Any retro PC enthusiasts / gamers?

[Duke23]

Nope I'm not talking DosBox here although that is a great tool. I'm talking real hardware... I have been interested in something for retro gaming, and got the idea to find some old laptops to mess around with. I picked them up on eBay for a decent price. The first one I've already received, taken apart, formatted, installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 and some games etc. The second is still in the mail and is slightly newer.

The first is a Digital DECpc 425SE. It's got a blazing fast 25mhz 486SX, 8mb of RAM, and the original (as far as I can tell) WD 170mb hard drive. I've had to transfer everything to it via floppy disk so I don't have any big games on it, and the screen refresh is a little disappointing being passive matrix. It also has no onboard sound except the PC speaker. When I received this computer it had Windows 95 which was pretty sluggish, and is partly why I downgraded it. The computer is from 1994 and was used at the Digital corporation, it has a "Property of" sticker on the bottom with an employee name and badge number, and Windows 95 said "Digital Internal Use Only" before the login. Not to worry, this company is long gone along with 99% of information and parts for this computer so I'm crossing my fingers that nothing goes wrong. Because of the screen I've been avoiding the first person shooters but it seems to run fine. I grew up with computers from this era so it's pretty nostalgic and entertaining to me.

A friend jokingly asked me if this computer would run KSP and I had a mental image of hitting the floor it button, going to sleep, waking up and hitting space, waiting two days and putting a roll of coins on the D key to start my gravity turn... I'm thinking of trying out the original Orbiter on it but that may be a little over my head.

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The other computer is a Dell Latitude XPi P133ST from 1997, with a larger active matrix SVGA screen and a mono speaker. It has the 133mhz Pentium 1 and 40mb of RAM (8mb onboard) and I believe it came with Windows 95 preinstalled, but it has no hard drive at the moment. I'd like to set that one up with a dual compact flash to IDE adapter to dual boot Windows 95 and Dos6.22/Win3.1. It has some cosmetic issues but I have epoxy and got it cheap so it's not a big deal and I can actually get (some) parts for this one online. Pics when it gets here...

So if there's anyone else here with oldschool computers show them off!

Edited November 19, 2014 by Duke23

[zekes]

I never though i'd be able to show this thing off.... I found it in a dumptser at my school, with the charger, and 3 other broken computers. The others were broken, but this tough guy worked.

It's a Clevo 2200C. The copyright on the BIOS says it's 1989-1998 I think.

This is a pic of it 2 years ago - i tried KSP and it obviously didn't work. I can take more pics of it now if you guys want... A couple of problems with it though. THere's no wireless card, and direct connect doesnt work some reason. So no internet for me I updated it to windows XP but i might go back to windows 95 - I liked that better.

Any idea what i can do with it, or any retro games I can play? it's got working keyboard, mouse, battery and charger, USB cord, so I can technically do anything non-internet on it. 9 GB hard drive.

[Nuke]

not quite what i think of when talking of retro computers. i usually think of older 16 and 8 bit computers (and 32 bit machines < 486). i used to maintain an old dos rig but i lost interest and scrapped it for parts.

[Duke23]

@Zekes: Cool! Feel free to post more pics if you want, I love these older machines. With more info there's probably lots of things you can do with it. It's probably missing the drivers for the Ethernet or it could have been taken out by a power surge... I'd try a PCMCIA solution, either wired or wireless depending on whether you keep XP. If I remember correctly Windows 95 doesn't technically support wireless although there are hacky solutions for DOS, Win3.1, and Win95 for open connections or WEP, and 98SE does to an extent but I don't think it would support WPA -- been a while since I messed with these. You may need to find a hardware detection program to find generic drivers that will work when/if you downgrade, a lot of these non big name computers are impossible to find OEM support for.

Check the system specs but I'd say any DOS games will work fine (with VDMSound under XP), check abandonware sites. Some of my favorite older games were Wolfenstein 3d, Doom of course, Duke Nukem, Whacky Wheels, Whiplash, Rise of the Triad, Descent, the Hugo series, the King's Quest series, and Commander Keen is worth mentioning although I just recently tried it. Some "newer" ones with slightly higher requirements to look for may be Terra Nova, Command & Conquer, Orion Burger, Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3d, and Zone Raiders for DOS (may require dos4gw or dos32a extenders under pure DOS), Gearheads and BadToys for Win3.x+, Midtown Madness, Monster Truck Madness, System Shock 2, Delta Force, and Jane's Fleet Commander for Win9x.

I'd take a wild guess and say that computer is probably a Pentium II, so you could probably get away with playing tons of older games that just won't run on modern 64bit systems.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Duke23

[Duke23]

not quite what i think of when talking of retro computers. i usually think of older 16 and 8 bit computers (and 32 bit machines < 486). i used to maintain an old dos rig but i lost interest and scrapped it for parts.

I personally don't have a lot of patience for machines much older than a 386 but I can respect that. I think my first IBM compatible was a Packard Bell 386... Where I got my first taste for DOS and later Windows 3.1. Hard to believe that the ones I mentioned are 20 years old or close to it, so pretty retro by most definitions. I do have a Commodore 64 that was working last time I fiddled with it, put up at my dad's house.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Duke23

[zekes]

@Zekes: Cool! Feel free to post more pics if you want, I love these older machines. With more info there's probably lots of things you can do with it. It's probably missing the drivers for the Ethernet or it could have been taken out by a power surge... I'd try a PCMCIA solution, either wired or wireless depending on whether you keep XP. If I remember correctly Windows 95 doesn't technically support wireless although there are hacky solutions for DOS, Win3.1, and Win95 for open connections or WEP, and 98SE does to an extent but I don't think it would support WPA -- been a while since I messed with these. You may need to find a hardware detection program to find generic drivers that will work when/if you downgrade, a lot of these non big name computers are impossible to find OEM support for.

Check the system specs but I'd say any DOS games will work fine (with VDMSound under XP), check abandonware sites. Some of my favorite older games were Wolfenstein 3d, Doom of course, Duke Nukem, Whacky Wheels, Whiplash, Rise of the Triad, Descent, the Hugo series, the King's Quest series, and Commander Keen is worth mentioning although I just recently tried it. Some "newer" ones with slightly higher requirements to look for may be Terra Nova, Command & Conquer, Orion Burger, Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3d, and Zone Raiders for DOS (may require dos4gw or dos32a extenders under pure DOS), Gearheads and BadToys for Win3.x+, Midtown Madness, Monster Truck Madness, System Shock 2, Delta Force, and Jane's Fleet Commander for Win9x.

I'd take a wild guess and say that computer is probably a Pentium II, so you could probably get away with playing tons of older games that just won't run on modern 64bit systems.

thanks! That's awesome.

[robopilot99]

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Ha I got my 1982 commodore 64!

Edited November 20, 2014 by robopilot99

[cantab]

Sadly, not any more. When I was at uni I acquired a fair few old computers, but I never actually did anything with them. In the end I think most got abandoned in the college storeroom and the rest of the stuff went to the tip.

The highlight was definitely a little Sun workstation, in a form factor similar to the modern mini-ITX cubes. It had an external hard drive that sat on top of it. IIRC I did boot it but that was about it. I also had an external SCSI cd drive, not Sun, that took the CD in a caddy.

There was also a DEC I think workstation, in the "pizza box" case, and an old pre-OSX Mac.

And there was the Dell I used as my main PC for a while, and its near-twin that I gave my mum. When new they were top-end workstations - but that was about seven years before I got them. Dual Pentium III processors - not dual core, dual processor - and I think 512 MB of RAMBUS memory (I later put all the memory in one and stashed the other). In my hands they ran various Linux distros, and they served me well through my time at university and until I built my current PC in 2010. Took them between home and uni, along with the 17" CRT monitor, on the train in a suitcase (a big suitcase!). You don't need to be limited to laptops people! It was a bit of a sad day when I got rid of the pair, but they took up too much space in the house.

I do still have my old Toshiba laptop from about 2002, but I don't really count that as retro - it's just old. I keep it around in case I break my wifi.

Edited November 20, 2014 by cantab

[Duke23]

http://imgur.com/a/YQQdF

Ha I got my 1982 commodore 64!

I'm not sure if I've seen that model? My C64 is... Bigger and uglier lol.

Cantab there were a few oddballs I wish I still had. The dual processor reminds me of an old IBM server I had (well have, but it no longer POSTs - I think it blew a cap or the CMOS battery), it took dual Pentium II slot processors or a single Pentium III. Thing was a monster and it was old when I got it. Had three 10gb drives in the front and I don't remember how much memory, 256mb or less I think. I loaded up Windows 2000 on it (in Vista days) and managed to get a few XP drivers and such working. I used it as a crude media server. Mostly because I liked to show it off / dare people to pick it up. It had 3 big fans aimed at the hard drives that sounded like a small jet taking off...

I wanted to say I can't imagine lugging something like that around but I used to take my gaming PC to my friend's house in ~2003-4 all the time... No monitor though, just the tower and maybe a mouse. The 17" flat CRT I had back then didn't ever go far.

Edited November 20, 2014 by Duke23

[LordFerret]

I'm an old dog, been around working in the industry since before there was a PC... was a computer/software consultant/developer for over 35 years. I have 9 old PCs in the attic, they all still work, still boot...

2 original IBM PCs with revision "B" stamp on the back, dual 5" full height floppies, Mono graphics/displays, DOS

1 original Compaq Portable (all 35lbs of it), dual floppies, 4" green screen, DOS

1 old Heath kit computer, 8" floppy, Heath Basic

1 old Dec PC/terminal, with 8" floppy, with some manner of Basic (Dec)

1 Tandy HD 1200, CGA graphics/display, a whopping 20mb hard drive and two 1/2 height 5-1/4" floppies... DOS & Basic compiler

The rest are all PC clones of various types, 640kb mem, various HDs & floppies, Phoenix BIOS's, CGA & VGA graphics/displays

I have elsewhere in the house (still in use lol):

1 Compaq Armada laptop (running Debian Linux), used for 2-meter packet radio

1 Compaq Presario 5900Z running Debian Linux, my file archive server

2 Toshiba laptops (Satellite A10 & Satellite P105), one Linux the other WinXP, lots of junk on both of them

1 Acer Aspire desktop (forget the model), WinXP, FlightSim and junk

1 Dell 10' Netbook, WinXP, collecting dust

1 Dell laptop PP26L, belongs to a friend, putting Linux Mint on it for her

and

1 ASUS Q550L laptop, which I'm typing on... it's my KSP machine.

I also have a storage locker with some office furniture and a whole library of old documentation manuals. It will make a nice bonfire someday.

I had, but don't know if they're still around, an old CoCo and a TI Sinclair.

Someday, I'd like to pick up an Altair for the collection lol.

[Duke23]

That's a heck of a collection, LordFerret. I'd love to check out some machines like that, especially the Portable as they always intrigued me. The tinkerer in me would like to dismantle all those computers in your attic and see what makes them tick, but I'd be scared I'd break something. Guess I know who to run to now if I have an issue with one of these projects, lol

As for the others, well never let a working computer go to waste I guess. I have a small collection of mostly functional laptops waiting for me to come up with a use. Nothing really worth mentioning but I just realized I have 4 or 5 of them hanging around aside from my "new" DECpc and my Dell N5050 which passes as a usable one when a tablet isn't quite good enough. Well one is an old monochrome Librex that I may try to find a couple parts for one day.

Hm, okay fine, I have a problem. Aside from needing to clean the screen on the one I actually sometimes use.

One's missing, that's the problem.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Duke23

[WinkAllKerb'']

10 load the magnetic band

20 when will we get a 3 1/2 or 5 1/4

30 wait and praise

40 eat an apple too while waiting

50 load failed by the great amiga and his Saints

60 here we go again, this thing is really like a turtle TO7 and Mo5

[worir4]

XD Lol OP

8MB RAM, 25Mhz CPU.

[steve_v]

XD Lol OP

8MB RAM, 25Mhz CPU.

I have an old IBM machine with similar specs (33mhz CPU / 8MB RAM / 80MB HDD) running as a router/firewall (FreeSCO) right now...

It _is_ actually a bit OP for that task - the bottleneck is the 10Mbit NIC.

It's the last of my prehistoric machines - the next oldest is a blazing fast PIII 800 - that I bought for $5

I used to have an old DEC Alpha workstation tower, I forget the exact specs but you could have the option of: A 486DX4, A DEC Alpha (64 bit!!) or a dual Pentium pro CPU/RAM board. With up to 64MB of FP ram - I had the Alpha, with an early UNIX OS (I forget the exact variety).

Dunno why I got rid of it TBH, probably space...

