61–70 of 79 posts
What’s the point of a retro machine from ‘98? Any application from that era should run natively on a modern machine. It’s past the point of games locked to a certain MHz or special purpose video drivers. If you want a CRT, just get a CRT. What’s the appeal?
What’s the point of a retro machine from ‘98? Any application from that era should run natively on a modern machine. It’s past the point of games locked to a certain MHz or special purpose video drivers. If you want a CRT, just get a CRT. What’s the appeal?
i am a fan of NeXTstep. i can see myself wanting to run that on an original machine because all alternatives would not provide the same experience.
next time i visit my mother i have to try and check if the NeXTstation stored there still boots up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lead does not evaporate at the temperatures used for soldering.
Is that true, I have always heard that a tiny bit of lead is in the fumes. Either way I still think that one should avoid breathing soldering fumes as a general rule, no matter how pleasant they may smell.
Yes, but due to the flux. So lead-free solder fumes are not really safer (some say they're worse). The main danger with leaded solder is getting lead on your hands, which could get into your food if you aren't careful.
What’s the point of a retro machine from ‘98? Any application from that era should run natively on a modern machine. It’s past the point of games locked to a certain MHz or special purpose video drivers. If you want a CRT, just get a CRT. What’s the appeal?
Honestly emulators work better than the real thing 99% of the time, so I don't feel the need to play with flaky and dusty 30yr old hardware
Some machines do not have emulators. Notably, most SGI workstations have custom hardware that's poorly documented and very complex.
I have a 42 year old apple //e that had been in an uninsulated attic in Boston for 30+ years. It booted fine and all the 5 1/4" floppies worked. I know that C64s need the caps replaced and the org external power supplies can catch fire. I'd be really surprised if 1990's pcs failed. There was a period of transition to non-lead solder where many pcbs from that era suffered shorts from whiskering but everything else sho…
Like you mention, the leaded to lead-free solder transition was one of them. I agree about 90s PCs quite likely being reliable. But then… 1999 to 2007 we had the capacitor plague: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
And around 2002 there was the Great Fujitsu Hard Drive Recall: https://www.theregister.com/2002/10/31/fujitsu_faces_lawsuit... If I’m remembering that one, they changed out a flame retardant additive in their chip packaging? Something like that? Those drives were approaching a 100% field failure rate and you could mail them back to Fujitsu and get a cheque for $100.
What’s the point of a retro machine from ‘98? Any application from that era should run natively on a modern machine. It’s past the point of games locked to a certain MHz or special purpose video drivers. If you want a CRT, just get a CRT. What’s the appeal?
Theoretically, but practically a lot of late 90s (and early 00s) games don’t run on modern windows.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I miss the scraping hard drive noises with a flickering “HDD” light and a mysterious “Turbo” indicator when my 90s PC had to work hard
Turbo was all about slowing down a 486-/Pentium-class machine to work with programs and some ISA cards that required a slower CPU and/or XT bus speeds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's functional isolation. Yeah, they're individually tested to 1500 Vrms (or so the factory in china claims), but that insulation is still just the very thin lacquer of the windings and maybe lacquer on the core. There are more expensive (and physically much larger) Ethernet transformers for medical devices and such, these have actual double/reinforced insulation and are tested to much higher voltages. Typically t…
Doesn't a (plugged-in) UPS have similar isolation?
It takes an awful lot of power to smash through these multiple layers of insulation and bypass all the capacitors, at least if the PSU is properly designed (specifically, clearance between the various power / ground domains).
In contrast, Ethernet transformers are tiny small little things.
Capacitors are perishable. Electrolytics dry up, solid (MLCC, polymer, tantalum, paper) dont like humidity (some even require baking before soldering). Mechanical stress and temperature cycling leads to cracking of caps and solder joints.
Mechanical parts will have stiction (hdd heads), dried grease. Plastic parts expand due to moisture (sprockets/cogs in FDD/CD), rubber bands liquify or dry and stiffen.
Then you have vented helium/lost vacuum.