Let's explore my second $3.33 Packard Bell that I bought at the System Source Warehouse Sale on Saturday. This one is a Packard Bell Legend 2440 Pentium 75MHz system, and, well.. it had quite the transformation 😂 Let's talk about it in a 🧵
So... first.. this computer was EXTREMELY DIRTY. It had spent most of its life secondhand smoking, I think. That poor power supply and floppy drive 🤮🤮

I've really been meaning to dive into these two $3.33 Packard Bells since getting them on Saturday! Let's have a look at the one on the top, a Legend 11CD 486DX2/50 system. After some restoration, I'm in love with it 😂. Time for a quick 🧵
So, first, you can see from the into pic that this thing REALLY cleaned up nicely. It was kind of a mangled mess. My first attempt to fix the mangled metal was not the best way, but here it is. The case at least closed when I was done, but there is more work to do.

I recently bought this lot of drives from eBay for $15, namely because I thought the Zip drive was cool 😂. Let's test time out, and talk about one serious testing blunder I made, in a 🧵 here!

The first drive: NEC CD-3200A, a 52X drive, but without the typical goofy branding on the front. This drive was not closing right, so I opened it up and cleaned it out, and then tested it. Well, I should have put it back in its casing before testing. 12V to ground killed it.

I picked up a bunch of ESDI hard drives at the System Source Swap Meet. These were on the free pile! I figured at least one of them should work in my IBM PS/2 Model 70 386... well, perhaps. Let's find out! 🧵 time! First, we have to start with the base case. Will the system start up with my 60MB ESDI drive in it? Yes. Good! Carry on!!

I spent some time swapping around components and upgrading one of my new LTE Elite 4/50CX systems! Let's talk about it! Time for a quick 🧵 So, first of all, this system has a 486DX2/50 processor. But some of you might recall that I bought a parts system at the System Source Warehouse sale. It's in terrible shape. But.. it has a 486DX4/75 processor! I swapped it in, and now we're cooking with gas!

Well, after swapping parts around, I have four decent Armada 7700 series systems! They are not flawless, but some of them are actually pretty decent! Let's talk about this morning's adventure in a 🧵 here!

So, my primary goal was to load system setup on these and see what the specs are. I started with the floppy drive. But these have the dreaded Citizen W1D drives. Ugh. Luckily there is a solution!

I posted the first picture you see earlier in the day, and promised all of you an explanation. Well, I don't have one 🤣. So, I guess we can just test these Compaq laptops out instead. And... things are going well, except for a couple of my screwups. Time for a 🧵

Alright, here we go, all of the laptops on the desk. Yes, the one LTE Elite on the right is thrashed, I paid $3.33 for it, hoping to get some parts!

Alright, I'm back home from the System Source Swap Meet and Warehouse Sale. You might have seen my video clips earlier, let's post some pictures! Time for a 🧵
Check out this Power Macintosh in its original box. Now, based on what was in the warehouse, there was some stiff competition for this. I don't think it sold.

Recently I updated the BIOS on my Compaq LTE 5400 to support large hard drives. However, this ended up causing a few other issues I had to solve. Anyone remember battling with DOS conventional memory and dealing with driver issues? Well... here we go! 🧵 As I noted in the opening post, I upgraded the BIOS. This upgrade basically adds XTIDE to the system to support large hard drives. But, XTIDE is what is known as an option ROM. Which means that it is going to take a slice of the "upper memory area" in order to work.

If you know me, you know that I like retro connectivity! Recently I picked up this most excellent WiRSa v3 (WiFi to Serial Adapter) from RetroDisks. It provides many ways to get online. Let's go through them and talk about my experiences with this device in a 🧵 here!


So, first, from the first post, you saw a picture of the device. I pulled that from the GitHub page that explains how to use this thing. You can find it here: github.com/nullvalue0/WiR…

Can we add a 240 GB SSD to this Compaq LTE 5400 laptop from 1996 running Windows 95? Yes, yes we can, and it just got easier with a recent breakthrough! Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here!

Okay! So, here we have a proprietary laptop with a proprietary BIOS. But we also have a persistent enthusiast who added XTIDE support to the LTE 5000 series BIOS. Wow! You can read about that here: bachler.se/lte5000xtide/

I picked up some interface cards at VCF East, and also found a CD-ROM drive on the free pile. Let's give them a test! We'll use one of my 486 DX2/66 systems. Let's go! Time for a 🧵


We'll start out with the CD-ROM. Looks like this was in a Compaq originally (allegedly a Presario). It's a model CR-581-KCQ, which I think makes it a 4X Panasonic drive. Anyway, I popped in my GCW Companion CD, and the drive passed! Hooray!!

Let's explore this AT&T 6300 that I picked up from consignment at VCF East this weekend. It's going to go to a friend soon, but we can at least look at it first! Time for a 🧵 First of all, here it is with the cover removed. What a weird computer!! Two disk drives. Apparently the video card connects the top logic board with the motherboard below.

How about some more exhibit pictures from VCF East? Here we have a cool Commodore / Atari accessor, an Amiga featuring me (😂) and a really cool AT&T Unix system


There was a ham radio exhibit with a Win3.1 computer, and a block game on vintage hardware exhibit!!

Let's have a look at some items I've seen at VCF East consignment. I imagine this will be a 🧵, so here we go! First, a cheap dell laptop. A Google blade, and an expensive IBM AT 😅


Cisco Aironet 350 cards (I have plenty of these!). Zenith notebook. Some generic PCs

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!

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.

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!


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 🤣

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 🧵
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.

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 🧵
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 🤣

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!
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:

https://x.com/RetroTechChris/status/2038838390435578165

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 🧵
First, a little about the tester card. It's an AliExpress special. That said, it did get here pretty fast. I'm impressed!