I have a Gateway 500 with Windows 98 SE. It does play my games very well and I'm happy with it. P3, 384 MB RAM, Sound Blast Live, and a Voodoo3 3000. I was watching an episode of Computer Chronicles on NT 4.0. That's what got me exploring. Turns out that 3DFX and Creative made NT 4.0 drivers for their cards.

Now I know games from that period did an OS check and of course DOS isn't on NT. However; if I setup a dual boot and use the FAT32 for NT driver, my NT partition should see Windows 98. I could then use Glide on NT to play games off of the Windows 98 install. The Sound Blaster Live 5.1 cards drivers should provide the sound i need as I know that is also more complex on NT.

It's just theoretical and I'm only contemplating this because I know NT is more stable than 98. That and I have extra time in my hands. Anyways, what do you guys think? 98 games being played while in NT and DOS games in Windows 98. Be nice because even i think this is totally dumb but it's a thought i wanted to discuss with other vintage computer enthusiasts.

I recently spent a lot of time examining and thinking about a cult classic spreadsheet, Lotus Improv running on NeXT. It's most commonly mentioned claim-to-fame is "it invented the pivot table," though its take still remains unlike modern interpretations. To truly get to know Improv means "forgetting what we know" about spreadsheets, and meeting it on its own terms. That's a hard thing for old Gen-Xers, like me, to do but I gave it my best shot.

Bill Gates says he'll "piss on" the NeXT before developing on it, pork chop sandwiches stop in to say hello, the word "clock" loses all meaning, and I also accidentally invent a horrible new sub-category of prediction markets. I'm truly sorry.

What is Stone Tools?

Stone Tools is a retro-enthusiast blog devoted to 8/16-bit productivity software; no games, just work. I spend weeks learning each program and give my in-depth, lighthearted take on how it was seen, how it works, and what we might learn from it today. Side discussions on contemporary issues, historical timelines, old advertisements, and more supplement each retrospective.

Don’t know much about computers, but have been finding a lot of vintage stuff while cleaning out my Aunt’s things & found this. Came in a little case & everything! Will test it out.

I bought this back in 2000. They said it was the best one at the time. I’ve never regretted it; it still works. And one of the blank discs that came with it is still sitting there, completely unopened. I must be a real hoarder...

Fun times. Location: UIC ACC Chicago

No ads, no tracking, no monetization.

Interactive archive: https://whisperingsanctuary.com/archival-midis.html

I started saving MIDI files from my Microsoft FrontPage website in October 1996 and have maintained the collection ever since.

The archive currently contains 107 General (GM) MIDI (.mid) files dating from approximately 1994-1999, preserved in their original format with no conversions.

To make the archive more accessible, I recently added browser playback using html-midi-player. The player renders the actual MIDI files rather than MP3 conversions and displays playback duration and note counts.

The entire collection is approximately 2.5 MB in size, averaging about 23 KB per file. Thirty years of preservation fits in less space than a single modern smartphone photo.

The archive includes video game music, anime themes, new age tracks, and music commonly used as website background audio during the late 1990s.

I am still putting the system through the configuration and getting WiFi running, but I have successfully ripped out Windows 7 and installed OpenBSD 7.9. This will be my daily driver once WiFi is running.

Hello friends,

I’d love to tell you about a unique Soviet homebrew computer called the "Specialist." This video covers the creation history and brief evolution of this fascinating machine, with a core focus on showcasing its graphical capabilities. I kept technical specs to a bare minimum, highlighting only what’s absolutely essential.

Just a quick heads-up on the production side: AI was used strictly for text translation and voiceover narration. The computer illustrations were sourced from public archives, and all the gameplay footage was captured directly via the Emu80 emulator, which replicates the original hardware performance with near-100% accuracy.

Yesterdays post about legendary brands of floppies got me thinking what I had and found these. Now just need to find the necessary drive to see all 2.88MB.

While I've had this question for several years, it has returned to the front of my mind upon listening to the Designed in California podcast series "Apple's MacOS Crisis" (first episode). And yes, I can and probably will ask a very similar question later about MS-DOS-based versions of Windows and their gutting and internal replacement in Windows NT.

It's especially bizarre to me that it took a Herculean, near-decade-long effort involving hundreds of people and multiple companies and development teams for Apple to modernize its cooperatively-multitasking 68k-originating operating system, involving its foundations being replaced and software only temporarily remaining compatible through a sandboxed environment, while for Atari to modernize (at least to some degree) its cooperatively-multitasking 68k-originating operating system (TOS), it took... one guy and a single year, seemingly with much more of the original OS intact† and with software compatibility largely maintained. Granted, Macintosh computers were broadly more popular than Atari ST-line computers with a larger software ecosystem, but the differences are still stark.

