#PC/XT

[lonelyrollingstar]

Occasionally getting old hardware working is less than elegant

[bake-lite]

IBM PC/XT

[princess-viola]

IBM PC XT

[commodorez]

IBM Analog Input Card, aka the original ISA joystick port option

[darth-azrael]

 PC World (September 1987)

[gamunity]

اعلنت AMD عن بطاقة الرسومات Radeon RX 7600 XT بسعر 329 دولار

تم الاعلان رسميا عن بطاقة الرسومات Radeon RX 7600 XT من AMD. بالنسبة للمواصفات ستكون لها نفس وحدة معالجة الرسوميات Navi 33 مثل Radeon RX 7600، فإن الاختلاف الرئيسي يكمن في قسم الـ “VRAM”. يستخدم الطراز 7600 بالفعل مجموعة Navi 33 الكاملة المكونة من 32 وحدة معالجة (CUs)، ولن تتغير واجهة الذاكرة التي هي 128-بت، مما يترك طريقين فقط لتحسين الأداء والميزات: المزيد من الذاكرة الـ “VRAM” و سرعة معالج…

[taintedco]

Gigabyte rx 6500 xt GPU (graphic card)

The Gigabyte Rx 6500 XT is a perfect graphics card to where I do not have to adjust really any game graphics. I can basically leave them all set to where they are and have not one stutter in it.

 The only game that I do have a little stutter in is New World but that is only because of how many people are gathered in the settlement at the time other than that it runs like a dream. I can play call of duty modern warfare II, Elden Ring and Ark with no issues.

 It has 3 cooling fans, 4gb of ram, a display port and an hdmi port which is if you use the display port you will get a crisper and clearer view than using an HDMI cable and it is an AMD Radeon. It has AMD sync built in so it will provide crisp and clear graphics on monitors that are compatible with AMD sync. The AMD Adrenaline software will keep your driver's updated and has some interesting features built specifically for this card. 

This includes the ability to overclock the card to get the most performance out of it, though I see no reason to overclock at the moment as all games run at good quality if not at ultra 1080p. In all honesty this is a great low budget graphics card that will pack a punch as big as the high end cards with little to no lag or decrease in graphic quality.

[yodaprod]

Pencept PenPad 200 on IBM PC XT (1983)

[univac1219]

Does your 1219 have a nickname?

Also, I was wondering if you have any fun stories surrounding it! Strange quirks it has or anything like that.

I'd love to see more photos if you're allowed to post them!

Thanks for the question! These are my favorite part about my blog by far.

Not exactly, the UNIVAC 1219 doesn’t have a nickname. I did realize recently that I should specify the pronunciation (Twelve-Nineteen), but it doesn’t have any nicknames. Apart from ‘the 1219’, it’s also regularly referred to as the CPU or just ‘the computer’.

Fun stories or weird quirks? Boy, I could fill a book with this machine’s weird quirks (or as we say, intermittent issues), but I’ll try to blitz through the most common ones:

Sometimes the computer will stop running and enter a WAIT mode. No reason, it just needs a break. We can’t fix it, it just has to decide to go back into operating mode.

The computer will often start attempting to communicate on IO channel 13. We’re not telling it to talk to anything, it just decides to try to.

One of our teletypes (the Kleinshmidt) stamps ink splotches into the paper rather than characters most of the time. However, this weekend it worked for the first time in 10 months! We didn’t change anything, it just had an extra cup of coffee or something.

The Digital Data Recorder, or the tape drive, has the most gremlins out of any of our units. The top handler works fairly well, but the bottom handler won’t properly read data, write data, move the tape forward, initialize the tape, or any number of other issues.

There’s more but hopefully this satisfies your curiosity.

Fun stories? Well, I can’t name any specific ones, but I can say it’s a very endearing machine. It’s the very last of its kind and being one of three individuals in the world responsible for it makes every issue that more frustrating. There is no real forum for it, the subject matter experts sit next to me and are often just as exasperated as I am.

But the unique nature of this situation make every successful diagnostic test that much sweeter. Every new addition (5.25” floppy drive via serial) that much cooler. I have an IBM PC-XT clone at home, but I thank my lucky stars every day that this big iron is what I get to specialize in.

As for more photos, I have none that are as grandiose as you would probably expect. I do have my working photos though. I took all my photos when I first started working on it and now I am more dedicated to fixes than photo-ops.

This is a photo of our finicky Kleinshmidt teletype. Still has blotches but it actually printed!

This is the back of the bottom handler. Pictured is the vacuum pump in the bottom left (so sudden stops just yank magnetic tape slack rather than ripping tape). The big cylinder in the center is a motor for running the magnetic tape handler itself. The big black ‘hose’ of wires coming out of the steel plate contains all the cables that come right off the handler’s head for reading and writing data!

This is the forward pinch roller of the bottom handler. It was replaced after this photo was taken as you can see the rubber has deteriorated in the 55 years this machine has been operating.

As for being allowed to post photos, that’s not an issue. The last 1219 was decommissioned in 2014 and now you can find all of its documentation online at http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/univac/military/1219/

[foone]

Hiya Foone, any chance you could identify either of these computers from the classic Czech comedy movie "Slunce, Seno, Erotika?"

I'm really curious what post-Iron Curtain computer they got here

The one on the right appears to be a Toshiba T3100e/40:

It's got that distinctive gas-plasma display. Love those things.

As for the left one, I'm not sure. I'm guessing an XT clone, there were millions of those.

But I suspect it's a Commodore PC 20-III.

