Just purchased and it worked perfectly, it instantly read the floppy disk in a second and I was able to view files stored from 1996, I ejected the floppy disk a few times and it still worked but about 10mins later when i reinserted the floppy disk it stopped making noise and now it won’t read the disk? I shined a light and the motors are still spinning but all Im getting now is read error and it makes zero noise despite the motor still spinning, the floppy has already been cleaned with isopropyl alcohol

I bought this server in a hurry back in 2014 because I wanted a physical machine to prepare for my Solaris 11 certification.

Then I discovered that the V100 wasn’t supported. Excellent planning on my part 😂

So I did a fresh Solaris 10 installation instead. Eventually the project stalled, the server went into the cellar, and there it stayed for over a decade. I rediscovered it while moving recently.

Sun hardware was already familiar territory for me. My background is in infrastructure and Unix administration, and I’d previously worked with Netra X1s, including installing NetBSD on them. Very similar-looking little boxes, although the X1 didn’t have the CD drive. Finding this V100 again brought back quite a few memories.

I opened it up and took these photos. Two Seagate IDE drives, four populated memory slots, and that enormous Sun logo on the lid. I still love the way these machines look.

One thing that concerns me is the group of capacitors next to the CPU heatsink. Some look slightly domed to me, although the lighting makes it hard to tell. For anyone familiar with these boards: do they look suspicious? Would you check or replace them before attempting to bring it back into service?

And what would you actually do with a V100 today?

Keep the Solaris 10 installation and rebuild a little period-correct Unix lab? Try a current BSD? Give it some small, completely unnecessary job just for the pleasure of seeing it work?

Or has it earned a place in a museum?

Anyone here still running one—or remembering when these were machines you looked after at work?

I decided to make a start on its restoration so I got my boxed VIC-20 on the bench this week. Before turned it on I checked the power supply, the plug and the fuse and measured the output 4.7V DC. It came out fine. The cursor froze once, but after a restart all the keys, sound worked and the original joystick worked too, which I didn’t expect.

About 20 minutes in it just switched itself off. Power LED has gone off and black screen. I turned it off and on again, it came back and a couple of minutes later it went off again. So I unplugged it and started the strip-down.

The board (250403 Rev D) is cleaner than I expected. No burn marks, no water marks, nothing obviously resoldered. The one odd thing is this black wire running across it, from one of the outputs over to the power side. I’m not sure it was fitted at the factory.

Has anyone seen this wire on their VIC-20? And does the switching off sound like the power supply to you or something on the board? I’ll post updates as I go.

Hi all! My name is Giorgio and I'm writing from Italy. I'm searching for the Programmer's Manual of Olivetti LIMO, that was in the '70s used to develop applications for Olivetti TC800 (it was a sort of assembler, the toolchain was DKASM, LINK...). I would like, just for fun, to write a LIMO emulator (probabily using a script language, so that it will be run on different platforms). To do that, I need a manual or better an old listing to understand the structure of the program. No need for instruction set: I own a copy of 'giallone', that was a foldable A4 reporting the syntax of all assembler instructions. Thank you all!

Ok. The drives work perfectly. Now to diagnose the motherboard. I'm thinking it's one of the logic chips. They might be holding the line low that would probably explain the problem it not reading and the light staying on even if the cable is on the correct way. We will see. If anyone could give some insight on these computers and what could be the problem I'm all ears. My scope went kaput over the weekend so I'm waiting on a replacement

I'm investigating a possible error in the IBM PCjr's I/O port address table, and I'm hoping someone with a working physical IBM PCjr would be willing to run a few short BASIC programs.

On page 2-29 of the IBM PCjr Technical Reference, the Intel 8253 timer is assigned I/O addresses 40H–47H. However, the table specifies 0 for address bit A2.

I suspect that 0 should actually be X (don't care).

If A2 is ignored, the timer's four registers should appear at two sets of addresses:

If A2 must be zero, only 40H–43H would access the timer.

The motherboard schematics suggest that A2 is ignored, but I'd like to verify this on real hardware.

