Mystery Thrift Finds - Retro Tech EP 004
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ค. 2024
- It's been a while since we had a Thrift Finds video and it was definitely worth the wait! Let's see what cool Retro Tech I was able to find from the local Thrift Stores and Online Marketplaces! Stay tuned, there are some goodies!
#retropc #retropc #thrifting #thrift #vintage #pc #ewaste #sun #compaq #acer #retrotech #nostalgia #corel #software #dlink #sony #samsung
Can’t go a day without seeing theretrorecall
Awe thanks!!!!
Bud. You're KILLING it with the nostalgia. I got a later version of that Compaq with a POS Pentium D and Windows Vista for Xmas one year. I put some time into that machine! I'd Love to see you restore that ol girl.
You bet!!!! It will definitely be on the list, glad you are enjoying!
I would love you to do a restoration of the Compaq laptop. It always amazes me how much stuff is still out there that is more than 15 years old. It's great to see this stuff for sale, and not just shoved into e-waste.
For sure! I try to do my part haha. I have also done a couple of Compaq laptop overviews on the channel. I will add this one to the list :)
@@TheRetroRecall Thank you very much!
I'm always amazed at what you can find in thrift stores. Where I live, they almost never have anything at all.
I've been extremely lucky! Lots of hunting.
ZIP disks are awesome, and "back in the day" 250mb could hold A TON of photos and documents!
Hahah how could we ever fill 250mb 😂
What a thrift! Except for the display I would definitely rob You of all the items You just showed off 😂
Can't wait to see the desktops being opened up! Thanks for sharing ❤
You're welcome!! Yes, I was definitely lucky over the last several months of hunting. I'm excited to see what is inside these PC's!
29:50, this was a local score pick-up? very very nice! good luck, I'll see you over in the next video!
Local to the province :)
I like the fact that minidisc is encased in a shel that protects against scratches and damage
Agreed, I love the format.
20:00 you got Word PErfect out IN THE WILD!?
what luck! VERY nice!
Yes sir!!! Locally!
When You buy optical drives always cleaned and lubricate them and the most important is to search if there is firmware update for them!!This will make them very reliable through time!!
Great points, thank you!
My sister had a Compaq laptop from the same range. Hers was the AMD Turion variant. Looking forward to the video.
For sure, I'd love to get it going and clean it up. Stay tuned!
I Really Loved the MiniDisk Setup when it first came out.
We we're in 11th-grade Digital Electronics class, and one of the Rich Kids got an MD Walkman with the Inline digital controller.
It was Sick, Transparent Colored Disks. I knew I still couldn't afford a DiskMan there was no way I was getting it.
A Lot of other DJ's growing up Instantly Started Changing over to MiniDisks Custom Rack-Mounted in our Rigs...
What a Waste LOL
That Sound Card in the Premium-AI looks like my SoundBlaster ISA I Swapped into Everything, I Loved the Fact it had the Volume Control built into the card for some reason.
Yeah, same here - I couldn't afford minidisc and despite my best efforts, I couldn't convince my parents to spend the money haha. I have just completed a video on that PC.... stay tuned for Saturday!
I came across my old external Backpack CD drive with the beige case the other day that works off the parallel port. I just couldn't throw it out. Nice finds 👍
That's great! So much of this tech has been thrown out over the years. It's awesome that yours works!
Oh wow, the nostalgia is insane, glad to hear those are still around :)
Some very nice find. Should be fun to see that Sun Microsystems computer come back to life.
Agreed!
That Compaq laptop brought back some memories. My brother had one of those, got it as a warranty replacement for a piece of junk eMachines laptop that died on him. Circuit City gave him a new Compaq V2000 in exchange. Want to say this was around 2002/2003. I used it briefly for one semester when my Sony Vaio died on me (the day the Colts won the Super Bowl). Anyway. The Compaq had a weird issue where it would just suddenly turn off, no error, no blue screen, just totally off without warning. I replaced/upgraded the RAM and it seemed to fix the issue. A classmate had the same laptop (his was AMD and the one I had was Intel) with the same problem. We assumed it was a cooling issue and would use it lifted off the table but the issue persisted. At a loss, we replaced the RAM and the issue resolved. No idea how or why that fixed it in both instances.
That's some great insight. I will try other memory and see if that is what is causing the issue. Much appreciated!!
I'm biased towards the computer systems but a variety of retro goodies on display!
For sure!!
a SUN 17inch LCD just looks so darn nice!
Great looking monitor.
Such a huge score.
For sure! First one that I've owned.
A VCR collection video would be interesting, especially if it's older models from the 1980's or early 90's.
I'd be up for it too!
For sure. I have an old Zenith easily from. The late 80s as well. It would be a fun one.