[koney-scanlines]

IBM pC 5150B On THe LEFT: 512k rAm, with cgA AnD hErcULEs vidEocaRds, 5151 mONitor. oN tHe RiGHt iS: XT turbO (10MHz) CLOnE WitH hERcuLES anD CGA GRAPhics CardS, 640K RAM, AdLib sOUnd, 5153 mONiTor, NEtWorK CARd fOR inteRneT/TeLNet Bbs ACceSs, 20MB ST-225 Mfm haRD DiSk.

[lonelyrollingstar]

Created the museum’s first Hidden Mickey-esque gag easter egg

[violentkeysmashing]

Man i love working with hardware.

Gave my main PC bravo a clean today, took em outside and blew all the dust out her radiators with the air compressor and cleaned out her case.

Gave her a fresh bit of cable management and insalled a CD drive i was meant to install a while ago.

Fuck optical media <3

After all that clean i gave her annother wipe down and took off her cooler to re-paste the CPU.

So now she is all clean, her thermals look great and im pleased with todays work on her.

Gotta make sure you give your computer a good clean and some love after you abuse them. Especially when you set them up with positive airflow to maximise cooling at the cost of becoming a dust collector.

Overall Bravo had a good clean today, and i've eveb taken some good time to fix how her insides looked, had to be very carefull while doing that, since i dont want electrostaic to mess with her parts so i had to set her up on my desk and take all her panles off to get a good poke arround inside.

All good even dowm to the PSUs management, gonna be a hell of a lot easier to maintain her in the future.

Specs below \/ \/

-= Bravo - 2

+ AMD Ryzen 9 12c24t CPU with a base clock of 3.7GHz

+ 32GB corsair vengange RAM (Ik its the wrong ammount im stupid and will fix it soon)

+ Sapphire RX 6700 XT 12GB (love this card)

+ MAG B550 motherboard

+ 1TB WD Black SSD

+ 1TB samsung SATA SSD (870 evo)

+ 2TB Segate HDD

@arch-official @debian-official - if you guys wanna see :3

[fictionalred]

PC update time!!

My GPU (Nvidia GTX 970) needed a replacement, which meant a new motherboard meaning a new CPU and memory. So, costly, ... but here's the replacement:

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT :))

Out with the old, in with the new

My biggest change in my brain is however the monitor set up. I had an old screen, on the left side, as a second monitor. Now, with Ephron's old monitor, I have set my main screen on the left.

(still need to tweak the colour settings)

I'll get used to it quickly I hope!

But yay fancy PC again!! Even the computer store owner said it was a very good choice :D

(the old computer parts are going to a friend who'll reuse them seeing as they still work fine. we just have too many outdated PC's ourselves already)

[robotexhaustfan]

What do you think of the IBM PC XT? It's one of my favorite models- they're so handsome

Love the art, thank you for feeding us!!

I am genuinely happy to provide this content. I am very surprised at the major positive response, thank you all so much still figuring out how exactly I want to use color, but this is a major step in the right direction. Love this little guy to the person who suggested the Agat-4, wow what a beautiful machine. I will get to that one soon. and whoever suggested edgar from electric dreams. I cannot believe I haven't drawn him sooner. I will get to him soon enough

[commodorez]

Top 5 worse computers from the 80s

While I'm sure someone could come up with a more definitive well-curated list, here's what I came up with on a whim: Sinclair ZX-81 The ZX-80 was a good, inexpensive step forward for the burgeoning UK computer market. Its successor, the ZX-81, tripped and fell rather than do anything beyond streamlining it for mass production. A real pain in the ass to type on, and notoriously flaky to do any serious work on. Localized in the US as the Timex-Sinclair 1000, it was too weak to really compete with the American market. British users seem to like them but I'd chalk up most of that to nostalgia goggles.

Apple III Apple tried and failed to make a business machine, and Jobs got his way a bit too much, and it overheated alot because he mandated that it couldn't have a fan. Ultimately, it confused people and was surpassed by better Apple II's. A weird footnote in Apple failures.

IBM PCjr The answer to a question that nobody asked. Crappy wireless keyboard, intended to be bolted to your home television. Cartridges? On an IBM? WTF is that? The expansion options are hot garbage. Eventually it was upstaged by the Tandy 1000 at its own game. Just get a PC XT. Or a Tandy.

Coleco Adam Likes to erase its own tapes if you leave them in the drive on power-up due to an electrical surge it shoves through the tape mechanism. The main system power supply is integrated into the printer, so you NEED the chonky printer to be plugged in for it to work. Has those weird phone pad + joystick hybrid controllers. Just get a ColecoVision to play your cartridge games.

Commodore Plus/4 I was going to take a stab at the MAX Machine, but Commodore did worse with the whole concept of the Plus/4. This thing was too cheap for its own good, and went in a completely bonkers direction at the behest of Jack Tramiel. It's supposed to be a cheap business machine to eat the ZX Spectrum's lunch. Why go after the little guy from the UK market? Who knows. Lame rubber chiclet keyboard, totally incompatible with existing Commodore software and most peripherals, and having 121 colors can't save it from being a dumb idea. Apparently it was a hit in eastern Europe.

Remember, pretty much every system has its fanclub, regardless of how flawed, underpowered, or limited a platform it is. So while I personally don't care for any of these machines, if you're mad at me for taking a pot shot at your favorite, do keep in mind that my favorite computer of all time is the VIC-20. You know, the one that most Commodore enthusiasts ignore for only having 5K of RAM having only 8 foreground colors, only 22 columns of screen resolution, and just not being a C64.