Test 1: Scan the I/O ports

Please enter and run the following BASIC program:

10 FOR I=50 TO 75
20 IF I=64 THEN PRINT "What happens next?"
30 PRINT I,INP(I)
40 NEXT I

This program may cause the PCjr to appear to lock up. However, I suspect that it may actually finish executing and simply leave the keyboard unresponsive.

I'd particularly appreciate an exact record of what happens:

• What does the program print? Please describe the complete output, including the port numbers and values.
• Does the program reach port 75 and display the BASIC Ok prompt?
• Does the keyboard still accept input afterward?
• If the machine appears to freeze, at exactly what point does that happen?

Details of the results would be especially helpful.

Test 2: Read port 41H (decimal 65)

After a fresh reboot, run:

PRINT INP(65)

Record the value, then try entering another BASIC command. Does the keyboard still work?

Test 3: Read the suspected alias, 45H (decimal 69)

After another fresh reboot, run:

PRINT INP(69)

Again, record the value and check whether the keyboard still responds.

Test 4: Read both ports

After another fresh reboot, enter and run:

10 A=INP(65)
20 B=INP(69)
30 PRINT A,B

Record both values and check whether the keyboard remains functional.

Why might these programs affect the keyboard?

The PCjr's BIOS uses timer counter 1 to reconstruct serial keyboard data. Reading the counter an odd number of times may disturb its low-byte/high-byte read sequence, leaving the BIOS out of sync. The computer may continue executing instructions even though the keyboard no longer works.

In the MartyPC emulator, reading port 65 once causes the keyboard to stop responding, while reading port 69 returns 255 and leaves it working. This suggests the emulator may not implement the suspected address alias.

Important: These tests may leave the keyboard unresponsive and require a reset. Please don't run them with unsaved work. Start each test after a fresh reboot so earlier tests cannot affect the results.

If you can help, please mention which BASIC version you're using and whether your PCjr has an infrared or wired keyboard.

I'm particularly interested in whether 41H and 45H access the same timer register on an actual IBM PCjr.

Thanks!

A few years ago, I got my hands on a Soviet mainframe control panel identical to the one once used at the infamous Russian Woodpecker site in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The machine installed there was an ES-1060, an IBM System/370 architectural clone, initially installed in late 1985 to handle improved algorithms. However, it was never put into operation because of the Chernobyl disaster.

The panel I have is from an ES-4001 block/byte multiplexer channel controller (which, as far as I understand, has no direct IBM equivalent as a standalone device).

I started this project a few years ago but haven't made much progress, as I want to keep the restoration as authentic as possible. So I've spent a lot of time hunting down surviving documentation and acquiring the correct parts and components.

It's a bit of a long shot, as many things are still unclear. Maybe it'll end up being just a beautiful set of blinkenlights, maybe something more, but... here's Part 1!

Hi I came across a old work PC monitor and I wanted to see if there is some kind of converter for it so I could maybe use it on my modern PC.

Please and thank you

Dear mac users , you are using old app with some emulator , and you regret to not have your app running on a moder machine , may be i can brought to you the solution

In the early 90s I wrote MAC•CAM Workshop, a HyperCard stack for playing

with cellular automata, in the spirit of Toffoli & Margolus's CAM-6. The

heavy lifting was done by two XFCNs in 68000 code: a little FORTH to write

the rules, and MACCAM, the machine that runs them on four bit planes.

The source code of those XFCNs is long gone. All that was left was the

68000 binary inside the stack.

So we read the machine code, rewrote both XFCNs in C, and compiled them to

WebAssembly. They now run inside HC, a free HyperCard clone for modern

macOS that I've been building (Intel and Apple Silicon). No native code is

ever loaded next to a stack: old externals live in a sandbox.