I saw your VHS vids on your channel. You have way more experience than I, however it will be fun either way haha.
I would watch it as well @@TheRetroRecall
Awesome!!
You found a Sun in a thrift store? I am jealous...
I never see anything like that in the NYC area.
Thrift stores and online marketplaces :). I consider looking online, hunting for great deals are sometimes cheaper than the local thrift stores. The Sun was from the local online marketplace.
Awesome haul! Love the VHS stack, that purple case reminds me of the cases from Barney tapes ROFL🤣
Those VHS cleaners can be a bit hit or miss. Sometimes they work, sometimes not, it just depends on the actual cleaner tape. I had a Scotch dry cleaning tape that worked pretty good, and that was a thrift store find in 2012! Had to toss it cuz I used just about all the check boxes LOL! I currently have a Maxell and a BlockBuster, both dry cleaners.
Also that Samsung keyboard looks like my Compaq Internet keyboard from my childhood Compaq PC, nice!!😉👍
Awesome!!! I love your videos on VHS, you can clearly see you have quite a bit of experience.
@@TheRetroRecall That's awesome that you've seen my VHS uploads!😉👌
Yeah I was practically raised by VHS my entire life LOL so I definitely have plenty of knowledge! I also learned a lot from other tech TH-camrs like 12voltvids, Spats Bear, and Probnots Tech to name a few!
Awesome and I'll check them out.
28:20, SEALED W95!! Wow wow!!
Yup, can never go wrong locating these gems!
Hello... the Sun Ultra 5 is a very nice find, but don't get your hopes up, those are SLOWWW, the low end model is a 270 Mhz CPU and a 9.1 GB Seagate 4200 rpm IDE drive. We upgraded ours (back in 2000) to IBM's 20 GB Ultrastar and bumped the RAM to 256 MB, that made them slight usable... The back ports are really two serial ports (one DB9 and one DB25) and the onboard Ethernet is a 10baseT, so there was a very popular card upgrade, the "Happy Meal" 100 Mb card with a SCSI controller on it... There are SBUS and PCI versions, you have the PCI version... if I recall, latter firmware versions supported bigger hard drives... You can run Solaris on it for the "original" experience, but they also run Linux (and probably NetBSD)
Thanks for this insight, much appreciated! I think it will be a fun experience going over the system and restoring it the best we can. I have 0 experience with Sun systems so it will be an adventure. Thabks again for the guidance!!
I wonder if you can copy VCR Games on those SQH tapes..
would be especially nice if you had one of those expensive VCR with firewire (to use with the PCI card) 😋
I'll take a look. I have a couple of higher end VCRs but not sure if they have the FireWire connection. Now.. Where would I find a pci FireWire card 😅
Hmm.
What would i do with a bunch of my own firewire pci cards ..
😅😅
I agree, the front plate in itself is a win, LG used those bezels for years :)
100%. I have a few other drives that this will fit for sure.
Those cassette cleaning systems are amazingly expensive to buy new now.
Wow, I had no idea. I have a couple of them, however for my VCRs, I tend to take them apart and clean the heads carefully.
I want a mini disc :)
Haha, you can still get them if you look hard enough :)
I have that same Sony 52x/32x/52x CD-R/RW drive! I bought it from Staples back in the 2000s. Even though I've gone through several computer builds since then, I always yank it out and save it. I've burned SO many CD-Rs with that thing, and it probably still works to this day. Though, like you said, the belts may need to be serviced at some point.
For sure. I love the look of it. Simple but that red writing gets me haha.
Love that Acer keyboard. Keep up the great content.
Thank you!
Bummer with the lightscribe drive. I had a case of NOS hp lightscribe drives made by lite-on. That I couldn't give away. I ended up using them all in systems I would resell on fakebook.
Fortunately I have a couple more of them and that beige bezel is a bonus!
Cool!
Agreed!
Awesome finds again! I trashpicked almost mint condition Dell Latitude D610 few days ago. Unfortunately it has had something spilled on the it, wireless card does not seem to recgonize and keyboard has some unresponsive keys, but it booted right up to Windows XP when tried :) Inside looks good besides the wireless card, probably will try to wash the keyboard and dig up another wireless card, I should still have few lying around somewhere.. :)
Haha! I love the D610-630 series laptops! Let me know how you make out :)
@@TheRetroRecall D630 is my absolute favourite of them all! Had one back in the day with extended battery and all of the nice things :) Maybe not the fastest but robust and pretty fast it was with SSD and Windows 7 :)
That's awesome! I own the D630 and did a video on it. Such a great laptop!
HOW THE HELL DID YOU LAND A THRIFT SUN ULTRA 5?!?! I had a SPARCstation IPX that I installed OpenBSD on and used it as a NAT device for my cable modem connection back when it was first being rolled out to my area.
