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New Member | Attended Swap meet!

haxername

haxername

Member
Joined
Feb 21, 2022
Messages
43
Location
NYC
Hey everyone! I just recently joined and am getting into the vintage computer community. I've been pretty active in the IRC chat over the last week and the people over there have been awesome.

I was getting my vintage tech from Ebay, but had the great opportunity to go to the swap meet for like an hour. It was awesome, got to talk with a lot of people, learn from them as well as purchase exactly what I was looking for. My systems are not fully working, but I am so excited to be working on them and documenting the process.

Super excited to continnue being a part of this amazing community :)
 
ST251 said:
Hello and welcome. What systems did you get?
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Thank you!

I picked up an IBM PS/2 Model 90. Its got the SX Processor, fully kitted out system memory, and an internet card! Floppy drive doesn't work though and the hard drive seems to be blank so thats fun.

Also got a Macintosh Performa 6200CD. Apparently it has a ton of cool software on it and works fine. I have to purchase video/input cables for that.

Was gonna grab more but ran out of time and had to rush home.
 
haxername said:
Thank you!

I picked up an IBM PS/2 Model 90. Its got the SX Processor, fully kitted out system memory, and an internet card! Floppy drive doesn't work though and the hard drive seems to be blank so thats fun.

Also got a Macintosh Performa 6200CD. Apparently it has a ton of cool software on it and works fine. I have to purchase video/input cables for that.

Was gonna grab more but ran out of time and had to rush home.
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those are some nice bits of kit there. hopefully they were reasonably priced.

I'm going to assume the PS/2's hard drive is SCSI? Any idea what may be wrong with the floppy drive?
 
ST251 said:
those are some nice bits of kit there. hopefully they were reasonably priced.

I'm going to assume the PS/2's hard drive is SCSI? Any idea what may be wrong with the floppy drive?
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Yes! So the hard drive is SCSI, the floppy drive seems to work up until its supposed to boot. Then nothing. Not only do the PS/2's have notoriously faulty floppy drives. To quote even Wikipedia : "As the hardware aged the drives often malfunctioned due to bad quality capacitors." I want to recap them but will first do a lot of practice.
 
haxername said:
Yes! So the hard drive is SCSI, the floppy drive seems to work up until its supposed to boot. Then nothing. Not only do the PS/2's have notoriously faulty floppy drives. To quote even Wikipedia : "As the hardware aged the drives often malfunctioned due to bad quality capacitors." I want to recap them but will first do a lot of practice.
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Do you have any other computer with an SCSI adapter?

Depending on where you are, if you have the capacitors on hand and you don't mind shipping the drive, I'd do it for just the cost of shipping it back. Soldering isn't part of my profession but I do a fair bit of it.
 
ST251 said:
Do you have any other computer with an SCSI adapter?

Depending on where you are, if you have the capacitors on hand and you don't mind shipping the drive, I'd do it for just the cost of shipping it back. Soldering isn't part of my profession but I do a fair bit of it.
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No other computers with SCSI unfortunately. And that's a very kind proposition. I'm in NYC, let me get my hands on the capacitors and then I'll follow up? :)
 
haxername said:
No other computers with SCSI unfortunately. And that's a very kind proposition. I'm in NYC, let me get my hands on the capacitors and then I'll follow up? :)
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Well there goes the "copy files onto the drive" plan.

Sure, and oh wow, I'm in NYC as well.
 
ST251 said:
Well there goes the "copy files onto the drive" plan.

Sure, and oh wow, I'm in NYC as well.
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Yea I had that in mind, but even adapters are getting expensive! I was thinking of doing a SCA to IDE adapter, (I was recommended SCSATOSD but its like 100$ right now).

Had I known what I spare parts would be helpfull I would have grabbed something from the Swap Meet but at that point I had no idea what was going on or what to look for.
 
haxername said:
Yea I had that in mind, but even adapters are getting expensive! I was thinking of doing a SCA to IDE adapter, (I was recommended SCSATOSD but its like 100$ right now).

Had I known what I spare parts would be helpfull I would have grabbed something from the Swap Meet but at that point I had no idea what was going on or what to look for.
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There's always the cheaper option of getting a PCI SCSI adapter. They're relatively cheap on eBay
 
haxername said:
My IBM PC 340 has a pci slot I think.

Edit: It has 3 of them :)
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Well if you're impatient like I am lol and don't want to wait for the floppy drive to be fixed, you could always buy a PCI SCSI adapter and move the hard drive between the two PCs
 
ST251 said:
Well if you're impatient like I am lol and don't want to wait for the floppy drive to be fixed, you could always buy a PCI SCSI adapter and move the hard drive between the two PCs
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I think I am that impatient, but I wanna do this right. But I'll still get all the required parts. A PS/Valuepoint just came in that I bought (Not working/for parts) and it fully works, floppy, HDD, everything :) So I think that will take some of my time.
 
haxername said:
I think I am that impatient, but I wanna do this right. But I'll still get all the required parts. A PS/Valuepoint just came in that I bought (Not working/for parts) and it fully works, floppy, HDD, everything :) So I think that will take some of my time.
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Heh, I didn't mean get the card in lieu of fixing the drive, I meant do both.

Glad to hear that Valuepoint worked out. You're really raking in the systems, huh lol

I need another project myself. There's nothing left to do to my 5160
 
haxername said:
Ill admit I got carried away. BUT they were really good deals 😅


How do you like the 5160? And what did you do with it?
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Hey listen, if you have the room and the money, I say try to save old technology

I like it a lot. As for what I've done to it, I changed out the one half height 360k drive for a full height IBM drive, it has a working 40MB Plus hardcard, original 20MB MFM drive, AST SixPakPlus card with an additional 64KB of RAM for a total of 576KB and a CGA/EGA/VGA card. I also installed DOS 6.22.

What do you have planned for your collection?
 
ST251 said:
Hey listen, if you have the room and the money, I say try to save old technology
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Yea! I really want to save it, and keep them too. Each system has a lot of history, both with the technical developments it brought and the things it enabled individuals to do. As well as the personal history with the previous owner!
ST251 said:
I like it a lot. As for what I've done to it, I changed out the one half height 360k drive for a full height IBM drive, it has a working 40MB Plus hardcard, original 20MB MFM drive, AST SixPakPlus card with an additional 64KB of RAM for a total of 576KB and a CGA/EGA/VGA card. I also installed DOS 6.22.
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Honestly I was born in the 2000's, so I never worked with DOS before. But I have been getting into it lately. Also put DOS 6.22 on one of my systems, so im getting practice. Do the upgrades cause a noticeable difference?
ST251 said:
What do you have planned for your collection?
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For now I am developing a simple OS in assembly and just want to work on it with these systems :) I do want to continue with IBM systems, and have a bunch of them that are unique (I love the look). I really got inspired by LGRs videos.

I wouldnt mind putting out some content either and sharing the systems with the internet.
 
haxername said:
Yea! I really want to save it, and keep them too. Each system has a lot of history, both with the technical developments it brought and the things it enabled individuals to do. As well as the personal history with the previous owner!

Honestly I was born in the 2000's, so I never worked with DOS before. But I have been getting into it lately. Also put DOS 6.22 on one of my systems, so im getting practice. Do the upgrades cause a noticeable difference?

For now I am developing a simple OS in assembly and just want to work on it with these systems :) I do want to continue with IBM systems, and have a bunch of them that are unique (I love the look). I really got inspired by LGRs videos.

I wouldnt mind putting out some content either and sharing the systems with the internet.
Click to expand...

It's a shame that a lot of people forget exactly how we got to the technology we have today and take it for granted.

I'm a byproduct of the 90s myself so I'm not that far behind. What upgrades do you mean?

Oh, so you're an aspiring programmer? I don't have the patience for that kind of stuff and it's great that there are people who do :p

I'd love to get a PS/2 like the one I used to mess around with but the recent popularity of them has put them way outside my price range, so I guess using one again will have to remain a pipe dream lol

Go for it. I wish I could show off my collection in videos but I'm one of those camera shy people.
 
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