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10 year quest

joe sixpack said:
Terry Yager said:
I can't imagine any flavor of Pentium being collectible, now, or in the forseeable future, they're just too common. Possible exceptions might be laptops, which don't age very well, and, of course, the old original 60 MHz Pentium (I call it Pentium 0, since everyone insists on calling the second version "Pentium 1"). Especially collectible would be chips that have the floating-point bug, as very few of them survived the recall.

--T
Click to expand...

I had a IBM Amber (I think thats what the line was called)
It was a Pentium 60 with the bug. RAN HOT AS HELL.
I gave it to a friend and he chucked it in the trash.
I GAVE HIM ONE NASTY VERBAL BEATING.
Not because it has any value (Because im pretty sure it does not)
But beacause i never ever throw out good hardware.
I find it hard enough trying to throw out bad hardware as you just
never know when you'll need something off it.
Click to expand...

Here's one I just kicked up on eBay. Comes in a nice display case, but I dunno if it's worth 75 buck$ or not (we'll see, won't we?)...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1247&item=5165353192&rd=1

--T
 
Well, as far as a laptop goes, I'm kinda looking(though not really right NOW, money situations and all) for a laptop that will run a very limited Win98 config(very basic....only really need it to run and store files) for Lotus Word Pro. It's the program I got with an earlier machine(yeah....about 6 years ago) that I prefer to do my writing on. I have a butchered computer up and running with it...but it's a tower, not portable at all. I'd like something I could take to work and use on the fly(when we aren't so busy that I can't jot some stuff down). I figure I can start looking in a month or two.
If anyone can suggest anything, the info would be much appreciated.
 
joe sixpack said:
if your looking for a pretty good / cheap laptop check out
a (acer) TI extensa 5xxx. I got a 560cd model it has all the goodies
of the day. 1.2gb hdd, 40mb mem, swapable floppy / 4x-cdrom, sound & infered
the NI-MH battery was shot but it was easy to recell. BTW it came with
a pen75 however it's just a desktop cpu so yank it out and put a pen100
in it. Wont take anything higher. another cool feature is it has tabs at
the top of the keyboard you can take it out and see the guts in about 2 sec's
with no tools. i got mine for 22.05 total. It's always over looked so you can
win them easy most times.
Click to expand...


T.I / Acer extensa 560cdt
OS: came with win95 (first release, read notes)
floppy / 4x cdrom (swapable)
NI-MH battery
pentium 75mhz (can put a pen100 desktop cpu in)
8 or 16mb (stock, 40mb max)
1.2gb hdd
10.4 lcd
sound w/speakers (on lcd)
touchpad 2 button mouse
infered port
2 - 16bit pcmcia slots (not to confuse with cardbus 32bit)

NOTES: you can take the keyboard out in about 5secs there are slider tabs
at the top that keep the keyboard in place after thats out you can see all the guts
of the system.. very cool. this makes cleaning easy and in my case
it helps if the system is over heating i can just pop up the keyboard and
it cools off quick!
Also the cdrom will not read burnt cds. it might just be mine but it has
a really hard time tracking CD-R(RW)'s. You can adjust the power output
to the lens but it's tricky and takes a lot of time so i've just lived with it.
Reads retail silver cds just fine. I just use a serial cable to transfer anything
i need.
The system plays mp3's fine but you'll need to make some adjustments/tweaks
1. set your player to only play MONO even for stereo files. This will cut cpu usage in
almost half and there is no real advantage to stereo on a laptop.
BTW you might want to use headphones the speakers are crap for music.
2. if the above does not help set the buffer to higher ammount. 3-5secs is good
3. last resort downmix the mp3 or have the player downmix to 22050hz

As far as OS this puppy will run pretty much anything of the day of course im going by
my system not the stock config i have no idea about.
Linux: It's a bitch to get on it but once you do runs just fine however go easy on the X
Win95: eats it up this is a very good fit so is 98 if you have max ram
NT4: runs just fine but i find NT4 to be a better on a desktop I.E: server
as it has no APM support and this is important if you use your laptop on the battery
DOS: Well of course it runs this, it took me a bit to get the card services working but runs like a
champ now, i prefer this for this machine. It will also run
Win3.x but my opinion is your better off saving that 15mb for something more usefull, like DOOM


est ebay price: under 50 USD

my config:
pentium 100 w/passive oversize heatsink (i had to cut a little bit inside the case for the way to big heatsink to fit but looks fine with the keyboard in.)
40mb ram
1.2gb hdd (i have cut in half 600/600)
33.6k pcmcia modem
OS: DOS/LINUX duelboot
Price: 22.05 shipped ebay as-is
Had one hinge cover missing no biggie just plastic cap
also the docking port cover is missing no biggie just plastic flap
the user said that windows said the cd-rom was bad
turns out the drivers got moved and mscdex could'nt load :lol: :lol:

also about the cpu transplant theres a jumper by the cpu, also the socket
is not a ZIF so you'll need to get something to get the cpu out.
i used a tiny flat head screw driver to get a tiny gap all the way around
the cpu, then take a larger screwdriver and go around the cpu again.
do this slowly if you put to much force on one side at a time you might
chip & or damage the cpu. there is a hole in the back of the case to take a very small
fan but im not sure what size. the cpu i put in had a oversize heat sink
so it works well but gets very warm with heavy use. If it gets too too hot
i just pop up open the keyboard and it cools down pretty quick a fan would
fix the problem but i hav'nt a clue as to the size and or where to get one without knowing the size.

