I bought some memory to upgrade the Pacman PC. SURELY this will go off without a hitch.. surely it will. Okay, let's talk about it, in a 🧵 here!
So, as you saw from the intro picture, we're now showing 1.5 GB of memory in this lovely system. The system booted up into Hannah Montana Linux 😂. That's fine.. we can ask it how much memory it sees. Looking good!

I had some "larger" hard drives laying around, and wanted to put one in the new Kehtron computer. But to do that, I had to work around the 528MB limit of this computer's BIOS. Let's use XTIDE to do that...surely this adventure will go off without a hitch... right? Time for a 🧵

So, first of all, what is this 528MB limit all about? Well, older BIOSes were limited to 1024 cylinders. Around the 486 era, as drives got bigger, BIOSes started to support Logical Block Addressing mode. However, this particular BIOS does not.

Got a few things in the mail today! No need to really test the CPU fans or batteries, but let's test the video card! Time for a 🧵


So, this video card is a Tseng Labs ET4000AX. Here it is next to my other ET4000AX card. Some differences for sure!

Okay, let's get some software installed on this "new" 486DX/50 PC of mine. As per usual, nothing was flawless here, so let's go over what went well and where I hit some snags! Time for a 🧵 To get the installers on the box, I decided to use MS LAN Manager and the network. I made a special LAN Manager boot disk with drivers for the Intel EtherExpress 16TP that you see in the bottom of the last picture here.

My friend Bill gave me a bunch of case lock keys! Back in the days of the AT standard for cases, keylocks were pretty common on PC clones, and IBM systems as well. Let's see how many locks we can open today. Time for a silly 🧵
First, the Gateway 2000 you saw in the intro post. First key I tried worked 😂

I already have too many PCs, but I had to have this cute little guy... and there is also a good nostalgic reason for having it! This 386 (now 486) PC needed a lot of work to get it running, let's talk about it in a 🧵 here!
First, in case you missed it, here's the nostalgic reason. Kehtron is a part of my childhood. And this PC was available locally. The weather was also PERFECT yesterday for making an hour drive to get it and rocking out to some 80s tunes on the way 😂

https://x.com/RetroTechChris/status/1951100235561726359

In my haste yesterday, there are TWO THINGS that I forgot to do and post about for this "eMachines" system. One is more important than the other! Let's talk about it in a brief 🧵 here! First of all, before we get too far, recall that this isn't actually an eMachines. The original motherboard failed, and a Pentium III Biostar motherboard was put in to replace it, in what I am calling a "reverse sleeper"

https://x.com/RetroTechChris/status/1949660599153041482

I recently picked up this "eMachines" from my friend Bill to bring to the next local meetup and plop on the "free" table. I thought I'd spruce it up a little bit in the meantime, since, well, I enjoy doing just that 😂. Let's talk about it in a 🧵 here! So, first and foremost, this isn't actually an eMachines. The original mobo died and it was replaced with a Biostar M6TWL and a Pentium III 600 MHz CPU. Does that makes this thing a "reverse sleeper"? 🤣

I recently received this Dell Inspiron 700m from my friend Bill. Originally a Windows XP system. I thought "maybe I could make this a mean DOS/Windows For Workgroups 3.11 system." Let's give it a shot in a 🧵 here, I bet we can get pretty close!
First thing I did was to look in the BIOS. This system is a Pentium M 2.0 GHz with 512MB of memory. The optical is a CD-RW/DVD. Okay, this should be more than adequate for what we want to do here 😂. Oh... and look, we can boot from a USB floppy drive! Okay, let's do that.

I got a few items in the mail for my Compaq LTE 5000 laptops! A power adapter... and a bunch of Cisco Aironet 350 wireless network cards from a friend who bought like 50+ of them 😂. Let's test out the network cards and go through how to set them up in MS-DOS!! Time for a 🧵

Before I get into the setup procedure, I wanted to inform that I do have a setup procedure for this on one of my old "crap film quality" videos (not that the newer ones were better 😂). If you want a video walkthrough, hosted by a younger RTC, go here!

