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

Apr 11
I don't think it's any secret that I collect Compaq LTE 5000 series laptops. Well, yesterday, I got a grail item in the mail: the Compaq MPEG and TV Video Adapter. This allows for MPEG playback as well as video output. Let's explore the MPEG capabilities a bit! Image
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First, why is this a grail item? It's because they are EXTREMELY rare. I do have a few other rare items, including a 3rd party Zip 100 drive, MultiBay Weight Saver (which I use to store spare parts apparently 😂), MultiBay HDD adapter, and laptop dock that takes ISA cards. Image
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Let's take a look at it from a few different angles. We can see it has options for video out and video in, including S-Video, RCA style jacks, and "headphone" style jacks. Wow!!! Image
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Apr 10
The time is nigh to discuss a tale of 4 eBay hard drives! We had some shipping perils, some DOA perils, and perhaps finally some success? Let's find out! 🧵time! Image
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So, let's start with the two drives in the first box. While the seller did issue a full refund, he "couldn't possibly imagine" that the drives were damaged in shipment. That makes the one of us 🤣 Image
Starting with the first drive, Western Digital Data Lifeguard found and fixed errors on one of the drives. Great! Image
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Read 11 tweets
Apr 5
Okay, let's look at one more retro item today: this ISA to USB interface card with an M-Systems Disk On Chip module! Can we use this little device to boot a computer? Absolutely! We'll test this out on the Pacman PC. Time for a 🧵 Image
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First, where did I get this, and what does it do? I picked this up from AliExpress, and this device basically lets you access USB drives from DOS systems. And it does support boot ROMs like the M-Systems Disk on Chip. We'll be using that today. Image
Let's look at some of the settings. We have a jumper to change the I/O address. Another jumper specifies 16 bit or 8 bit system. And the jumper in the middle? It's a mystery. The back of the board has some writing in Chinese that basically says "this end faces PC rear" Image
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Read 9 tweets
Apr 4
Recently I picked up this SMC network card, that supports network boot via a boot ROM. I spent some time with it, and we had some misadventures together. But it did give me a chance to test out my new POST card too. How could all of this be related? Time for a 🧵 Image
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First of all, let's take some time to admire the property sticker on the back! This card was allegedly property of America Online at some point 🤣 Image
Okay, so I got this SMC Ethercard Elite 8216T (say that five times fast) installed in my Pentium 233 MMX. I was able to pull up the boot ROM configuration page, but savings settings would freeze. That would be a bit of a metaphor for this card... Image
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Apr 4
Hooray, my PS/2 Model 70 386 is fixed! No more issues with the system freezing on powerup when a Microsoft mouse is plugged in. How did I fix it? Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here! Image
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In case you missed it, I recently got a device to display BIOS diagnostic codes on powerup, and we learned that the system was getting stuck when it was testing the keyboard controller:
So, what did I do? I went to eBay and found an untested motherboard. For $35, I was more than willing to take a gamble! Image
Read 8 tweets
Mar 31
My parallel port POST test card arrived today! Let's test out my IBM PS/2 Model 70 386 to see if we can figure out why it is not powering up when certain types of mice are plugged into it! Time for a quick 🧵 Image
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First, a little about the tester card. It's an AliExpress special. That said, it did get here pretty fast. I'm impressed! Image
Alright, first off, let's try this card out without a mouse plugged in. Looks like the system boots, and we land on code 0x6E. I found this awesome reference manual called The BIOS Companion, and it has this code listed as "Reset page register; boot up system". That tracks! Image
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Read 6 tweets

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