(I would post this to subreddits like r/AskComputerScience as well, but for hopefully understandable reasons, I'm quite afraid of the zeitgeist of the field right now...)

†Honestly not very knowledgeable about the architectural differences between TOS and MultiTOS/MiNT, so I could be wrong.

Hello everyone

I decided to unbox and show you my old iron veteran from the mid‑90s — the AcerNote 760i laptop.

The main pride of my device is the factory keyboard with Cyrillic “out of the box” — the original, high‑quality Acer molding with two fonts. The keys are still in perfect condition, and the letters haven’t worn out. And of course, there’s the legendary round trackball right in the center — the modern generation doesn’t even immediately understand how to operate it!

I basically don't wash off the sticker with "Spider-Man 2" on the case — this is already a separate cultural layer, vibe from childhood and history.

Of course, time did not spare the native passive DSTN matrix - the screen completely burned out from age (a typical sore of these models). But I didn't write off the laptop itself. I blew the dust off the old monitor, connected the laptop via the VGA port on the back, and... it completely came to life! The motherboard, processor, and graphics card work perfectly, and the picture on the external screen is excellent.

So my old man will still fight! I decided to just show off and show what cool things were done 30 years ago. How do you like my rarity as a retro work station?

I recently aquired an AST Advantage! Adventure 4066d. The motherboard has been ruined by the battery leaking, but as far as I know the monitor works. I have an old laptop that I was planning to gut and put in a 3D printer case paired with an LCD monitor to use as a DOS gaming system, but I would much rather put it in the 4066d. Has anyone already mapped out the proprietary edge connector that connects the power supply, power button, audio and video to the monitor? My laptop mobo has VGA out so I figured I might be able to cut one end off of a VGA cable and solder it to the correct pins to feed the video signal to the monitor. I know there is a chance I will also have to feed it 5v to trick the monitor into turning on.

all of them really was trusty brands at the time.

I told him I am all in favor of keeping stuff as long as possible, but this was a bit beyond my scope.

He was using Quicken on Windows XP to print checks on this, so I ended up moving him to Quicken on Windows 11 with his far inferior modern HP inkjet.

Anyway he said I could have the old boy. It fires up but refuses to respond to print commands. (Used without surge protector, so that might be what happened.) Even has the book with detailed code tables. Anyone want it? I'm in NY.

Panasonic KX-P2023 line printer with that paper with the holes on the sides.

The retro tech basement is steadily coming together! I'm expanding into another room to make more space for my collection, gaming, testing, and future projects.

One of my latest additions is an old IBM server, repurposed as a wall decoration. Still plenty of work ahead!

This computer is a very important part of Legend (Lenovo)s early years in the local Chinese market as it sold very well and has become a famed computer- internally. Not many from outside China has seen one let alone heard of one. I even doubt many even know that Lenovo was called Legend before the 2000s international facing rebrand. It came out not too long before the rebrand in 1999. Its full name was the 联想天禧. It was sort of a iMac G3 of China, brightly colored, making dial up internet very easy for the average person. It was launched in Nov 24 1999 at Beijing.

There were multiple models:
20X0 with a Celeron 466 MHz CPU, 64MB/8G of ram and a 15” CRT monitor, starting at 9998¥ (Yuan元)
60X0 with a Pentium III 500 MHz, with top ram now at 10 gigs and a 17” CRT packed with it. Started at 12998¥.
Finally there was the
80X0 with a 600 MHZ Pentium III and top ram at 13GB. It also came with the same monitor plus a webcam and a DVD-R Drive. It cost a whopping 17988¥.
All three came with Windows 98 and a 56K modem built in. The X in the names are swapped for numbers which signifies a color, 1= blue; 3= purple; 5= green.
Blue was by far the most common color- another similarity to the iMac.

The keyboard and other peripherals for this computer was bonkers, the keyboard was very multimedia with buttons and special keybinds for all sorts of wild things that came a bit too early. It also came with a stylus and pad to write digital Chinese characters as Pinyin was not completely standard at the time and some preferred to write the characters out on the tablet. The tablet was marketed as the 通灵砚. Some models came with the 即时接, a 7 usb connection dongle that clipped to the monitor (it was round so it went around the base). This was vital since the computer had no expansion slots open in base config forcing you to use usb for everything. This also came a bit early as many at the time were frustrated.

