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 🧵

First and foremost, let's talk about the hardware. I chose to use a Raspberry Pi 3 that I had sitting in a drawer. I also have this Sabrent USB to Parallel cable as well, which you can find for pretty cheap if needed! I'll used a 32GB MicroSD card for the Pi

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 🧵

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!

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 🧵
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 😂

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 🧵
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!

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! 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.

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 🧵 First, I looked at my SCSI emulators... both my BlueSCSI and ZuluSCSI Blaster, but quickly realized they don't take Micro SD cards. Next 😂

Since people have been asking forever, I finally decided to give ReactOS a try! Let's...see...how...it...went. Buckle up, things are about to get a little chaotic. Time for a looong 🧵 So, first of all, I decided to go with the nightly debug version, so take that for what it is worth! Second, I promise I am not being critical, what has been done here represents a lot of great work, and the software is still considered to be alpha.

Over the years, I've been a huge fan of XTIDE and the capabilities it has brought to retro PCs. Let's have a look at some of the XTIDE related hardware I have in my collection, and what I have done with the XTIDE Universal BIOS as well. Time for a 🧵


First, I imagine that many retro enthusiasts are familiar with it, but the XTIDE Universal BIOS is actively developed and offered at no cost to the retro community. If you haven't seen it before, you can read more about it here: xtideuniversalbios.org

I've been playing around with my SCSI emulators, in particular, the wireless networking on them a bit. I think we have done this before, but it's been a hot minute, so let's talk about it anyway 😂. Time for a 🧵
So, first of all, these SCSI emulators (BlueSCSI V2 and ZuluSCSI Blaster) were predominantly designed for Macintosh systems, which also tended to use DayaPort SCSI network cards like this one here.

No need to adjust your television set, I promise you are not seeing double! But the error message on the screen is a "clue" as to why I now have two IBM PS/2 Model 30 286 systems. Let's talk about what I did this time... I guess we need to do a 🧵 Well, first, let's clean up the new one. Oh boy, it is ever dirty!! Here's a before an after... I failed at getting a clear after picture. Sorry, no refunds 🤣

Let's do a factory restore on this Packard Bell Multimedia 601. It's a Pentium 233MMX system. I've got some things on the table to help us out with the process. Let's explore a bit. Time for a 🧵

First and foremost, we're going to need a Master CD. Which one? Well, recently I found an eBay listing with some "System Credentials" that match my PC. And I saved them off for this very reason! We can grab 175710-05 from the Internet Archive and get this going!

I've got one of my Tandy 1000 SX systems on the desk, let's check out some of the PicoMEM 2 capabilities on it! Time to get it installed. Let's explore together in a 🧵 here!
First, we'll see that we're doing a good job of using up the expansion slots in this beast 😂. Oh, and before I forget, when installing any PicoMEM in a Tandy 1000, you do have to update the configuration and add Tandy to it!

I decided to play with Tandy 3-voice sound on the PicoMEM 2 today. There's a bit of a nuance with using Tandy sound on non Tandys, but this is a problem that has been solved. Let's explore a bit in a 🧵 here!
First of all, the PicoMEM 2 does a FANTASTIC job at emulating Tandy sound. You can go into configuration and set the appropriate port settings, or you can use the "PMINIT" program to initialize whatever you need! I am just going to set the settings via the configuration util.

I've been playing with the PicoMEM 2 today. I love it! I've been using my Packard Bell Multimedia 601 Pentium PC to test it, but this will work with 8 bit PCs as well. Let's look at sound (including Gravis!), HDD, wireless network, and real time clock capabilities! Time for a 🧵

First of all, if you are not familiar with PicoMEM, it's an amazing little all in one card that brings you lots of capabilities. This card will be available for sale soon I believe. The functionality is strong and capable. You can read more about it here: github.com/FreddyVRetro/I…

I picked up this parallel to IDE CD-ROM thing off of the free table at VCFSW. I got it to work!! Let's talk about it in a quick 🧵 So, first of all, the drive in it is completely toast. Let's swap it out for another IDE drive. Ahh, that's better!

Looks like we have some testing to do! This will be ongoing throughout the day. Let's do a "somewhat live" 🧵

Yea, okay, this deserved its own thread, haha. You can read about the parallel to IDE drive converter over here!

https://x.com/RetroTechChris/status/2061467167204241733

Okay, now that I wrapped the day and had some dinner, let's post some more pictures from #VCFSW. How about a 🧵 since that might be less chaotic than the way I posted earlier 🤣? Let's go! First, some items for sale from TexElec! We can see his test/demo computer here too!!


Next, Macintoshes, Macintoshes, and more Macintoshes. And look at that Kaypro sign! And the Teddy Ruxpins 😂

A few days ago, I had the Compaq laptop fleet out! Recently, I had "redone" my DOS/Win3.11 setup. I wanted to copy this new setup to all of my LTE 5000 laptops, but didn't want to completely reload them! Let's talk about what I did! Time for a quick 🧵


So, first question, why redo the setup? Recently, I loaded an XTIDE patch on my Compaq LTE 5400 to allow large drive support. I ended up having to really optimize conventional memory. I also simplified the boot process to always load network drivers:

https://x.com/RetroTechChris/status/2048599272732475516

I picked up this $5 VESA Local Bus I/O card at the System Source Swap Meet. Let's test it out! Time for a 🧵
This card is a SIIG Professional VL. And it has your typical I/O as you can see here: dual IDE, FDD, 2 serial, 1 parallel, and 1 game

Who here believes in redemption? The other day, I was cursing these SMC Elite 16 ISA network cards as they were giving me all sorts of trouble. Let's give them another chance since I have so many of them 😂. Time for a 🧵

Anyway, this thread starts out with a funny story. I grabbed a PC at random, and it happened to be the Kehtron PC. Guess what kind of card was already installed and operational in it? Yep, a SMC Elite 16 😂. Well, good, this problem should be solvable then!

I picked up a $5 ISA video card (!) at the System Source Swap Meet! Let's test it out. Time for a 🧵
So this card is based on the Cirrus Logic GD-5422 chipset. It looks to be a STB System Horizon card. I didn't count the memory, but looks to be 1MB