The [H] Retrocomputing Thread!

Ive seen some really destroyed boards too, one varta exploded and spead all over the board as it was a tower case lying on its side for who knows how long. Traces on the board were gone, chips were falling off the board, the 286 on the board was hanging on by a few legs...it was sad.
 
What would go in here...

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I love their power supplies that can also power the monitor. What is the cable called? I looked around a while back and had no luck.

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I dont remember the proper name for it, but I know a lot of the early IBM monitors had them attached to them
 
Although once monitors got bigger they stopped using that plug, although the plug remained on PSUs for a very long time after that even though it was not safe to run them that way due to the current draw of later CRTS
 
Starfalcon said:
Although once monitors got bigger they stopped using that plug, although the plug remained on PSUs for a very long time after that even though it was not safe to run them that way due to the current draw of later CRTS
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The last time I used it was on an old pentium 75. I thought maybe it was a cable I could buy, not realizing it was part of the monitor. Shame.

Turns out the video card is a 1mb card because the slots are full.
 
Starfalcon said:
I am sure you can buy them still, just I wouldnt trust an old PSU to even run one of those old 12-13 in CRTS.
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I'll just stick with its own power. Plugs are not hard to come by lol.

Sound card is a rare ATI Stereo F/X card. I guess there is another Stereo F/X card, non ati, that is more common. What a weird random journey tonight has been.
 
ATI making sound cards, WD making video cards, what other weird things from the past will make you scratch your head. Tune into the retro computing thread next week and find out :)
 
Starfalcon said:
Although a lot of times it was just a boring 486 or pentium with just a modem.....no cool old sound cards, video cards, or SCSI cards...
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I don't have any experience with SCSI cards or drives, but I think this is one?

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Lol.... Says SCSI on the left. I'm smart.

Got it for $2 at a thrift store months ago. Only for it because it was random.
 
Yeah that big 50 pin and the trapezoid shaped 68 pin are always a giveaway. Plus adaptec made a lot of SCSI cards, most of the ones I have are from them along with a few tekram and off brand ones.
 
Back in the day SCSI was really awesome, but it was spendy to get it set up. The cards were expensive, the cables were expensive, the drives were expensive but very fast, and even the cable terminators were expensive. It was nice having 10 and 15k rpm drives though, they were the SSDs of their day. Good old IBM ultrastar, seagate cheetah, and maxtor atlas drives, plus a lot of the good early CD burners were SCSI also.
 
auntjemima said:
I don't have any experience with SCSI cards or drives, but I think this is one?

View attachment 328525


Lol.... Says SCSI on the left. I'm smart.

Got it for $2 at a thrift store months ago. Only for it because it was random.
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Good call, those PCI-X (64-bit PCI) Adaptec SCSI controllers were extremely reliable and had solid performance back in the early to mid-2000s, and I still have quite a few of them.
The 29160 (Ultra160 SCSI @ 160MB/s) was the mid-range of those units, and was my favorite to work with back then, and I saw them in use up until around 2007 when SAS finally made parallel SCSI obsolete.

The 19160 was the entry-level card (small maximum number of connected devices), the 29160 was the mid-range card (moderate amount of connected devices with best system compatibility), and the 39160 was the high-end card (lots of connected devices but compatibility was minimal outside of servers with large BAR and IRQ counts).
That was a nice find!

36-ef1ea429e060_1.a9d6b831e30a3feb47241adb2ee18033.jpg 515G9S3MNYL._AC_SX466_.jpg 51E40NECAML._AC_.jpg

I can't believe these SCSI controllers are almost 20 years old, and I remember when they were new-to-market and were used in quite a few servers I maintained and upgraded at the time.
This really makes me feel old... :whistle:


Starfalcon said:
Yeah that big 50 pin and the trapezoid shaped 68 pin are always a giveaway. Plus adaptec made a lot of SCSI cards, most of the ones I have are from them along with a few tekram and off brand ones.
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Exactly!

8E12VGDG52G-5.jpg 8E12VGDG52G-4.jpg
 
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auntjemima said:
I don't have any experience with SCSI cards or drives, but I think this is one?

View attachment 328525


Lol.... Says SCSI on the left. I'm smart.

Got it for $2 at a thrift store months ago. Only for it because it was random.
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Since it has a universal PCI-X connector, you can see if it works in a normal PCI slot, just make sure there's room for the connector to overhang the back of the slot. Some cards do, some don't. In the case it does work, the card will be bottlenecked by the narrower slower 32 bit PCI.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
Since it has a universal PCI-X connector, you can see if it works in a normal PCI slot, just make sure there's room for the connector to overhang the back of the slot. Some cards do, some don't. In the case it does work, the card will be bottlenecked by the narrower slower 32 bit PCI.
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They all work in a standard 32-bit PCI 33MHz or 66MHz slot (assuming it will fit) - you are right, and we did that very thing with this exact controller back in the day when on a budget!
 