Memory testing, final round! Mostly good news, but some bad news too. What happened? And... just how many memory spares did we end up having? Let's find out, 🧵 time!
First, let's talk about the cliffhangers from last time. Both the CompUSA custom and the eMachines T2341 finished their round of testing, and are good to go!

Memory testing, round 3.. fight! 🧵
So, first of all, the Pacman PC passed its tests with flying colors! Woot! I'll leave it at 1GB for future fun.

Memory test round 2: fight! Let's talk about what we are up to today, in a 🧵here!
First, some good news. After running for 9 hour or so, the Abit PC in the basement passed multiple times! I didn't snap a picture, so this one from yesterday will have to do 😂

I went to visit my friend Bill yesterday, and he gave me "just a few" DIMM and RDRAM modules 😂. Shall we explore a bit and upgrade some PCs? Methinks yes. Time for a 🧵 The first order of business was to sort a bit. I looked up a fair number of chips to get this far, and also got a little lazy and "guessed" on a few. But we can see we have PC100/133, DDR, DDR2, and Rambus modules here, in varying capacities!

Last week, I took my ISA to USB card out of my Tandy 1000 TX. Today it finds a new home in my 486 DX4/66. Let's get it installed and talk about it briefly in a 🧵 here!
And before I get into that, recall that if you purchase one of these ISA to USB cards, they are pretty much good for mass storage devices only. Also, I did design a bracket for these a few years back if you need one!

A few weeks back, I picked up this X10 home automation system for $5 at a thrift store. Who wants to explore some home automation using Windows '95? Let's have a look in a 🧵 here!
First of all, what is probably most fascinating is that you can still buy this stuff from X10's website... in 2025. Go figure!

I recently picked up another AST Premium Exec 386 laptop... but not so much for the laptop, but really in search of some spare parts for my other Premium Exec 386 laptop. Let's talk about it and explore it in a 🧵 here!

First of all, unlike my Premium Exec 386SX/25 Color, this Premium Exec 386SX/20 is greyscale. It's still really nice though! I imagine that the color variants of these laptops was pretty rare, given the cost at the time.

I got my $50 HP LaserJet 6L in the mail today, and here it is. Let's have a closer look... oh.. wait a minute... oh no. Yea, not good. Let's talk about it, and some fun I had with it, and my NEW PLAN, in a 🧵 here So, yes, the plastics on this printer were brittle, and it unfortunately wasn't shipped well. As soon as I saw the box, and the size of the box, I thought we might be in trouble. And, yes, we were. Just look at all of those glorious plastic pieces.

I think it's time to consolidate a few more retro PCs 😅. Going to start with my Tandy 1000 TX which already has a new owner! I did a little bit of consolidation into my 1000 SX in preps for sending it packing. Let's talk about it briefly in a 🧵 here!
My 1000 SX had an XTIDE card in it, but the 1000 TX had a Silicon Valley ADP50 "hard card" with a 540 MB HDD. I decided to move that over to the 1000 SX. It takes up a fair amount of space, fortunately my 8 bit ISA network card is tiny 😂

I got some 20MB Bernoulli disks in the mail today. Some of them are Tandy branded! Let's check them out and see how many will actually work... time for a 🧵
For the first disk, I decided to try one of the "older logo" Iomega disks. And... well... good old General Error decided to visit. This means that the disk has too many bad sectors to recover... and, yes, each disk does have reserved sectors, I covered that in a past post!

I have a few things to test! A CD-ROM drive and an ATI All In Wonder Pro video card. Let's explore these in a 🧵 there!
First, the CD-ROM drive. It's a Universal Buslink Corporation drive, never heard of it! Unfortunately, it powers on, the light lights up, and, well, that's about it.