Siliconemelons
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Just for fun, what are some pieces of obscure or rare tech that you have used or owned?
My first computer, a Tandy 1000SL - not super obscure, but not many really have had or used a Tandy at the time.
Working with this thing and being a budding gamer, the "Tandy" color, the "Tandy" CPU etc. posed challenges and compatibility - but I actually, looking back, learned a lot of being able to hack things to work, troubleshoot issues etc. I have many fond memories on this thing, and it started my (what would be) MMO addiction with BBS based game - Legend of the Red Dragon
Next are kind of a set a Pocket PC running windows CE and Palm Pilot- a great little item, but technology was accelerating in the portable world so fast that these devices where essentially outpaced these type of devices - they all formed a rush of mobile tech that gives us our current phones, laptops and tablets. The Palm was a hand me down from my brother.
The PocketPC was a piece of tech I have no idea how I manged to afford in high school for myself lol- but it was so fun - I remember reading PC sales mags that had them over and over trying to find what one was the best and what I could afford. I ended up with the Casio - I wanted...soo soo bad the HP, that was color etc... I saw it at a store and played with it once. To tell more of the times, that was where they were also selling Cross Pen, Styluses.
I believe Windows CE still lives on or did in the embedded / IOT version of Windows.
Kind of still in the line of small PC's that I was obsessed with, was my "College computer" - a Sony VIAO Picturebook.
I still have it, its a little.. broken, lol. But I just found its little 2.5 IDE drive the other day, plugged it in- had a click click that locks it up for a few moments, but then is fine - was able to find some old papers and stuff- was great.
What was more obscure was mine used (as pictured) a Curuso CPU processor. It was a slot CPU, so no pins or socket - it was kinda like a piece of ram, with the flat copper connectors on 3 sides of the square that slid into a C shaped slot. Not only was this CPU a real low power CPU in order to get the little laptop to last longer (the other models were I think p3?) - but it also was the first CPU to be able to have its clock speed changed on the fly via software from the OS itself. So you could go "slow" to save power and "fast" and a few in between all just in windows on the fly rather than going into bios etc.
The last for now, is a graphics card(s)... a Real3D - StarFighter i740 - PCI VideoCard.
My first real paycheck I cashed and bought a computer... and it had a crappy built in video card that took the AGP bus...so I only had PCI. So trying to play games and stuff, and wanting to get something more than my Voodoo 2 - I got this thing somehow... took me back to my Tandy days as it was not really fully OpenGL etc. and it would just not run EQ... It was an interesting card and I was able to get some things mostly working by using hacked homebrew drivers...
I eventually sold it to a friend and saved and got... a PCI Voodoo 5... I found the PCI version in stock at the last Babages about 1hr away. I used this darn thing for like 3-4 years - it was such a rock star haha. I was pissed when they released a PCI GeForce about 8 months later, for like 200$ vs this thigns $550 price tag.
My first computer, a Tandy 1000SL - not super obscure, but not many really have had or used a Tandy at the time.
Working with this thing and being a budding gamer, the "Tandy" color, the "Tandy" CPU etc. posed challenges and compatibility - but I actually, looking back, learned a lot of being able to hack things to work, troubleshoot issues etc. I have many fond memories on this thing, and it started my (what would be) MMO addiction with BBS based game - Legend of the Red Dragon
Next are kind of a set a Pocket PC running windows CE and Palm Pilot- a great little item, but technology was accelerating in the portable world so fast that these devices where essentially outpaced these type of devices - they all formed a rush of mobile tech that gives us our current phones, laptops and tablets. The Palm was a hand me down from my brother.
The PocketPC was a piece of tech I have no idea how I manged to afford in high school for myself lol- but it was so fun - I remember reading PC sales mags that had them over and over trying to find what one was the best and what I could afford. I ended up with the Casio - I wanted...soo soo bad the HP, that was color etc... I saw it at a store and played with it once. To tell more of the times, that was where they were also selling Cross Pen, Styluses.
I believe Windows CE still lives on or did in the embedded / IOT version of Windows.
Kind of still in the line of small PC's that I was obsessed with, was my "College computer" - a Sony VIAO Picturebook.
I still have it, its a little.. broken, lol. But I just found its little 2.5 IDE drive the other day, plugged it in- had a click click that locks it up for a few moments, but then is fine - was able to find some old papers and stuff- was great.
What was more obscure was mine used (as pictured) a Curuso CPU processor. It was a slot CPU, so no pins or socket - it was kinda like a piece of ram, with the flat copper connectors on 3 sides of the square that slid into a C shaped slot. Not only was this CPU a real low power CPU in order to get the little laptop to last longer (the other models were I think p3?) - but it also was the first CPU to be able to have its clock speed changed on the fly via software from the OS itself. So you could go "slow" to save power and "fast" and a few in between all just in windows on the fly rather than going into bios etc.
The last for now, is a graphics card(s)... a Real3D - StarFighter i740 - PCI VideoCard.
My first real paycheck I cashed and bought a computer... and it had a crappy built in video card that took the AGP bus...so I only had PCI. So trying to play games and stuff, and wanting to get something more than my Voodoo 2 - I got this thing somehow... took me back to my Tandy days as it was not really fully OpenGL etc. and it would just not run EQ... It was an interesting card and I was able to get some things mostly working by using hacked homebrew drivers...
I eventually sold it to a friend and saved and got... a PCI Voodoo 5... I found the PCI version in stock at the last Babages about 1hr away. I used this darn thing for like 3-4 years - it was such a rock star haha. I was pissed when they released a PCI GeForce about 8 months later, for like 200$ vs this thigns $550 price tag.
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