I'd agree. I'm not a purist, and I don't think everything can, or should be preserved. I'll add three reasons why this is different. 1. You can SEE what's inside it. That adds a lot of value keeping it around. It's not just something in a cardboard sealed box. 2. It's small, and easily stored. 3. Preserving it in the packaging preserves the significance of Radio Shacki selling off their parts stock after the Tandy computers weren't popular any more. Radio Shack/Tandy is AFAIK the only computer maker other than Apple that's had retail stores, and Apple only did that..... sometime in the 2000s.
@@stevesether Gateway had their Gateway Country stores for a while, before Apple did. More recently, Microsoft had retail stores with their Surface devices, etc. for a while
@@electronerd I forgot about Gateway. It's true, they were the second. Microsoft I guess counts. The point is more that Tandy was the first to scale that level of vertical integration, and came at it from the other angle. Retailer->computer manufacturer, rather than the other way around.
@@stevesether Commodore had dedicated retail stores as well. I was lucky enough to have one in my town. The name of the store was "Commodore Business Machines" and it consisted of a showroom full of Commodore PC's (maybe even a few PETs ) and they had a C64 in the corner that they considered a "toy". I would make my regular weekend pilgrimage to the CBM store while my brother and cousins were next door at the video arcade dropping quarters to no end, I was here discovering text adventures like Zork and Colossal Caves , experimenting with this new fangled drawing tablet called a Koala Pad and dreaming of a future so bright. I of course kept my share of quarters so one day I could afford on of those "toys".
That TI-99/4A keyboard is very similar to the one I bought at Radio Shack that had mechanical switches. I sprayed the caps with black epoxy paint, glued down some labels photocopied from the ZX-81 user's manual, then hit 'em again with clear satin acrylic. Wired up the matrix with some wire salvaged from an old piece of phone cable, and soldered it to the board on my ZX-81. A Bud case with some very crude metal work became home for it. It was gnarly, but had the best ZX-81 keyboard ever!
I did a simular operation, but modded it for my ZX-80, didn't modify the keys as was mostly doing maths for a Differential Equations (DE) college class, made the "typing" so much easier. Also, led me to do more BASIC progamming with a "Normal" keyboard compared to that membrane pos.
My uncle had a lot of games from Epyx. When I was 5, the old Apple IIe was mine so every once in a while he would load one up for me and help me through them (grandma didn’t want me playing most of them). That brought back a lot of great memories ❤
When I lived in North Texas, I worked at AST, and supported that card you have in your hands! I supported that AST card. Lots of people loved having it. In 1995, I had the F-22 flight simulator and it was so fun. I loved playing it. I mastered the game. I flew all over the US and landed at many locations. It was a blast! I also mastered the Microsoft flight simulator.
That Apple PC/DOS compatibility card reminded me of a past boyfriend my sister had, he was a full-on mac user and had what I think was a G3 tower, and he showed me he could run both MacOS and Windows at once, doing a quick keystroke on the keyboard under MacOS, then the monitor blinked and switched over to a Windows desktop, up until now I had just assumed he was running a virtual environment or something, but, seeing that card now, it's possible it was one of those (or something similar) that he was running...
That was exactly how that card behaved. We had one in the college lab that I worked in. In a different comment here I detailed how to do something with that card that Apple said wasn't possible because the person who wrote the documentation didn't understand networking properly.
Orchid made the first retail 3Dfx Voodoo card, one of which i just happened to buy in a retail shop as a fresh teen. I wish i'd kept it, it was a rev 1 board with the audible "click" from a relay whenever a game initialised it. That loud click and the 3Dfx logo animation was SO satisfying... I sold the card at a lan party a few years later to someone who couldn't really run counter-strike on his computer, i installed it for him and everything. I was a teen and therefore poor, so it made sense at the time, but oh man i wish i still had it!
I remember seeing Flight Simulator on my uncle's Apple ][+, and being blown away. A few years later I had an Apple ][e, and my dad took me Farnsworth Computers (in Bensenville?) and got me Flight Simulator 2 for my birthday. This was my prized possesion, and I remember inviting a friend over to show him, and spending hours flying from Meigs Field down to Champaign. :) A few years later I went to college at U or I, and my roommate actually interned at SubLogic.
24:00 Indeed that's the Apple PC Compatibility card (with a Pentium 166) for PCI Power Macintosh systems. The cable you showed is for the older DOS Compatibility card (with a 486) for certain 68K Macs and won't work with that PCI card. Its can be connected either via that internal ribbon cable you saw in the eBay listing on certain Power Macintosh systems or there's a similar external cable that just breaks out video. These are super fun to play with!
@@ughinotogni4580 I'm surprised. I have one of those (complete with box) and the manual specifically calls out the G3 as not being compatible because the PCI slots in the G3 and above as being only 3.3V, which the Compatibility card needs 5V PCI slots.
Damnit Garth!! GET OUT OF MY VIDEOS!! And yes you're 100% correct, that's the older cable. The one specifically for this card only has three ends to connect to the Mac's own monitor port, the PC Compatibility card, and the monitor you're going to see everything on.
@@stinkertonsden believe me! That compatibility card worked better than Real PC or Connectix Virtual PC and every Dos or win95 game was Soo fast with that card!!
Radio Shack constantly bought up surplus to sell in their stores for parts. You could find all sorts of chips and other computing components, for...a modest markup.
It was awesome to see hardware and software from back in the day. To remember working on computer hardware and typing in computer programs from magazines as a youth. Including buying a few cassettes and diskettes.
When I was a kid, my TI99 keyboard died. I purchased the one you have from Radio Shack in my local mall. I think it was around 1983 or 1984. I still have it. I wouldn't bother to open it as they were the worst of the TI keyboards.