Haha! It was complete luck I suppose! What makes it more fun is I know nothing about sun systems, so it will be an adventure!
I've got a stack of Zip disks and no way to read them :)
oooh a Sun Spark system complete? hope you can get whatever Sun Unix was appropriate for that system.
Haha I have lots of drives, but only a few disks!! :)
i wonder if that compaq issue could be the cmos battery.....i have an acer that did that and it runs vista so not to much newer than this one and that fixed my issue......try it and see if it works.
Wil do, great suggestion - thank you!
I find it amazing how much stuff you can find around your area, here it is like more rare than finding gold on the walkway when it comes to old and unique hardware. But I do got something you really would want for your Sun computer in my collection, I actually worked on mine today giving it a nice needed Re-Cap, I have the Sun External SCSI hard drive! that would work with the external SCSI connector you have on that computer, and now mine is fresh and serviced with brand new capacitors and it has a 9,1GB 10K IBM Ultrastar drive, I also have a 6 disc external SCSI CD-Rom changer unit with the same connectors that works too, I am thinking on making a probable re-cap on this unit too soon. the caps in the hard drive had started to leak actually but it had no damage from it yet. caps from the 90s really getting old now causing problems very often
You will have to stay tuned to see what other goodies came with the Sun when I go to do the video :).
As for the external cd drive, I'm very interested in seeing your recapping video!!
@@TheRetroRecall yeah I look forward to it. But about the re-cap, I did not really make any video of it. I just took a bunch of pictures when I fixed this. And I don’t have a way of sending these to you so I could show you what it looks like. But it has VERY Nice Rubycon capacitors now
1:53 I guess it's exceedingly understood VHS tapes are not manufactured today 😁... However, that leads me to reflect upon that other media, blank optical discs. A decade ago I thought their days were numbered by then and would disappear in not much more than a couple of years, and here we are in 2024 with spindles of those readily available in many stores, especially online. And if you know where to buy, they are as cheap as they have ever been, too, it's astounding. I sometimes think maybe I should stock a number of those before production ceases and they become more expensive to get.
Haha you never know the comments I would get if I left it in there without a correction lol. As for the optical discs, I have a few spindles and boxes with jewel cases hanging around. I think it will be many years before you see those even starting to slow down. People still love their cd's!
That Compaq Notebook ist the Little Brother of my HP Notebook the HP Compaq NX 9105 With AMD 64, 2 GB RAM
Nice!!! Just need to get the little brother working again haha
I still have my internal FireWire card installed in my main workstation and I refuse to remove it. 😤
Haha. FireWire is something that I've never worked with, never needed to. I knew it was there but tended to utilize USB.
@@TheRetroRecall A lot of older commercial audio interfaces that were on the higher end uses FireWire to connect to a computer, specifically MOTU devices.
Those Lite-On drives are great! They will even rip cd's with cactus data shield and stuff. Good finds, only a Plextor would be better.
Agreed, plextor is next on the list haha!
@@TheRetroRecall Are you in USA? I have a few don't need anymore.
@ScottyBrockway he's in Canada mate
I'm in Canada and unfortunately, shipping and customs make shipping this stuff expensive. That said, I am specifically looking for 4x or older Creative drives and Plextor drives. I would be willing to cover shipment on those. Appreciate the offer!
nice computers
Agreed, looking forward to getting them going!
@@TheRetroRecall sadly over here they think that old computers are worth like a brand new computer
That's very unfortunate. I wish they would be priced correctly to allow everyone to enjoy them.
I've been retired for a long time now but my business used to be Sun-powered. We were a Sun shop after DEC pressed F and left the chat.
Happy to have you along. Hopefully you can offer some help to get this sun (or future sun's) going :)
the laptop looks nice hopefully just ram or something
I'm definitely going to dig in deeper to see what we can do.
A long time ago, I wanted to name my band "Head Cleaner". That way, I figured we'd sell at least a few tapes by accident.
Haha!
Btw that Sony Mini-Disk player - does it has a RS232 interface,or any other???
Unfortunately not.
Sucks. All the thrift stores, Goodwills, Salvation Army's etc. in my area no longer sell any of this stuff. No VHS, cassettes, or CD's either. All electronics go stright into recycling bins and they won't allow me to look in those either. Goodwill puts all valuable electronics and items on their shopgoodwill website where you have to bid on them now. None of my local e-recyclers allow customers to come and buy stuff either.
Yeah, it's unfortunate and I feel ours will be going that way soon.
I had a Intel Presario laptop, much better speakers than the Laptops near it in store at the time! It got stolen a few years later :(
That's unfortunate for sure.
About that Sun pc.
Wasn't them running OS/2 system??
Or was it NT??
