Computer nostalgia - Post your relics!

Off the top of my head 10BASE5 was thicknet which is the one where you used vampire taps, then 10BASE2 was thinnet was a slight improvement using hubs but still only half duplex and still easily brought down by broadcast floods which was still a major issue at the time with the prevalence protocols like NetBEUI.
The old 3COM hubs used to have both a collision light and a bandwidth meter, when a flood was happening that collision light was solid red, and the bandwidth meter was pegged, lol.

NetBEUI! That's going back! Now I'm remembering IPX/SPX and netware, lol.
 
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Now I'm remember IPX/SPX and netware, lol.
I was a Novell CNE at one time. The IPX/SPX protocol was really good, but was obsoleted by TCP/IP. IPX could retransmit just a lost frame, while TCP has to retransmit an entire window. IPX was completely unable to use the internet and could not handle variable length frames. IPX had zero configuration for clients, which was pretty cool, but IPv6 now has the same thing with stateless autoconf.
 
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I recently upgraded my mom from an i5 6500 to an i3 10100t machine, but at one point I didn't like how loud the i5 6500 machine was with the anemic Intel stock cooler Asus used so I got a Zalman cnps8900 quiet pretty cheap which works fantastic running full out at 1500rpm. I have it plugged in the case fan header which I disabled the fan control on, the CPU header is broken out to an adapter that I'm using on my big boy 92x38mm fans to provide PWM signal and one of them is tied back to the tach, the fans are then plugged into the powersupply since I didn't want to run two of them off one header, they spin at about 2000rpm which is not really that loud at all blends in with the background noise of the house. I know this CPU cooler model is only about 10 years old and the Extreme version with the faster fan is a little older but it's essentially their popular design from 20 years ago with heatpipes added, I loved those old Zalman designs and their unique tower designs that had the same design cues, now all they make is the same generic tower coolers everyone else makes with RGB vomit all over.
 
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I recently upgraded my mom from an i5 6500 to an i3 10100t machine, but at one point I didn't like how loud the i5 6500 machine was with the anemic Intel stock cooler Asus used so I got a Zalman cnps8900 quiet pretty cheap which works fantastic running full out at 1500rpm. I have it plugged in the case fan header which I disabled the fan control on, the CPU header is broken out to an adapter that I'm using on my big boy 92x38mm fans to provide PWM signal and one of them is tied back to the tach, the fans are then plugged into the powersupply since I didn't want to run two of them off one header, they spin at about 2000rpm which is not really that loud at all blends in with the background noise of the house. I know this CPU cooler model is only about 10 years old and the Extreme version with the faster fan is a little older but it's essentially their popular design from 20 years ago with heatpipes added, I loved those old Zalman designs and their unique tower designs that had the same design cues, now all they make is the same generic tower coolers everyone else makes with RGB vomit all over.

Those and the 9700cnps were the Noctua NH15 of their time. Beautiful copper shine.
 
I used to support some drycleaner POS's with dos based ethernet networking(novell netware?? maybe? been along time)
as a side job.
.. that was a load of joy working on those 10-15 year old POS systems
I had to ebay some antique nics it had to be same exact chipset.
They had about 9 stores and a few plants.
Never did backups either.
 
Funny I remember my sound cards better than the video cards!

I think I had 4 different SB variants the first one then the AWE 32 and 64 and this little guy. Don’t do sound stuff with the kids anymore. Good memories of that.
I had the awe32 and the sound was very good.. then migrated to a soundblaster Live, began to take my old analog cassette tapes and convert them to digital audio!
At one point they did start putting IDE on sound cards and they even sold ISA cards with one IDE interface on them just for hooking up a CD-ROM drive because hooking an ATAPI device on the same channel as the HDD I don't think was ever really recommended.
yup.. had a dvd-rom controller card which was much better at decoding the dvd video than the cpu or graphics card!
Remember HD120, ZIP and JAZZ? Various interfaces available. I think I still had an ATAPI ZIP drive here somewhere (as well as an external parallel one).
When I moved I found the old zip discs!! Bunch of college stuff on that! I'll have to see what's on them!!

