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this is the old computer thread. post some photos of old computers, post about old computers you own, post about an old computer you think is cool. diversions into incredibly spergy and boring poo poo are, of course, welcome RULES: 1. Post old computer
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Jan 12, 2016 03:19
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 09:20 |
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here's my PDP-11/73  Wikipedia says it best: "Introduced in 1983, this system used the Jaws-11 chip set and the Q-Bus, with a clock speed of 15.2 MHz." basically, this was a miniaturized PDP-11 used in various sytems that would be well-served by a PDP-11 but that didn't need a serial connection to a Big Ol PDP-11. once microchips started being a thing (LARGE SCALE INTEGRATION), DEC discovered that you can take a thing that takes up dozens or hundreds of circuit boards and thousands of components and put it on one or two chip dies. If you had a VT-103 terminal, you could build an entire computer like this inside it. the computer, as a whole, is the Q-Bus card cage, which is just a dumb backplane with a power supply connector and a bunch of cards in it. It's a cheaper and smaller revision of the earlier Unibus, created by multiplexing the address and data lines.  The CPU card (a KDJ11A, the thing that makes it a PDP-11) is in the front. The two dies are a "data path chip" and a "control chip" and I have no idea why they're separate or how they work. It's 16-bit, just like all the other PDP-11s, and its clock speed is pretty high for the time. lol posted:The design originally was intended to support multiple control chips to allow implementation of additional instructions such as the Commercial Instruction Set (CIS), but no such control chips were ever offered. what the gently caress is Dibol posted:Commercial Instruction Set (CIS) This particular computer was inside a Kevex electron microscope controller. Besides the CPU card, it's also equipped with a 1.1 kiloword RAM card (which goes over the same Q-bus connection as everything else so it's pretty slow), a GTSC 304 4-port serial card (equivalent to DEC's DLV11-J), a Data Translation EP050 data acquisition card, a Kevex electron microscope controller card, and a GTSC 360/361 SCSI controller card. Unfortunately, it doesn't work yet. I need to find or build a power supply for it and connect it to a terminal, and to the Quantum ProDrive that came with it. Someday, it will boot, but for now it just sits there looking kinda neat.
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Jan 12, 2016 03:30
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my end goal with the PDP-11 is to put 2.11BSD on it and connect it to the Internet somehow.
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Jan 12, 2016 03:36
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Good poo poo.
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Jan 12, 2016 03:39
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Jan 12, 2016 03:40
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but the best amiga is the cancelled ranger prototype from 1987
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Jan 12, 2016 03:41
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I have an SGI Octane in storage. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to find the pics I took of it back in 2003. Here's the whole setup, including SGI-branded Sony Trinitron monitor The beige box on the right is an external SCSI CD-ROM drive, since the Octane had no room for an internal one. It's got a 64-bit MIPS R12000 CPU @300mhz w/640MB RAM  Not pictured: the support I had to add to the underside of the desk to stop it from sagging under the weight of a 19" CRT and an 80 lbs SGI workstation. edit: this particular Octane only has the SE graphics, meaning the (2nd generation?) entry-level 3D graphics hardware with no texture memory. Doc Block fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 03:41
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Doc Block posted:I have an SGI Octane in storage. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to find the pics I took of it back in 2003. Here's the whole setup, including SGI-branded Sony Trinitron monitor i threw out two octanes two years ago and i regret it. daddies, hug ur boxen tight. don't let them go.
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Jan 12, 2016 03:43
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 it's good
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Jan 12, 2016 03:44
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lol I never noticed the "this computer is never obsolete" verbage Silver Alicorn fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 03:45
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Silver Alicorn posted:
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Jan 12, 2016 03:45
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Doc Block posted:I have an SGI Octane in storage. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to find the pics I took of it back in 2003. Here's the whole setup, including SGI-branded Sony Trinitron monitor Also found a screenshot I took. Again, from 2003. 
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Jan 12, 2016 03:48
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 this is the computer i had as a childe. a tandy tl1000. it was pretty cool. i can still remember the smell of the milky transparent plastic keyboard cover, which had just enough ball point pen markings on it to let you know someone hosed up. it had a lot of cool programs. there was a music composition program that took approximately 10 minutes to load. there was a word processing program that i used to type up school assignments. there was an art program that made spiralgraph things, and you could print out banners on the dot matrix. fast forward to present day, as a 30 year old adult i have met one of the loathesome men responsible for creating the tandy tl1000. he works at the place i work and his teeth look like he eats plaque for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. he doesn't shut the gently caress up about tandy and now i can't think of my cherished childhood memories of playing some math game i can't remember the name of without a sense memory of this troglodite's foul breath flooding my nostrils. haha this brings back so many now ruined fond memories 
Jerry Bindle fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 03:49
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Doc Block posted:I have an SGI Octane in storage. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to find the pics I took of it back in 2003. Here's the whole setup, including SGI-branded Sony Trinitron monitor i took a photo of the other room (it's not normally this junky, I'm moving my stuff atm) there's an octane and an indy under the indigos and indigo2s somewhere. I also have an O2 that was in perfect condition until someone rear-ended my car and it flew out of the cargo net and shattered  
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Jan 12, 2016 03:49
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im the defective box.
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Jan 12, 2016 03:51
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Doc Block posted:Also found a screenshot I took. Again, from 2003. https://instagram.com/p/40bWv5tS2F/ Running DOOM on a former Top500 supercomputer. posted:Unlike most systems to have graced the Top500 list, this machine has graphics, so here it is running Doom. quote:Facts at a glance:
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Jan 12, 2016 03:57
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Barnyard Protein posted:i threw out two octanes two years ago and i regret it. daddies, hug ur boxen tight. don't let them go. RIP ur SGI octanes RIP SGI
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Jan 12, 2016 03:59
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i think i also threw out a full IRIX 6.5 install set. that doesn't sound like something i'd do, because i'd been looking for a full IRIX cd set for a decade prior, but damned if i can't find it now.
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Jan 12, 2016 04:02
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they have this thing called a cd burner edit: I burned an IRIX CD to change the root password on the Octane so I could see what it was used for. was hoping for cool graphics poo poo or video games or something. got proofs from a print shop for a brochure about a municipal sewer system upgrade program atomicthumbs fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 04:03
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yeah i unlocked an indy circa 2002 using an overlay ISO that i talked some into sending me on IRC. when i cared enough to do it, finding the full install set online was impossible, legit sets on ebay were prohibitively expensive. oh well. the unlocked indy, most of the apps weren't installed locally so it turned out to be a huge waste of time anyways. FFWD to 2012, i picked up 2x octanes and 2x indies from someone off nekochan for free, and he gave me a full install set. after sitting in my living room for a few months i got really skeez'd out about having HDD's sitting in my house that formerly belonged to someone on nekochan, pot kettle i know whatever, and chucked them.
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Jan 12, 2016 04:09
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i called SGI, when i got the indy's, to ask about getting a copy of IRIX. the lady said i'd need a support contract. i forget the exact cost for 1 year of support, but i think it was $30k.
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Jan 12, 2016 04:10
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Just checked, and I still have my IRIX 6.5.20 installation & software CDs that came with the Octane.  edit: all 8 billion of them 
Doc Block fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 04:22
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Used to have a Sun SparcStation IPX too, but I never even booted it. Don't remember if it's still in storage with the Octane or if I sold it.
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Jan 12, 2016 04:53
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fine I'll just post in here too
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Jan 12, 2016 05:08
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so in my neighborhood when people have big stuff they want to throw out it's normal for them to just sort of put it out on the corner and we've got a bunch of serious loving pack rats I guess because the broken lamps and used mattresses disappear in like 6 hours. I don't know who is sitting around trolling the neighborhood for broken high chairs and stained couches with ripped upholstery, but most stuff is gone before dark, the rest isn't there in the morning. So one day I'm out walking with my lil boy in he stroller when he was like 9mos old and I see this pile of stuff at the street corner. I got nearer, it looked like about a 4 foot tall stack of computers. Turns out there were like 15-20 Sparc 5s & 10s just piled up there. Disks & ram pulled. That pile of Sun garbage stayed there for almost 2 weeks.
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Jan 12, 2016 05:12
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 in the messy goddamn room if you rotate 180 degrees from the sgi corner you get the sun corner i should probably just get rid of these
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Jan 12, 2016 05:30
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the best thing about pizza-box suns is the floppy drives on the side
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Jan 12, 2016 05:31
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insert jammer in hole 2 down 4 across from back to pop those bad boys open
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Jan 12, 2016 05:42
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just did that yesterday to inspect a Sun 411 SCSI case I was picking up it's going to house a SCSISD, so I can have a ton of storage for my SS20 also just found a TurboGX+ so I can get 24-bit color and hopefully my pair of SM71 CPUs arrive soon to give the system a little more oomph now I just need to figure out pkgsrc on NetBSD 7 and I can even run reasonably modern software on it!
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Jan 12, 2016 05:55
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNRO7lno_DM in my basement, with other machines, is a highly modified IBM PC. It's got a nametag from someone who was a UC Berkeley computer science professor in the 80s. It's outfitted with a handmade aluminum bar heatsink for the CPU, an 8087, and unknown other modifications. There's something soldered into the bus lines on the motherboard. I don't know the full extent of what's been done to it but I can tell that it's been souped the gently caress up I wonder if it'll run that demo, or if the timing would be hosed up.
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Jan 12, 2016 06:30
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Jan 12, 2016 06:37
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that is just unbelievably rude to post!!
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Jan 12, 2016 07:34
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history of old puters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYFRdV1r4nU
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Jan 12, 2016 17:15
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this 2009 vintage macbook is my daily driver. jealous much
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Jan 12, 2016 17:23
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 from reddit
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Jan 12, 2016 22:16
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so do you just use old computers instead of furniture
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Jan 12, 2016 22:37
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atomicthumbs posted:
i have that screwdriver
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Jan 12, 2016 23:57
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echinopsis posted:i have that screwdriver i find this highly unlikely you may have one like it but i truly doubt you've obtained that screwdriver
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Jan 13, 2016 00:09
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Silver Alicorn posted:so do you just use old computers instead of furniture use every part of the workstation
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Jan 13, 2016 00:29
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 09:20 |
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Sniep posted:i find this highly unlikely well it was in that picture and now I have one in my drawer. coincidence? hardly likely
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Jan 13, 2016 00:43
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