I think we had that same 233mhz MMX daughter board processor in our Dell PC in the late 90s we were given from our grandparents. Ran descent, starcraft, cyberstorm2, doom you name it. Loved that thing.
In the May 1985 Radio Electronics magazine, which you can find on the Internet Archive, there's a Radio Shack Parts Place ad on p. 127, where you can find that keyboard for sale for $2.95. Now that's the real bargain bin.
I love these vids! Just an hour with Adrian, going through cool vintage stuff. It's kind of what I used to enjoy about Krazy Ken back when he made his tech misadventures series: unscripted, checking out stuff and trying to get it to work!
Adrian, An easy way to view the floppy medium. Place two fingers in the disk hole, from the bottom side. Then use a finger to spin the floppy cover. I learned this from Bruce Q. Hammond at Starpoint software. It was how he discovered the laser burn mark used to protect certain c64 software.
Love these random box videos. I recognized that IBM processor card right away, I unfortunately have gotten into PS/2s recently, resulting in many headaches and sweaty foreheads.
The original Atari 400 & 800 both did not have any internal programming language, so the Basic cartridge was needed to program in Basic for both computers. With no programming language cartridge installed in a 400 or 800, turning on the computer would result in a blue screen that had the word "MEMO PAD" on top of the screen. You could type and see what you typed, but whatever you typed wouldn't do anything. Or you could buy other programming languages such as "Microsoft Basic" or "Pilot", for examples. The Atari XL / XE / XG computers came with Basic already onboard.
Took a little longer to get the time to watch the longer form videos, but I sure do enjoy watching them because of all the ancient tech and software. It reminds me of some of the old games I used to play so long ago.
In Idaho, Fred Meyers sometimes have an electronics section, but it's usually outside the retail section, past the checkout and they have a dedicated checkout for that stuff
CD Caddies made a lot of sense for libraries. If "Business Abstracts 1983" cost $395, it might have made a individual caddy for each disc a good investment. Patrons could pick the proper disc out of the rack and not worry so much about fingerprints and scratches. The home market, not so much.
I remember Orchid sound cards from about 1996. A co-worker was at a computer store and he said the store had a bunch of Orchid cards on sale for cheap. He bought one for me, and I put it in my work machine so I could listen to music while I worked. The low price was the reason I got it, since I wasn't gaming on that machine. I also had a CD drive with a caddy. I don't remember the brand, but it had the same kind of door that rotated open. I thought that the caddy was more than just protection; it was necessary to keep the disc spinning stably at 3x, which was really fast at the time.
Rotated open would be a NEC drive, they were on the fancier pricier end of things. I worked as a tech at a shop then, whenever I got a machine in with a NEC drive I knew before opening the case that the owner was serious about quality gear, and it for sure was no 486sx. If I recall correctly all the NEC ones were also SCSI, at least the ones I saw. At the time I got the first Mitsumi IDE one, much slower but it was the first 'cheap' enough drive to not cost nearly as much as the rest of my PC would have been worth. Sound cards were expensive back then, I didn't have one at all for a long time then the Vibra 16 came out or some such, which was finally cheap enough, but it also did all the processing on the main CPU sort of, so every time a sound played whatever else you did slowed down or stopped. Was funny talking to customers since they assumed I had fancy stuff - I made something like $1.20/hr lol, through some work placement program.
It was because they hadn't figured out to do the centering tray for the head grab it is something that was really common on external CD Drive cases for early sun sparc workstations.
The virge card mod might be to tie it to a voodoo 3d card without the messy pass through cable sticking out the back of the machine. The datecode lines up nicely with that era
Hello Adrian, I watched some of your repair videos where, if everything was good, the result was a working computer from the past. What happens to them afterwards? You must have an awful big storage for all of them. To watch your repair sessions is real fun for me, most astonished I was when I saw you washing Motherboards. Beeing a student of Physics I owned during the late 80ies a Atari ST F with memory addition to 4 MB and a 70 Hz black and white monitor SM 124 and I wrote my thesis with this machine. Beeing in my profession later I had a PC and for my hobby recording classical choir music I turned to Apple Computers. Greetings from Germany, Hanns
Go ahead & give those Atari floppies a good spin in a drive. To help open up the sleeve, run the edges on the corner of a desk first. It's a trick I used back in the day that frequently worked. The floppy inside will more freely.
We had Turtle Beach Fiji sound cards at the company I worked for as part of the loudspeaker measurement software, I seem to remember they were still in the $300-400 price range in the mid 2000's so definitely high end cards for Pro use
I've had a Turtle Beach Tropez+, and I have a Turtle Beach Maui. These run great in DOS. You certainly don't need Windows (though it's obviously easier to use in 3.11/95). The sound is incredible! The MIDI is stunning. Turtle Beach's wavetable is hands-down the best I ever heard. I'll be happy to make some recordings of some familiar MIDI's...but I would strongly recommend exploring the Turtle Beach MIDI world. The WaveFront chip could do some great postprocessing, too.
Hey, I have three of the Commodore 16 keyboards from Radio Shack! One is still in the package. Went to look for it because I know it has the price still on it but can't find it right now. But I remember last time I looked at it I think it was only like $4.95 or something. Had to be cheap or I wouldn't have bought three! Never used them for anything tho. At this point I'll probably keep the on still in the full packaging but the other two I'll hang on to as spare parts (one has a broken key from storage anyway) if I ever get a C16 or 64.
27:10 I can confirm the Rio daughterboard is compatible with the standard WaveBlaster connector. Additionally, this is one of the rare daughterboards that not only receives MIDI commands but also can _send_ MIDI commands back. These are used for proprietary commands, such as loading your own sound fonts over MIDI into the SIPP memory.
Extra details: the SIPP can support up to 4MB in size. The daughterboard's chips support 16MB but require additional sockets that physically don't fit on the daughterboard. Later Turtle Beach sound cards moved the daughterboard chips to the sound card itself and these cards support the full 16MB of RAM.
Back in the day I did purchase one of those C16 keyboards from Radio Shack. I used the keyboard on a AIM65 to replace it's missing one. I also had to replace a power board on my TI 99/4a which blew one of the ICs on the board (released the magic smoke). I just replaced the whole board instead of fixing the broken one.
Oh it's been eons since I've seen "sleevies" on that cpu adapter. Used them at HP for similar adapters. It was like BGA, you had a stencil/holder, fill em with sleevies attach both parts & bake.
Man, that Fred Meyer price tag gives some nostalgia. That game was $3.97 clearance. You could find clearance items in electronics in a round wire bin at my local Fred Meyer back in the 80s. Mid 90s they upgraded to just having a second on the shelf for software, but they still used a similar sticker. I bought so many clearance games from there for the PC.
Unboxing the clock-doubling cyrix upgrade reminds me of the typical thrifting experience. Get excited about the box, then be disappointed looking inside the box.
On the Turtle beach the txt was hinting at having its own memory & processor not needing to raid the system ram with DMA. I never got too close to these boards but even if the system crashes put it continues which was weird on odd occasions.
Yes, there are couple compiling basics for the Apple ii line... Microsoft TASC, Dr Gralfo's Integer Basic Compiler. Plus several more post-commercial lifespan ones. And Fred Meyers DOES still carry computers. Usually pretty low end. Usually only a couple models, just in the black-friday to week before christmas timeframe. They do carry an array of low end tablets, too.
@@massmike11 In about 2010, The Eagle River AK Fred Meyers actually had a few decent laptops, too. I almost spent the PDF on one...but alas, the wife's car needed help.
In 1980, I was a freshman at U of I in Champaign/Urbana. I interviewed with Bruce Artwick at SubLogic as a programmer. I knew BASIC, but he told me to come back after I learned assembly.
On the topic of Freddy’s electronics, I work at Fred Meyer and you’re right, we don’t sell computers anymore. We mostly sell some game consoles, TVs, and smaller devices like tablets, cameras, and smart watches.
Wow I had one of those SCSI NEC CD rom drives, same model too. I think that was my first CD rom drive I ever had. Totally forgot about that. I had an external one. I had that drive in an enclosure. I went digging, and found that I still have the enclosure, but not the drive.
My last soundcard I used in Dos was a Soundwave 32. The version of it I had actually didn't sound that bad, other than the random popping that I almost was used to. Maybe I had it at just the right volume settings and the higher capacity sample chips. I'd really love to hear it again.
A friend gave us a stack of disks like that with a copy of Striker, was probably the best of them. Also looks awesome on a monochrome monitor. I was some what disappointed to find that it didn't run well on a non 8088 system.
That connexant 878 chip was a popular chip and were used in lots of PCI TV tuners and capture cards. I think it is originally a Phillips chip but not sure.
Galactic Chase was the first game I had for our Atari 800, kind of a clone of the Galaxian arcade game. The Datasoft BASIC compiler came in a white/blue small 3 ring notebook. Some commercial games were made using BASIC compilers. I think quite a few of the SSI strategy games were compiled BASIC, for instance.
I used the same video capture cards in CCTV systems! The S3 card is seen as similar in arcade machines when not in a pc case but to replace a cartridge of dedicated system board. Also seen a similar but not on such a good card on industrial HID(Human Interface Device) as to fit a rack not a pc case.
I do recall buying one of those TI-99/4A keyboards from Radio Shack -- had seen a magazine article that showed the modifications that could be made to the keyboard so that it can be plugged into a Sinclair ZX-81 (replacing that awful membrane keyboard). Never got around to doing that mod, unfortunately.
You talked about playing Flight Simulator II. I had a copy of the full package for the C64 and it wasn't a game exactly. My best friend was learning how to fly a Piper Cub and used it in between flying lessons. It aimed to be more realistic, so you could get a basic understanding of the different controls on an airplane and how they interacted with each other and how to do basic navigation and approaches. I got good enough with it to take off and navigation and could do approaches, but rarely landed successfully.
I had that FS2 package for my Atari, though it was Microsoft-branded by then. Everything looks the same, even the screen graphics. I suppose it was a relatively easy port since Ataris had a high-resolution mode with artifact colors comparable to the Apple II.
That Virge card takes me back... my first computer (I knew nada then so ordered from guy who made it), a Pentium 90mhz chip with the Virge "de-celerator" on board. Win 95. I was so happy when I bought a Voodoo Banshee for Quake enjoyment frills.
The S3 may have been in an Amiga with a mediator. I remember I had a hacked tower with a mediator and none of the PC cards fitted the case. I upgraded t an Elbox or something and that was custom so they fitted. I think those and Voodoo had drivers in P96. Or a laptop like you said.
I did tech support and fixed computers in the early 90s and I remember the Turtle Beach cards being a pain in the rear because of compatibility. Maybe it was when I was support at Compaq? But a lot of problems with people doing what they wanted.
When I worked at Future Vision Multimedia we had apparently done some packaging/bundling deals with Turtle beach, a couple people at FVM went to work at TB while a couple TB employes moved to FVM.
I had one of those cyrix clock doublers - I still have the motherboard somewhere. I would have taken the old processor and put it in the box that the new one came in so I do have the box somewhere but with the old CPU inside!
Adrian, would you consider creating a third channel with electronic courses, an educational channel, and methods to understand and fix motherboards of all style? You have such a valuable knowledge that it’s a shame not sharing, and I would be willing to pay a fee to benefit from it. Food for thought… Great videos !