The rule was simple: the original is the judge. It runs in Basilisk II

right next to HC, and both have to give the same output. Some results:

- the stack runs without changing a single line of its scripts

- one of the demo cards computes Pythagorean triples ("Fermat") with a

FORTH word written as raw 68000 opcodes, poked in with "," – it still

works: 1.27 million emulated 68000 instructions, and the 225 numbers

match the original character for character

- the rule tables come out identical to the old ones

Video of the stack running in HC: https://labynet.fr/videos/maccam-stack.mp4

HC is open source (MIT): https://github.com/cleobuline/hc

Site: https://hc.labynet.fr

This went so well that I'm now offering to do the same for other people's

old Mac software – stacks, XCMDs, small 68000 apps:

https://code-rebirth.labynet.fr/en.html

Happy to answer any question about the 68000 side, the WebAssembly

sandbox, HyperCard internals, or any old applications

.

Lots of branding on this one - Autodesk, Logitech, LogiCad... but the original tech hails from German aerospace. The puck can be nudged and twisted to control movement & rotation of 3D objects. Connects with Windows/Linux/UNIX systems via 9-pin serial. More info here.

Acorn released BBC Micro with 2MHz 6502(while Apple II and C64 was only 1Mhz), Econet networking and built-in sound processor in 1981. Then in 1987, Acorn released the first RISC based PC Archimedes with the ARM processor. We really benefit today from the ARM processors. What an amazing company it was with so many innovations

Had this one set up a few years ago with an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, miss that card.

Learned acsii basic on this

If you want to write “new” software for your old LGP-30, try this:

GitHub - etherbrat/xasm_lgp30: An LGP-30 cross assembler written in Python

The cross assembler is written in Python. The pre-built executable in the dist subdirectory runs under Windows. You can rebuild from source for Linux. The docs subdirectory contains a pretty good manual, and the demo_programs subdirectory contains assembly code examples, of which the helloworld program showcases the cross assembler best.

You can convert the cross assembled binaries to LGP-30 tape format using this:

GitHub - etherbrat/hex2tape_lgp30: From XASM_LGP30 object file or LGP-30 drum image...

To complete this suite, there is also an LGP-30 simulator, also written in Python, complete with good documentation and some LGP-30 programs. But note that this program only runs under Windows:

GitHub - etherbrat/sim_lgp30: An LGP-30 simulator written in Python

RTFM for all further information. Enjoy!

I have this commodore drive but i didint find any pictures of this online.

its a reach i figure but does anyone on here have the satellite speakers that came with boston acoustics speaker setups on vintage systems, including the stands? i got a BA635 setup but the satellite speakers are missing their stands and i would prefer to design them in CAD and 3d print but the dimensions are not available online. as far as im aware the stand design was shared across every satellite speaker at this time so if you have a different model with the same looking speakers/stands theyll probably work.

r/nullPlayer

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer

nullPlayer is 100% free and open source

A lot of 7 HP 2645A terminals in Edmonton.

I would love to, but can't store that many on my place.

Hi peeps

I've been trying to map out my tech history so to speak. I found an old video of my room with my PC from 2001 and I am trying to id it. It's quite a beast of a tower! I don’t remember it being that big.

The only clues I have, mostly from memory... I went from a Packard Bell desktop (486 SX I think) in the early 90s to a Gateway Pentium of some sort mid-late 90s to a custom build at some point early 2000s. This could be the Gateway but I remember it having the big green cow patch badge so maybe not. 

I'm in the UK if that has any relevance.

Side note - I believe I had a Diamond NVIDIA RIva TNT in this machine. I remember buying it within a year of launch and putting it into my existing machine.

Bonus points for the printer,  monitor and speakers :). 2nd pic is a better quality photo of what must be the same monitor from ~2005 from a different angle.

Thank you! 1993-2005 is such a blind spot for me on what specific computers I had and it's all just vague memories. Any help would be hugely appreciated. 

Never have done vintage restoration before. I bought a C64, Vic-20 and Mac Classic several years ago with the intent to. Finally getting around to it, starting with the Mac classic. My soldering skills are very rusty, and I was never good at SMD, but I got it torn down today and the logic board recapped. It was SOOO crusty and fiddly. But even if ugly, I think I got them all on there - even if not pretty. I have good continuity to the next spot on the circuit for each one anyway.

Analog board is next.

I got lucky and the battery never leaked but I think every cap did on both boards. Also has a full 4mb with the expansion card.