I picked up this 1989 Star Micronics NX-1000 dot matrix printer from a recent computer warehouse haul in Auckland. There’s a good chance it hasn’t seen much use in 25-ish years, but I was surprised to see that it came in its original box. During the unboxing you’ll see that its manuals and cables all present and correct, so I had hopes that this epson compatible printer might work.This lovely little printer was one I was familiar with from primary school back in the day of the BBC micro, and it was a very nice machine back in its day.
retro
10MHz V20 XT vs. a 6 MHz 286?
Here’s another quicky video! Call me dumb but I had no idea whether an XT-clone PC XT rated at 10MHz NEC V20 CPU with an 8087 co-processor, or an XT machine with a 6MHz Intel 80286 CPU and an 80287 co-processor would be faster. Surely logic would say that because 10 is bigger than 6, that’s better? Surely an 80287 would be better than an 8087? Right??? Well, the results may surprise you. Of course, the results are all 100% scientific. Legit scienciefied. The final benchmark which concludes everything is the old ‘Which one loads up Leisure Suit Larry 3’ test. Y’all know that one, right? 😉
Auckland Vintage Computer Haul
I went to Auckland on the 11th of July for this massive retro computer warehouse sale. I picked up a number of goodies myself, but meeting the people there and looking at all the amazing machines and memories made it super special!
IBM PC: The first games ’81-’91 Part 8 (1988)
I reviewed approximately 82 games for this year. The vast majority were worthy of keeping in the ‘play that again’ pile. It made for an almost impossible task of selecting just 10 #games that I’d consider the cream of the crop, so don’t hurt me too much if you don’t agree with the list! I hope you enjoy my videos! If you want to help keeping me going, please subscribe to my channel, and if you feel that my content is good, I’d really appreciate it if you could buy me a coffee or something on Patreon (www.patreon.com/alsgeeklab).
ST506 Drive ‘Find’
I recently took ownership of a banged-up old #IBM PC XT. The motherboard was toast, the case was all banged up, so I decided it wasn’t worth repairing after many hours wasted with a multimeter and desoldering.. I put a new old 10MHz Turbo XT clone board in and it complained about some boot issues. So whilst I was debugging the issue, I thought I’d put the #ST506 hard drive in from the old machine. I didn’t expect it to work, but I thought just having a controller in there might help the issue. What I didn’t expect is that the 25+ year old drive would actually work. To my amazement, it (almost) worked first time. And here’s the treasure trove on it. Always find it amazing just seeing what people leave behind on their computers. It’s like a time capsule. Apologies for the really rough video, I shot it on my phone with no mic or anything, I just recorded it live as it was happening as I didn’t know if the disk was going to crap out on me. Didn’t have time to prep
Cleaning Retro Kit
Well, I got a mouse today. A lovely little original serial port #Microsoft mouse. It was pretty grubby, so I decided to give it a good old clean up.
Here is a video of the process and materials of what I use to clean up my retro stuff. I hope you find it entertaining and educational. I certainly found doing it a little more entertaining than it should be (thanks, Cussons!).
Please subscribe to my channel if you like the stuff I do. I really do love it when you subscribe! If you also feel particularly generous, you could flip me a buck or two at Patreon and donate to spurn me on to make more videos. Cheers a bucket-load! https://www.patreon.com/alsgeeklab).
IBM PC – The first games ’81-’91: Part 1 (1981)
The IBM PC launched in 1981. Until its release, many people hadn’t programmed for the Intel 8086 architecture, so there weren’t many games to go on day one, for IBM’s ‘business machine’. But that didn’t stop a few fledgling games companies starting up and beginning what became a multi-billion dollar industry in PC games. This is the year where it all began. First in a ten-part series, find out about the beginnings of gaming on the PC.
How to set up a retro DOS PC to use the web, IRC chat, email, twitter, connect to BBS’s and more!
In this video I show you how to set up networking using a packet driver and mTCP. After that it’s over to showcasing some of the ways to get apps such as telnetd on a Linux box to give you email, twitter, reddit, rss, video and more. Then there’s the native mTCP apps such as IRC; an FTP server, an FTP client, a telnet client (for you to connect to your Linux box with) and more. Finally, there’s a harkening back to the days pre-internet with BBS’s. I’ll show you how to connect to BBS’s via telnet.
Windows 2.0 Review
Windows 2.0 was the hotly anticipated replacement for 1985’s Windows 1.0. Here’s an in-depth set-up guide and review on real hardware. Is it everything you hoped for in a vintage GUI environment, or is it just another bunch of ‘doze?
How to get more than 640K RAM in a PC or XT
For years, I thought that it was impossible to access any more than 640K ‘Conventional’ RAM on my PC or XT. I was wrong. This time on Al’s Geek Lab, we see why and how the PC only addressed 640K, as well as how to take it up to 1MB without any major work.
MicroRAM card from Monotech Vintage PCs: https://monotech.fwscart.com DOSMAX / SHELLMAX Utility: https://www.pcorner.com/list/UTILITY/… USE!UMBS: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread…