How to backup old PCs over Serial
Look, old PCs can be hard work. Getting data off and on to them with no network and no USB is an absolute nightmare. So how do we do it? We use the tools of the time. And some emulation via Virtualbox
Checking out the Shuttle SN41G2
Back in 2003 PCs were changing. We’d suffered the horrible beige boxes of the 90s and with the invention of the iMac in 1998, companies were looking to make their machines more aesthetically pleasing. PCs weren’t just tools anymore, they were art pieces, and Shuttle wanted in on the market. They released and refined this …
Making The Barn Find Pentium Pro More Usable
In this video I upgrade the Barn Find Pentium Pro with additional parts which will hopefully make it more flexible and easier to upgrade in future.
PC Stats Display With Raspberry Pi and Aida64
A while back I made a PC stats display using a Raspberry Pi and some free software from Modbros. Conceptually I loved it as a solution, I just wished it was a little bit more flexible and allowed you to display different images outside of the templates featured in the software. Enter Aida64. In this …
This Pentium 4 PC Wasn’t Worth Saving
Sometimes a piece of junk is JUST a piece of junk. A while back I picked up a couple of PCs on the Indian classified website olx.in One of those machines was my Pentium Pro PC, but the other turned out to be a much more modern Pentium 4 machine made by Asus. Unfortunately, as …
Checking out the Gotek Floppy Emulator
Floppy disks were a massive part of the computing landscape in the 80s and 90s. Back in a time before high speed internet and USB drives, if you were moving data between two PCs the chances are you were using a floppy disk. The problem with using floppies on retro PCs in the 21st century …
My AMD Ryzen 5900x / Nvidia 3080 BEAST
Yeah, I know, I have way more money than sense. There was absolutely NOTHING wrong with my AMD Ryzen 3900x based system, even with its cautiously optimistic Radeon 5700XT GPU. But, I’m a man with needs, and I needed a much faster system Surprisingly, I was able to pick up the GPU at more or …
Unboxing a Pentium Pro from 1996
Way back when, Intel needed a product that would bridge the gap between high-end server machines and ordinary desktops. They came up with the Pentium Pro not long after the original Pentium, in 1996. The idea was that its 32-bit performance would excel past what even the Pentium could achieve, and it wasn’t the only …
Olivetti Philos 46 – Revisiting my First PC
Back in winter 1994 I remember spending one wet and windy evening sitting patiently in the aisles of PC World in Northampton as my dad spoke to a salesman with about as much focus as I’ve ever seen from someone. With hindsight it was easy to understand why, as later that evening my dad parted …
This Pentium Pro Machine Was Found in a Shed!
Last summer I was bored while my wife and daughter were away visiting family, so I began to look into the Retro PC scene. The problem was that where I am (India) there isn’t really a retro scene and it was very difficult to actually find a marketplace where I might lay my hands on …