Hey Adrian, lovely video as always (oh and btw loved especially the recent after dark video, it was so comfy!). But anyway I want to mention that "Wavetable" on Soundblaster cards has nothing to do with "Wavetable Synthesis" that can be found on Synthesizers such as a Waldorf Microwave or ASM Hydrasynth. "Wavetable" on Soundcards is actually just a "Rompler", a Rom Sample Player without any synthesis capabilities. Best wishes! ^_^
16:30 with a card like that were there accessories you would add to the motherboard to speed up video compression? Years ago i dismantled an early P4 security minitor computer and in one of the RAM sockets (yes, in one of the DDR2 ram sockets) was a ram sized card i could find no info on. It had at least one FPGA on it and i assumed it was some kind of compression card, i had NEVER heard of a ram socket being used for anything but RAM and that card blew my mind. This system probably had about 12 bnc jacks for video input and also stored and played back video.
I bought one of those TI keyboards from Radio Shack back in the day, and started rewiring the matrix to try and make a remote keyboard for my CoCo. I never finished the job -- too tedious for the teenage brain -- but I still have the keyboard in a box somewhere. There were BASIC compilers for the CoCo 1/2 & CoCo 3. One was named MLBASIC, I think. Now there's ugBASIC that runs on modern PCs and supports many target machines, including the CoCo.
I worked with a guy back in 2002 that used to be a programmer for flight simulator or was some way associated with the project. He said there was an easter egg on several versions which was a file that had an image of the programmers I think from Sublogic. It survived well into the Microsoft Windows era where the file was never removed until Microsoft found out in the late 90s. The company we worked for made air traffic control simulators to teach tower operators how to become an air traffic controller.
17:27 The Conexant cards work pretty well in Linux, I built several video surveillance recorders using software motion detection. The software was simply called Motion.
Myself and my cousin had those Archer TI keyboards as kids. If I recall they were about $6.95 or $7.95. Cheap enough that our parents got them for us so we could "play computer" with them. This was when we were in elementary school before I got my first MC-10 computer in about 87 or so. I also remember seeing those Commodore keyboards thinking they were for a C64 since I had a friend that had one and recognized the F-key layout.
The flight Sim II box, brought back a lot of memories. As a professional pilot, I used Flight Sim II on my Amiga 2000. I used this program for many years, as a procedures trainer to practise my emergency procedures. in preparation for my annual checkrides., The program couldn't be configured as a commercial plane, but flying the (I think, Cessna 210) at DC-10 speeds, was close enough to make it all work. It was just for practising procedures, so the timing was important, and the fact that it flew well enough at the DC10 speeds, was all that mattered. I also found the program quite handy for reviewing instrument procedures at airports in our route system, that I hadn't been to in some time. As a training aid, it worked extremely well for me for many years. If I remember correctly, the Sub Logic Flight Sim II program for the Amiga, started up with Chicago Midway airport, as the installed primary example, but it was easy to add other airports into the database. It was rudimentary, but it worked.
That Apple PC compatibility card looks like the one that goes with the Power Mac 7200. The "extra card and ribbon cable" you're missing let the card connect to an internal video header, so you wouldn't need any of that external wiring to make it work.
Your IBM card looks like a Type 4 Processor Complex for a Model 90/95... oh you're figuring that out. But! Those are the good ones and are very good to have. Definitely one to preserve.
Adrian checking random retro stuff hardware and software = my therapy session
Keep the rat shack stuff packaged until you need it. To quote Dr. Jones, "It belongs in a museum!"
I'd agree. I'm not a purist, and I don't think everything can, or should be preserved. I'll add three reasons why this is different.
1. You can SEE what's inside it. That adds a lot of value keeping it around. It's not just something in a cardboard sealed box.
2. It's small, and easily stored.
3. Preserving it in the packaging preserves the significance of Radio Shacki selling off their parts stock after the Tandy computers weren't popular any more. Radio Shack/Tandy is AFAIK the only computer maker other than Apple that's had retail stores, and Apple only did that..... sometime in the 2000s.
@@stevesether Gateway had their Gateway Country stores for a while, before Apple did. More recently, Microsoft had retail stores with their Surface devices, etc. for a while
@@electronerd I forgot about Gateway. It's true, they were the second. Microsoft I guess counts. The point is more that Tandy was the first to scale that level of vertical integration, and came at it from the other angle. Retailer->computer manufacturer, rather than the other way around.
@@stevesether Commodore had dedicated retail stores as well. I was lucky enough to have one in my town. The name of the store was "Commodore Business Machines" and it consisted of a showroom full of Commodore PC's (maybe even a few PETs ) and they had a C64 in the corner that they considered a "toy". I would make my regular weekend pilgrimage to the CBM store while my brother and cousins were next door at the video arcade dropping quarters to no end, I was here discovering text adventures like Zork and Colossal Caves , experimenting with this new fangled drawing tablet called a Koala Pad and dreaming of a future so bright. I of course kept my share of quarters so one day I could afford on of those "toys".
Random computer archeology is always interesting and appreciated. Vids like this help me decompress after a stressful day. Beats going to a shrink!
That TI-99/4A keyboard is very similar to the one I bought at Radio Shack that had mechanical switches. I sprayed the caps with black epoxy paint, glued down some labels photocopied from the ZX-81 user's manual, then hit 'em again with clear satin acrylic. Wired up the matrix with some wire salvaged from an old piece of phone cable, and soldered it to the board on my ZX-81. A Bud case with some very crude metal work became home for it. It was gnarly, but had the best ZX-81 keyboard ever!
I did a simular operation, but modded it for my ZX-80, didn't modify the keys as was mostly doing maths for a Differential Equations (DE) college class, made the "typing" so much easier. Also, led me to do more BASIC progamming with a "Normal" keyboard compared to that membrane pos.
