TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[SamirD]

So awesome to hear you got w98 working with that much ram--I had forgotten about the problems I'd hit after 256mb.

1600x1200 is such an awesome resolution to be playing Quake 2! That was next to impossible back in the day without really expensive hardware. Even our $11,000 Cyrix p166 build couldn't do more than 640x480 without stuttering, but that was under raw dos. I wonder if the #9 card we had would have done better under w98 (that system was built ground up for win 3.1).

 

[Trekkie4]

So awesome to hear you got w98 working with that much ram--I had forgotten about the problems I'd hit after 256mb.

1600x1200 is such an awesome resolution to be playing Quake 2! That was next to impossible back in the day without really expensive hardware. Even our $11,000 Cyrix p166 build couldn't do more than 640x480 without stuttering, but that was under raw dos. I wonder if the #9 card we had would have done better under w98 (that system was built ground up for win 3.1).

Are you sure about that? I'm running Win98 on my signature (profile) rig, with 512MB DDR400 & not getting any issues, whatsoever.

 

[SamirD]

I think it varies on the motherboard, and I could be mistaken and it was 512mb. It's been decades and all the info is a bit fuzzy and jumbled.

 

[havli]

I think 512 MB is pretty much guaranteed to work correctly on vanilla win98SE.

 

[Dinnercore]

Anyone remember PD-Drives? I just got one from my granddad who had this beauty sitting in his basement for some years:

PD stands for Phase-change Dual and features CD-like optical discs that actually can be rewritten like a harddrive. So it was the CD-shaped USB-stick from 1995. Kinda.

The black cases are actually 'CD-adapters' so that the PD-drive can also be used for normal CD-roms. Maybe someone will appreciate that I took the time to find a time-matching album from 1996 and put it in there. (Good old omni trio - haunted science!)

And now for the real deal:

These are the PD-Cartridges. They hold 650MB and can be rewritten about 500.000 times according to wikipedia. That wiki article is sadly a bit short.

They have a very unique look on the data-side and are probably very sensitive:

I´m a bit concerned about the dust buildup in there, but I´ll see if I even dare to try and clean it or just carefully do a testrun in that state and leave it be if it doesn´t work. I do have some spare ones to try tho.

In this last pic you can just about see the different rings.

 

[havli]

Very nice. I have something similar, also magneto-optical drive, however something diferent... not PD. Most likely older. It is connected by SCSI and the drive is double-height 5.25'' size.

Ah, managed to find old photos and one video of it

So it seems to be Ricoh RO-5030E, made in 1989. I have just one media that came with it, the capacity is 277 MB for each side. Not bad for 1989.

http://hw-museum.cz/data/temp/RO-5030E.mkv

 

[Trekkie4]

Very nice. I have something similar, also magneto-optical drive, however something diferent... not PD. Most likely older. It is connected by SCSI and the drive is double-height 5.25'' size.

Ah, managed to find old photos and one video of it

So it seems to be Ricoh RO-5030E, made in 1989. I have just one media that came with it, the capacity is 277 MB for each side. Not bad for 1989.

http://hw-museum.cz/data/temp/RO-5030E.mkv

View attachment 105461

View attachment 105462

View attachment 105463

Wow!! Back In '89, 277MB would have been more than average hard drive! Just imagine how many DOS games would fit on one of these

 

[Susquehannock]

While it is possible to go higher, 512mb was the official limit for Win98. There are workarounds for up to 1.5gb. Personally, I have always found 512mb to be sufficient.

Have my Win98 rig torn apart waiting for 120mm fans to finally quiet this thing down. Bit of a mix, but it is what I have from purchases back in the day.

Mainboard = Abit KR7A​

CPU = Athlon XP 1700+ DLT3C​

RAM = 512mb DDR​

GPU = Voodoo4​

PSU = Fortron 300w (120mm fan)​

Sound card = Turtle Beach (Aureal) N270​

HDD 0 = Maxtor 20gb ata-133​

HDD 1 = Quantum Bigfoot 6gb​

OS = Win98se​

Case = unknown. Bought in 2002. ​

 

[Trekkie4]

While it is possible to go higher, 512mb was the official limit for Win98. There are workarounds for up to 1.5gb. Personally, I have always found 512mb to be sufficient.

