Seob Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 I have a not working commodore pc10-III, need to see if i can fix it. I also have a p100, with a gus and a nice videocard, and a p233 mmx, with a 12mb monster and a matrox g200. Love old pc's. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenorman Posted May 15, 2015 Share Posted May 15, 2015 Glad to see the Tandy 1000 series getting so much attention in this thread. Those were great gaming computers if you wanted to go the IBM route before 386 / VGA / Soundblaster. The only thing that annoyed me when I had one was the Tandy 16 color graphics. A lot of games supported it, but I remember seeing a lot of games that didn't as well. I used to really wish I had a "real" EGA card instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted May 15, 2015 Share Posted May 15, 2015 Sooner or later old PC's will be desirable for vintage games and collectors. And we'll all lament the e-waste trend.. https://www.google.com/search?q=e-waste&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=KlBVVcSbONGBygS0k4CwBw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1024&bih=623#imgrc=QIP_iSqJC4KfAM%253A%3BXdAMWxHr8GCxAM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.greenpeace.org%252Fusa%252FGlobal%252Fusa%252Fimage%252F2005%252F8%252Fclose-up-of-a-huge-pile-of-com.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.greenpeace.org%252Fusa%252Fen%252Fcampaigns%252Ftoxics%252FOur-Current-Projects%252Fgreen-electonics%252Fe-waste%252F%3B500%3B334 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxpressed Posted May 15, 2015 Share Posted May 15, 2015 Already happening. Functioning 386 and 486 mobos fetch a pretty penny. Got an AT case with a turbo button and LED MHz display? Worth bucks. Any ISA SoundBlasters. Any 3DFX card. Anything Roland. The good news is that you can still find these gems at low cost if you're lucky and have a good eye. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted May 15, 2015 Share Posted May 15, 2015 Man, I want to dig up a gutted 5170 case. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro-Z Posted May 15, 2015 Author Share Posted May 15, 2015 (edited) Already happening. Functioning 386 and 486 mobos fetch a pretty penny. Got an AT case with a turbo button and LED MHz display? Worth bucks. Any ISA SoundBlasters. Any 3DFX card. Anything Roland. The good news is that you can still find these gems at low cost if you're lucky and have a good eye. This is very true. Some of the REALLY early IBM 5150s are valuable machines as well. Heck, even some of the high end sound cards from the early 90s are insanely expensive at the moment. More and more of these machines are getting thrown out or recycled every day. I was just at an estate sale this morning, and I saw some scattered 5.25" floppy disks, disk drive cleaning stuff, and other signs that there were some old computers in the estate. When I asked if they still had any of the computer equipment, they said it was taken in for recycling before they opened the sale. It's always a bummer to hear stuff like that, and they rationalized their decision by saying nobody used floppy disks anymore, so they knew nobody would want the computers. I guess it just increases the rarity of the machines that survive being discarded as trash or e-waste. Edited May 15, 2015 by Retro-Z Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxpressed Posted May 15, 2015 Share Posted May 15, 2015 What was surprising to me is how the values of working 5150s and 5160s are about the same as your generic beige 486 mini tower. This auction is a typical example: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 271836143658 Those kinds of boxes must have been recycled by the sh*t ton in order to be this scarce today. I have to think that period-correct gaming is what is driving up the values of these boxes. 486s are great DOS boxes for everything except later FPS. The thing with 5.25" drives is that there's a really good chance that untested ones do not work (unlike an Atari 2600). So you pay a premium to those folks with a retro rig that can properly test them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted May 16, 2015 Share Posted May 16, 2015 I rigged my 5160 with a 1.44 MB floppy drive. Unfortunately, I don't have a hard drive for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zylon Posted May 16, 2015 Share Posted May 16, 2015 Glad to see the Tandy 1000 series getting so much attention in this thread. Those were great gaming computers if you wanted to go the IBM route before 386 / VGA / Soundblaster. The only thing that annoyed me when I had one was the Tandy 16 color graphics. A lot of games supported it, but I remember seeing a lot of games that didn't as well. I used to really wish I had a "real" EGA card instead. Good and so I'll update. I traded my old 1000Ex yesterday for an SX and now have TX and SX. it's easier for me as they both use the same pieces and parts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
