***Vintage PC Technology Mega Discussion Thread***

Page 13 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
Eximo said:
The Radeon might attract some attention for vintage gaming PC builders. Not bad for an AGP card. You won't get a lot though, mostly would just be helping someone get an old system running for old school gaming.

Some guy in Germany selling a big pile of them for $80 a piece.
Click to expand...

Yeah its more make it worth boxing and don't let it go to waste. Its all perfectly fine just old, but SOMEBODY has to have a use for it.

I was gonna build an arcade machine with it, but TBH a Raspberry Pi can do the same thing and use 1/10th the power and be completely silent.
 
I sold my Radeon 6670 for $35, shipped. I think I netted like $12. But I had no use for it. Was in my HTPC, but it freaked out when I tried to run 4K through it, wouldn't scale it right. Sure it made that person quite pleased to get it for so little. Sold my GTX580 for $60 each.

Once that whole DX11/12 era and PCIe cards were a thing I lost my itch to collect them. Plenty of old PCI and ISA cards though. In some cases, they just look cooler. Large process nodes, practically no integration. Most newer cards are just big heatsinks.
 
Bought my first PC in 1994 from local Dixons store:

Intel 486
4MB RAM
250MB HDD in removable, locking caddy
No CD-ROM drive
DOS 6.2 & Windows 3.11 for Workgroups
Free portable Canon monochrome printer

The cost of this box of tricks was an eye-watering £1000!
 
We were still rocking 486 machines in 95/96/97, but had dropped 83Mhz overdrive or DX 133Mhz in them. I didn't replace my Pentium 83Mhz until the K6 came out. Bought the base model 166Mhz, ran it at 233Mhz. Didn't pick up a true Pentium until the Pentium II? Had a few slot based CPUs around that time. I upgraded my original Celeron 466Mhz, to a Pentium III 800Mhz that I got used for a very reasonable price. Then back to AMD until the first i series processors came out.
 
I still struggle to wrap my head around the fact you could have bought a 486 in 1989 or so and still used it untill 2014 and been under the microsoft support unbrella since windows xp could run on a 486.

Unfortunately i killed my q9500 setup, so im working on making another xp system. Im thinking something stupid like dual 1366 6 core xeons and a 960.
 
Eximo said:
We were still rocking 486 machines in 95/96/97, but had dropped 83Mhz overdrive or DX 133Mhz in them. I didn't replace my Pentium 83Mhz until the K6 came out. Bought the base model 166Mhz, ran it at 233Mhz. Didn't pick up a true Pentium until the Pentium II? Had a few slot based CPUs around that time. I upgraded my original Celeron 466Mhz, to a Pentium III 800Mhz that I got used for a very reasonable price. Then back to AMD until the first i series processors came out.
Click to expand...

I literally never owned a Pentium (or any Intel processor from that time period), went from a Cyrix 486 DX4100 to an AMD K6, and so on from there. Even my original 386 SX 33 was an AMD.

That said I worked for various computer places so I built and worked on a bunch of them.
 
We flopped back and forth, whatever was on sale at the local computer show, basically. My brother had a Cyrix 150Mhz. That odd transition period between mail order and internet e-tailers available in the midwest, dial up only days, so couldn't spend all day researching.

Starting ordering parts with my Athlon XP 2800+, after a frustrating time of my XP 1800+ (first time I bought top of the line) started dying (which itself replaced a DOA system). To this day I don't know where that 2800+ ended up, still one of my great mysteries. Built three machines around that time (one was a 2500+ on the same motherboard), and I know some part swapping happened at one point, but I can't recall the details. But we still have one of them, was a portable recording studio in a rack mount built on the cheap since it didn't need much power.

Athlon X2 6000+ is still kicking around, but it runs Windows 7 on all default drivers. Probably need to retire that one. Also has a BFG video card, good times.
 
I have currently a working vic-20 I modded to have 32k sram in it...
It works really well and it is really fun to write little basic and assembly programs for it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: USAFRet
First home computer we had was a Coleco Adam. It was a Colecovision console with a cassette tape drive, expansion ports and the largest & loudest daisy wheel printer ever made that also housed the power supply.
First PC we had was a Packed in Hell original Pentium. Think it had a 120Mhz CPU, 1 GB HD, 28kbs modem.
 
My oldest PC (beside C64 and Amiga I had) was 486DX4 running on 120MHz. It has cooler small as my cooler on chipset of my PC I own right now. It has 16MB of ram which was expensive as hell. How it could even run with 16MB? Probably I will ask my self the same question in 15 years when 16GB become silly size as 16MB 15 years ago. At that time 16MB was like 16GB now. It hase 2 HDDs, each 1 GB. I was most proud of my graphic card. I had Diamon Stealth 32. At the time most popular card in my market was Trident 9000. My motherboard was some kind of no name that was so bent it was hard to tighten all screws to case. Of course it has standard 1.44 inch floppy drive. I cant remember of cd rom, but I will look at old photos and check if my first cd rom was on this computer. It has Windows 3.11. And Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16. It was big card. Its is silly, graphic card was smaller than sound card and nowdays, graphic card are so big and audio cards are small chips on motherboards.
 
Superfrog79 said:
My oldest PC (beside C64 and Amiga I had) was 486DX4 running on 120MHz. It has cooler small as my cooler on chipset of my PC I own right now. It has 16MB of ram which was expensive as hell. How it could even run with 16MB? Probably I will ask my self the same question in 15 years when 16GB become silly size as 16MB 15 years ago. At that time 16MB was like 16GB now. It hase 2 HDDs, each 1 GB. I was most proud of my graphic card. I had Diamon Stealth 32. At the time most popular card in my market was Trident 9000. My motherboard was some kind of no name that was so bent it was hard to tighten all screws to case. Of course it has standard 1.44 inch floppy drive. I cant remember of cd rom, but I will look at old photos and check if my first cd rom was on this computer. It has Windows 3.11. And Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16. It was big card. Its is silly, graphic card was smaller than sound card and nowdays, graphic card are so big and audio cards are small chips on motherboards.
Click to expand...
I had an 8086 with 1MB and a Commodore 64 with 64 KB before that. Had AMD shortly after the Intel 8086 but mostly Intel until my Ryzen 3900.
 
Theresa N said:
I had an 8086 with 1MB and a Commodore 64 with 64 KB before that. Had AMD shortly after the Intel 8086 but mostly Intel until my Ryzen 3900.
Click to expand...
1 mb of ram was less then some Casio databanks. Honestly, I enjoyed playing games on my old Amiga and PC more than now on these battlestations.
 
have a stupid refurbished pc XPS 420 from 2005-2007 with hardware that come from the same era
CPU:Core 2 Quad Q6600 @2.4 Ghz
GPU:Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX 768 Mbs
RAM:Some heatsink-less ram ddr2
PSU:Some shady-idkhowitdidn'texplodeyet-Power Supply
HDD:a 1 TB Barracuda Hard drive
Case:XPS 420
MOBO:BTX(WHYYYY) Motherboard
 
i just handed down an xps 420. upgraded it to 8 gb ram and an r9-270 gpu. mine had the 375w delta psu which was still running strong after all these years. added a cheap ssd and it was a snappy little performer.

was still a solid little system and served me well for along time. i'm gonna miss that 75 lb case sitting on my spare desk. my brother is using it now as a streamer box for the tv. also plays some minor games on it sitting on the couch with a wireless keyboard/mouse. it'll play a lot of games at 1080p no problem. nothing AAA but then he's not into those types anyway. mainly project cars and f1 games, gtr racing and so on.
 
The first PC that I ever owned was a 486DX4 which was given to me in late 1995. Going back to 1988 I spent a lot of time gaming on an Amiga 500 that was owned by a sibling. I still yearn for several of the old Amiga games (Genghis Khan, Three Stooges, N.Y. Warriors and the American Version of The Settlers which was oddly called Serf City: Life is Feudal). But the first PC that I ever built myself was a Pentium 200mhz in 1996. I still enjoy playing Win 95 games such as Mechwarrior 2 and Interstate '76. I have kept every video card and sound card that I have ever purchased, which comes in very handy, because vintage stuff can get very expensive. I recently saw an Ebay listing for a Commodore 2000 box. Only the box - nothing else and the seller wants $1000.
 
