Me too!!! I upgraded to 16MB. Woot!!
Computer nostalgia - Post your relics!
- Thread starter OVERKILL
- Start date
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
If that sound card works, there are retro guys looking for those and willing to pay, FWIW.
I was trying to explain to my kids that 30 years ago computers had 1/1000 the RAM and and processor speed, and 1/100 the hard drive space and still kind of worked the same as now... They didn't care that much...
Someday I'll have to see if the old Amiga 500 still works, I never did get a hard drive for it. just a second 3.5 drive and 500mb more RAM, I'm sure they will be impressed!
A few days ago, I claimed the dining room table(while my wife was at work...) to set up my Mac Pro 4,1/5,1, which currently doesn't have a permanent home.
This one is actually stock-ish, or at least CPU wise it is. It's a dual quad core with 32gb RAM, a Radeon 5970, and runs 10.6.8 booting off a PCIe SSD that came out of a 2015 MacBook Air.
I use this computer to run the two film scanners shown here, a Nikon Coolscan V and a Coolscan 8000. I hadn't used either in a long time, but bought a custom film holder form a guy in Germany(the Nikon stock medium format holder is awful) and was trying it out. I needed to scan some 35mm also, which is why the V is out.
These scanners haven't been made in almost 20 years, and Nikon never updated the software. It's PowerPC native and actually is "Carbonized"(will run in both OS 9 and OS X). Yes, there is 3rd party software, but nothing works quite like the Nikon software. Plus, the 8000 is Firewire, which means virtualization on a newer system isn't possible. I even have easy access to a Firewire port on my 2019 iMac as I use an Apple Thunderbolt display with it, but Firewire can't be passed through to a VM.
In any case, for whatever crazy reason, the software is super unstable on my dual hex core MP 5,1. About 2 years ago I bought a 2011 Mac Mini server, which was the first quad core Mini and can be made to run 10.6.8, but this software was also really unstable on it. It can take ~30 minutes to complete a scan on the 8000(you can make it even slower if you want, but that's about the limit of where you start to see improvements), so it can be super frustrating to have it crash mid-scan or while the physical scan has been completed but the software is still processing it.
The display in use here is an Apple 27" Cinema. The glass was cracked when I got this display, but it's gotten worse. I have a parts Thunderbolt display with good glass I need to rob it off of(the glass is super easy to change on these-it's held on with magnets) but haven't gotten around to it. The keyboard is a c. 1998 Apple "Bondi Blue" as would have shipped with the first iMac G3 and B&W G3. I'm using a corded Mighty Mouse with it, my personal favorite Apple mouse.
This one is actually stock-ish, or at least CPU wise it is. It's a dual quad core with 32gb RAM, a Radeon 5970, and runs 10.6.8 booting off a PCIe SSD that came out of a 2015 MacBook Air.
I use this computer to run the two film scanners shown here, a Nikon Coolscan V and a Coolscan 8000. I hadn't used either in a long time, but bought a custom film holder form a guy in Germany(the Nikon stock medium format holder is awful) and was trying it out. I needed to scan some 35mm also, which is why the V is out.
These scanners haven't been made in almost 20 years, and Nikon never updated the software. It's PowerPC native and actually is "Carbonized"(will run in both OS 9 and OS X). Yes, there is 3rd party software, but nothing works quite like the Nikon software. Plus, the 8000 is Firewire, which means virtualization on a newer system isn't possible. I even have easy access to a Firewire port on my 2019 iMac as I use an Apple Thunderbolt display with it, but Firewire can't be passed through to a VM.
In any case, for whatever crazy reason, the software is super unstable on my dual hex core MP 5,1. About 2 years ago I bought a 2011 Mac Mini server, which was the first quad core Mini and can be made to run 10.6.8, but this software was also really unstable on it. It can take ~30 minutes to complete a scan on the 8000(you can make it even slower if you want, but that's about the limit of where you start to see improvements), so it can be super frustrating to have it crash mid-scan or while the physical scan has been completed but the software is still processing it.