high voltage Posted May 16, 2015 Share Posted May 16, 2015 I'm just working on my new gaming room, here's my PC table: Left side: Sega Teradrive Genesis/286 PC running DOS/Win 3.1, in the middle IBM Thinkpad 760 XL running Windows ME, right side: IBM ThinkCentre running Ubuntu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted May 16, 2015 Share Posted May 16, 2015 (edited) Yup. And all the pentium iii's and iv's and core duos we're throwing away today will be worth a little something 10 years from now. It is important to remember that many business people are pretty dumb when it comes to tech. In this case of old computers. They see metal, weight, materials.. What is the recycling value. They spread the word (out of idiocy) that your old system isn't worth anything. That in conjunction with advertising incessantly telling you that what you bought 6-months ago is hopeless outdated and that you must buy today's product; no wonder why the systems are being trashed 2-40! But anyhow I think it's great. I got 4 or 5 cartons of those old sound cards, rolands, awe32's, yamahaha daughter boards, gravis ultrasound, genuine sb16, waveblaster I and II.. All that good stuff. And vlb video boards, isa videoboards. Bought them on fleabay and from various local sources like used computer stores going out of business in the middle of the dotcom era. Some of it was even bulk recycling. The other half of one garage is stacked with various other parts, drives, boards of all kinds.. Good to know it's worth more than scrap. Edited May 16, 2015 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxpressed Posted May 16, 2015 Share Posted May 16, 2015 Yup. And all the pentium iii's and iv's and core duos we're throwing away today will be worth a little something 10 years from now. It is important to remember that many business people are pretty dumb when it comes to tech. In this case of old computers. They see metal, weight, materials.. What is the recycling value. They spread the word (out of idiocy) that your old system isn't worth anything. That in conjunction with advertising incessantly telling you that what you bought 6-months ago is hopeless outdated and that you must buy today's product; no wonder why the systems are being trashed 2-40! But anyhow I think it's great. I got 4 or 5 cartons of those old sound cards, rolands, awe32's, yamahaha daughter boards, gravis ultrasound, genuine sb16, waveblaster I and II.. All that good stuff. And vlb video boards, isa videoboards. Bought them on fleabay and from various local sources like used computer stores going out of business in the middle of the dotcom era. Some of it was even bulk recycling. The other half of one garage is stacked with various other parts, drives, boards of all kinds.. Good to know it's worth more than scrap. All that stuff is gold. Anything 486-era having to do with local bus video and wavetable sound. Gravis Ultrasound, VLB video cards, etc. I still have my original GUS Ace and Diamond VLB. PCI video was too buggy in its 486 implementation and only came into its own in the Pentium era. I never had the money to buy any Roland stuff back in the day, but firing up some LucasArts or Sierra DOS games with the MT-32 was one of the best things about building a retro rig. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retro-Z Posted May 17, 2015 Author Share Posted May 17, 2015 Well, I'm just glad to see that there ARE some other members here at AtariAge that still play/tinker with PC style computers. There is a lot of discussion about many of the other 8 and 16 bit computers of the era, and I have been surprised to see so little about the 8088/8086, 286, 386, 486, and early Pentium PC computers. I mean seriously... how can you even MENTION video gaming in the 1990s without bring games like Doom, Descent, Warcraft, and many others into the conversation. I was rocking a Super Nintendo and early Pentium PC all through the early 90s and into the early 2000s (at which point I moved on to the PS2), and I believe that was definitely an awesome time to grow up around all of the great new titles that were coming out. I got so spoiled off of the awesome soundtracks in games like Descent that I actually find it very hard to enjoy early 70s/80s console games, since they almost always lack any kind of background music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxpressed Posted May 17, 2015 Share Posted May 17, 2015 Took this photo just before I took a hiatus from collecting and gaming last year. Damn cards are so cheap. Well, most of them, anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fyrebird Posted May 17, 2015 Share Posted May 17, 2015 started out on an 8088 back in 84, and was strictly PC till about 97 when I got a Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. To be honest, have no interest in