I finally got an entire vintage setup from circa 2004. Perhaps on the border of old and vintage, but whatever.

I bought this today.

Disney Dream Desk PC made by Medion (specs below)
Disney branded LCD monitor with Micky mouse-ear speakers and light up Disney logo
Disney branded PS2 keyboard with shortcuts to Disney.com+Disney software
Mickey-shaped PS2 mouse
Disney Dream Desk controller (sealed in original packaging)
Disney Dream Desk camcorder (compatible with included movie software) also came sealed in original packaging.
Matching blue themed Lexmark printer (will have to dig up a parallel cable)

PC specs:
Intel Celeron D @2.66ghz
256mb ram
ATI RADEON 9100 igp
FSP 250w PSU
40gb Seagate IDE HDD
CD rom drive
Windows XP with Disney skin, sounds, software, and more.

I upgraded the single 256mb stick to 2x1gb DDR 333mhz, and there are still 2 slots free on the motherboard. I also have a Pentium 4 2.4ghz which I suspect may be faster since it probably has a ton more cache, though I'm not sure if it is compatible.

I want to buy another IDE disk and try to install W10 out of curiosity.

Was listed for $200, bought for $125 off of a local person. IDK why they still had it sitting around tbh.

These are VERY hard to find online, but I would estimate the value is much more than what I paid. I don't know how to value it, however, as I can find not comps.

Photo:

https://ibb.co/5F2dhKV

This was the photo in the ad. My setup is quite ugly rn.

Edit, you cannot find the PC at all on eBay rn. On sold listings, I see one similar setup sold for $600+shipping in late 2019.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Disney-Dre...052675?hash=item3d888e9cc3:g:eXgAAOSwVttbILkW
 
Last edited:
NightHawkRMX said:
I finally got an entire vintage setup from circa 2004. Perhaps on the border of old and vintage, but whatever.

I bought this today.

Disney Dream Desk PC made by Medion (specs below)
Disney branded LCD monitor with Micky mouse-ear speakers and light up Disney logo
Disney branded PS2 keyboard with shortcuts to Disney.com+Disney software
Mickey-shaped PS2 mouse
Disney Dream Desk controller (sealed in original packaging)
Disney Dream Desk camcorder (compatible with included movie software) also came sealed in original packaging.
Matching blue themed Lexmark printer (will have to dig up a parallel cable)

PC specs:
Intel Celeron D @2.66ghz
256mb ram
ATI RADEON 9100 igp
FSP 250w PSU
40gb Seagate IDE HDD
CD rom drive
Windows XP with Disney skin, sounds, software, and more.

I upgraded the single 256mb stick to 2x1gb DDR 333mhz, and there are still 2 slots free on the motherboard. I also have a Pentium 4 2.4ghz which I suspect may be faster since it probably has a ton more cache, though I'm not sure if it is compatible.

I want to buy another IDE disk and try to install W10 out of curiosity.

Was listed for $200, bought for $125 off of a local person. IDK why they still had it sitting around tbh.

These are VERY hard to find online, but I would estimate the value is much more than what I paid. I don't know how to value it, however, as I can find not comps.

Photo:

https://ibb.co/5F2dhKV

This was the photo in the ad. My setup is quite ugly rn.

Edit, you cannot find the PC at all on eBay rn. On sold listings, I see one similar setup sold for $600+shipping in late 2019.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Disney-Dre...052675?hash=item3d888e9cc3:g:eXgAAOSwVttbILkW
Click to expand...


there are bizzaro disney freaks who would be all over that. You will make money.
 
I've got some vintage motherboards, some still in the boxes and/or sealed in the static bags! Any idea where I should list these other than ebay?
 
I hope this is the appropriate thread for this. Please let me know if not.

I’ve been cleaning out an old storage room and came across a roughly 20 year old PC of ours. I'd like to review contents of the hard drive for family photos, etc. before recycling/junking it. I can get to BIOS and hard drive is recognized, but I can't get it to boot. Was wondering if anyone here might be able to point me in right direction (self-help info or professional assistance, I am open to either.)

I can post some photos of what I am seeing on boot if that is useful. Pretty sure the computer has Windows XP installed as operating system...

Thank you in advance for any guidance!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom