TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Trekkie4]

It's been a while since I posted any pics, so here's something to share & talk about...

First to start off with this Creative DVD encoder card. Still not sure what's the purpose of this thing (other than watching videos/DVD on a system without MPEG hardware support), or what's the difference between DXR-2 cards & this thing *shrug*



Just got this handheld scanner today... Almost mint condition, never been used from what I can tell! I'm tempted to hook it up, but then again why would I do such a thing, in the first place? Can't find any obvious purpose for this thing, other than to look awesome on the shelf. Besides, it's worth so much more in this condition, even if the actual scanner doesn't work. Which I'm sure it does, just saying

@Trekkie4
Dug it out of Storage and its Logitech Scanman Hand Held Scanner
Model 32 for IBM
Mine come's with Software on ( 2 ) 3 1/2" Floppys and ( 3 ) 5 1/4 " Floppys
A 16bit ISA Interface Card and the plug in hand held Scanner

Date 1989 ish ( Box Printed in Ireland ) so its over 25 years old and still in mint condition

Pic's here later

Handheld scanner Mustek gs-800. ISA. 1996 year.
View attachment 70429 View attachment 70430 View attachment 70431

ahahahah i had the same kind, but from Logitech ... sadly i can't find it back

Yeah man, I know how you feel *sigh* If I could go back in time, I'd save dozen of rare PC components, including one completely functional Diamond Monster 3DII (12mb), rare "Adison" case with vertical door, and Cooler Master modding gear. Anyhow... Got the "same" one from Genius, pics were posted a while back... Mine is in mint condition, from what I can tell this thing has never been used before. It may have been tested at some point, but judging from the protective plastic film (still attached to the scanner unit), I'd say this thing is brand "new"

Dorsetknob also claims he had one of these, but I don't think he ever remembered to upload the pic

PS, warning to unsuspected TPU members. Once again, I'm sharing a link with old, previously uploaded images posted to Imagebam service, which according to some members has tendency to spam you with random crap. So to be on a safe side, don't click on anything funny, and always make sure to have your malware app up & running.

 

[dorsetknob]

Dorsetknob also claims he had one of these, but I don't think he ever remembered to upload the pic

Your right i had forgot thanks for the reminder

 

[Trekkie4]

Haha, no prob I forgot all about it, myself. That is, until I was quoting that post, above.

On a side note... A lesson to be learned! Couple of days ago, I've started up my retro system for the 1st time in couple of months, wanting to play Need for Speed 3 (Hot Pursuit). Upon starting the game, system hanged which I admit doesn't happen very often, but it DOES happen from time to time. Mainly because of all the hardware that's inside I'm guessing, age difference (driver thing in particular). However, even after restarting the system & giving it yet ANOTHER try, I got the same result all over again... This time however, I've noticed that the problem is somehow related to Voodoo2 cards - whenever the system calls for them, systems hangs up! In fact, even DXDiag gave me pixelated image and crashed the entire system, so at this point I was scared to death because I assumed that one (or both?) Voodoo2 cards somehow got damaged. It certainly wouldn't be the 1st time to experience a problem like this, these things were using EDO VRAM which (as you guys probably know) are prone to going bad, especially after 15 years of service & being exposed to extreme heat.

So, anyhow... Long story short, both Voodoo2 cards turned out to be fine (I turned them both off & tested one at the time, through Device manager) and so I eventually located the problem. To make things more interesting, I'm going to turn this into a quiz - what do you think caused the system to hang & go crazy? I've been warned about problems like that back in the 90's, someone once told me to _____, otherwise Windows 98 are more than likely to start falling apart. So there, should be a huge hint

 

[Kirill2000]

GeForce 2 MX400 64MB. No name. 2002 year


Memory Interface: 64/128-bit SDR, 64-bit DDR
Texels per Second: 800 Million
Memory Bandwidth: 2.7GB/s

Spoiler: http://www.nvidia.com/object/LO_20010612_4442.html

GeForce2 MX Product Overview

 

[Trekkie4]

Happy new year, guys







PS, today I'm celebrating my 1yr anniversary of joining TPU Talk about time, can't believe it's been a year already!