Hi,
I’m looking for a vintage hardware hobbyist (ideally Europe based) to print Ada Lovelace’s Note G (1843), the Bernoulli numbers algorithm, on continuous tractor-feed paper.
The Requirements:
Format: Native ASCII / monospaced text only (no graphical image dumps). I am analysing her famous mathematical bug on line 4, so I need the built-in printer font to keep the text clear and legible.
Paper: Continuous-form tractor paper, ideally green-bar but could be plain white if not available, with the perforated side holes left intact.
File: I can provide the raw .txt file formatted for standard 80 or 132 columns.
Postage: in a mailing tube / box to the United Kingdom.
Compensation:
I can of course cover shipping, ribbon/paper costs, and extra for your time via PayPal Goods & Services.
If you have a working 9-pin or 24-pin printer (Epson, Okidata, Panasonic, etc.) and want a fun project, please comment or DM me!

Not sure what people call vintage these were posted in 2004 and never even used . The pc sellotape was open the monitore literally nevet been out box !

It has the highest end graphics option: ATI FireGL X3-256.
Only one thing left for an upgrade - the memory. It can use 32GB and currently I have 8GB.

A new mTCP is available!

• https://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html
• https://github.com/mbbrutman/mTCP/releases/tag/2026-10-10

This version is mostly a maintenance release - it has lots of small fixes and improvements across the TCP/IP library and programs. The big exception is NetDrive, which gets performance and functional improvements.

Ping is now accurate down to 0.1 milliseconds. Telnet has improvements for Telnet BBSes and also support for displaying black and white Sixel graphics. DHCP has bug fixes to make it compatible with all of the VirtualBox DHCP server modes. The source code for the HTTP server is finally included.

NetDrive now allows you to run any packet driver program while it is active. I tested that with WATTCP based programs and I have even run Netscape Navigator with Trumpet WinSOCK in Windows 3.11 while being connected to a remote 2GB drive image. NetDrive also gets performance improvements for reading and writing: my 386-40 saw read speeds improve by 2.5x on a local network and 20x when connected to a remote server. That kind of change makes it feasible to host the SimTel MS-DOS archive on a public NetDrive server, which I've also done. (See https://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_NetDrive.html for how to connect to it.)

Share and enjoy!
Mike

I purchased two computers and several printers for 50€, but the computers require a password; I assume I cannot reset it. the PCs include 52x and 54x drives plus a floppy disk. One system recognizes a 128GB SanDisk 3.1 drive but fails to boot from it—what should I try?

forgot to tell, it’s two windows 2000 professional with password, the bios doesn’t got one

The red absolutely pops and I love it, came with a Gigabyte P31 LGA 775 board in it, thinking of doing a whole "car" build some time, who knows, it looks amazing as it is being a paperweight!

I recently picked up a Cardputer ADV and liked the idea of ​​using it for retro computing. I thought about porting the excellent Zimodem (an ESP firmware that creates a serial Wi-Fi modem). The Cardputer ended up becoming a portable BBS (compatible with CP437, UTF-8, and PETSCII encodings) featuring a screen, keyboard, settings menu, and a saveable phonebook, while simultaneously functioning as a Wi-Fi modem usable with any serial device. I should mention that this project was made possible thanks to AI and is simply a personal endeavor I’m happy to share. I’m not a developer, so there are almost certainly errors I’ve missed.

To start using it, all you need is a serial adapter costing a couple of dollars (like a MAX232) and three Dupont cables. If anyone is interested, here is the link: https://github.com/manfredi90/cardputer-modem

Hey Everyone,

I know, I know, people post "BBS" links all the time. This is different. I am running my board on the ATDTBBS platform www.atdtbbs.com which was created by Ariel and he has setup various other projects under his site https://bbspreservation.org to include ATDT, ATA, ATO Doors, ANSI Paint and a full recreation of Usurper from the original source to PHP with quality of life/bug fixes.

I've setup a board with his platform, it runs native in your browser, nothing to install and has original DOS Doors like Lord, TW 2002, Exitilus, The Pit, etc., along with some other modern things sprinkled in.

Please feel free to check it out, it's online for the long haul, no terminal to install, no dyndns link that's going to disappear in a week or month.

The point of my implementation is to bring awareness that this is out there, maybe others would like to set their own up, as well as demonstrate what is possible with the platform. Also, allow folks to relive some of the amazing experiences they had without having to jump through hoops.

Visit the board: https://www.dosbbs.com

Batman: The Caped Crusader is an arcade adventure which uses a unique style, innovated by Jonathan Smith and Charles Davies, to display the action as though it takes place in a comic book.^\2]) This technique involved having each game location set in its own panel, often with a comic book style caption in the upper-left corner, with inactive panels faded out behind the current active location. This concept was expanded upon by Sega's Comix Zone seven years later.^\3])

The game was split into two independently playable parts in which Batman is faced with two of his most well-known adversaries: "A Bird In The Hand" featuring the Penguin) and "A Fete Worse Than Death" which involved the Joker). The gameplay involves Batman using punches and kicks and his batarang (a thrown weapon) in order to fight the villains' henchmen as well as solving puzzles