For reasons not entirely known, I have the massive yearning to have an old, old, old, computer. I'm talking about the stuff that a few of you grew up on. 486 and older. I have been looking high and low and might have secured one, although it's yet to be seen if that will pan out.

What I ask is, for you veterans to share your stories with such antiques. "You young'uns don't know how good you got it" a bonus.

My father basically has a museum of antique computers. Old Macs, Commodore 64, some PCs, some Chinese knockoff PCs.

Macintosh Plus (1985) really was an ace computer, though. Even if I still did use it 12 years after it was launched.

Oldest thing I have is a 450mhz celeron in my closet. It works, but I don't think that's how old you were looking for :p

I grew up using a 286. 20MB HDD, 512kB RAM, floppies in both 3.5" and 5" varieties.

Ah the days of playing Police Quest, Kings Quest IV, Space Quest, Arkanoid etc...

I was quicker at driving DOS back then than I was driving windows 3.1 and I've got my dad to thank for that.

(Just remembered - my C Programming for Dummies book has this to say on drive names (paraphrased): "Your floppy drive will be A:\ and your primary hard drive C:\. B:\ is skipped for historical reasons".

I HAD A B DRIVE!!

Everyone and his dog had a Commodore 64 or a 386; if you want something truly antique you should look for something properly historical. Get a piece of a Whirlwind SAGE system or one of those Soviet ternary computers and you'd be my hero.

Then splash some cold water on your face and get over it. Once the novelty of having a piece of hardware like that wears off, you'll be left with nothing but a useless boat anchor.

But if it'll make you understand just how good you really do have it, then by all means, go for it.

I still have an intact 286 (there's a 386, 486 and about 7 pentiums in the cupboard).

There's not a lot of peripherals for it (full-length ISA video card, 21meg RLL HDD, 2 sticks of 30 pin ram which are never used), so there's not really a lot of playing around or fiddling to get things to work. Once in a while I start it up to play Grand Prix or some other old DOS game (Starcontrol) but that's about it. It's amusing to hear the hdd spin up like a turbine and wait for the CGA monitor to 'warm up' before it can start displaying things properly.

There's also a 1994 Alpha sitting here I've been meaning to do something with for a couple of years. It's got 32 sticks of ram (128meg), a fan the size of a salad bowl, 190mhz 64bit cpu and room for 7 or 8 SCSI drives. I've also got another cpu board and ram board to go in and the plan is to put debian on it. Oh, also a couple of fixed frequency monitors (one of them Sun Microsystems). This one will need a lot of ****ing around.

If you really want something to do your head in, forget 386's and commodore's, get on ebay and go VAX/OpenVMS.

i had a hunch this thread was started by tibby, just the title alone gives it away

tibby... rummage sales and thrift stores...

i once got a couple of old *** computers for $1... one was rocking a 75MHz Pentium 1 (not quite a 486 but still slow and it didn't even have a soundcard) and Windows 3.1 (IMO this was the best part) the other had a 100MHz AMD K5 and had windows 98 installed on it

I think we have an Atari 4800 in the basement still. I pulled it out a couple of years ago and hooked it up to a tv for a few days... played pacman and asteroids.

Get a Tandy. Heh.

I had an old Radio Shack modei. It had no OS. It ran off 8 inch floppies. It had a black and green screen.

Another thing I want is a gameport joystick, or a usb to gameport converter (which don't exist because that's dumb) and a voodoo series card to make that pentium 2 great.
Gameport because as it is it's windows 95, or a joystick, not both.

Windows 95 OSR2 had USB support, FYI.

I know, I tried it. For some reason it just won't detect the joystick, and when I go to set it up it won't allow to select "USB". only Gameport. (IE there is a drop down menu that should list USB, but it doesn't).
I guess I could re-install and try again.
It's a logitech attack 3 if anyone knows where I can find win95 drivers, or an extreme 3d pro I have one of too.

i have a sidewinder i could sell you...

Logitech Wingman interceptor.

Frankly, the best damn joystick I have ever used, to this day.

Haha, wow, I remember drooling over that joystick a little over a decade ago... That plus the specs of the machines mentioned above brings back a ton of x-wing and tie fighter nostalgia...

That looks ****ing awesome, my goal however is a Sidewinder 3D pro. It's what my and my dad bought in late 1998 and I regret trashing to this very day.
Although really any gameport will do, and I'm sure I can find one at a flea market or something.

You can get them dirt cheap on ebay. I got a backup wingman interceptor for $5 with $5 shipping.

A slight problem there with me not being 18 and my parents (perhaps understandably) don't want to put dusty computer parts on their account.

Dude, ebay can't tell how old you are over the internet.

I'm pretty sure if you get some kind of visa prepaid cash card, ebay/paypal will work for you.

Even as a minor you can get a bank account for free, and you can get cheques/money orders from the bank for free or a minimal fee. There's really nothing stopping anybody from using ebay... lol

Paypal won't let me reg if im not 18, and my parents won't let me get a credit card.
Which is fine, I can live.

.. I have one ..

mine creaks.

yeah, i've got a sidewinder force feedback pro. i've got the driver disc and everything...pm me if ur interested...willing to let it go for 10$ plus shipping to freakin canadia.

I have a voodoo3 around here somewhere.

one thing i loved about logitech's old joysticks was how well they fit in my hand... i had this one (and i believe i still have it somewhere in my garage)



Wingman Extreme Digital

I have a copy of Tie Fighter in a LucasArts case right next to my JK cd's, MOTS cd, and Dark Forces CD

To all the gents selling joysticks: Thanks, but like I said I have no way to pay for it, and my parents won't.

Reid: Yeah, I keep all my Lucasarts games in an old munitions container.

I swear the wingman series of joysticks are the greatest and most solid performing pieces of hardware logitech ever made.

So wait... a computer that will take even longer to shut down?

I laughed.

mb... if it's running DOS he could just flip the power switch

I ran an old 286 that I couldn't just cut power to. I had to run diskpark.exe when I was ready to shut down.

And if you didn't the hard disk spindle would just rest on the platters?

I had that EXACT same joystick. I actually started playing JK with it (before I discovered that one could use a mouse with the keyboard!). It was an excellent joystick and very comfortable. The throttle was a little cheap though. I remember XvT, it would sometimes not go all the way to 100% or down to 0%.



They do that anyway. But they park on a special protected portion of the platters.