cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/833791

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Okay, so I know this isn’t 80s/early-90s retro, but hear me out.

I collect old computers, mainly those from the 90s and 2000s. For a while, I’ve been missing a “complete” beige setup. I’ve had the keyboards, mice, computers, and this IBM 2124 CRT (from 1997, still works lovely, great image… and I’ll be heartbroken if it ever packs it in), but not the speakers! Well, fast forward to a few days ago, I find these Harman/Kardon speakers at the thrift store for a few dollars. I brought them home, not sure if they worked or not. Even if they didn’t, they aesthetically fit the scene.

Oh boy. Not only do they work well (and properly - a lot of the times speakers can have screwy volume control), they sound objectively GREAT. I have a Logitech sound bar speaker for laptops that sounds shockingly great, but this is just… so much better. Even without the subwoofer, the sound is full, rich, and heavy. My god, I might move them to my main PC!

As for the Deskpro, it’s been somewhat of a Guinea pig for me. It’s survived a 1GHz PIII upgrade (okay, not that cursed for this one), a PCI GeForce FX-5500 (because I could, works shockingly well), and having Arch Linux shoehorned on it (because I could). Runs Windows 2000, and brings me right back to my childhood. Kinda hard to believe this thing is now 24-26 years old now.

I like the hacked breadboards so far. I made a sloppy super-breadboard. I should have glued it before soldering but was worried the glue might make it into the slots with the metal contacts. I also broke up the internal rails and labeled so that 8b data and 16b address all exist on the same set of 4 power rails.

I think I am having an issue with either some crossed wires or how Bus Request works with the Z80 versus how the Bus Enable of the 65x chips work. I think one or all may have some type of routine that does not high-z the buses immediately... a problem for tomorrow.

What if you used a late 80s Unix system for your job or university, but still wanted a nice and pretty GUI to use? Well then, let’s discover a nice selection of window managers and graphical user interfaces that will make your boring installation look awesome!

Looking through my regular SRAM chips, most have a standby mode with just a few micro amps of current draw and function down to 2 volts. So, a perfect match for one of these and a coin cell. That makes programming from scratch easy, and one can iterate without a ROM programmer. Once a subroutine is verified, it can be transferred to an EEPROM. Then there is no fussing with paged erasure, not that erasure is a big deal. It just requires the subroutine and a 12 volt source.

Anyways, the battery backed SRAM on the board is the plan for tomorrow. I might have expanded the real estate a bit today, and built a custom breadboard for the 68k Hershey bar. I don't know if I will mess with the 68k stuff as all chips I have are NMOS, and I think that means they cannot single step through code. Reading up on the Z80, that thing is really really nice compared to the 6502.

Sorry for my nude unisocks.

ZX Spectrum, NES, and Super NES... Si Si Si pew pew pew.

Meet Motorola ROKR E2, an almost unknown successor of the infamous iTunes phone ROKR E1. The device was one of the first candybar style non-touchscreen phones on the market running Linux. When connected to a PC it can present itself as a network device. Running telnet against the IP address of a network interface exposed BASH, where I had a chance to learn UNIX scripting.

More about Motorola ROKR E2 here.

Sadly there was no VCF Berlin 2025 this year, but I'll make sure to put my whole collection of legacy pocketable computing devices on display.

Meanwhile, you can enjoy my reports on VCFB2023 and VCFB2024, as well as the online version of my collection.

Let’s discover the development and beta builds of the first version of Windows, alongside its GUI! And... was Windows 1.0 as good as the other GUIs? Our analysis and comparison will try to unveil that; tap on the link to find out!

We’ve already seen the marvels of the exciting Amiga PC in our previous Episode, but what about its Atari counterpart, which ran Atari TOS and the GEM GUI? The advertisements say you’ll have Power Without the Price, so let’s see if it’s true or not! Also in 🇮🇹

The Multimedia Revolution is here! Let’s have a look at the Amiga and its Workbench, which will give us the power to experience new ways of using a PC! Plus, it even has a GUI, couldn’t it be more wonderful? Well then, click the link below and connect to the magic!

Also in 🇮🇹

If you’re on the US East Coast, you should head on over to Wall, NJ and check out the Vintage Computer Festival East. After all, [Brian Kernighan] is going to be there. Yes, that [Brian Kernighan].

Events are actually well underway, and you’ve already missed the first few TRS-80 Color Computer programming workshops, but rest assured that they’re going on all weekend. If you’re from the other side of the retrocomputing fence, namely the C64 side, you’ve also got a lot to look forward to, because the theme this year is “The Sounds of Retro” which means that your favorite chiptune chips will be getting a workout.

[Tom Nardi] went to VCF East last year, so if you’re on the fence, just have a look at his writeup and you’ll probably hop in your car, or like us, wish you could. If when you do end up going, let us know how it was in the comments!

It's a widely known problem with roots in urban legend: Devices with motherboards failing in the early 2000s with a sudden pop, a gruesome spill, or sometimes a burst of flames. And it was allegedly all due to one guy who didn't copy a stolen formula correctly.

The "capacitor plague" of the early 2000s was real and fairly widespread among devices, even if the majority of those devices didn't go bad at the same time or even in the same year. The story of this widespread failure, passing between industry insider stories and media reports, had a specific culprit, but also a broad narrative about the shift from Japanese to Taiwanese manufacturers and about outsourcing generally.

The Asianometry channel on YouTube recently dug into the "capacitor plague" in a video that asks, "What happened to the capacitors in 2002?" and comes to some informed, broad, and layered answers. It explains the specifics of what's happening inside both a working capacitor and the faulty models, relays the reporting on the companies blamed and affected, and, crucially, puts the plague in the wider context of hotter chips, complex supply chains, counterfeits, and, sure, some industrial sabotage.

"We will never know what exactly happened, but let's try," the host says at the start. It is recommended you follow along.

For all the admirers of the SUN. There seem to be a few as I noticed by the comments on my previous post. There might be some to follow, I just have to export the right pics from shotwell...