Remember this Am5x86-P75 on a PowerStacker that I fixed? Well, it died. But I fixed it again. The story is very complicated and cursed though🫠 bsky.app/profile/jeff...

Am I going to regret buying this questionable as-is ATI Radeon 9500 Pro for $35? Only time will tell 😁

Always wanted one of these amazing looking Swiftech s370/462 CPU heatsinks. Super hefty with spiral “helicoid” pins for extra surface area. The fan I suspect is a jet engine 😁 Peak 2001 air cooling flex 💪

Happy Canada Day! 🇨🇦

Repurposing this TI EPROM chip from a dead 486 board. Into the UV easy bake oven you go 😎

Among the bunch of motherboards, this one with the text “TX Pro-II” on the chipset. Turns out it’s called PCChips M571LMR v5.1. It wouldn’t run any code when powered. From a glance, the sound chip had some damaged pads and shorted legs, so I removed the chip, and it booted👀

Another thrift store find. Higher end 2011 era Gigabyte AM3 board. Smelt of cigarettes SOOO BAD. Everything white on it looks yellow/brown. Pass.

My local thrift store had a bunch of these Symbol handhelds. I assume they are barcode scanners with terminal client capabilities? Anyone seen these before?

Bought a machine and it came with a fun bonus inside! :)

Starting Windows 3.1 like it's 1994 [📹 pc_user_486] Original post

This Asus CUV4X's original caps are almost all Rubycon except for these three OST/I.Q branded ones. They don't look bad, but seemed a shame to not be 100% ruby. It got ZLH series replacements. 10V and way smaller too. Will test the OSTs later.

Another 386 board saved just in the nick of time 💥💣

My Voodoo 3 brackets and Voodoo armor mentioned! 👀 Thank you for including my stuff in your video, @vswitchzero.com! It's such a rare happening😂

This is how a proper capacitor explodes 💥 👌🏻

Back in 2003 I didn't even have a desk, but I still had the best of times on my Athlon PC with Voodoo graphics card. (Also a cute cat called Smudge, R.I.P little crazy dude).

New Video! This is part three of the 3dfx Voodoo 3 1000 enhancement series. Today I dive deep into memory tweaking and tuning to make the SGRAM based 1000 as fast as possible. The results were surprising! youtu.be/rSJSsnGyjV0

Happy 28th birthday to Windows 98! Released June 25th, 1998. Enjoy a two minute time-lapse video I did a few years back of the full installation process 🙂 youtu.be/2IvyM__2sNI #retrocomputing #windows98

Here's an update on how production is going for PicoIDE: www.crowdsupply.com/polpotronics... Spoilers: a bit slower than expected (we've missed the ship date for the earliest batch), but things are moving along.

New video finished! Going live tomorrow. On a personal note, this one was a big deal for me. It was half finished when I was forced to RTO last summer and I had several failed attempts to get back into it. Feels great to finally put it behind me and to have something I'm happy with too 🥹👍

Video POWER with Johnny Arcade! (1990 - 1992) Dude, I wanted to be on this show SO BAD. The winner got to wear this velcro suit, run through a course FULL of video games and got to keep all the games they could carry or stick to themselves PLUS extra prizes I was so jealous 🥲

The gateway to faster if blurrier graphics: 3Dfx! The first iteration of their logo from 1996-1999.

This is something I need to learn!

Why tf am I buying multiple 40GB IDE drives on eBay. This hobby leads me in strange directions sometimes haha

Check out the Scrap Computing YT channel if you haven't. Great content. Here is his latest slot-a recapping project with an interesting EEPROM BIOS chip failure that prevented the board from posting. youtu.be/rmYciogE2CY?...

It feels like a century the last time I feel as excited for a CPU release as I felt about the first Athlon! AMD Athlon: AMD’s game changing CPU from 1999 dfarq.homeip.net/amd-athlon-a... via @siliconundergro.bsky.social

I bought one of the coolest looking early 2000s Lian-Li cases - the PC35. BNIB and arriving today. I plan to build a high-end 2001 gaming system in it based on the original Athlon XP 1800+. Obviously needs RAID0 with those lockable bays :) .. now to find a pair of working IBM Deskstar drives 🫠

Here’s a link to my latest video if anyone isn’t already subscribed: Before the iPod: The MP3 Player That Worked With iTunes youtu.be/iEp3yo6O3MY

Nearing the end of my next video! Should be released later this week. I guess 7 weeks since my last one is better than the 9 month gap before that 🙂

Time for some Cyrix instead™ (on a freshly recapped MSI MS5169)

3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP, June 2000. #computers #computing

Observed behind the glass at the local thrift store. Definitely not thrift store pricing though 😕 The price tag is $599 “without game or expansion” apparently. It was gone when I returned a couple days later so someone must have bought it.

It took a long time to have the right equipment to scale and capture low resolution, VGA output from my old computers... But I think I am finally there. I still have tweaking to do, but perhaps I can finally make the video I have wanted to make for years.

New video is finished and published. You can all watch it now. This video is about my Sony Trinitron RGB mod that I recently did. One of the extremely rare moments that a project of mine ended in success. www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Te...

Microsoft MS-DOS 3.3 - Factory Sealed (1987)

I was frustrated because this CRT have a horrible problem with the switches on the front. I replaced them but I was still having problems. Well I made an external interface 😎

"Sleep awaits those of us who dare to dream" 😴 💾 🎮 💤💤💤

Doomscrolling

Vintage and Retro Computer nook up and running. It’s been a six year project, but now it’s finally complete with original and emulation hardware capable of playing most games perfectly, from the late 1970s well into the 2000s.

Capacitors, capacitors and more capacitors! New fresh batch from Mouser just arrived today for recapping two nice looking NOS purple motherboards: a 2003 ECS K7S5A Pro (Socket A) and a 2006 ECS P4M800PRO-M (LGA 775) So, @vswitchzero.com will have company on "recapping duty" this weekend!

Just the CRT I happen to keep on my workbench nbd.

Is it just me? or does this off-center sticker placement on SO MANY oem AMD heatsinks from this era drive you nuts 🫠

Finally, I verified all the pins and they all checked out fine! Now I can use it to actually repair the various broken motherboard I have on hand🤡🤪

Never owned a P4 back in the day but starting to explore the platform. Always wanted to try out the earliest socket 423 with RDRAM. Came with a 1.3 (slowest P4 I believe). Hopefully this nasty scratch on the back will be okay. I have a heatsink and retention bracket for it somewhere too.

It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while a PC shows up at the thrift store near me! …. yeah.

Today I learned that you can enable a Duke Nukem 3D style automap on the Windows 98 Maze screensaver.

The second board I’m recapping is this Gigabyte GA-7ZXE. It’s full of the infamous “Choyo” brand caps from the plague era. Even the tiny ones are Choyo. Many are buldging. It’s getting the full Rubycon ZLH treatment.

One of the boards I’ll be recapping is this Shuttle slot-a board. Full of I.Q brand caps and all failed. Notice how many are angled because the burst from the bottom instead of the vents on top. Lots of crustiness to clean after removal

Feels satisfying to finally place an order for capacitors to repair four motherboards. Over 100 caps total - keeping Rubycon and Panasonic in business 🫠

More jig for the same project🤔