What retro things have you done today?

Soldato
Joined
23 May 2016
Posts
3,727
Location
North Essex
Been following this ever since it got listed at £500 buy it now.. (Not an asking price but seller said they were waiting for offers..)
It got put on auction instead recently and I grabbed it.. Made some stupid 486 purchases in the last 2 weeks and potentially lost a few £ (Which hasnt happened to me much to be fair!) so hopefully this is the end to that search :D


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-...=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Aug 2003
Posts
37,506
Location
Leafy Cheshire
Long time no post, grabbed a CoolerMaster ATCS-620-BX1 from eBay the other day for a whopping £26, boxed (complete with a S775 system based on the Asus P5B, that'll go in the bin - Unless anyone wants me to send it them?). Wanted a black desktop form factor case that could more aesthetically fit in with the rest of my modern systems, that way I can keep it out and it not look odd. Still need to decide what's going into it, Baby-AT or MATX both fit (baby-AT with some fettling), possibly my Super Socket 7 machine.

Anyway, that's now 4 CoolerMaster ATCS cases in the collection, ATCS-201-SXK, ATCS-210-AX1, ATCS-111C-SX1 and now the ATCS-620-BX1:

atcs-620-bx1-1.jpg


atcs-620-bx1-2.jpg


atcs-620-bx1-3.jpg
 
Soldato
Joined
23 May 2016
Posts
3,727
Location
North Essex
Great pick guys. That Dell 486 looks lovely @LewisRaz It's a DX2 66?
All indications make it seem like a DX2 66! Will have to wait and see. The seller has not powered it on which is ominous but as long as there is no major damage anywhere then caps etc can be replaced so I am hopeful. It still has the original Dell packaging which is great too.

@paradigm that case looks nice. Would make a great HTPC kinda looks like an old VCR
 
Caporegime
Joined
26 Aug 2003
Posts
37,506
Location
Leafy Cheshire
Soldato
Joined
23 May 2016
Posts
3,727
Location
North Essex
I would have grabbed it instantly but have just spent most of my play money on that Dell and also lost a week from work isolating because of some hero who came in positive and triggered a bunch of peoples NHS apps. Someone got a bargain there for sure! Shame it wasnt anyone from here
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Jul 2004
Posts
3,268
Location
Thunderdome
I would love that Dell CRT to match my Dell P90.

This weekend, the retro desk was set up for my Amiga 1200.

Screenshot-20210113-195506.png


The South West Amiga meet would have been in January, so this was a tribute to that.

That looks in great condition. Funnily enough I was toying with setting mine up today! I need to send it off to be recapped but I've been procrastinating - it's my pride and joy and I don't relished risking it with couriers/postal system.

The plan is to recap and then transfer into my new CD32 case (A1200.net). Still waiting on my new keycaps however. In the meantime I need to decide if I'm going to replace the disk drive with a Gotek.

Any plans for yours?
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Nov 2005
Posts
3,025
Location
Swindon, UK
It's had a good life. :p

It's got an ACA 1211 accelerator card with all features unlocked.

A compact flash drive with loads of WHD Load games and software.

It's hooked up to the internet.

I've got an Iomega zip drive, video digitiser, hand-pull scanner.

It makes a cameo appearance on a few of the South West Amiga meet YouTube Videos including ones from RMC.

I did the Gotek thing and then reverted back to a floppy drive.

As far as recapping goes, you should be able to just send the motherboard off if you wanted.
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Jul 2004
Posts
3,268
Location
Thunderdome
Indeed, I could just send the motherboard. I’ll have a think about that.

I have an ACA1233n and the obligatory CF card. That has keep me going for ages.

Interesting that you reverted back to the floppy drive, I think I’ll hang on for now. I was thinking about a vampire, but tbh it does everything I want already.
 
Soldato
Joined
7 Feb 2004
Posts
8,110
Location
North East
I don't think I need to make a thread here as well as Vogons but I've been keeping myself out of trouble by benchmarking a bunch of Socket 775 CPUs (that are not particularly retro but still...)

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=78681

It would be interesting to see whether the Extreme Editions were worth the ridiculous price. IIRC one of the Celeron Ds (quick google suggests maybe Cedar Mill chips?) was an overclocking monster from a value for money perspective at the time.

I know it's a bit earlier, but if you do similar with s478, it would also be interesting to revisit the Pentium M chips and ITX boards that came out around this time (Banias/Dothan... so around 2004?). They didn't seem to get much traction outside of overlcocking experiments iirc, but without the constraints of a laptop they were quite fast for the time if i recall. It took a couple of years for intel to develop these into the Core/Core2 lines. Intel might have taken the crown from AMD much earlier if they didn't persevere with netburst so long! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M I don't know how available these will be as they weren't exactly common at the time.
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Nov 2005
Posts
3,025
Location
Swindon, UK
Indeed, I could just send the motherboard. I’ll have a think about that.

I have an ACA1233n and the obligatory CF card. That has keep me going for ages.

Interesting that you reverted back to the floppy drive, I think I’ll hang on for now. I was thinking about a vampire, but tbh it does everything I want already.

I didn't know about the A1200 Vampire. Impressive.

With regards to the Gotek, the CF drive does everything I personally need. There's something about originality in having the floppy drive. I can transfer files over the network to the A1200 and I have the 'SuperDrive' hardware where you can write amiga images from the 'net back to a floppy drive.

I bought the bits to connect my Gotek to the external floppy drive port if needed. But so far, I haven't needed to.

I bought the Philips monitor 2 years ago. The power button as given up, so I have to hold it in with a paper-clip. I just haven't got the skills, tools or time to do the whole power button replacement thing, so a paper clip will do!

Reminiscing about the Meet up. This was my Amiga demonstrating the Amiga Genlock capabilities:

Amiga-Video-Capture.png


My in-laws were chucking out a couple of 4:3 CRT TVs from their garage last year, and I have 2 x 4:3 multisync vga monitors so I have some options for screen-display.

TVPic.png


@almoststew1990 I don't put that much effort into anything in life, let alone benchmarking retro hardware. Well done! :p
 
Soldato
Joined
23 May 2016
Posts
3,727
Location
North Essex
I don't think I need to make a thread here as well as Vogons but I've been keeping myself out of trouble by benchmarking a bunch of Socket 775 CPUs (that are not particularly retro but still...)

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=78681

Thats a lot of work done there!

775 has to be one of the best sockets.. Still usable to this day.. Single core all the way to quads.. IDE - SATA.. AGP -PCIe
 
Back
Top Bottom