Jetway 386WB motherboard

Jetway 386WB motherboard

The Jetway 386WB was an inexpensive clone motherboard with an Opti chipset available in the 1989 /1990 time frame.

I’m familiar with the Jetway board because I own one, but many manufacturers in Taiwan produced boards based on the same Opti reference design. Essentially, Opti did the engineering work, and the Taiwan-based manufacturers handled production. The result was an unassuming board that provided good value for money.

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DEC Tulip packet drivers for DOS

DEC Tulip packet drivers for DOS

Back when I was getting started in Linux, the network card to get was anything based on the DEC Tulip chipset. DEC sold them themselves for a short time, but so did Netgear, Linksys, and probably others. Unlike DEC ISA cards, which were junk, the Tulip chipset was great. At least in Linux and Windows. DOS? I never had reason to check. Here’s how (and why) I set up DEC Tulip packet drivers for DOS.

I recently came across a couple of old DEC Tulip cards in my parts stash, and I decided to try to get them working in DOS. I’ve had mixed success with PCI cards and DOS, so if I could get those old Tulip cards working, it could make life easier for me when I run DOS on that type of machine. Here’s how I did it.

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Fix 3.5-inch floppy drives with these easy tips

Fix 3.5-inch floppy drives with these easy tips

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information out there about how to fix 3.5-inch floppy drives, especially the 1.44 megabyte format that was a fixture in PCs for nearly 20 years. Maybe everyone knows how to do it, but that won’t be true forever. In this blog post, I’ll record the secrets of fixing this enduring storage format, before they get lost to time.

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Build an IBM 5170

Build an IBM 5170

The February 1990 cover of Compute magazine screamed, “build an AT for $1,000!” It was a clone, of course. And a soon-to-be outmoded clone at that. At that time the idea of building a true blue IBM was laughable. Today, it may be the easiest way to get your hands on a 5170 if you want one. Here’s how to build an IBM 5170.

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What a netbook is

What a netbook is

What is a netbook? Maybe it would be a more appropriate to ask what was a netbook, because the product category is pretty much extinct at this point. But for a few years, it was a fast-growing product category.

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Should you buy an IBM PS/2?

Should you buy an IBM PS/2?

At the dawn of October 1988, the IBM PS/2 was looking like a success. As it closed out its third quarter of 1988, IBM announced the PS/2 had sold 3 million units in its first year and a half on the market. The pace of 2 million units a year made it one of the best-selling machines in the world at the time. But it ultimately proved to be IBM’s downfall in the PC market. So it’s historically significant, however you feel about IBM. But should you buy an IBM PS/2? Is an IBM PS/2 a good retro computer?

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Tandy CM-11 monitor

Tandy CM-11 monitor

The Tandy CM-11 monitor, introduced in 1988, was the more expensive CGA-compatible monitor from the Tandy 1000’s heyday. It had a reputation for being reliable, but more importantly, it included a better picture tube than its entry-level counterpart, to provide a display more worthy of the Tandy tagline of “Clearly Superior.”

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Early home computer blank 80

Early home computer blank 80

It seems like a good Jeopardy question. This early home computer was called the blank 80. In this blog post, I’ll fill in the blank, explain what the number 80 meant, and why the number was more memorable than the initials.

The early home computer blank 80 was the TRS-80, manufactured by Tandy Corporation and sold in its Radio Shack stores.

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Radio Shack Armatron

Radio Shack Armatron

The Radio Shack Armatron was a toy robotic arm manufactured by Tomy, the Japanese toy maker, and imported and sold at Radio Shack stores from 1984 to 1991 and again in 1994. It was a robotic arm that you controlled with joysticks and it came with game pieces so you could make a game of trying to pick up objects and perform simple tasks.

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Tandy MMS-10 under-monitor speakers

Tandy MMS-10 under-monitor speakers

The Tandy MMS-10 is a self contained speaker unit that sits under a monitor, providing external speakers for vintage computers. Radio Shack sold them for use with 1990s multimedia PCs. But the MMS-10 looks and works well with an Amiga computer too. And who would blame you for using one with a Tandy 1000?

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