Excellent as always. Pedantic nitpick: EMS is exPANded memory, not exTENded memory. Extended memory would be XMS.
That IBM Pentium Processor complex card for the PS/2 model 90/95 towards the end of the video is highly sought after by PS/2 collectors.
My uncle had a lot of games from Epyx. When I was 5, the old Apple IIe was mine so every once in a while he would load one up for me and help me through them (grandma didn’t want me playing most of them). That brought back a lot of great memories ❤
The S3 card with a 90 degree mod is probably for use with a 3DFX card. He didnt want to have the pass through cable on the outside of the case.
1:05:50 - I think the label you were looking for fell out of the box
When I lived in North Texas, I worked at AST, and supported that card you have in your hands! I supported that AST card. Lots of people loved having it. In 1995, I had the F-22 flight simulator and it was so fun. I loved playing it. I mastered the game. I flew all over the US and landed at many locations. It was a blast! I also mastered the Microsoft flight simulator.
That Apple PC/DOS compatibility card reminded me of a past boyfriend my sister had, he was a full-on mac user and had what I think was a G3 tower, and he showed me he could run both MacOS and Windows at once, doing a quick keystroke on the keyboard under MacOS, then the monitor blinked and switched over to a Windows desktop, up until now I had just assumed he was running a virtual environment or something, but, seeing that card now, it's possible it was one of those (or something similar) that he was running...
That was exactly how that card behaved. We had one in the college lab that I worked in. In a different comment here I detailed how to do something with that card that Apple said wasn't possible because the person who wrote the documentation didn't understand networking properly.
Orchid made the first retail 3Dfx Voodoo card, one of which i just happened to buy in a retail shop as a fresh teen. I wish i'd kept it, it was a rev 1 board with the audible "click" from a relay whenever a game initialised it. That loud click and the 3Dfx logo animation was SO satisfying...
I sold the card at a lan party a few years later to someone who couldn't really run counter-strike on his computer, i installed it for him and everything. I was a teen and therefore poor, so it made sense at the time, but oh man i wish i still had it!
I remember seeing Flight Simulator on my uncle's Apple ][+, and being blown away. A few years later I had an Apple ][e, and my dad took me Farnsworth Computers (in Bensenville?) and got me Flight Simulator 2 for my birthday. This was my prized possesion, and I remember inviting a friend over to show him, and spending hours flying from Meigs Field down to Champaign. :) A few years later I went to college at U or I, and my roommate actually interned at SubLogic.
24:00 Indeed that's the Apple PC Compatibility card (with a Pentium 166) for PCI Power Macintosh systems. The cable you showed is for the older DOS Compatibility card (with a 486) for certain 68K Macs and won't work with that PCI card. Its can be connected either via that internal ribbon cable you saw in the eBay listing on certain Power Macintosh systems or there's a similar external cable that just breaks out video.
These are super fun to play with!
The Apple PC compatibility card worked fine on my PowerMac G3 266 MHz. You need to find the double connection monitor cable tho.
@@ughinotogni4580 I'm surprised. I have one of those (complete with box) and the manual specifically calls out the G3 as not being compatible because the PCI slots in the G3 and above as being only 3.3V, which the Compatibility card needs 5V PCI slots.
Damnit Garth!! GET OUT OF MY VIDEOS!! And yes you're 100% correct, that's the older cable. The one specifically for this card only has three ends to connect to the Mac's own monitor port, the PC Compatibility card, and the monitor you're going to see everything on.
@@stinkertonsden 😁
@@stinkertonsden believe me! That compatibility card worked better than Real PC or Connectix Virtual PC and every Dos or win95 game was Soo fast with that card!!
Radio Shack constantly bought up surplus to sell in their stores for parts. You could find all sorts of chips and other computing components, for...a modest markup.
That PowerPC Mac card with a Pentium should be offered to the person who runs the channel "Action Retro".
That's a great call. Sean would figure out some way to get it to play Minecraft.
Or do a collab!
I would look forward to seeing it run Haiku!
Your Body with a Soul should be offered to the person who runs the channel "Action Retro"
The old Mac 7100 PC Card is awesome.
This may possibly be the very first time you've featured Micro-Channel Architecture devices on the channel! Noice!
It was awesome to see hardware and software from back in the day. To remember working on computer hardware and typing in computer programs from magazines as a youth. Including buying a few cassettes and diskettes.
When I was a kid, my TI99 keyboard died. I purchased the one you have from Radio Shack in my local mall. I think it was around 1983 or 1984. I still have it. I wouldn't bother to open it as they were the worst of the TI keyboards.
I think we had that same 233mhz MMX daughter board processor in our Dell PC in the late 90s we were given from our grandparents. Ran descent, starcraft, cyberstorm2, doom you name it. Loved that thing.
I remember those composite capture cards. My dad used one where he was working for a security system
In the May 1985 Radio Electronics magazine, which you can find on the Internet Archive, there's a Radio Shack Parts Place ad on p. 127, where you can find that keyboard for sale for $2.95. Now that's the real bargain bin.
The intro tune is becoming an institution by Nathan divino.... It just fits and works.. Love it...
I love these vids! Just an hour with Adrian, going through cool vintage stuff. It's kind of what I used to enjoy about Krazy Ken back when he made his tech misadventures series: unscripted, checking out stuff and trying to get it to work!
Adrian, An easy way to view the floppy medium. Place two fingers in the disk hole, from the bottom side. Then use a finger to spin the floppy cover. I learned this from Bruce Q. Hammond at Starpoint software. It was how he discovered the laser burn mark used to protect certain c64 software.
Love these random box videos. I recognized that IBM processor card right away, I unfortunately have gotten into PS/2s recently, resulting in many headaches and sweaty foreheads.
