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A walk down memory lane. Show us some older hardware and tell us how you used it.

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SemiCycle

Member
Joined
Jun 14, 2002
Location
Hampton Roads. VA
A walk down memory lane. Show us some older hardware and tell us how you used it.

Amid the monthly shuffle of new product announcements, it is very easy to forget about the older stuff that allowed us to move from point A to point M. I still can't help but marvel at how engineers have been able to consolidated and reduce the size of boards and chips. Many of this items listed below had as many as 20+ ICs on them. Nowadays, that same device has but one chip.

While I was cleaning some of the older hardware that was sitting in my closet (I have about 6 containers of the stuff), I decided to empty one of the containers out. Once I started empting it out, I could tell each layer was taking me back in time. The closer I got to the bottom of the container, the older the hardware was. I haven't touched this stuff in many years. Most of the stuff came from my father. He used to build these things computers in my den back in the K-Pro days (anyone else remeber k-pros? These are the days when Computer Shopper magazine was very thick and you could spend weeks reading through one issue). Many of the items are pre 1988, while some are only a couple years ago. Some of the items I pulled out of this box included :

-(3) socket3 motherboards - VIA and UMC chipsets - All with Vesa local bus goodness
-(2) socket7 motherboards - OptiViper and SIS chipsets
-Syquest EZ-Flyer - this thing ate zip drives for lunch
-NEC 6x4 CD changer. I loved this one....I hated the dos drivers though
-Hollywood DVD decoder - not old at all....I may use it in an upcoming HTPC
-(6) NICS
-Sound blaster 16 - one of the first models
-Sound blaster Live....still works fine, but the secondary output port is blown
-Pentium III 550 cart...no idea of it works anymore
-Western Digtal ISA Video card .....Speedstar 24x/Paradise
-Diamond ISA Speedstar /w Tseng labs chipset
-Olicom Token ring NIC
-Yamaha based sound card ISA - I liked this one alot, some time
afterwards, I had a PCI based yamaha sound card....YAMAHA MIDI ruled
-Crystal based sound card ISA
-Opti based sound card ISA
-ISA Modem from an AST computer....no idea how I got it
-(4) controller cards
-(3) ISA modems
-(4) hard drives - conner, seagate and 2 WDs
-1 5 1/4 floppy
-ISA ram board
-ISA floppy controller - 1983
 
Picture of some of the stuff

1.jpg
 
What is sad is that I still actively use half of that stuff at my work! We've got bits and pieces of similar age of your older stuff too. Most got thrown away a few months ago, I couldn't bear to see it go. I remember when PCI sound cards came out: "why would anyone need more bandwidth than ISA for SOUND!??!?! it is only SOUND!?!?" I was busy puttering around with a 486 sx/25 playing X-Wing. What a fun game. I wish I kept that system operational with period games and stuff. It was fun then, how could it not be fun now?

My brother had a bernouli (sp?) drive: with three 10mb disks. Our hard drive was only 200mb, so extra 10mb could easily hold smaller games (the Doom.WAD file was 10mb, so it was a little too big to fit unzipped on the bernouli). We had a 60mb tape drive to backup our pr0n collection (at 2400 baud, it took a LONG time to approach 60mb!). I remember when we figured out data compression so we could effectively get 9600 baud on text. WOW. It came in faster than I could read it! Then our first 14.4, then 28.8 .. I thought 56k wasn't real until I saw a card in the flesh. Wow. I'm now complaining when I *only* get a 256kb DSL connection. I'm so happy I was there to dink around with computer crap from ages ago. It makes me a better person I think. :)

Remember scorched earth? Whoa, those were the days.

Anybody else run their own BBS for a while before the internet was cool?

-ben
 
Ah! Scorched earth and Bomb!. Those were the days of old. Those two games were the first pc games i really ever had.

Here are some pics taken by Celeron Phreak. This is of our old HP 9816 and the associated hardware and what not. The pc is loaded with Basic, and it was originally my first PC. I learned about programming with this paperweight. Then it was just passed down in the family from there.

http://www.geocities.com/davidi722001/HP9816/index.html
 
Actually. It uses a dual 720k floppy drive for boot disks. It loads basic 2.0 off a floppy. I have many manuals and software for this "little" guy. The big tape/disc drive weighs about as much as two littl HP computers together.

If you think that's old, you should see all the other stuff I have. ESDI drives, caddy CDROMs, CPU collection, lots of HDs, and a bunch of collectible stuff. Macintosh Portable, 486 CPU that goes in a 386 socket.

C.P.
 
Hows this for old?;

bighdd.jpg


I keep this under my desk... and guess what---- IT WORKS... all 44MB of it! Geez, Seagate has come long way!
 
Ahh... what the heck, dig into my bin..... how about a

2400 BAUD MODEM and CGA video card!

modem.jpg
 
One last time for old times sake... prolly the last time these will EVER be seen :D

Alright... diggin deep here(number corrisponds to number on item in pic):

1 - 256k isa vid card
2,3 - 2400 baud modems
4,5,6 - CGA video cards
7 - 4 port serial port controller
8,9 - VESA bus I/O controllers
10 - ISA server managment card (from IBM dual Ppro server)
13 - ISA I/O controller
11 - serial/paralele controller
12 - floppy controller


and 14 a WHOPPING 286 motherboard! This gem has a toggle switch for color/monochrome :D

lot.jpg
 
Last edited:
JDXNC said:
Hows this for old?;

bighdd.jpg


I keep this under my desk... and guess what---- IT WORKS... all 44MB of it! Geez, Seagate has come long way!

I have a funny story about this. When I first started working, I was told to take the HDD out of an old 386 HP server. Looking for about 10 minutes I could find anything I "thought" was a HDD. Feeling really really stupid I asked for someones help, and they pointed me to exaclty what JDZNC pictured. Even worse, I thought it was PSU b/c it had wires everywhere coming from it including a ground wire to the computer case.
 
JDXNC:

I have an old HD like that from HP. My dad brought it home when he was working in the DMD (Disk Memory Division) at HP. Only mine is a 1GIG ESDI drive. I also have three 1GIG SCSI drives the same size. Loud and heavy. I do use them every once in awhile when I can't find a small SCSI drive though. They work great when I've got the HP external box with PSU for it :).

My IBM PS/2 80s use the same size HD as well, but they are ESDI and are 80MB drives.

C.P.
 
Geez, wish I could fit all of my 'vintage' hardware in my room here at college. ;)

My favorite pieces of hardware are probably my Compaq Portable and my Mac Pluses. That Compaq is so cool... I wish I could put a LAN rig in it.
 
TI Extensa 555cd

a '95 laptop

ill post pictures later
it worsk except for the HDD

~500mb corrupted HDD
 
lol the oldest stuff i have is from my first computer.... P1, AMD K5 stuff... doesnt work i dont think, and some old video cards too.

but at school there is some mad old stuff that you are supposed to learn usfulyl stuff from in Applied tech,,, like 5 boxes of the kinda stuff you have.. and some normal sized HDD's
 
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