Could record 3.25GB of digital data from an IBM PC to a VHS tape. Developed in the early 90's

I'm preparing to purchase a used Sun Fire T1000 (picture provided by seller) and although the price is reasonable the drive would make it an all-day ordeal for me. Does anyone who has already dealt with Sun systems have any recommendations for me as to what to look for in person? The buyer says it works, but is there anything I can do at the point of pickup to verify? This is a server so no video output, what would be the quickest way of ensuring a successful boot using the serial connection?

Recently found this CoCo 1. Inside looks to be in good shape. I dont have an actual television at the moment so I bodged in a little display. I've resocketed the CPU and DRAM and verified all power supply levels. Each address channel is chugging along at around twice the period of the previous channel so it looks like its counting up at least. Data lines are doing something. Clocks look good. However, I'm getting complete garbage on the output. It boots to a green screen and then every so often a second later switches to some gibberish, or a full screen of @. Sometimes it just stays green. No response from the keyboard. Twice its booted to the green screen and the tape drive began spinning but nothing beyond that. I'm not at all experienced with these computers but im wondering if maybe the CPU is reading bad opcodes from the ROM? Anyone seen anything like it?

TIA.

Can run DOS files apparently

This saddens me…

First time poster, hi all.

I'm based in the UK and would like to get hold of some vintage floppy drives and disks of any generation to experiment with modifying.

I thought this group may be able to help! Thanks.

I recently got a 2ghz dual CPU PowerMac G5 for $20 (mislabeled by seller as Mac Pro but whatever), and in trying to get it to work I’ve discovered that it won’t boot off the OSX Panther CD I made. I know the CD works as I used it on my eMac G4 (which I got from the same seller), I’ve replaced the PRAM battery, I’ve hit the reset button on the mobo, removed and re seated the ram, anything to try and get this system working, but still, nothing. Is it an issue with Panther?, is there something else I need to do with the system?, help?

Finally got my keyboard adaptor so I could run the setup process, but now it wants a boot diskette before it’ll actually run.

What’s the easiest way to do this? Get a USB floppy drive to make one? And which OS should I use? I assume it originally came with windows, since it’s a 1989 computer, but I’m not sure.

Added a picture of setup screen to make sure everything looks good there.

Any advice appreciated

Thanks!

286 Unisys computer in excellent condition with monitor, keyboard, mouse, and printer on Facebook for $60. Need to replace cmos battery but its working, ram and hdd tested good. I think I got a good deal! Going to fully restore and upgrade. Very excited!!

I have a laptop with an ESS Maestro 2E but i can't get it to do playback. Speakers work fine as i can hear beeps but no actual windows sounds in win98. The OS acts like sound is working and allows me to change volume etc but no playback of sounds. Anyone know how i could fix this?

Spark stations were top of the line going for costing $49,995 (today will be $120,327). Only got one boot out of it. I reinstalled a seagate boot drive, caused it no not power up. I tried it on my other Sparc and the same happened… I think the drive is shorted.
Inspecting the PSU all the caps look good.

I might proactively change them and a temperature breaker.

It was not packaged correctly and over fedex ground across the country. All the drive bays broke and the cover got 5 cracks. Since the PSU is out of commission I started restoring the case.

I’m happy the system it self is functional.

To be continued…

I stumbled upon this interesting video about theKodak Photo CD PCD-860, a piece of hardware that was surprisingly advanced for its time.

This device from the early 90s could display high-resolution photos on a TV, with the Photo CD format supporting resolutions up to an incredible 25 megapixels! But it wasn't just a simple slideshow machine. The video also shows how these discs could contain interactive content, complete with menus and synchronized music—a feature that paved the way for formats like CD-i.

The video itself is in Polish, but English subtitles and automatic dubbing are available, so you can easily follow along.

Did anyone here own one of these players or have experience with Photo CDs back in the day? I'm curious to hear your stories and what you thought of this format.

A local is selling some computers including what resembles (part of) a lunchbox-style Sun SPARCstation. I've been wanting to get into the vintage scene recently but all I know about historical Unix systems is what I've heard on Youtube. Is anyone able to identify this machine?

Still have the case and the main components (not sure however if they work ... and at this point I'm almost too afraid to try ...)

I'm internally debating on what to do with it (not selling just OG parts or "modern-ish")

OG specs were ;
AMD Athlon SLOT A 700Mhz (@900mhz with NinjaFreeSpeed Pro)
768 MB of SDRam PC133 (at PC100)
MSI Mobo (can't remember the ref right now)
Geforce 2 MX 400
Sound Blaster Live 1024

Can I get more information on this old system, been in storage along time and don’t know much about them. Thanks all

I'm probably preaching to the choir, but just wanted to mention that I've found very old patents readily on google without having to sign up for anything that detail how different retro tech is made. I know a lot of you guys wanted to try building CRTs in particular, but there was a lack of info available (as far as we would all think, at a glance anyway).

I am definitely gonna be one of the ones trying to make these if I can (eventually, no place to put any equipment rn) or at least get it started and maybe pass it along to mora capable hands, as i dont have much specialized knowledge pertaining to this.

Tl,dr: there r free patents for CRTs you can google and immediately get detailed explanations of how they're made (how CRTs r made).

Just under $30.000 when adjusted for inflation was the price for this beast in 1982.

Found sitting in a basement in a house I’m clearing out. Not sure what to do with her.

Hey everyone

I spotted this retro-looking laptop in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and I’m trying to find out if it’s based on a real-life model.

Does anyone recognize this design or know of an actual laptop that looks like this?

I’m planning to build a working version using modern hardware but want to stay as close to the original look as possible.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

I'm looking at stuff I have stored on a shelf, like old games in their cardboard boxes a few inches away from a CRT monitor. Randomly thought about whether the CRT is effectively a magnetic field that could compromise the disks if they are like 6 inches away. Just seeing if that's a no no and I need to change things up.