Starfalcon said:
Back in the day SCSI was really awesome, but it was spendy to get it set up. The cards were expensive, the cables were expensive, the drives were expensive but very fast, and even the cable terminators were expensive. It was nice having 10 and 15k rpm drives though, they were the SSDs of their day. Good old IBM ultrastar, seagate cheetah, and maxtor atlas drives, plus a lot of the good early CD burners were SCSI also.
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LoL SCSI I had a old SCSI CD-Writer. I had a Yamaha CRW8424 8X write 4x Rewrite 24X read not SCSI this was my first one my second one was an external one the model number I forgot but also a Yamaha.
I was one of the first students to get one in high school (2000 or so) this made me the "cool kid" I made so much money making CDs for the other students.
I built my first PC also in the year 2000
Abit KT7-A
AMD Athlon 1GHZ (I spent extra $ for the 1GHZ bragging rights back when 1GHZ was new and on heard of)
Sound Blaster 16 PCI
Inwin Q500 (I wish I still had that! My father new a guy who painted cars he got it painted silver powder coated like it was made that way from the factory new!)

I took many many 35MM pictures of this! I also got pictures of the traffic lights back when they first went to LED!
I still have them also I should scan them but my scanner AIO is a POS Canon MX532 I scanned pictures of my fathers 1979 Ford Thunderbird but they came out weird colors were messed up?

Another thread I stated I got my sister's old K7N2-V PC I built for her in my high school days it had a few bad capacitors as most of them did, replaced them and it works like it did then now to find and IDE DVD drive and a bigger IDE HDD.

PS I actually like the old late 1990's hard drive noises some don't I do I have an older WD 1TB black drive I love that it's loud when it get accessed for read/write not as loud as the old ones but basically the same noises just not as loud.
 
auntjemima said:
I love there power supplies that can also power the monitor. What is the cable called? I looked around a while back and had no luck.

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These can still be had (the cables) some PDU's use that type of plug.
You can get a C13/C14 extender those will fit right in and the C13 will go into the monitors power socket or you can get a C13 to a NEMA 5-15R (Standard 125V/15A US style wall receptacle type of socket)

Forgot this is the complete IEC 60320 specification page on Wikipedia
 
I figured I should open my next generation tower as well. It's the first of the Pentiums, so it isn't oooollllddd I guess, and I have a hodge podge of items in it.

Pentium 90, IIRC on an Asus P55TVP4 board.

Trusty turbo button and a readout. Neat!

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Just the back side with only an AT connector for your keyboard.

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Overview picture.

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Generic D-Link network card.

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Pretty sure it's a voodoo3 2000. I would usually like to keep my cards generation specific, but I don't have a Celeron 300a or a p2 kicking around to pair this with and I can't leave a v3 sitting around! I added the heatsink... Bought it without.

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ISA IBM soundcard. Some of the reading I've done on it seems to indicate it's a decent sound card. I liked that it wasn't SB like the other 45 cards I have.

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Just some pictures of the inside. Has a slot for cache, generic socket 7 (not sure if this is a SS7 or not).

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It can support two types of memory! I think this is the only board I own that does.

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auntjemima said:
Meant to add these random cables. Pretty sure the first is for a matrox and the second is for an ATI AIW card.

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The first one looks like a DMS-59 cable.
I've used a lot of those with SFF GPUs like low-end Quadro NVS and FireMV GPUs (way before micro-HDMI and mini-DP were a thing), and were mostly used for 2D workstations needing multiple (2-4) displays in such a form factor.

I've seen the second one before back in the 1990s and early 2000s, but my memory eludes me as to what the connector is called.
 
Red Falcon said:
The first one looks like a DMS-59 cable.
I've used a lot of those with SFF GPUs like low-end Quadro NVS and FireMV GPUs (way before micro-HDMI and mini-DP were a thing), and were mostly used for 2D workstations needing multiple (2-4) displays in such a form factor.

I've seen the second one before back in the 1990s and early 2000s, but my memory eludes me as to what the connector is called.
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A little googling says it's a dual VGA connector. Pretty uncommon.
 
auntjemima said:
A little googling says it's a dual VGA connector. Pretty uncommon.
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Yep, and others are dual-DVI as well - still have one in operation at work.
51l8kGhB8OL._SX342_.jpg

Here's an older AMD/ATI 2400XT with the DMS-59 connector:
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You're right, these weren't very common connectors, and really were only used on SFF GPUs for 2D displays.
I believe the primary usage was for 2D graphs, stock trading, etc. - mainly business applications.

I used to use them for playing WoW on a Quadro NVS 280.
2D performance was fine but it was definitely no 60fps 3D performer, and these were really the only GPUs to utilize this connector type.

Mini-DP made DMS-59 completely obsolete.
Even the Quadro P600 can have up to four mini-DP 4K display outputs in a single-slot SFF design.

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auntjemima said:
Meant to add these random cables. Pretty sure the first is for a matrox and the second is for an ATI AIW card.

View attachment 331592

View attachment 331593
Click to expand...

AMD was in love with LFH-60 and DMS-59 for quite a number of years on their low profile cards. They used it from the x300 series all the way up to the HD 5450 and maybe a bit into the HD 6000 era.

The second connector was used on the All in Wonder 9600 series. I have two AIW 9600 Pro cards that use that pigtail. Strangely, the AIW 9800 Pro used a regular DVI port.
 
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