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What do you use your old PC for?

Mainly retroprogramming. I tinker with making games for pre-Pentium DOS PCs, and even though I do most of the development on my modern PC and DOSBox, having actual hardware to test on is very helpful. I also have some games installed on my 486, but I usually use DOSBox for the really old stuff. My later retro PCs (a Pentium MMX and a P3 system, so not really 'vintage') are used to play Win95/98-era games that don't run well (or at all) on modern PCs.
 
My primary PC was a K6-2 or Celeron 400 up until 2015 or so,
I did everything from photoshop to small videos to a poetry/portrait business to old games
at that point all hacks and patches for internet support went down the toilet for Windows 9x
Couldn’t even make the webmail client work correctly, attachments in email seemed to be inop not long before.

I still struggled along in 2016 but we stopped the business so I didn’t have much reason to mess around in PC land.

I always kept a 5150 and some sort of 386/486/p60 machine for really old stuff (games mainly) and 5 1/4” disk support

And I used an upgraded 1980’s QLT Futura 100 right up into 2015 for a photo business as well.

Lots of family issues put an end to it,

Now I have a Win7 box I rarely touch and do most everything on a Mobil or tablet

I really would like to drag the vintage computer portrait booth out one last time but since it’s just me now it’s hard to find time to do

Ah well
 
I don't use any of my vintage equipment for anything useful. But I have friends who keep these things running for work. I think you'd be surprised at how old the equipment is and what they need to do to keep thing running.
 
I know someone who just spent over $10k on an XT compatible to keep an induction welder running.
 
I love to repair, setup, and play with different configurations. For the most part I only play games on them though. I did get to service a 486 system for a fellow that was using it to automate his HAM radio setup. He has specialized DOS software that operates the radio through a serial port.
 
KC9UDX said:
I know someone who just spent over $10k on an XT compatible to keep an induction welder running.
Click to expand...

Sounds about right. There are businesses all over the place which are using 70s/80s/90s metal working equipment, etc. which have ancient PC systems running them and suppliers itching to unload NoS parts to keep them running for eye watering prices.

Though I always wondered if you could get away with replacing the guts with like a slow 486SX and turn the cache off to make it even slower, assuming it used ISA cards and not a proprietary motherboard.
 
I've done that.

Yes there are proprietary motherboards with unusual interfaces (but those are rare). Also there are many times when the vendor has a proprietary ISA card, and will only sell the whole computer with the card. I've seen a lot of computers with proprietary (not MSDOS etc compatible) BIOS chips, too. Most of the time not only can't you buy the BIOS chip, but usually the manufacturer insists that the whole motherboard is proprietary when really only that chip is.
 
I have a DTS sound system for a 35mm projector which has a 486DLC and a proprietary BIOS like that. It looks like a normal motherboard with ISA slots, but only works with the proprietary decoder cards and SCSI controller that came with it.

If you try to put a video card in it, the system won't even power on.
 
One of my clients works in the medical field. He maintains X-Ray radiation generators that are over 30 years old, run iRMX and are accessed via 1.2M floppy drives. He occasionally asks me to make him some new diagnostic floppy disks when the older ones that he uses to maintain these machines get flakey.
 
I'm currently putting together a 486 which I will be trying to make as much use of as possible. Firstly, the 486 was the first PC I had as a kid, so, I will of course load it up with games. Some of the other things I will be using it for will be the internet with a text browser, which if it works, I will probably use a fair bit to do some reading. I also want to make use of Qbasic. I used to play with that a lot as a kid and am hoping that my own kid might be interested in playing around it as well.
 
Playing retro games. Played WarCraft today with nullmodem. Working on setting up two PCs to play Command & Conquer. My Digital Starion 200i does not run C&C unfortunately.
 
PeterLI said:
Playing retro games. Played WarCraft today with nullmodem. Working on setting up two PCs to play Command & Conquer. My Digital Starion 200i does not run C&C unfortunately.
Click to expand...

is there a modern port of command and conquer (the original) that doesnt use dosbox or some other emulation. I used to love the original but I know it doesnt run well on new systems.
 
As far as old PCs go I have an 8mhz XT 8088, 80286-12, and 1 486 PC, IBM 486 laptop, Compaq 486 portable and a K6-2 PC. All have at least VGA and a NIC. All have TCPIP and can access the internet including the XT and 286. I really just enjoy building them up and playing some games on them etc. No 386, I have the parts but I never saw a reason to build one again. I have a bunch of other various PCs/laptops but they are newer. I think I get the most enjoyment upgrading them to the max and seeing what they can do just for the fun of it.
 
Are we now referring to vintage computers as our "old PC"? I thought this thread was about our computers that are no longer our current driver.
 
For vintage PC's I have three....

A Tandy 1000 - which I mostly just use for old DOS games though occasionally I like to use it to test out stuff I dabble with in AGIStudio and CIA (Create Interactive Adventures)

A 286 - I like that one for more of the mid-80's-early 90's games, and when I have the time I'll be debugging the Memory Address/IRQ/DMA on it for conflicts because I upgraded it to SCSI months ago and have a conflict with my sound card

Then there's my 486 which is my 24/7 second-driver which still sees a lot of use. Right now I'm trying to fix file sharing on it's Windows For Workgroups 3.11 installation though. I'm also trying to create some games on it in Klik N' Play, Adventure Game Studio, AGIStudio, and a few other old game engine creator type programs. I also do some NES ROM Hacking on it once in awhile still. More recently I started experimenting with using it as a Digital Audio Workstaiton under Windows 95 using an old copy of Cakewalk that was one of the first to have digital audio - surprisingly it's fast enough to deal with it. Already have 2-3 tracks of music I've recorded down on that machine. Honestly, if I ever hohned down to one vintage computer - the 486 would be the one I'd keep.
 
Games. Photoshop, ACDsee, Corel Draw, Turbo Pascal. Playnig games on any machine from 286 and higher, editing photos and making poster on and machine from 486DX2/66 or Centris 650 and higher in Photoshop and CorelDraw. Also learning Pascal on a 286. Even my 8-bit KAypro 10 I hope to use to learn programming for ancient systems.
 
I maintain and use a 386 to image old software in my collection. I have my whole software collection imaged. I can back up the directory that holds my images in my 386 by using a modern Win10 machine to copy that directory over the network. From there a copy is place on a USB flash drive. The 386 has 1-360K FD, 1-1.2M FD, 1-720K, 1-1.44M FD and a CD-ROM reader.

My non vintage computers AT computers are Tyan S1564D installed in a IBM 5160 case and a Tyan S1830S considered the fastest and one of the last AT motherboards, used for programming in Clipper 5.3 and gaming. It uses a removable drive and runs several operating systems.

framer
 
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