r/vintagecomputing • • 5h ago

IBM ViaVoice 98

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48 Upvotes

Local thrift find! Never heard of it before


r/vintagecomputing • • 2h ago

Another barnfind! 😍

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22 Upvotes

Got this for free from an old guy clearing out the loft on his barn. Irs an AST Bravo 386/16 with 4mb of ram and 70mb quantum disk! No battery leakage amd it fired right up! Only thing was the disk was stuck.. gave it a horisontal smack while powering it up and it spun right up 🤩


r/vintagecomputing • • 8h ago

How vintage does this group get?

18 Upvotes

Any S100 fans out there?


r/vintagecomputing • • 18h ago

A 3D card for the Packard Bell

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107 Upvotes

Earlier this year I posted about a 1998/99 Packard Bell desktop I bought, with the intention of adding some period appropriate bits to it to make it an authentic (if modest!) gaming machine of its day.

An I-O Data Voodoo Banshee came up for sale in Japan complete with box, driver floppies and demo disks and after some finagling (i.e. learning I had to switch a jumper on the motherboard to disable the onboard VGA) I finally got it working.

As expected it doesn’t run things very smoothly by modern standards, probably around 30 fps with some stutter and drops when the action heats up, but I think someone would have been pretty chuffed by the upgrade back in the day.

Have also included a picture of the sound card I put in - I fancied something with EAX support, maybe I’ll check how well Thief: The Dark Project runs one of these days!


r/vintagecomputing • • 6h ago

What exactly is happening….

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

11 Upvotes

I tried removing the Keyboard to take out the CMOS but the screw is stripped


r/vintagecomputing • • 4h ago

Royal Alphatronic PC

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7 Upvotes

This machine has been in my storage in the box for 20+ years, I had forgotten about it, just pulled it out and it powered right on and works perfectly. It is from 1983 and was made in Japan.


r/vintagecomputing • • 4h ago

Getting non-sun branded drive working with V250

3 Upvotes

I am trying to get a drive (68pin) working with a V250 by adding it to the unused connector at the top of the system 5.25" drive bay. I have set the id to 4 which isn't used by the backplane. While the system sees the device (sd4), it doesn't show up as available when I used the format command. The drive works in an SGI Fuel and with an adaptec card in a PC.


r/vintagecomputing • • 12h ago

Star Trek: Quadrant Command - a reimagining of the original 'Star Trek' mainframe game

9 Upvotes

If you grew up gaming in the 70s or 80s, you likely crossed paths with the granddaddy of all space simulators: the original 1971 Star Trek text game. There was a unique thrill to typing coordinates into a glowing green terminal, hunting down "K"s on an 8x8 grid, and carefully rationing your energy reserves. It was a groundbreaking experience that laid the foundation for the entire tactical genre.

I wanted to capture that exact feeling of sitting in the center seat, but elevate the mechanics with the kind of strategic depth modern players expect. Enter Star Trek: Quadrant Command.

This is a complete tactical evolution of the classic formula. It takes the foundation you remember, the ticking stardate clock and the delicate power grid, and turns the galaxy into a living, hostile ecosystem. You aren't just clearing empty sectors anymore; you are triaging a quadrant actively under siege. The game forces you to make hard, high-stakes decisions. You might have to choose between warping across the map to rescue a civilian freighter desperately trying to escape its attackers, or holding the line to defend a critical Starbase from a coordinated enemy assault.

The combat rewards careful positioning and resource management. You can calculate photon torpedo chain reactions to wipe out clustered fleets, or divert your dwindling power to focused phaser beams and wide-arc cone dispersals when things get close. And you will need every tool in your arsenal, because you are up against methodical Klingon wolfpacks, Romulan ambushers that cloak to hide their energy signatures, and relentless Orion pirates.

Even the environment is out to get you. To secure the quadrant, you will have to navigate blind through sensor-jamming nebulae, weather shield-battering ion storms, and sometimes take the ultimate risk of dropping your shields entirely to siphon emergency power directly from a star.

The Enterprise has the tools, but the math of the universe is working against you. If you love deep, turn-based strategy and have a soft spot for the retro classics, I'd love for you to take command.

Do you have what it takes to save the galaxy before time runs out?

Play it for freehere: https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/sttr1/

Please note, much like the main viewscreen on the Enterprise, this game runs best on a large monitor


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

It's All About The Pentiums Baby

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389 Upvotes

r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

Found this at work. HP 9816

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47 Upvotes

r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

Goodwill score! RadioShack MMS 20

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147 Upvotes

For some reason I have never come across this one. Usually I only see the RadioShack / Tandy MMS 10! This one has the 5 band graphic equalizer that is fun to mess with!


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

Vintage 1995 Digi board, anybody have a use for this?

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163 Upvotes

Cleaning up and decluttering, I find this 1995 Digi board. Originally intended for a BBS that never happened. Still in the original boxes. Anybody have a use for this? Or should I just toss it out as E waste?

Not for sale or trade, just want to know if anybody wants to rescue it before it goes in a dumpster.

EDIT: I’m in MD, USA.