The display in use here is an Apple 27" Cinema. The glass was cracked when I got this display, but it's gotten worse. I have a parts Thunderbolt display with good glass I need to rob it off of(the glass is super easy to change on these-it's held on with magnets) but haven't gotten around to it. The keyboard is a c. 1998 Apple "Bondi Blue" as would have shipped with the first iMac G3 and B&W G3. I'm using a corded Mighty Mouse with it, my personal favorite Apple mouse.
why oh why oh why
The only and I mean ONLY reason I would ever keep an old computer around is something along the lines of what bunnspecial descibes above - a useful piece of hardware that will not run on newer OSes. And it would have to be air-gapped from the Internet.
I see these kids unboxing things like never-used IBM XT PCs from the 1980s on YouTube. Whatever floats your boat, but those things sucked when they were new. If you had lived with them in their time, you would know that everything that came after it (except maybe Windows ME) was much better. But anyway.
Not my relic, but one from a customer. This is the dead chassis. Sending it back.
If you are still using any Sun SE3510 storage arrays, don't.
I had to get the replacement from Singapore. This one is going back.
It had quantity 12 - 146GB x 15K RPM drives in it. This is one of four disk trays in the customer's storage system.
I believe the serial number puts this at nearly 18 years old this month. (21st week of 2006 was the build date)
The drives would flash like Christmas lights when more than one drive was in this disk tray.
On the back, it has two IO modules with two 1gb Fiber Connections. One connection each for the A and B loops.
One of the four trays has two RAID modules. IIRC, either 4 or 6 additional trays can be added to the RAID tray in strings of two or three trays. One string is connected to the A loop of the top controller and B loop of the bottom. The other is the reverse. It's been too long since I've worked on one of these and I want to forget what I know about them.
If you are still using any Sun SE3510 storage arrays, don't.
I had to get the replacement from Singapore. This one is going back.
It had quantity 12 - 146GB x 15K RPM drives in it. This is one of four disk trays in the customer's storage system.
I believe the serial number puts this at nearly 18 years old this month. (21st week of 2006 was the build date)
The drives would flash like Christmas lights when more than one drive was in this disk tray.
On the back, it has two IO modules with two 1gb Fiber Connections. One connection each for the A and B loops.
One of the four trays has two RAID modules. IIRC, either 4 or 6 additional trays can be added to the RAID tray in strings of two or three trays. One string is connected to the A loop of the top controller and B loop of the bottom. The other is the reverse. It's been too long since I've worked on one of these and I want to forget what I know about them.
Retro computing has sort of kind of been a hobby of mine for a while.
For me, there is a big element of nostalgia at play in it. I took a real interest in learning about/working on computers in late elementary and early middle school, which was mid to late 90s. A lot of the stuff I could get my hands on were 286-386-486 era computers, so I do have some fondness for those. They were also moderately useable still then, especially the 486s.
I've actually gotten away from x86 computers, but back then I was also curious about Macs. I just never had one. I've kind of gone all in and have ended up with the stuff I could have never afforded back then, plus went even further back into history and bought computers from before my time.
Among other things, I do enjoy playing the games I enjoyed "back in the day". I'm not really into modern computer gaming, but some of the old ones are pretty incredible just as far as what they did accomplish with fairly limited computing resources. The more graphics intensive ones, IMO, often really need a 15-17" CRT to be enjoyed at their best since many would be full screen at 640x480. A lot of LCDs look really crummy scaled to that resolution, and at native resolution on a modern screen you end up with a tiny box.
I do enjoy playing with older enterprise grade stuff too, even though I don't have a lot I can really do on it. Unfortunately, I don't really have the space, or for that matter the time, to do a lot of it anymore. The above Mac Pro does a lot for me. Most early 2000s programs will run on it, and I have a PowerMac G4 that can handle a lot of other stuff.
I'll mention too that sometimes specialty software can find a home on these older systems. I use Chemdraw somewhat often for work. A version that would run on a current computer is subscription based and is a few thousand dollars a year-not a chance my work would pay for that. The older copies I have work fine for my needs, but need an old computer to run them.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Most of the stuff I want I can't justify buying, lol.
SGI Octane workstation
DEC Alpha workstation
I got rid of all my SPARC gear some years ago.
If I need a Solaris fix these days, I run it on Intel or AMD in a VM.
Occasionally I need to fire it up to refresh some knowledge for an upcoming engagement.
Telco, DoD and Medical Research still have some SPARC based systems running out there.
Heck, I even installed two SPARC based servers earlier this year.
I had an Octane in my office at my last job.