Have my Win98 rig torn apart waiting for 120mm fans to finally quiet this thing down. Bit of a mix, but it is what I have from purchases back in the day.

Mainboard = Abit KR7A​

CPU = Athlon XP 1700+ DLT3C​

RAM = 512mb DDR​

GPU = Voodoo4​

Sound card = Turtle beach (Aureal)​

HDD 0 = Maxtor 20gb​

HDD 1 = Quantum Bigfoot 6gb​

OS = Win98se​

Case = unknown. Bought in 2002. ​

Agreed!

By the way, your rig closely resembles my RetroMaster 2500, from the profile (which is based on AthlonXP 1800+) & also comes with 512MB, DDR400

 

[biffzinker]

The black cases are actually 'CD-adapters'

I remember those being referred to as CD-ROM caddy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caddy_(hardware)

 

[SamirD]

That's going to be a nice system for sure and already feels quite period correct from someone who saw that era as 'new computing' compared to dos/win3.1.

MO drives were awesome and that PD drive was imo the ultimate as it had cd-rom compatibility so one less drive. And those caddies were also for cd-rom drives back in the day like the awesome drives made by Plextor, and the original Yamaha 4x4x cd recorder that started the whole genre. I've got both of these still installed in our old Cyrix p166 build that I need to restore.

Too bad PD was eclipsed by MO drives, which were pretty awesome in their own right for data archive. There were machines that 100 discs and 1-4 drives and worked like a tape library except with MO. Maxoptix was one of the bigger names for these and I still have a 4.6GB MO drive that wrote 2.3GB per side of the cartridge. I still have some data to pull off those cartridges too. Too bad the cartridges outlive the drive as the last time I tried to use the drive after it sat for just 2 years it had to go back for warranty repair. I'm really afraid how bad it will be if I turned it on today.

The other popular cartridge solutions out there were the Syquest and Bernoulli drives, Bernoulli being the precursor to the zip disk. The Syquest drives literally had a hard drive platter in the cartridge, but worked very well and were reliable albeit delicate. I still have a few drives and cartridges...more data to migrate...

 

[biffzinker]

The other popular cartridge solutions out there were the Syquest and Bernoulli drives, Bernoulli being the precursor to the zip disk. The Syquest drives literally had a hard drive platter in the cartridge, but worked very well and were reliable albeit delicate. I still have a few drives and cartridges...more data to migrate...

Don't forget the Jaz drive from Iomega, had one hooked up to my PowerBase 240 through a Adaptec SCSI Ultra PCI card, it replaced a SCSI Zip drive connected to the on board SCSI.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Syquest is Iomega
Or I should say, they were absorbed by Iomega around 1998 I think.

 

[biffzinker]

I admit I forgot that happened to Syquest, would explain where the Jaz drive came from based off the SparQ drive? 98 sounds right per Wikipedia. "SyQuest filed for bankruptcy in late 1998, and portions of the company were subsequently purchased by Iomega Corp. in January, 1999. SyQuest retained the rights to sell their remaining inventory, on condition of renaming themselves SYQT in order to continue operations. "

 

[Trekkie4]

I absolutely adored Iomega (ZipDrive) back in a day... To me, it was the "cool" and smart way to store megabytes & megabytes of data ... 100 to be exact For a while I've had this "vision" to include a Zip100 drives on each & every system that I'm going to buy in the future.

Obviously, things didn't quite work out the way I was expecting, and only got two drives. Which became pretty much obsolete once I got my first 128MB USB flash drive. Don't remember what happened to those two original units, but I got loads of ZIP100 & ZIP250 units later (when I got into retro obsession), and so I included them on more than few of my Win98 builds. I still got approx. 5 ZIP100 disks (one of them is even brand new, still wrapped in plastic sheet) so having a ZIP drive comes in handy

Edit
Think I got 6 internal ATAPI drives (think there's 3 of each, 100 & 250) & one of those purple parallel (LPT1) 100 drives.