old PCs (Outside of the TI99/4A I just picked up) I still enjoy the games, bought several from GOG and they play just like I remember them, I used to love tinkering with them, reading books about PCs to get them most out of them, all that good stuff, but honestly just want to play now. Guess it's because I work on them every day has something to do with it. I can understand the respect for old systems especially the early ones like the 8088 and 286 those cases were like a tank (and kind of looked like one too) but me personally, dosbox is all I need for my old PC fix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted May 17, 2015 Share Posted May 17, 2015 Duke Nuke'em 3-D, Descent, Doom, Quake, Raptor. All favs of mine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted May 17, 2015 Share Posted May 17, 2015 The Wolfenstein 3-D port for the Mac was a far superior version to the PC game of the same name. If for no other reason, the audio was much enhanced... Smoothness of motion was also improved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted May 17, 2015 Share Posted May 17, 2015 The Wolfenstein 3-D port for the Mac was a far superior version to the PC game of the same name. If for no other reason, the audio was much enhanced... Smoothness of motion was also improved. I think it ran at a higher resolution too if I'm not mistaken. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmetal88 Posted May 17, 2015 Share Posted May 17, 2015 I grew up in the 486 era, and have a particular soft spot for the kinds of side-scrolling platform games released for the PC in the early 1990s. I do indulge in some earlier PC usage as well, though, since my first computer was a turbo XT clone and my second was a 286 laptop. The earliest PC-compatible I have (or should I say, DOS-compatible since it isn't fully PC-compatible) right now is my IBM PCjr, and it's pretty fun to mess with, especially when I can find software that takes advantage of its special 16-color mode (which is the one that inspired Tandy graphics, by the way). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxpressed Posted May 17, 2015 Share Posted May 17, 2015 Like your avatar. Was delighted to find this at a thrift not long ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmetal88 Posted May 18, 2015 Share Posted May 18, 2015 Like your avatar. Was delighted to find this at a thrift not long ago. Yep, I've got the direct order versions of both the Jazz Jackrabbit and Jazz Jackrabbit 2 CD-ROMs. First video games I ever actually ordered as opposed to just sticking with the shareware copies or waiting until the dollar store got clearance copies. Also got the Epic Pinball CD at the same time and the Epic Classics release of Jill of the Jungle with all three episodes on one floppy. My avatar is actually part of an 'in-joke' from the GP32x forums. A prominent member (Craigix, IIRC, who is one of the major people behind the Open Pandora system), had that still from Ed Wood as his avatar. Then later on, someone down the road spliced a different head over the top of Johnny Depp's and used it as their own avatar. Eventually, it got so a good portion of the forum was doing that, all with different faces over the top of Depp's. So I eventually scanned in the cover of my Jazz Jackrabbit manual and cut around Jazz's head to splice it over the top of the Ed Wood still myself. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint Thompson Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Took this photo just before I took a hiatus from collecting and gaming last year. Damn cards are so cheap. Well, most of them, anyway. Where are those plastic cases/boxes from? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boxpressed Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 Those are just plastic box protectors I had been using for 2600 games. Turns out most cards fit well in them. Had to use some Intellivision box protectors for slightly longer cards. Less than $1 apiece in bulk. Great for quick identification. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 I cringe to think about this, but several years ago, the company I worked for at the time upgraded all their x86 IBMs to WindowsXP Dells... The IBMs all got thrown in the dumpster, and...yes... I took part in the slaughter... It was something like 12 or 13 computers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dafivehole Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 I used to work for Best Buy and I took a tour of our recycling partner's facility (ERI) and I almost cried seeing pallet upon pallet of 386/486 era computers being stripped and trashed... amazing how many were being trashed and this was a super small facility here in Denver. I agree that the games are what's also making these desirable machines... Roger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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