Who knows what happened to it-chances are it's been disposed of by now. It was a real shame too, especially as it had some specialty software on it that people sometimes stopped by my office to use.
I always sort of joked about sneaking it out in my car one evening, but it was on the $5K inventory which meant it had to be accounted for annually(they actually didn't care about anything that wasn't on that list and were glad if I saved them the trouble of disposing of it).
I also had this one, although unfortunately I never found a keyboard or mouse for it. It didn't have hard drives, although that was easy enough(they were 50 pin SCSI) but I knew I wouldn't get anywhere without input peripherals. Unlike Sun or some of the other makers, SGI stuff for the older systems at least was in short supply. The Octane fortunately was PS/2. I had an O2 stashed back in my office also, but it was dead
There was also this one that appeared in my office one day...I'll respectfully decline comment or knowledge as to its current whereabouts
At this point I'm surprised that most 15K drives haven't bit the dust, SCSI drives from the 90s now are to the point where you can't really trust them anymore and to get vintage MACs up and going a SCSI emulator is becoming more necessary as the old spinning drives drop like flies.
Some days I get nostalgic for CDE. But that sentiment quickly passes
As long as they don't stop spinning...
I think the customer had a "power event" and not everything came back up once the power was restored.
I've actually had decent luck with 15K drives, although a lot of them out there now do have some serious runtime on them.
I have a bunch of 10K drives around also, but I avoid them wherever possible. Every 10K drive I've used(mostly Seagates) has had some weird resonant frequency that just sends a shiver up my spine and I find them uncomfortable to hear running. It wouldn't surprise me if 15K drives make similar sounds, but I expect they're higher pitched and outside the frequency I can hear.
I'd not be surprised, though, if @javacontour 's point about stopping spinning has a lot to do with the longevity of these drives. I run a few turbomolecular pumps in the lab, or actually I guess I probably only have one now. Turbopumps spin at 20K+. The rotors sit on magnetic bearings when running, and provided they don't ingest a bunch of air experience almost no wear while actually spinning. The vast majority of wear happens at start up from a complete stop(if shut down properly and kept under low vacuum while stopping, shutdown causes only a small amount of wear). Fortunately, I can usually get away with only shutting the one I have now down a few times a year, and I'm very particular about the shutdown sequence especially given that it's 20+ years old(and I'd have to do a lot of begging to get the money to replace it). Hard drives aren't EXACTLY the same situation, but I do imagine starting and stopping puts a lot more wear on the plates than sitting their spinning undisturbed.
Those Sound Blaster 5.1's were a sweet sounding audio card in its day with a great software package.. I still occassionally use mine in my old Pentium 3- 1 GHZ- XP machine . Wish it worked with a newer O.S.
I had an Alpha workstation 25-27 years ago running NT4. It wasn't that great. Probably would have been better with modern SSD storage, but then, a lot of things back then would have been. Probably could have saturated the PCI bus with a big modern SSD.
I had an OG 3DFX card in the 90s, I saved my pennies to get it, and the first time I launched GL-accelerated Quake I, it was a seminal moment in my life up to that point. So I kind of get it, but my current low end personal laptop would probably run circles around that old Pentium 233 MMX system, even with the new system's built in Intel Iris graphics. Assuming there is an OpenGL driver for Intel Iris, that is.
Meant to say too that you really have some RISCy aspirations
I had it in my head too after I got the Sun to get an Alpha as I had PowerPC, MIPS, and SPARC covered. One never quite materialized for a price I wanted to pay.
I do have some older x86 DECs. I actually have a personally owned one with a 200mhz PPro. I bought it as part of a lot of spare parts, manuals, and tools for Hewlett Packard 5890 gas chromatographs(which I’ve run a now mostly inactive business serving and maintaining). The computer came from someone else in independent service, and he had it set up as his test bench computer for HPIB computers. It has licensed software on it to run the 5890/6890, the 1050 and 1100 HPLC, and the HP UV-Vis specs. I have it at work now running an HP 8452b UV-Vis.
On the RISC front, one of my others on my want list is one of the PowerPC IBMs. They’re not at all common and there’s not much in the way of real software for them, but they’re the only computers I’m aware of that can run NT 3.5 for PowerPC. Incidentally, I’m at a loss as to what MIPS computer can run Windows NT, as SGIs can’t.
AIX maybe?