 

[stinger608]

LOL, yep, that is some awesome ole 5 1/4" disks @Trekkie4 !!!

And a happy anniversary here as well bro! And Happy New Year to all the nostalgic hardware awesome members!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Trekkie4]

LOL, yep, that is some awesome ole 5 1/4" disks @Trekkie4 !!!

And a happy anniversary here as well bro! And Happy New Year to all the nostalgic hardware awesome members!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks, I've really had so much fun here with you guys, hoping to stick around for years and years to come

On a side note, I totally forgot to mention this earlier... I'm trying with new image hosting service, PostImage.org, do let me know what do you think of them so far (you @stinger608, and everyone else) As you might remember, I've had several complaints about ImageBam so I figured it's finally time to move on & try something new

 

[STIG_ZA]

Found old 6600 agp(non gt) for cheap cheap. Stuck it in my athlon xp 3000+ in place of the 9600pro, was lazy when looking for drivers so just put the latest 307.83 on. Performance in some games is worse than it should be, should i try some older drivers or does anybody know what the best driver for 6600 is?

 

[dorsetknob]

I'm trying with new image hosting service, PostImage.org,

Been uploading my images to them for quite a while
easy to use and reliable you will not regret moving to them

 

[Kirill2000]

ASUS V7100 Pro GeForce2 MX400 32Mb

 

[P4-630]

ASUS V7100 Pro GeForce2 MX400 32Mb
View attachment 70626 View attachment 70627 View attachment 70628 View attachment 70629 View attachment 70630

How hot does such run under load?

 

[Kirill2000]

How hot does such run under load?

Enough cold

 

[P4-630]

Enough cold

Yeah cool I think, since the chips at that time were still quite slow.
It may have even ran without the fan.

 

[Kirill2000]

Primetek Radeon ATI 9600 128Mb. Capacitors ...

 

[Trekkie4]

Not sure I understand... Just "pull" these out & swap for new ones, it should do the trick From my own, personal experience - as long it's not SMD component that's causing the problems, it should be user repairable.

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

@Kirill2000

Just solder new caps! Get it back working again!


I got into health emergency this few days for myself. Doctor ask whether I want to admitted to ER, I choose to go back home. Now I am resting myself and calming myself down. It is still a long way for me to be an antic nostalgia myself. Hope my health would get better and fine.

Now here my first video game that payed with my savings. Lol I wonder what the shopkeeper thought of me paying in literally a handful of coins and a stack of $2 notes. ahaha Roller coaster tycoon! I recall going to the game shop paying in $2 dollar notes and coins for this lol. I don't know where the cd is now just left the cardboard box. Games then came in huge boxes like this. Sad that many of the originals like diablo, red alert, cultures, sim city, starcraft, warcraft boxes are thrown away including the games. This is the only surviving game in this huge of a box. Nowadays games in stores are just in dvd casing size rather than in this vhs size box. I feel like wanna play cultures again and populous! Damn populous cd was thrown too! The former game I can't find anyone selling it. Still have to clean the room to dig out the old stuff which hopefully is still there.

 

[Trekkie4]

Oh man, these are NOT just games... I remember old operating systems (Windows 9X) which came in bulky cardboard boxes ... especially Windows 95 which had two stacks of floppy disks I actually got one of these in my collection, still in the original wrap and sealed up. Heck, even the hardware came with large boxes, most of you probably remember Creative's SoundBlaster cards, or even MIDI "expansions", Wave Blaster add-on cards! Today you're lucky to get a cheap, sealed up plastic container or just a bubble wrapped component if it's OEM part...

My personal favorite was retail-boxed CD (and later, DVD) drive... For some reason, I always thought they looked cool and futuristic lol. Honestly, I can't remember the last time when I had the opportunity to see one of these. Perhaps back in 2006, when I bought 2 Asus CD (yup, CD-ROM) retail units. These were already "compact", as in smaller size and they didn't have audio control on the front panel, or even the headphone jack... But I do believe these were last boxed optical units that I've got, with the exception of a Samsung CD drive which I got few years later, but that was old stock (and no, I didn't keep it boxed - it got mounted inside one of my old rigs )

 

[Kirill2000]

Memory....