EDIT: correction: cd-roms can'd read CD-RW's anyway, I ment CD-R's
 
Terry. What is the cable socket and voltage for the power supply?
I have a Commodore 386 LT without a power supply and I heard that it takes the same one as the Zeos. The Commodore takes an 8-pin mini-din like a female Mac socket. I've seen Zeos LTs on Ebay before who would also ship to Canada, but was reluctant to buy if it wouldn't work with the Commodore LT, Not trying to beg the Zeos, just wanted affirmation that the ac adaptors did indeed have that socket.

Lawrence

Terry Yager said:
Here's one...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5165082305&fromMakeTrack=true

--T
Click to expand...
 
This lil' Zeos is using an 11.5v. 2.5A power supply with a standard (+)-tip, barrel-type jack, size "M" at RadioShack ($1.87 for a blister pack of two). This one is a cute lil' sub, but Zeos also made full-sized notebooks, which probably have different power requirements.

--T
 
vic user said:
oh man, do i ever sound like you!

my main internet computer is a pentium 166 running win95, and i am about to upgrade to somewhere around the pentium 300 area, as one of the fellow vintage comp. guys is giving me one for free.

maybe i will find out what all the fuss was about with win98 ;)

chris
Click to expand...

Sounds like me too. Just look at below, took me 4 years to push that box that once was a 386 DX-20 up to a Pentium III, and I'm still in search of a "modern" motherboard that can support more than ONE Floppy diskette drive (I want to get my 1.2 MB 5.25" back in). However, you'd never know it was a Micro ATX looking at it 8) I'm sure those that have seen the Uncreative Labs and 386 pages have seen older pics of this one before...

686.jpg
 
I'm not sure there are newer motherboards supporting a 5.25" disk at all, being the primary or not. Even the 3.5" are becoming legacy, albeit they still stick around to the industry's big grief.

Cool case mod though.. did you do much work on the rear side to house the backplane of the Micro-ATX board? If I'm not mistaken, EISA-based 486:s had a backplane very similar to ATX, as we used to have a such (EISA) system in a slightly modded ATX case at the computer club. One day when the motherboard had given up, we re-modded it back to house a real ATX board.
 
carlsson said:
Cool case mod though.. did you do much work on the rear side to house the backplane of the Micro-ATX board? If I'm not mistaken, EISA-based 486:s had a backplane very similar to ATX, as we used to have a such (EISA) system in a slightly modded ATX case at the computer club. One day when the motherboard had given up, we re-modded it back to house a real ATX board.
Click to expand...

Not much work had to be done surprisingly. This was at one time a full size AT chassis (it could fit a 1st version IBM PC AT 286 board easily), all I had to do was cut a large hole in back about 3.5" X 10" wide and then slide in the backplane from a damaged Gateway Essential 550C (damaged part of the case was cut off leaving the backplane). The only trickery involved was installing the Micro ATX PSU into the AT PSU case. I used a mixture of clever screw holes, sticky tack, and heat shrink tubing to get the air flow and grounding and all properly installed. I took the original positive action power switch out and put in a "Big Red Button (TM)" from Radio Shack to try and keep the classic 80's look of this machine. The entire back was repainted gloss black, saving the original serial number and GEM logo, and I painted the PSU case gold for an interesting 80's look.

I'm guessing the EISA 486 you speak of was a Deskpro XL series box. I sold one of those on E-bay (built out of 3 non working units), I always thought they would make a rather close mod to ATX given the way the system board was set up.
 
I'll let you in on a little secret. There are converters available that allow you to hook up floppy drives to the SCSI bus. They're pretty interesting.
 
Anonymous Coward said:
I'll let you in on a little secret. There are converters available that allow you to hook up floppy drives to the SCSI bus. They're pretty interesting.
Click to expand...

I'm actually beginning to tinker with that idee, there might be a real benifit if I can boot from any device on the SCSI chain. That might be something I'll look into.
 
Hm, I wonder if it would make sense to put a disk drive like 1541 on a SCSI chain - maybe someone has done it already? The CMD hard drive is a SCSI interface but in the other direction (to have a SCSI disk to a C64).
 
The SCSI diskette system works better when using a 32-bit protected mode operating system. You need to keep in mind that the ASPI driver takes up a fair bit of conventional memory. I currently have a converter installed on an 8088 class system, and while it works I think it is a better idea to buy a proprietary controller instead. But, I think for your purpose, the SCSI floppy drive would be perfect. Perhaps a USB controller also exists.
 
I'm still using a Pentium running at 288 MHz, with a 3 gig disk (wow!). One of my friends has a PC with over 3 gigs of RAM, gee, that's my disk size.

Am I backward or just cheap because I won't spend money on a really serious system?
 
machine said:
I'm still using a Pentium running at 288 MHz, with a 3 gig disk (wow!). One of my friends has a PC with over 3 gigs of RAM, gee, that's my disk size.

Am I backward or just cheap because I won't spend money on a really serious system?
Click to expand...

Shoot, that thing I made up there (the AT in the picture) is only a Pentium III, and the only reasons for the upgrade were pretty ridiculous, The Sims, and Robot Arena. If not, I'd still have a Pentium 200 MMX with 64MB of EDO RAM. My mom has that with 128 MB of RAM instead of 64 and a 60 GB HDD.

I can't see how anyone under normal circumstances would need more than 15 GB. I've got a 40 GB drive, and I've only managed to use about 10% of it at the most multimedia heavy. I barely even break 3GB of disk space myself per partition. And that's WITH Linux RedHat 9.1 installed & Windows 98 SE.
 
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