I don’t look for vintage computers in the wild nearly as much anymore as I look for vintage computer accessories. I was very happy to find a vintage desktop keyboard drawer less than 6 miles from home.
Read More »Desktop keyboard drawer: Unheraded retro accessory
The most common problem with an Atari Jaguar is not being able to power it on. Usually this is due to user error rather than a hardware fault, so here’s how to quickly fix the problem.
Vintage computing has gotten expensive. One way to enjoy the vintage computing experience on a budget is to install FreeDOS on aging physical hardware that isn’t quite old enough to be collectible, building what some people call a time machine. I had someone ask me on Mastodon to walk them through the process.
The goal was to walk someone through a project that would be affordable and not require someone to have a storage unit full of hardware already. If you’re ready to graduate from DOSBox or FreeDOS on VirtualBox and onto bare metal, this project is for you.
I have a Teac FD-55BV 5.25″ 360K floppy drive for my Tandy 1000EX. Teac drives tend to be very reliable, but this one had one problem. The spindle clamp would stick when I opened the lever and tried to remove the disk. Here’s how I fix a sticky floppy drive, and you can too.
The Commodore 64 came equipped with a powerful sound chip called the SID, acronym for sound interface device. In its later years, one of the ways Commodore enthusiasts extended the usefulness of their machines was by adding a second sound chip. Let’s talk about this capability and how many people took advantage of it.
Atari’s final game console of the 20th century was a console called the Jaguar. It entered a crowded game console market when it was released in late 1993, and it left the market in 1996 with more of a whimper than a roar. Today, it is a prized collectors item. Here’s why the Atari Jaguar is so expensive.
Launched in November 1993 at a price of $249 and soon reduced to $199, and then to $159 and $99, the Jaguar is worth considerably more than that today.Read More »Why the Atari Jaguar is so expensive
What’s the ideal operating system to run on a retro PC? There are several names you hear over and over again. MS-DOS 6.22 is probably the most frequent option. MS-DOS 3.31 is one that comes up from time to time. I don’t think enough people talk about IBM PC DOS 2000. I think it’s an underrated choice.
IBM PC DOS 2000 was derived from the same code base as MS DOS 6.22, so it has a very high degree of compatibility with the most popular retro DOS. But it also has some advantages.
The Apple IIc was the 4th computer in the Apple II line, introduced in April 1984. It was a bit of a departure from the earlier Apple II machines.
The Apple II, II+, and IIe were strictly desktop computers. The system unit was a large box with an integrated keyboard and, importantly, expansion slots. The expansion slots went a long way toward ensuring the Apple II’s longevity. When you ran out of hardware capability, there were seven expansion slots to plug more hardware in to solve your problem.
The IBM 4863 matched the industrial design of the PCjr, but was functionally very similar. And it wasn’t really priced any lower than it counterpart for the IBM PC. It’s retail price was $680, and the RGB cable to connect it to a PCjr was an additional $20.
Creating an IMG file of a DOS disk from individual files isn’t something you have to do often, but when you do, it’s a bit of a hassle. But it’s doable. Here’s how to write files to an img file in Windows, which you can then read with a Gotek floppy emulator running Flashfloppy.