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

Oh man, these are NOT just games... I remember old operating systems (Windows 9X) which came in bulky cardboard boxes ... especially Windows 95 which had two stacks of floppy disks I actually got one of these in my collection, still in the original wrap and sealed up. Heck, even the hardware came with large boxes, most of you probably remember Creative's SoundBlaster cards, or even MIDI "expansions", Wave Blaster add-on cards! Today you're lucky to get a cheap, sealed up plastic container or just a bubble wrapped component if it's OEM part...

I love those huge boxes frankly lol. I love the size and a lot of thought put into it. Creative soundblaster was cutting edge during that time than those useless motherboard beeps. xD It was a godsend!
I miss those imposing boxes than just one simple cd now. Oem parts are now rather pitiful like someone wrap the cd with used recycled paper from the bin. I guess things are more environmentally friendly than those big boxes and packaging. Show us those windows 9X!

 

[Mr.Scott]

Found old 6600 agp(non gt) for cheap cheap. Stuck it in my athlon xp 3000+ in place of the 9600pro, was lazy when looking for drivers so just put the latest 307.83 on. Performance in some games is worse than it should be, should i try some older drivers or does anybody know what the best driver for 6600 is?

169.21
182.50
197.45

 

[Trekkie4]

I love those huge boxes frankly lol. I love the size and a lot of thought put into it. Creative soundblaster was cutting edge during that time than those useless motherboard beeps. xD It was a godsend!
I miss those imposing boxes than just one simple cd now. Oem parts are now rather pitiful like someone wrap the cd with used recycled paper from the bin. I guess things are more environmentally friendly than those big boxes and packaging. Show us those windows 9X!

I already did! Way, way back... But for the sake of searching & dealing with ImageBam once again, I'm just going to take another pic.

Windows 95 (floppy version), in the original, sealed up box... I also got several OEM, CD-ROM versions also in the sealed-up bags with all the instruction manuals & paperwork


On a side note, you can actually see the original box of that Samsung CD-ROM in the background It's empty though, but it looks nice...

Office came to me bundled with Windows 95 and sadly it's been opened at some point, by the former owner. But still, it looks kinda cool...

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

@Trekkie4

Those boxes are like huge blocks! It look like a big dictionary or a book! It is so thick! All the pc stuff there look...erm how can I put it, "educational" like books . PC was known as educational tools and we can see how that turned out now lmao. Far to different from what is intended. I miss the ms-dos icon there. What is that spec sheet for? The pc tower spec?

Is that a game "Broken sword"?

 

[Trekkie4]

Haha, so true And yes, every tower has its own specs sheet... I've decided to label each and every build I have, because the overall number of these things got to 20 something, so there's absolutely no way I'd be able to remember everything and every one

Yes, that game is indeed the original Broken Sword. Also got the 2nd CD, which is somewhere behind the Windows 95 box. I didn't have enough space for both, so I only placed the 1st one. But these are fully operational, just like the original copy of Unreal... I don't use these however, I got the entire retro game database copied onto the external HDD (as CD images) and burned to disposable, new CD discs which can be used (and abused) on a regular basis! Better safe than sorry

 

[STIG_ZA]

Some Athlon XP madness. Upgraded the one i did have and found enough parts to build another which was mainly just to make a nice DX8 rig for the quardo 4

rig 1:
Athlon XP 3000+ 2.16ghz(Barton 333mhz bus)
1gb DDR 400
Gigabyte 7tv600-L(rev 1.0)
Nvidia 6600 256mb AGP
80gb hdd
300W psu

rig2:
Athlon XP 2400+(Thorton 2ghz 266mhz bus)
768Mb DDR 400
Gigabyte 7vt600-L (rev 2.0)
Nvidia Quadro 4 980XGL 128Mb
7.1ch C-media sound card(onboard is fried)
80Gb hdd
250W psu
evercool copper cpu cooler

 

[Kirill2000]

Nvidia Quadro 4 980XGL 128Mb