 

[dorsetknob]

I went the LS120 Route rather than Zip Drive Still got 2 working Drives and only 6 disks
got them fitted in Removable Drive Bays
They Still Come in handy as they can be used with Standard 3-1/2" 720k/1.44mb / 2.88mb and can be made Bootable for DOS
They never Caught on Due to CD Drives

 

[Aaron_Henderson]

Ah, I remember my zip disk drive, and also my CD-RW drive that requires a cd caddy...might be something else I need to add to my Win98 SE build at some point in the future.

 

[Keullo-e]

Got a surprise box from an interned friend, he didn't even tell me that he send this.

-Asus M2N-SLI
-Asus M3N78 SE
-3x Corsair DDR2-800 1GB
-Creative SB XtremeAudio PCI-E
-Radeon X800 Pro AGP
-Athlon 64 X2 6000+
-Phenom II X4 940

Pics later.

Also the mailman finally brought my Athlon Thunderbird 1000MHz today.

 

[Ahhzz]

Anyone remember PD-Drives? I just got one from my granddad who had this beauty sitting in his basement for some years:

PD stands for Phase-change Dual and features CD-like optical discs that actually can be rewritten like a harddrive. So it was the CD-shaped USB-stick from 1995. Kinda.

The black cases are actually 'CD-adapters' so that the PD-drive can also be used for normal CD-roms. Maybe someone will appreciate that I took the time to find a time-matching album from 1996 and put it in there. (Good old omni trio - haunted science!)

And now for the real deal:

These are the PD-Cartridges. They hold 650MB and can be rewritten about 500.000 times according to wikipedia. That wiki article is sadly a bit short.

They have a very unique look on the data-side and are probably very sensitive:

I´m a bit concerned about the dust buildup in there, but I´ll see if I even dare to try and clean it or just carefully do a testrun in that state and leave it be if it doesn´t work. I do have some spare ones to try tho.

In this last pic you can just about see the different rings.

I threw away a whole stack, half a dozen of these. Basically DVDrewritables.

 

[Keullo-e]

What pisses me is that it's just a X800 Pro, not X800 Pro VIVO... the VIVO models could be bios-flashed to XT PE's.

anyway, I made some cleaning for it and changed the TIM.

 

[Robert B]

Flea market day today - I got some real nice parts

nVIDIA Quadro FX 1000 Zalman cooler - (600-50128-003-008A/900-50128-0101-100 Rev.B)

Butterfly Intel i740 8MB AGP

CD-ROM Creative CR-563-B - 3DO Blaster
http://www.ausretrogamer.com/retrospective-the-3do-blaster/
Creative 3DO Blaster running

They are waiting to be cleaned and restored. I hope that the graphic cards are alive.

 

[Trekkie4]

Flea market day today - I got some real nice parts

nVIDIA Quadro FX 1000 Zalman cooler - (600-50128-003-008A/900-50128-0101-100 Rev.B)

Butterfly Intel i740 8MB AGP

CD-ROM Creative CR-563-B - 3DO Blaster
http://www.ausretrogamer.com/retrospective-the-3do-blaster/
Creative 3DO Blaster running

They are waiting to be cleaned and restored. I hope that the graphic cards are alive.

Ah ... a Panasonic/Mitsumi drive, if I'm not mistaking! Great find

 

[StrayKAT]

I had a zipdrive too. In retrospect, it's kind of remarkable they survived as long as they did. Not usually the case for proprietary media.

 

[delshay]

Below is a rough photo of my 939 computer FX60. It has a total of 11 fans, but five will disappear when the R9 Nano VRM cooling solution is fixed. Very stable with prime95 upto 3.1Ghz.

Those with a keen eye will see it has two of the first Wraith CPU cooler shroud which has been modified internally with-in the shroud to accept Noctua Fans. Cables need to be tidied up, but it has improved as the motherboard case header fan has been desoldered & moved to the back of the motherboard.

specification

AMD FX60
R9 Nano
Seasonic PSU
Samsung 2TB (SSD) plus Samsung 2TB back-up drive (SSD)
Pioneer Blu-ray drive
Wi-fi/Bluetooth card
Infrared receiver (program most remote controls to control computer).
Matrix Orbital GTT 5.25 touchscreen display (displays anything you want on the front of computer case).

 

[HUSKIE]

fitted with amd phenom 9850 quad core cpu...