The original Atari 400 & 800 both did not have any internal programming language, so the Basic cartridge was needed to program in Basic for both computers. With no programming language cartridge installed in a 400 or 800, turning on the computer would result in a blue screen that had the word "MEMO PAD" on top of the screen. You could type and see what you typed, but whatever you typed wouldn't do anything. Or you could buy other programming languages such as "Microsoft Basic" or "Pilot", for examples. The Atari XL / XE / XG computers came with Basic already onboard.
Except the 1200XL, as I learned to my consternation after buying one.
@@kevinkeeney9418 Good point; I forgot about the 1200XL and how it was different than the other XLs in that regard.
1:05:48 looks like that label feel out and on the floor. Happy you found it :)
Took a little longer to get the time to watch the longer form videos, but I sure do enjoy watching them because of all the ancient tech and software. It reminds me of some of the old games I used to play so long ago.
In Idaho, Fred Meyers sometimes have an electronics section, but it's usually outside the retail section, past the checkout and they have a dedicated checkout for that stuff
Qix! Now that's a blast from the past! And I feel old as I actually remember seeing the original arcade version when I was a kid!
@1:00:00 - FS-1 came out on the Tandy TRS-80 initially - was ported to the Apple. It was great fun, me and my mate used to play it often 🙂
CD Caddies made a lot of sense for libraries. If "Business Abstracts 1983" cost $395, it might have made a individual caddy for each disc a good investment. Patrons could pick the proper disc out of the rack and not worry so much about fingerprints and scratches. The home market, not so much.
I remember Orchid sound cards from about 1996. A co-worker was at a computer store and he said the store had a bunch of Orchid cards on sale for cheap. He bought one for me, and I put it in my work machine so I could listen to music while I worked. The low price was the reason I got it, since I wasn't gaming on that machine.
I also had a CD drive with a caddy. I don't remember the brand, but it had the same kind of door that rotated open. I thought that the caddy was more than just protection; it was necessary to keep the disc spinning stably at 3x, which was really fast at the time.
Rotated open would be a NEC drive, they were on the fancier pricier end of things. I worked as a tech at a shop then, whenever I got a machine in with a NEC drive I knew before opening the case that the owner was serious about quality gear, and it for sure was no 486sx. If I recall correctly all the NEC ones were also SCSI, at least the ones I saw. At the time I got the first Mitsumi IDE one, much slower but it was the first 'cheap' enough drive to not cost nearly as much as the rest of my PC would have been worth.
Sound cards were expensive back then, I didn't have one at all for a long time then the Vibra 16 came out or some such, which was finally cheap enough, but it also did all the processing on the main CPU sort of, so every time a sound played whatever else you did slowed down or stopped. Was funny talking to customers since they assumed I had fancy stuff - I made something like $1.20/hr lol, through some work placement program.
It was because they hadn't figured out to do the centering tray for the head grab it is something that was really common on external CD Drive cases for early sun sparc workstations.
The virge card mod might be to tie it to a voodoo 3d card without the messy pass through cable sticking out the back of the machine. The datecode lines up nicely with that era
Hello Adrian, I watched some of your repair videos where, if everything was good, the result was a working computer from the past. What happens to them afterwards? You must have an awful big storage for all of them. To watch your repair sessions is real fun for me, most astonished I was when I saw you washing Motherboards. Beeing a student of Physics I owned during the late 80ies a Atari ST F with memory addition to 4 MB and a 70 Hz black and white monitor SM 124 and I wrote my thesis with this machine. Beeing in my profession later I had a PC and for my hobby recording classical choir music I turned to Apple Computers. Greetings from Germany, Hanns
Go ahead & give those Atari floppies a good spin in a drive. To help open up the sleeve, run the edges on the corner of a desk first. It's a trick I used back in the day that frequently worked. The floppy inside will more freely.
i'd get that poster framed. i love that “futuristic” design aesthetic.
Definitely the most interesting box I've seen in a long time! Anything I'd like you to test? Why everything of course! 😊
Haa! I was waiting for you to mention the TI994A. (I’m new here, so I didn’t wait long.) That is the first computer I had. Loved it!
We had Turtle Beach Fiji sound cards at the company I worked for as part of the loudspeaker measurement software, I seem to remember they were still in the $300-400 price range in the mid 2000's so definitely high end cards for Pro use
I had a BASIC Compiler for the ZX81 it was great. The three-dimensional games for the early 8-bit computers in wireframe were fantastic.
I've had a Turtle Beach Tropez+, and I have a Turtle Beach Maui. These run great in DOS. You certainly don't need Windows (though it's obviously easier to use in 3.11/95). The sound is incredible! The MIDI is stunning. Turtle Beach's wavetable is hands-down the best I ever heard. I'll be happy to make some recordings of some familiar MIDI's...but I would strongly recommend exploring the Turtle Beach MIDI world. The WaveFront chip could do some great postprocessing, too.
Another great video. Thanks! Would love to see the shareware.
love your content, always find something interesting about what your doing in your videos, keep up the good work.
Love mystery boxes unboxed❤
Hey, I have three of the Commodore 16 keyboards from Radio Shack! One is still in the package. Went to look for it because I know it has the price still on it but can't find it right now. But I remember last time I looked at it I think it was only like $4.95 or something. Had to be cheap or I wouldn't have bought three! Never used them for anything tho. At this point I'll probably keep the on still in the full packaging but the other two I'll hang on to as spare parts (one has a broken key from storage anyway) if I ever get a C16 or 64.
27:10 I can confirm the Rio daughterboard is compatible with the standard WaveBlaster connector. Additionally, this is one of the rare daughterboards that not only receives MIDI commands but also can _send_ MIDI commands back. These are used for proprietary commands, such as loading your own sound fonts over MIDI into the SIPP memory.
