I picked up a PCMCIA 6 in 1 Multi Card Adapter at our retro meetup on Sunday. I always thought it would be neat to have one, but never got around to having one until now. I don't have it working yet, but I think I know why! Let's explore it in a 🧵 here! First of all, here is a close up of the front and back. Apparently this adapter will work with SD, MMC, SM, MS, MS Pro, and xD cards. I'll plan to use it with an SD card, more on that in a minute.

I picked up this 5.25" 1.2 MB FDD at our Sunday retro meetup. I gave it a test, but it has a problem that's probably going to REALLY limit its usability. Let's explore in a 🧵 here! First of all, the drive is a Mitsubishi MF504C-347UA. Say that five times fast! The Google tells me it is 1.2 MB, at least if this "for sale" post I found is to be believed. Okay, well, that's good!

I received some GREAT stickers from @geekenspiel today! And it's given me an idea, and, yes, it involves the eMachines T2341! Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here!
So, as many know, I have been on an escapade to add a bunch of operating systems to this PC. This is the current list!

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!


Next, we have @retrobitstv who brought an EVO64 with TONS of cool sound options!

It's time for another OS install on the eMachines T2341 Athlon XP 2400+ machine, and this time, it's IBM OS/2 Warp 4.52. The end result for this is VERY impressive. Get ready for a long 🧵 with details. Buckle up, here we go! So, for those who have been following along, I've been on a bit of a crusade to install OSes on this system. Here's the list so far. My favorite boot and partition manager, BootIt Bare Metal, is great. Some OSes have cylinder limits, which I have had to juggle a bit.

Time for another OS install on the eMachines T2341. This time, it's Windows NT 3.51. Prepare to be underwhelmed by this install 😂. I'll explain more, let's do a 🧵
So, similar to other NT installs, I copied the contents of the i386 directory to a FAT16 drive partition. Running winnt /b, we are able to do a diskless install from there! Phase 1 of 3 completes pretty quickly.

Did I really install YET ANOTHER OS on the eMachines T2341? I sure did! And I had to call Microsoft to complete this install. Let's talk about installing Windows Server 2003 in a 🧵 here!
Installation was pretty straight forward! Our partition is in the middle of the disk, so the first screen looks a little weird. Look at all of that marketing as we install 😆. And I set things up for 5 client access licenses, though I won't be using them.

Another OS install on the eMachines T2341? Yes please! This time it's going to be Windows NT 4.0 Workstation. This gave me some trouble, and not everything is working the way I'd like, but, well... let's talk about it in a BIG 🧵 here. Buckle up! So, starting out, I set up an NTFS partition using, of course, BootIt. I then booted into my Windows for Workgroups 3.11 install and copied over the NT installer files. From there, I kicked off a diskless install of NT 4.0 Workstation using the /b option. Woot!

I installed Windows 2000 on the eMachines T2341 since, well, I guess I didn't have enough OSes on here already😂. In true "me" fashion, I made it harder than I had to, naturally. Let's talk about it (briefly) in a 🧵 here!
So, after creating a dedicated partition in my boot manager, I popped my Windows 2000 CD into the drive. And I got a bunch of errors. On closer inspection, I see why, this CD is a MESS!

Okay, round 2 for my ATI Rage XL AGP video card on Windows 95, and now things are working the way they should! Grateful for some info I received from someone in the ITX Llama Discord. Let's talk about it. Time for a 🧵
So, a few days ago, I made this thread. I had found "Windows ME drivers" for the ATI Rage XL, but didn't find any Windows 95 drivers. They did seem to work, but the utilities would throw an error.

https://x.com/RetroTechChris/status/1848568011914887564

I'm about to wrap up my Pacman PC adventures for now. We've definitely installed an operating system or two on it at this point. Let's fire up a few of the operating systems that we haven't tried recently & see if the sound and video hardware work as expected first. Let's go! 🧵


So, first, you may ask: why is this necessary, what has changed? Well, at some point, in order to gain sound card compatibility in Windows 3.1x, I installed an Aureal Vortex 1 card. So, I wanted to make sure everything still works!

I took some time to install Windows 98 SE on the Pentium III Pacman PC! And there was definitely a snag or two I hit along the way. Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here.
So, per usual, first thing I did was carve out some space for the install using my boot manager BootIt. The list of OSes on this PC keeps growing.

I took a few minutes today and spruced up the Windows 95 install on the Pacman PC! Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here!
So, first of all, I reinstalled the Diamond Stealth III S540 video card in the system. I had removed it to test out a different card that I purchased a few days ago.

I installed Win95 OSR 2.5 on my Pentium III Pacman PC tonight! The goal was to test out my new ATI Rage XL video card for my eventual ITX Llama PC. And... I gotta tell you, I don't think I made the best choice in hardware here, but I think it SHOULD work. Time for a 🧵.
So, before I got to installing drivers, the Win95 install was pretty straight forward. I always enjoy seeing this screen!

I got a video card in the mail today that I plan to use with the ITX Llama when it gets here. It's an ATI Rage XL AGP card. Let's test it out in the Pacman PC in a 🧵 here!
It's been a little while since we have had the Pacman PC on the desk. It's a Pentium III system. Here's a shot of the inside!

A friend of mine had an 8 Bit ISA Ethernet Card for sale, so I picked it up for the Tandy 1000 SX. Let's get it installed in a 🧵 here!
Installation was as easy as can be. I pulled out the Intel 8/16 card that was in the system (far right) and put in the 8 Bit ISA Ethernet card (far right). Sheesh, I should have taken a picture without that cable in the way 😂

Here's something a little different from me.. recently I saw a request on a forum: "Can someone make a custom high score file for Tetris for Windows." I figured this could be pretty easily reversed engineered, and indeed it can! Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here.

Basically, Tetris saves your score in a file called tetris.hst. It asks you if you want to create a high score file after achieving your first high score. tetris.hst is a 660 byte file.

I recently picked up this $15 Compaq LTE 5300 that was missing a few parts. Naturally, I had enough parts to fix it up and get it working! Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here!





So, the first thing I did was turn to my "spreadsheet of spare parts" and carved a few out. This system came with a memory module, and I don't inventory batteries, but otherwise, we ended up pulling a few parts from the spares!

I spent some time going through my thin client collection today. With the right thin client, you can make a cool little retro machine! Most of them are in tip top shape, but I also found some bad news. Let's talk about these four system, and what I found out, in a 🧵 here! So, first, I'd say that THE best resource about thin clients on the Internet is ParkyTowers. On that site, you can research different thin clients and see which ones are going to work the best with what you want to do. You can find the website here: parkytowers.me.uk/thin/

I thought I'd test out some PCI cards tonight! We have one USB card and two modems. Let's have a look in a 🧵 here!

So, first order of business is to make a "backup" of my Windows XP installation, which is really easy to do with BootIt. We'll use the backup for our purposes since, as we know, drivers of the era don't always uninstall cleanly.

Let's test some more items for my "99 cent eBay virtual near-free table" listings. What could possibly be in these boxes? Let's find out in a 🧵 here!

Okay, first item is a 486DX/33 CPU. Things have gotten a little crowded in the case! After some finagling I got it seated right. Cool. And the ZIF socket arm is nice and accessible 🤣. Pass!