I also remember my Diamond Graphics video card, the V770.. had the tnt2 chip.. agp video slot..
we all might be "old" but I'm glad I'm the age I am at.. got to experience all these computers as the industry grew up really quick!

edit: Found an old review of the v770 card.. from anandtech, I used to visit that site all the time, now I'm here on BITOG instead.. https://www.anandtech.com/show/307
 
I had the awe32 and the sound was very good.. then migrated to a soundblaster Live, began to take my old analog cassette tapes and convert them to digital audio!

yup.. had a dvd-rom controller card which was much better at decoding the dvd video than the cpu or graphics card!

When I moved I found the old zip discs!! Bunch of college stuff on that! I'll have to see what's on them!!

I also remember my Diamond Graphics video card, the V770.. had the tnt2 chip.. agp video slot..
we all might be "old" but I'm glad I'm the age I am at.. got to experience all these computers as the industry grew up really quick!

edit: Found an old review of the v770 card.. from anandtech, I used to visit that site all the time, now I'm here on BITOG instead.. https://www.anandtech.com/show/307
Oh man, the DVD decoders! Didn't Matrox make one?

Of course we can't forget the Voodoo cards with the VGA passthrough, lol.
 
yup.. had a dvd-rom controller card which was much better at decoding the dvd video than the cpu or graphics card!
I had Pionex branded computer I picked up 10 years ago with a 333mhz PII in it, it had an S3 Virge card in it with a MPACT dvd decoder connected to it, I tried to use it but I don't think I could find the right software for it and maybe it had trouble running on 98 and not 95.
 
Oh man, the DVD decoders! Didn't Matrox make one?

Of course we can't forget the Voodoo cards with the VGA passthrough, lol.
yup yup.. I think matrox did make one.. I had to look mine up, it was from Diamond called the MaximumDVD package. It was a little buggy, video would skip after first pushing play.. then it was fine.
 
I had Pionex branded computer I picked up 10 years ago with a 333mhz PII in it, it had an S3 Virge card in it with a MPACT dvd decoder connected to it, I tried to use it but I don't think I could find the right software for it and maybe it had trouble running on 98 and not 95.
Pionex just reminded me of the "Pine" branded computer peripherals which were like "Dollar General" grade. They had those horrible desktop speakers that hummed.
 
I had Pionex branded computer I picked up 10 years ago with a 333mhz PII in it, it had an S3 Virge card in it with a MPACT dvd decoder connected to it, I tried to use it but I don't think I could find the right software for it and maybe it had trouble running on 98 and not 95.
ya they did have a problem on win 98.. on my 98SE it was a little buggy but it was much better running a dvd video than trying to let the video card do all the work. And wow Pionex, yep bringing back some good memories.
 
yup yup.. I think matrox did make one.. I had to look mine up, it was from Diamond called the MaximumDVD package. It was a little buggy, video would skip after first pushing play.. then it was fine.
I have an old Diamond home wireless networking kit that pre-dates WiFi.
 
Pionex just reminded me of the "Pine" branded computer peripherals which were like "Dollar General" grade. They had those horrible desktop speakers that hummed.
wasn't it packard bell computer that lit on fire? lol.. then Lucky Goldstar monitors (on fire).. PR was so bad, they changed their name to LG.. oh wait.. who was it that hard drives that also smoked? maxtor or was that IBM with their "deathstar" brands..
 
wasn't it packard bell computer that lit on fire? lol.. then Lucky Goldstar monitors (on fire).. PR was so bad, they changed their name to LG.. oh wait.. who was it that hard drives that also smoked? maxtor or was that IBM with their "deathstar" brands..
I don't remember the Deathstar drives smoking, just dropping dead. There have been SO MANY examples though! Remember the Fujitsu 40GB hard drives that dropped like flies? I remember taking them back to the depot for warranty and there were literally skids of thousands of these drives being returned, it was unreal.

The Maxtor drives used to have the bearings go out of them and then they'd whine.

Remember the Quantum "Big Foot" 5.25" drives? They were glacially slow, but dirt cheap.

More recently of course (out of the nostalgia era) we had the Seagate 7200.11 I think it was, that failed in huge numbers?
 
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I have this 10GB bigfoot, I think after I got done using it as a prop to make jokes about finding Bigfoot sneaking in my Windows, I ended up sticking it in my Pentium Overdrive system running Windows 98Lite and an old version of Debian or Slackware from back when the 2.2 kernel was relevant.
 
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