Extra details: the SIPP can support up to 4MB in size. The daughterboard's chips support 16MB but require additional sockets that physically don't fit on the daughterboard. Later Turtle Beach sound cards moved the daughterboard chips to the sound card itself and these cards support the full 16MB of RAM.
29:14 Oh, my God! I had one of these Orchid cards in one of my custom build PCs.
Back in the day I did purchase one of those C16 keyboards from Radio Shack. I used the keyboard on a AIM65 to replace it's missing one. I also had to replace a power board on my TI 99/4a which blew one of the ICs on the board (released the magic smoke). I just replaced the whole board instead of fixing the broken one.
Oh it's been eons since I've seen "sleevies" on that cpu adapter. Used them at HP for similar adapters. It was like BGA, you had a stencil/holder, fill em with sleevies attach both parts & bake.
Really enjoy this! Look forward to seeing all the goodies in action soon!
Man, that Fred Meyer price tag gives some nostalgia. That game was $3.97 clearance. You could find clearance items in electronics in a round wire bin at my local Fred Meyer back in the 80s. Mid 90s they upgraded to just having a second on the shelf for software, but they still used a similar sticker. I bought so many clearance games from there for the PC.
Unboxing the clock-doubling cyrix upgrade reminds me of the typical thrifting experience. Get excited about the box, then be disappointed looking inside the box.
On the Turtle beach the txt was hinting at having its own memory & processor not needing to raid the system ram with DMA.
I never got too close to these boards but even if the system crashes put it continues which was weird on odd occasions.
This was awesome, love the content - keep doing what makes you happy!
Yes, there are couple compiling basics for the Apple ii line... Microsoft TASC, Dr Gralfo's Integer Basic Compiler. Plus several more post-commercial lifespan ones.
And Fred Meyers DOES still carry computers. Usually pretty low end. Usually only a couple models, just in the black-friday to week before christmas timeframe.
They do carry an array of low end tablets, too.
Got my iPad at Fred Meyer, they had the best price around at the time, that was really weird but I saved like $30 over even wally world.
@@massmike11 In about 2010, The Eagle River AK Fred Meyers actually had a few decent laptops, too. I almost spent the PDF on one...but alas, the wife's car needed help.
You might want to get in touch with Neil from RMC as he collects the flight simulator games and recurrently acquired one version for the Apple II 🙂
Yes!! Good call!
In 1980, I was a freshman at U of I in Champaign/Urbana. I interviewed with Bruce Artwick at SubLogic as a programmer. I knew BASIC, but he told me to come back after I learned assembly.
On the topic of Freddy’s electronics, I work at Fred Meyer and you’re right, we don’t sell computers anymore. We mostly sell some game consoles, TVs, and smaller devices like tablets, cameras, and smart watches.
Those powerleap upgrade adapters are really cool, I bet it could handle a chip clocked at 400mhz.
as someone who has been around since the Spectrum (at 8yo), i appreciate reliving my childhood - the VIC-20/C64 and IBM 5150 years were the best
I Absolutely Love Boxes Of Mystery Tech, Because I Have A Couple Boxes Of It Myself . . . lol . . .
MSX Computers also have a BASIC compiler. The first one i can remember was Kun-Basic, wich came in ROM format for Sanyo PHC-70FD machines.
Wow I had one of those SCSI NEC CD rom drives, same model too. I think that was my first CD rom drive I ever had. Totally forgot about that. I had an external one. I had that drive in an enclosure. I went digging, and found that I still have the enclosure, but not the drive.
My last soundcard I used in Dos was a Soundwave 32. The version of it I had actually didn't sound that bad, other than the random popping that I almost was used to. Maybe I had it at just the right volume settings and the higher capacity sample chips. I'd really love to hear it again.
That's amazing, I have the same 486 upgrade and yes by Cyrix. How cool.
A friend gave us a stack of disks like that with a copy of Striker, was probably the best of them. Also looks awesome on a monochrome monitor. I was some what disappointed to find that it didn't run well on a non 8088 system.
That connexant 878 chip was a popular chip and were used in lots of PCI TV tuners and capture cards. I think it is originally a Phillips chip but not sure.
Galactic Chase was the first game I had for our Atari 800, kind of a clone of the Galaxian arcade game. The Datasoft BASIC compiler came in a white/blue small 3 ring notebook. Some commercial games were made using BASIC compilers. I think quite a few of the SSI strategy games were compiled BASIC, for instance.
I used the same video capture cards in CCTV systems!
The S3 card is seen as similar in arcade machines when not in a pc case but to replace a cartridge of dedicated system board.
Also seen a similar but not on such a good card on industrial HID(Human Interface Device) as to fit a rack not a pc case.
I do recall buying one of those TI-99/4A keyboards from Radio Shack -- had seen a magazine article that showed the modifications that could be made to the keyboard so that it can be plugged into a Sinclair ZX-81 (replacing that awful membrane keyboard). Never got around to doing that mod, unfortunately.
You talked about playing Flight Simulator II. I had a copy of the full package for the C64 and it wasn't a game exactly. My best friend was learning how to fly a Piper Cub and used it in between flying lessons. It aimed to be more realistic, so you could get a basic understanding of the different controls on an airplane and how they interacted with each other and how to do basic navigation and approaches. I got good enough with it to take off and navigation and could do approaches, but rarely landed successfully.
We used to do the modification to S3 video cards for the Compaq luggables....
I had that FS2 package for my Atari, though it was Microsoft-branded by then. Everything looks the same, even the screen graphics. I suppose it was a relatively easy port since Ataris had a high-resolution mode with artifact colors comparable to the Apple II.
That Virge card takes me back... my first computer (I knew nada then so ordered from guy who made it), a Pentium 90mhz chip with the Virge "de-celerator" on board. Win 95. I was so happy when I bought a Voodoo Banshee for Quake enjoyment frills.
