talk too much, asshole.

kthxbai

>>1023667

I have a panasonic kx-p2023 and they still sell ribbons for it. It is "epson compatible" which just about all old hardware supports.

I just checked the eBay prices of some old ISA cards after reading some stuff online and wow did they go up. A few years ago I bid on a bunch of old graphics cards etc. and got tons of stuff for 1-5 euros. I'm so glad that I did that now, never need to buy something else and get scalped. I even have a ton of truecolor RAMDAC ISA cards, even an ATI Mach64.