I believe it was Solaris? That said, I understand that they can also run certain distros of Linux.
@@TheRetroRecall
Hmm.
You have been busy!👍👍
Recently I found a Dell Optiplex 7010 SFF PC., which had been thrown out, so I rescued it and there was 16 gig of ddr3 ram., installed and a 256 gig ssd., and a third generation i7 CPU., there was also an 18.5 inch wide screen Asus VGA., monitor, both items have now been thoroughly cleaned and are currently in working order.
I dismantled the PC., and renewed the thermal paste and installed a 500 gig ssd., the 256 gig ssd., will come in handy through time, the Dell caddy is designed to take two 2.5 inch drives, so I also installed a 320 gig., mechanical HD., for storage and for the OS., I installed Linux Mint the Mate version.
The Cmos battery is still okay.
I'm always surprised by what folk throw out!
That sounds perfect!! Yes I'm shocked at what people toss away!
@@TheRetroRecall In my opinion, those recycling centres and thrift stores etc., provide an excellent service and an update on the Dell PC., I have now had to replace the Cmos battery and add another sata cable; 3.5 inch HD., can be fitted to it and I have a 1 TB., HD and 1.5 TB., HD., and a 2 TB., HD., but I shall keep those as storage drives for tower builds.
Have you found one of those cameras which uses floppy disks yet?
I did, I have a Mavica from Sony! FD75 I believe. I just need to find the power cable for it and I'll be good to go!
@@TheRetroRecall I assume that it's a proprietary cable, recently, I watched a video which showed one of those Mavica cameras and it took decent images of statues and other objects, but the images of landscapes were poor, they are interesting cameras and it would be fun to try one, I still have three boxes of floppy disks and two of those are sealed, so hopefully some of the disks will still work.
Nice! Yes very proprietary however they are available on eBay.
It would be nice if there is a fb Group So we can post our finds .
I never thought about that purpose, however I am going to be setting up a FB page for these videos and possibly a Discord. Stay tuned!
be careful with that atpc because it probs has a varta bat in it pal
Good point, I'll check it out asap. VARTA has been the death of so many PC's.
Okay, for the Ultra 5 -- if you're not going to add a card into the UPA slot, replace the power supply NOW with one that has a beefy 5v rail. the PSU those came with were garbage. The capacitors on the motherboard are 9 times out of 10 made by I.Q. and are garbage as well. DEFINITELY requires a full recap just because of how terrible the caps are. I had to replace all the ones near the CPU in my Ultra 10 (same board!) and yeah.... not the best.
Adaptec 3-port USB 2.0 cards are the most compatible. Aside from this, Intel Pro/1000 ethernet is a thing, and you can add in a SATA card if you flash a silicon image 3112 with a Mac ROM, as that's what it needs to enumerate. You can't boot off of it, but it's faster than the onboard IDE drive. the IDE chipset if DMA is turned on will corrupt hard drive partitions, max RAM is 1GB and 1GB only, and good luck getting your floppy drive to work, they're all super duper dead at this point. Replace the 92mm fan ASAP as well, they get bad bearings very easily after 25 years.
Thanks for all of these great tips! I think to start will be an overview of the system, see what came with it and see what it does in terms of posting. I will definitely need to take what you suggested as well as others as I have 0 knowledge of Sun systems. It should be a fun ride! Thanks again!
Is blowing out the 5.25 safe?
I once had a drive that wasn't working, then I blew it out, and it seemed to work
Now, if I could just get PC Arcade floppy to read.
I generally use an ESD brush or vacuum along side some IPA and some cotton swaps. That generally does the trick. :)
do you have the sonicstage software for the minidisc player?
I am not familiar with that software. Tell me more! :)
@@TheRetroRecall its the compression software by sony that allows bit rate compression and allows recording on a portable minidisc player to be possible without a home system.......i have a hi ned md by sony but the inside frame isnt aligned right so its hard to close the door....maybe someone can look at it....also have a brand new hi net 1gb disc sealed.
what is the year for that acer keyboard? i have the old ibm model m gray logo from 1988 and it is a buckling spring mech keyboard with a steel backplate.
Just confirmed, March 1991 date code. These keyboards are great to type on. It definitely deserves a good cleaning :)
@@TheRetroRecall that’s awesome! Btw my ibm had the laminated strip function key chart for word 2.0
I didn't know that. I knew they had it for Word Perfect, it really was a staple!
@@TheRetroRecall yeah well i can never find a big box copy of windows 95 or 98 so you got me there. i have a big box mac osx server and osx 10.4 tiger and also microsoft office 2000
Ohhh Office 2k, I've been looking for that in big box! Had it when I was younger and threw it out unfortunately. I am not worthy lol.
I'm also a minidisc collector
Neat. I'm sure you have some great stuff