RetroTech Chris Profile picture
Nov 18, 2024 11 tweets 6 min read Read on X
Let's have a look at some pictures I took at today's Washington DC Area retro meetup. I'll make a thread!

First, a Packard Bell Legend 100CD with some nice expansion, and an IBM PS/1. Also, a Compaq Portable 286, an IBM NetVista and Compaq Deskpro! Image
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Next, we have @retrobitstv who brought an EVO64 with TONS of cool sound options! Image
Next, we have a Replay 68060 from FPGAArcade. Yep, that's a real CPU in there. Very cool device. Image
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Next, we have some Amigas, featuring some reproduction hardware. Commodore was very well represented today! Image
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Apple II was in the house. We have a IIGS connected up via FujiNet and a very nice IIc Image
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Were there Macs? Oh you know it! Color Classics are awesome, as are Macintosh TVs. And there was a Macintosh Portable as well! Image
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Believe it or not, this Compaq LTE 5300 is not mine 😂 Image
An Acorn A4000. Paging @NoodlesTech 😂 Image
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@NoodlesTech An Apple Pippin running System 7.5.2, I believe! That's pretty cool. Image
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@NoodlesTech This MZ-700 is looking pretty Sharp 😂. And, look, an Atari STacy. No, it was not powered on. Image
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@NoodlesTech And finally we'll wrap with a TI99/4A, a Commodore VIC-20 and 64, and.. .a Vectrex!!

Lots to see at this regional meetup of ours. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

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More from @RetroTechChris

Jul 29
Yesterday I shared that I had put my Panasonic dot matrix printer on the network. Some people asked "how did you do that"? Well, I put together a tutorial for the interested! Time for a 🧵
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So, the first thing I did was to load the 64-bit version of Raspbian on the pi using the Raspberry Pi Imager. I gave the pi a hostname of "matrixpi", configured the WiFi, enabled SSH, and set a default login of "pi" with a password. Image
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Jul 26
I'm continuing my Micro SD Card "swapout" to reclaim some of my bigger cards with these smaller 32GB cards that I bought. Today's victims are my ITX Llama and the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B that puts my HP LaserJet 5L on the network. Let's talk about how it's going, time for a 🧵 Image
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First, we'll start with the ITX Llama. I took out the SD card from the motherboard and brought it to my modern system. Only one partition was showing though! So I booted the ITX Llama back up and adjusted what is currently visible from the boot manager. Okay, that's better! Image
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Oh, here is what FDISK shows after making that change! The "non DOS" partition is Windows 98, FAT32, which DOS 6.22 can't see Image
Read 9 tweets
Jul 26
I decided to round out the day with one final test... the Socket 7 motherboard that I got from the Retro Bits and Bytes Swap Meet. And I have good news to share. Time for a quick 🧵 Image
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This particular board is a Tomato TX98-3D. Did the fact that this board was labelled a "Tomato Board" encourage me to purchase it, even though I didn't really need it? Perhaps 😂 Image
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So, here we go, first power on! My POST card reader is looking good! I did have to choose the right speed in the BIOS, which is fine. And we can see that everything got detected nicely! Image
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Read 5 tweets
Jul 26
I picked up juuust a few items at last week's Retro Bits and Bytes Swap Meet here in Northern Virginia USA. Perhaps we can test a few of them, let's see how it goes! Are these new old stock floppy drives going to work? Let's find out! Time for a 🧵 Image
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So, first of all, we are need to need a test victim... erm... I mean a test harness... or a test machine. I think the Kehtron 486 DX/50 is the perfect candidate. It's been a little flaky recently though. I had to reseat the HDD/FDD controller to get it to boot! Image
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Let's begin our testing session with this beeeautiful Gateway 2000 keyboard. It works great! I took it downstairs and cleaned it up, and now not only does it work great, it also looks great! Image
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Jul 25
Most people in the retro PC world have heard of XTIDE, and many are now aware of PicoMEM, but have you heard of the XTMax? I recently learned about it, and decided to pick one up. Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here! Image
The XTMax was designed by Ted Fried (MicroCore Labs) and is an 8-bit software defined ISA card that expands RAM up to 640KB, adds 16MB of expanded memory, and provides bootable HDD-like access. It uses a Teensy 4.1. And yes, there is PicoMEM rivalry, more on that in a minute. Image
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Read 9 tweets
Jul 25
Recently I noticed my spare Micro SD cards stash was getting low. I got to thinking: I have a lot of devices that have much bigger cards than they need, so I bought a bunch of "cheaper" 32GB cards and looked at my retro devices to "reclaim" the bigger cards. Time for a 🧵 Image
First, I looked at my SCSI emulators... both my BlueSCSI and ZuluSCSI Blaster, but quickly realized they don't take Micro SD cards. Next 😂 Image
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I pulled out my WirSA modem, and SD2LPT (or whatever it is called) and downgraded both to 32GB cards! Same with my RGBtoHDMI Image
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Read 9 tweets

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