The S3 may have been in an Amiga with a mediator. I remember I had a hacked tower with a mediator and none of the PC cards fitted the case. I upgraded t an Elbox or something and that was custom so they fitted. I think those and Voodoo had drivers in P96. Or a laptop like you said.
I did tech support and fixed computers in the early 90s and I remember the Turtle Beach cards being a pain in the rear because of compatibility. Maybe it was when I was support at Compaq? But a lot of problems with people doing what they wanted.
When I worked at Future Vision Multimedia we had apparently done some packaging/bundling deals with Turtle beach, a couple people at FVM went to work at TB while a couple TB employes moved to FVM.
I had one of those cyrix clock doublers - I still have the motherboard somewhere. I would have taken the old processor and put it in the box that the new one came in so I do have the box somewhere but with the old CPU inside!
I've got one of those caddy CD drives but in an external case - I've used it as a CD player before but too slow to use as a CDROM these days!
Does the missing VIC-20 game cartridge label fall out of the box at 1:05:50 Looks like that might be what slips out at that point.
The NEC CDrom was the first one I ever had. I got it Christmas 93 or 94 from Fry’s.
Playing obscure, forgotten shareware games? Heck yes!
I had a PowerLeap for putting a K6-2 on a Asus TX-97LE motherboard. They really do what it says on the box.
Adrian, would you consider creating a third channel with electronic courses, an educational channel, and methods to understand and fix motherboards of all style?
You have such a valuable knowledge that it’s a shame not sharing, and I would be willing to pay a fee to benefit from it.
Food for thought…
Great videos !
Hey Adrian, lovely video as always (oh and btw loved especially the recent after dark video, it was so comfy!). But anyway I want to mention that "Wavetable" on Soundblaster cards has nothing to do with "Wavetable Synthesis" that can be found on Synthesizers such as a Waldorf Microwave or ASM Hydrasynth. "Wavetable" on Soundcards is actually just a "Rompler", a Rom Sample Player without any synthesis capabilities. Best wishes! ^_^
LOL, I just progressed to the advertisement calling it "wavetable synthesis". I did not know they marketed it as such, very dishonest ...
16:30 with a card like that were there accessories you would add to the motherboard to speed up video compression?
Years ago i dismantled an early P4 security minitor computer and in one of the RAM sockets (yes, in one of the DDR2 ram sockets) was a ram sized card i could find no info on. It had at least one FPGA on it and i assumed it was some kind of compression card, i had NEVER heard of a ram socket being used for anything but RAM and that card blew my mind.
This system probably had about 12 bnc jacks for video input and also stored and played back video.
I used that keyboard and power supply in my homebrew wire wrapped 6800. Pile of circuit boards and wire on my desk. 13" Zenith B&W TV for a monitor.
I bought one of those TI keyboards from Radio Shack back in the day, and started rewiring the matrix to try and make a remote keyboard for my CoCo. I never finished the job -- too tedious for the teenage brain -- but I still have the keyboard in a box somewhere.
There were BASIC compilers for the CoCo 1/2 & CoCo 3. One was named MLBASIC, I think. Now there's ugBASIC that runs on modern PCs and supports many target machines, including the CoCo.
I worked with a guy back in 2002 that used to be a programmer for flight simulator or was some way associated with the project. He said there was an easter egg on several versions which was a file that had an image of the programmers I think from Sublogic. It survived well into the Microsoft Windows era where the file was never removed until Microsoft found out in the late 90s. The company we worked for made air traffic control simulators to teach tower operators how to become an air traffic controller.
17:27 The Conexant cards work pretty well in Linux, I built several video surveillance recorders using software motion detection. The software was simply called Motion.
Myself and my cousin had those Archer TI keyboards as kids. If I recall they were about $6.95 or $7.95. Cheap enough that our parents got them for us so we could "play computer" with them. This was when we were in elementary school before I got my first MC-10 computer in about 87 or so. I also remember seeing those Commodore keyboards thinking they were for a C64 since I had a friend that had one and recognized the F-key layout.
The flight Sim II box, brought back a lot of memories. As a professional pilot, I used Flight Sim II on my Amiga 2000. I used this program for many years, as a procedures trainer to practise my emergency procedures. in preparation for my annual checkrides., The program couldn't be configured as a commercial plane, but flying the (I think, Cessna 210) at DC-10 speeds, was close enough to make it all work. It was just for practising procedures, so the timing was important, and the fact that it flew well enough at the DC10 speeds, was all that mattered.
I also found the program quite handy for reviewing instrument procedures at airports in our route system, that I hadn't been to in some time. As a training aid, it worked extremely well for me for many years.
If I remember correctly, the Sub Logic Flight Sim II program for the Amiga, started up with Chicago Midway airport, as the installed primary example, but it was easy to add other airports into the database. It was rudimentary, but it worked.
I played a lot of Jet back then. SubLogic was a local company (as was Volition - RIP).
That Apple PC compatibility card looks like the one that goes with the Power Mac 7200. The "extra card and ribbon cable" you're missing let the card connect to an internal video header, so you wouldn't need any of that external wiring to make it work.
Some of those software titles i remember form back in the day. Wizard of Wor, Temple of Apshai in particular.
it was nice seeing vic20 stuff--it was my first computer and I learned BASIC and 6502 assembler on it and eventually became a software engineer
Your IBM card looks like a Type 4 Processor Complex for a Model 90/95... oh you're figuring that out. But! Those are the good ones and are very good to have. Definitely one to preserve.
The late 70s/early 80s baggy or simple folder packaging for software is the best! 🙂
I remember seeing surplus Commodore C16 keyboards sold at Radio Shack
My suggestion for the TI keyboard is to get it to one of the retro museums.