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I rarely dive into the individual forum categories. I just click on "What's new" and then read any thread that catches my interest, regardless of where it was posted.

Which version? I never had a problem running IBM Diagnostics on a generic clone. In fact, aftermarket VGA cards all have "IBM" in their BIOS to make sure it would pass IBM's VGA diagnostics.

I fully understand that, having used a typewriter that was missing the 1 and 0 keys because it expected l and O to serve double-purpose. But virtually every computer manual from the late '70s to early '90s stressed the importance of not mixing up these characters, because when the computer is...

The use of the same character for the number 1 and lowercase letter l is quite surprising to me. I wonder if the software for it was designed to interpret any accidental keypress of a lowercase l in a numerical field as the number 1? Because the operator wouldn't be able to tell the difference...

"Vintage Computer Federation" is a registered trademark, but not VCF: https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=97448623&caseSearchType=US_APPLICATION&caseType=DEFAULT&searchType=statusSearch

Since VCF is a 501(c)3 that is collecting monetary donations and enjoying tax benefits, I think there needs to be more accountability and less finger-pointing. If the excuse is that there are people and events using the VCF name without having any official association with the non-profit...

Rather than blaming him for the "failed" donation, it should have either been politely refused to begin with, or if VCF could no longer safely store it, then he should have been the first person contacted to ask if he wanted it back before it was divvied up and/or discarded. If he then said...

Isn't that a Windows 3.0 box that someone put a 3.1 sticker on? The screenshot shows Reversi, which was replaced by Minesweeper in 3.1.

Did you reflow all of the solder joints going to the flyback? Thermal cycling often causes them to crack loose from the board.

Here's how mine looked:

High-density floppy disks, as well as chrome and metal formulation audio and videotapes, will require longer to fully erase than what the manual recommends. I discovered that it takes quite a while to completely erase a Metal Evaporated MiniDV videotape:

That's a Cyrix 486SRx², which was designed to clip on top of a 386SX CPU. It's a clock-doubled 486SLC with a 1 kB internal cache. But note the disclaimer: "386-SX16 MHz computers manufactured before 1991 are not electrically compatible with Cyrix's 486SRx² upgrade"...

My own IBM 8513 also had quite a lot of border area... except in 650x350 EGA mode, which was vertically stretched and nearly filled the full height of the screen. It was like that since the monitor was new.

In 1988, NEC got slapped by the Federal Trade Commission for "unfair and deceptive practices" because they advertised the PC-8001A computer as having 32K of RAM expandable to 160K, while only a programmer who wrote their own code could access the RAM above 64K, and there were no operating...

Also add T2 to the end of the BLASTER variable if it is the original SB Pro with dual OPL2 chips, or T4 if it is the SB Pro 2 with a single OPL3 chip. And some helpful advice here: https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2010/06/issues-with-sound-blasters.html

So it only works with the original TV it came with? It probably uses the typical "Pong on a chip" IC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AY-3-8500

I have had floppy disks that formatted with bad sectors, which then magically disappeared after erasing them with a bulk tape eraser.

Do you have the turbo switch turned off or not connected? Some 486 boards run at about the speed of an 8 MHz 286 unless you have a turbo button connected and turned on, or put a jumper on the turbo switch jumpers.

I see 1987 date codes. That was pretty early to have much of the logic integrated into a single surface-mount chip.

I see it solves the "XT slot 8" problem by not having one. :)