Some of you #RetroComputing folks might remember this from about a month ago, when I found a huge cache of vintage tech stuff in a dumpster. One of the items I rescued was a really neat old minitower PC - it’s time to check it out!
I’ll be testing it alongside this sweet @IBM “G78” 17” CRT monitor I found a few days ago, in the same pile that contained the pretty iMac G3 I tweeted about a couple hours ago
Along with being somewhat dirty, this PC has some really interesting handwritten tags on the front and back. Apparently it was known as “Spidey” and is also tagged “Hong Kong” and “South China Morning Post.” Maybe it was used in a newspaper office?
I love the little flip-cover that’s attached to the faceplate, protecting the Power button from accidental presses (but amusingly, not the Turbo or Reset buttons). These kinds of PC accessories used to be on random store shelves everywhere when I was a kid!
Here’s a look at the rear of the machine. Looks like we have some typical mid-90’s PC Cards here, likely a SoundBlaster (or compatible) audio card, some kind of VGA board at the bottom, and parallel / serial ports. I’m curious what the tape drive is connected to!
Look closer at those pics of the back of the machine… notice anything missing?
That’s right - there’s no screws to remove the case!
Getting the case open requires pulling the faceplate of the machine straight off the front, revealing the case-screws that would more commonly be found on the rear. Neat!
A closer look at yet another hand-written note, this time carefully taped to the inside of the case. Looks like drive details for the pair of IDE hard disks in the machine. Looks like the C: drive is ~2.1GB, while the D: drive is ~1.2GB. Pretty spacious by mid-90’s standards!
Finally getting my first good look inside the machine. Other than the typical dust-bunnies and cobwebs, it’s remarkably clean, and shows good cable-management for a machine of this era. Love all the handwritten notes everywhere - this was clearly a well-loved / important machine!
More positive signs: the BIOS battery looks fully intact, with no signs of acid leakage or corrosion. As a wise person says constantly, GET THE DAMN BATTERIES OUT
Anyone wanna hazard a guess as to what CPU is tucked away under this little cooler and fan?
It’s kinda cramped in here, but I’m getting a first look at the markings on the VGA card, and it looks to be a Diamond Stealth64 VLB card! Can’t say I’m familiar with this card/chipset - anyone know if it’s good for DOS #gaming?
Okay, I’ve blown out most of the dust and cobwebs, hooked the PC up to the monitor, found an old @IBM#MechanicalKeyboard that fits the “AT” style socket on the PC motherboard… it’s the moment of truth. WILL THE MACHINE POWER UP? DOES THE SIDEWALK MONITOR WORK??
The good news: THE DISPLAY WORKS AND THE PC POWERED UP!!
The less-good news: looks like the BIOS battery is long dead (no surprise), and it *does not* like this ancient IBM keyboard - it’s emitting an ear-shattering tone from the speaker and giving keyboard errors. Progress!!
Whelp, I think this is as far as I can go tonight - without a compatible keyboard I can’t proceed past the Power-On Self Test (“POST”) errors, but honestly I’m super happy. The machine is in better shape than it might’ve been, and the display is sharp and bright. Awesome!
I think I may have another “AT” style keyboard stashed in my storage locker, so hopefully I can give this another try in the next few days. Stay tuned for more updates 😊👍
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SCAM ALERT: I was trying to sell a mattress box-spring set on Facebook Marketplace, and I just dodged a scammer using a trick I hadn’t seen before. A short thread follows 🧵 1/7
First clue: the person contacted me by Facebook Messenger but their FB profile was completely blank - no pic, no biographical info, nothing other than a name. Not a 100% dealbreaker, but kinda suspicious. 2/7
Second clue: they asked me to text their phone rather than using Facebook Messenger - again, not a 100% lock for scammer, but a red flag. 3/7
In Jan. 1997 I was 15 and obsessed with computers. My family happened to be in San Francisco and we drove by Moscone Center where I saw banners proclaiming that MacWorld Expo was happening. The pic is me around that time 🙂
I made a sign on a pizza box reading "SPARE MACWORLD PASS?" I only stood outside for ~10 minutes before a nice woman in a business suit gave me her pass and said "tell anyone who questions you that I'm your mom!" I went in and spent a joyful day exploring the exhibit hall.
1997 was a tumultuous time in @apple's history and for the #Mac / #macOS platform, as evidenced by San Francisco being blanketed in militaristic / revolutionary posters defending the small (but feisty!) ecosystem of Mac clones
Short Thread: *Beyond* excited: with some crazy luck, I found an unused DataRover 840. This was (I think) the only commercially-released hardware actually sold by #GeneralMagic, the folks behind the wildly-inventive Magic Cap Operating System. @generalmagicmov#retrocomputing
As if finding an unused & functional DataRover wasn't awesome enough, this one came with the difficult-to-find proprietary serial cable, which means it's theoretically possible that I'll be able to connect this to one of my mid-90s-era computers to sync data + install apps
It's also possible that the same cable will work with my other #MagicCap device, the Sony PIC-1000, which would be really cool
[Short thread] So my 9yo kid has recently become aware of the vague concept of "hackers" and "hacking things," likely via word-of-mouth from school-mates who've been sucked into some weird YouTube channels.
Since he sees me working from home regularly in my role as a Sales Engineer with a cloud security company, he then quickly reached the conclusion that I must be a hacker. I did not disabuse him of this notion, despite my total lack of any real hacking skills 😅
He has spent the past few days asking if I would "show him how to hack something." Given that he's 9 and has lived his entire life in a touch-enabled, iPad-centric world, I had to put some thought into how I was gonna approach this.