Resurrecting a Legacy X86 PC..

[Lazarus]

I do recall cannibalising parts of "George", the 1970s era Mainframe at Leeds Uni, but can't remember what I did with them. Certainly don't have them now.

The thing was so slow and cumbersome that all operations were accorded a priority. As a Finalist Undergrad trying to cross-compile Assembly language to get my M6800 to work, you had to get your input done on a Monday and collect the output on the following Thursday! Bonkers.

 

[Captain Jack]

70s doesn't sound like much fun...

 

[Lazarus]

Au contraire, tovarich, there was ample time to linger in the bar

 

[Vipersan]

70s doesn't sound like much fun...

I beg to differ ...
HitchHiking to Knebworth ..
Long hot Summers ...
Babes in Cheesecloth with high Libidos..
Wacky Backy ..not that skunk crap..
The real Deal ..Mellow Times..Mellow Tunes ...Mellow Weather ...and Lots of free love..

What's NOT to like

 

[Captain Jack]

Other than the fact that everyone seemed to gag for it in the 70s, I have no idea what the rest of it is!

 

[Lazarus]

What?!


A man who has never worn a Cheesecloth shirt is not a man. No Sir.

I had shoulder length hair .... and it's just as well, as there is little left now

 

[Captain Jack]

 

[Topper]

What?!


A man who has never worn a Cheesecloth shirt is not a man. No Sir.

I had shoulder length hair .... and it's just as well, as there is little left now

Well was there any other way to dress in the 70s?
Was just about to hitchhike to Heathrow then fly to Israel

 

[Vipersan]

Fire up the Tardis ...I'm coming home..
If only...

 

[davemurgtroyd]

So ..for the record ..
The resident media player is useless and cannot open mkv media..
Sound OK ..but no picture
VLC can open MKV ..but this PC is just too slow ..
The file opens the mkv ..over the network ..or indeed when popped on a USB stick ..but the video is very jerky ..
audio is fine.
I know it's an old mobo ..but I would have thought a P3 would be sufficiently fast to play SD video ..
I shall try this test with XP at a later time..

Back in the day they said it couldn't be done but on my first self built PC (a 200 MHz P2) I actually got it to play DVDs with the help of a decent video accelerator card - you couldn't have anything else running at the same time though.

 

[davemurgtroyd]

Well my latest toys have arrived - a usb Magneto Optical drive and 640MB disc, the usb DDC4 drive plos 5 new tapes and 3 cleaning tapes. Just waiting for an external CD IDE housing to arrive to house the DDS drive - it has usb B and molex connectors so should be able to easily adapt the housing.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Be careful CH ..
You too could catch the retro-virus..
;)

If I really wanted to run up the rose tinted floppies, I have an HP Pavillion 3120 extreme low profile thing at the back of the shed, just in case.

I kept it only because it was about a third of the size of any other device at the time.

 

[Lazarus]

Well was there any other way to dress in the 70s?
Was just about to hitchhike to Heathrow then fly to Israel

You can't kid me ..... that's David Cassidy, surely?

 

[Topper]

You can't kid me ..... that's David Cassidy, surely?

Oh you've found me out

 

[Captain Jack]

Back in the day they said it couldn't be done but on my first self built PC (a 200 MHz P2) I actually got it to play DVDs with the help of a decent video accelerator card - you couldn't have anything else running at the same time though.

I call and raise you P166 machine playing DVDs flawlessly with the help of yet another accelerator card by Sigma Designs. Specifically made for DVD watching and came bundled with a DVD drive. Even remember my first two DVDs - Happy Gilmore and Armageddon. Ran very well but had to use Sigma's own software which made use of overlaid output from the Sigma card to "merge" with the main graphics one.

PC hardly strained...

 

[Vipersan]

So ..having been gifted a full set of floppies for Windoze 3.00 (cheers Neil)
..I had to travel a bit further down the rabbit hole ..
Found an old 6gb IDE to play with ..but stupidly forgot that 3.00 can only use FAT ...
is that FAT16 ..?
I doubt it's even that.
Point being the drive/partition size cannot exceed 2gb ...and requires DOS to format and install.
Managed to find MSDOS 6.2 ..and now have a full 4 disk floppy set (pause for jokes).
And made 3 partitions on the Hard Drive ..and am currently fomatting using the MSDOS diskettes..
I've forgotten soooo much over the years..
lol
But slowly the grey matter is accommodating the Legacy stuff..

 

[Captain Jack]

Format A:
Format C:

...that's kind of all you need to know?

It's amazing that we managed to fit entire operating systems on a bunch of floppy disks. We can't even create a useful program for less than that these days...

 

[Vipersan]

Format A:
Format C:

...that's kind of all you need to know?

It's amazing that we managed to fit entire operating systems on a bunch of floppy disks. We can't even create a useful program for less than that these days...

Yep ..I'd sort of figured that CJ ..but of course ..I tried to make the partitions and format them in XP ...and it natively doesnt support FAT only FAT32 during the partition creation ..
So had to start again using DOS FDISK ..and simple FAT format.
My first attempt was on a single 6gb partition ..
..WIN 3.00 can't be installed on such a large partition ...
so max size is 2gb ..and the FAT has to be earlier than FAT32 ..

 

[Captain Jack]

You can use something like a live GParted disk to do all that preliminary work. Create 3x 2GB partitions and format as FAT.

 

[Vipersan]

You can use something like a live GParted disk to do all that preliminary work. Create 3x 2GB partitions and format as FAT.

Basically what I've done Alex ..only did it from DOS