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

My first retro PC

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84 Upvotes

This is my first Reddit post and my first retro pc ever, I’m so excited and I felt I just had to share it.
Its a IBM PS/2, model P70 386 +387 8573-061
Which from what I could find means that it has a mathematical card.
I have not put power to it yet, it has been stored in a garage for over 30 years so it would probably not be good for it.
But I will try to clean it out and change the cosmos and etc.
Any thoughts?


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

Help Backing Up MFM Drive (Using Picomem?)

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29 Upvotes

Hi all!

I have a RLL-encoded MFM drive and ISA controller (Adaptec ACB-2070A) with very special contents that I need to back up. The Adaptec is as extracted from the original computer system (which has a blown proprietary power supply at the moment) and has no jumpers populated.

I restored an XT clone (ITT Xtra), purchased a Picomem card, and hoped I could use the Picomem to boot and then pull the data off of the MFM drive. The problem is that the Adaptec appears to have a fixed address of 0xC8000 so it always appears to boot before the Picomem (which my HDD image from the Picomem GIT defaults to 0xD000). I'm not experienced enough with XT systems to know how to get around this...

So... Does anyone have any ideas on how to backup this drive? Is there some way that I can get the Picomem to boot first? Is there a different piece of hardware I need? Is there some combo of all this plus a floppy bootdisk maybe? Any thoughts or ideas would be extremely appreciated!


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

Cyrix 6x86 - good or bad?

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265 Upvotes

In early 1996, its superior integer performance justified premium pricing over Pentiums at the same clock speed. The weak FPU barely mattered. Then Quake arrived, changed the rules, and shattered Cyrix's dreams. That's what history remembers.

https://www.ardent-tool.com/CPU/docs/MPR/19960212/100202.pdf


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

Help me out

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24 Upvotes

So I bought a bios password removal from eBay but since plugging it in expecting to show something else it just stays on the screen


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

Interlnk/Intersvr Python port for Linux

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6 Upvotes

r/vintagecomputing • • 2d ago

Found this at the dump today!

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225 Upvotes

Was at my local dump when i saw the back of a beige desktop sticking out of the electronics recycling trailer I always look through, it was a full HP desktop set with the matching crt (last week I found a working gateway ps2 keyboard and bose companion 2 multimedia speakers). The computer is fully functional and 100% original so I assume someone passed away and the family decided to toss it, seems like whoever owned it took great care of it. Its a HP pavilion 6336 with an amd k6 333mhz, 64mb ram, quantum bigfoot hdd (working with its original win98 installation), LG cdrom, 3.5 floppy, and a relatively large ISA modem. the plastic sleeve and wire tie was still on the vga cable and the original warranty seal was still very much attached to the pc, but an expansion card was missing. the front of the side panel had been yanked open but not slid off so it didnt break the seal. why someone removed it that way to end up scrapping it i dont know 🤷‍♂️


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

40th Anniversary of The Great Escape [1986]

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4 Upvotes

The Great Escape is an action-adventure video game which shares a title and similar plot to the film The Great Escape. It was developed by Denton Designs, which went on to produce the similarly acclaimed Where Time Stood Still. The Great Escape was published by Ocean Software in 1986 for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and MS-DOS. Trevor Inns programmed the Commodore 64 version.


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

XNA’s Space War 2006 Glass Display

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35 Upvotes

Here is a glass display for the launch of XNA Game Studio Express in 2006. It was a framework for indie developers to create their own games for the XBOX Live Marketplace. Microsoft created their own version of the 1962 Space War as a demo. You can see the ships battling in this glass display. Nice homage to Space War.


r/vintagecomputing • • 1d ago

rate the setup :p

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4 Upvotes

I spent a good time on this and I managed to finish it just on the 25th birthday of Windows XP.

Just wanted to post it to see what others think of it :)

The PC is running a Pentium 4 Willamette @ 1.9GHz on a DFI WB72-SC with 512MB of SDRam (Yes, Socket 423 with SDRam, quite rare), GPU is the Winfast Titanium (NV15) / Geforce2 Ti.

Peripherals are kinda generic like the Gateway EV500 CRT, but I also got some kind of Wireless Infrared Headphones which work and I find them kinda cool, also I have a Casio EX-Z40 hooked up there.


r/vintagecomputing • • 2d ago

Commodore Portable SX-64

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228 Upvotes

(Oc) picked up this cutie for 40$Usd today at a yard sale with its bag and user guide. Not interested in selling, I got it to game on, hopefully. I know OEM keyboards and wires are wildly expensive. Is there a good 3rd party option out there? I've never had a computer this old so I am willing to take any advice! I'd love to be able to use this adorable lil dude in my game room!


r/vintagecomputing • • 2d ago

My old PC from around the year 1999

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35 Upvotes

r/vintagecomputing • • 2d ago

What does this do?

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110 Upvotes

Found this at a thirst store. On the back there are phone jacks for a phone and modem, and outlets labeled the same as the front. My guess is that it's some sort of power management device where if you want to keep everything plugged in at the same time, but dont want them all on either, so you press the button on the front to select what you specifically want on or off.