creepingnet
Veteran Member
Been awhile, though probably not as long as thought....
Picked up another LCD flatscreen, this time a 14", and a 4 port switch for the man cave closet rig.
The closet rig is how I will currently be working with my vintage computer gear. I am now down to 4 machines that can be classified as "vintage", 3 PCs, one Mac.
Man, my Fiancee was shocked at how cool everything was when I put it all together, we are the vintage electronics couple after-all, who else owns and still uses a 4 head VCR and a LaserDisc player?
The next thing will be some tweaks to each individual PC...
XT - Just needs audio, my solution will likely be same as the 286, I wired up a mono jack to the internal speaker after looping the internal speaker output on the motherboard through the SoundBlaster card (old SoundBlasters have an input for the internal speaker). After that. the rest is all software, mostly just rebuilding the networking. I plan to feature full stereo though, I feel an order of new internal speakers is in order.
286 - The prototypical internal speaker setup will be replaced with something more...err..permanent....and Stereo. Then it's all a matter of EQing everything in software and things should be pretty killer. Other than that, the ol' GEM is pretty much trouble free.
486 - Ah yes, the brat of the group. Having VLB video card problems again, not sure if it's a timing issue between the KVM, the LCD, or if it's just yet another dying VLB card. I'm open to suggestions. I really want to find something along the lines of a 3D card. I will try reseating it first though, however, the issues only start after DOS has loaded...so go figure. It's also getting the internal stereo audio card mod to it as well. Anything that keeps me from having to setup more wires makes me happy.
The only thing left to do for the frame of things is the networking....which is kind of tricky. Already ran a network cable over to the man cave, it's roughly about 30 feet (two 15 foot cables linked together) and stealthly hidden along the wallboards. then that runs into a 48 port switch, which then will split off into the 5 port switch that I will be using for the old boxes (unless the switch I picked up is one of the rare gigabit variety, which then means I will swap the switches).
After this all I need to do is toss another SATA drive (1TB should do) on the Dell I use for recording and setup some shares the old DOS boxes and pull programs from on it. That might take awhile as I'll basically be pulling all the crap I archive on my dual core to the Dell. But I figure, when it's not crunching guitar, bass, and synth tracks, then it can act as file storage for the household.
Picked up another LCD flatscreen, this time a 14", and a 4 port switch for the man cave closet rig.
The closet rig is how I will currently be working with my vintage computer gear. I am now down to 4 machines that can be classified as "vintage", 3 PCs, one Mac.
Man, my Fiancee was shocked at how cool everything was when I put it all together, we are the vintage electronics couple after-all, who else owns and still uses a 4 head VCR and a LaserDisc player?
The next thing will be some tweaks to each individual PC...
XT - Just needs audio, my solution will likely be same as the 286, I wired up a mono jack to the internal speaker after looping the internal speaker output on the motherboard through the SoundBlaster card (old SoundBlasters have an input for the internal speaker). After that. the rest is all software, mostly just rebuilding the networking. I plan to feature full stereo though, I feel an order of new internal speakers is in order.
286 - The prototypical internal speaker setup will be replaced with something more...err..permanent....and Stereo. Then it's all a matter of EQing everything in software and things should be pretty killer. Other than that, the ol' GEM is pretty much trouble free.
486 - Ah yes, the brat of the group. Having VLB video card problems again, not sure if it's a timing issue between the KVM, the LCD, or if it's just yet another dying VLB card. I'm open to suggestions. I really want to find something along the lines of a 3D card. I will try reseating it first though, however, the issues only start after DOS has loaded...so go figure. It's also getting the internal stereo audio card mod to it as well. Anything that keeps me from having to setup more wires makes me happy.
The only thing left to do for the frame of things is the networking....which is kind of tricky. Already ran a network cable over to the man cave, it's roughly about 30 feet (two 15 foot cables linked together) and stealthly hidden along the wallboards. then that runs into a 48 port switch, which then will split off into the 5 port switch that I will be using for the old boxes (unless the switch I picked up is one of the rare gigabit variety, which then means I will swap the switches).
After this all I need to do is toss another SATA drive (1TB should do) on the Dell I use for recording and setup some shares the old DOS boxes and pull programs from on it. That might take awhile as I'll basically be pulling all the crap I archive on my dual core to the Dell. But I figure, when it's not crunching guitar, bass, and synth tracks, then it can act as file storage for the household.