DEC made some damn fine machines, that beast was more structuraly sound than most modern cars.

Where I work, there's a _room_ full of ancient laptops, some are 386 era. Nobody seems to know how to back things up properly, so they have been keeping entire machines just for the data on the disks

Might have to go exploring one day soon.

Edited November 22, 2014 by steve_v

[WinkAllKerb'']

some are 386 era.

%*#-@] drivers ¤#=}+&^^¨^%.

Pfiuuuu now that work pretty fast

[LordFerret]

... never let a working computer go to waste I guess. ...

EXACTLY!!! Kudos!

Nice collection you have there. If nothing else, most old machines can be loaded up with Linux and reused - for email if nothing else. Linux puts new life in old hardware.

[LordFerret]

... DEC made some damn fine machines, ...

That they did! In early years I worked with some of the PDP series (the 8 and 11, phone company had them tied to ESS-1A switches), and then later in the 80's popped up the MicroVAX 'Worldbox' running VAX VMS ... sweet stuff... basically it resized a Volkswagen-sized computer down into a nice little cabinet lol.

My true love however was the HP, particularly the 1000 series... absolutely a laboratory tool... even the microcode was reprogrammable on them (and we did!). Their OS was very powerful and flexible. I got started with them around RTE-III and used them up through RTE-6VM. What a wonderful machine! My world was all Macro-assembler, Fortran, and some compiled Basic. lol

WinkAllKerb' - Nice find!

[WinkAllKerb'']

... lol

WinkAllKerb' - Nice find!

curiosity i guess, but i feel to old to install linux even if i love the concept.

[LordFerret]

I'm wondering if any of you recall what was out there before DOS? CP/M ring a bell? lol

[Duke23]

EXACTLY!!! Kudos!

Nice collection you have there. If nothing else, most old machines can be loaded up with Linux and reused - for email if nothing else. Linux puts new life in old hardware.

Lol thanks. The Dell in the back is the newest (the N5050, no issues), the VAIO in pieces (NR-120e) also works fine aside from not having a screen, I um had an idea... The Librex has a bad HDD and external floppy, the Sharp (Win95) has a bad floppy drive, dodgy touchpad, and some dead areas in the screen... the Dell to the right (dont even know what it is right off) has a bad HDD, and the DECpc is perfectly functional. I did find the other laptop after I posted, its just an early XP era HP that functions fine aside from a few odd noises and being painfully slow. And that Bigfoot I forgot I had, it came out of an old Pentium II Compaq and technically should still work.

So you're right, a couple of those are just begging for a lightweight Linux install. I did that to the HP actually when a friend needed something to type up a few documents on, I forget which distro. I'd be on it if I just had a practical use for them besides making people ask questions (which is admittedly enough of a reason sometimes).

[Duke23]

Where I work, there's a _room_ full of ancient laptops, some are 386 era. Nobody seems to know how to back things up properly, so they have been keeping entire machines just for the data on the disks

Might have to go exploring one day soon.

Think you can sneak me a few? Wink wink... I'll help you back up the disks and everything! Lol.

Some of those old hard drives seem to be picky about what you hook them up to, I can't get any of mine to work over a USB-IDE adapter on my Win7 x64 machine. It'd really save me a lot of headache if I could image them or add software I need.

I'm crossing my fingers that the Dell I bought will accept my PCMCIA CF reader at least, because it has a handy removable hard drive caddy instead of having to disassemble the entire thing.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Duke23

[Godot]

I still have my C-64 and Amiga 500. Unfortunately the C-1541 (5 1/4 " Floppydrive for the C-64) doesn´t work anymore (but the Datasette is in functioning state I think).

I also still have my first (SCSI) HDD (for the Amiga 500) ... whopping ~200 MB for a price of just ~1000 € at ~1990. I never was able to completely fill the HDD up

(unfortunately the HDD isn´t in working order anymore as well, I suspect controller problems)

[sal_vager]

Heh, I still have my old Amstrad cpc464 actually, I don't know if it still works, or if the tapes will load after all this time :/

[WinkAllKerb'']

Heh, I still have my old Amstrad cpc464 actually, I don't know if it still works, or if the tapes will load after all this time :/

yup, dispersion

[Nikolai]

I still have a Color Computer 2 from Radio Shack (16K RAM, expanded to 64K; nine colors; 0.89 MHz processor).