Tag Archives: vintage stuff

Project Kryoflux – Part 1: The Board and Associated Hardware

Posted on April 21, 2013 by lui_gough

It’s 2013 – and the floppy disk is extinct. Floppy drives are no longer sold at computer stores, motherboards have almost all completely eliminated the onboard interface. Computer cases are beginning to lose their 3.5″ front facing bays, and USB … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Electronics | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Tech Flashback: 50 ways to use your ZIP disk

Posted on April 21, 2013 by lui_gough

I was rummaging around my room the other day, to find what appeared to be pristine, new in box ZIP 100 disk. Here’s the insert, still unmarked. You can see the perforated line where users would tear off that segment … Continue reading →

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Salvage: Kodak Professional RFS3600 Film Scanner

Posted on April 10, 2013 by lui_gough

This post has been a while in the making – despite salvaging this a while back from my “regular place of salvage”, I wasn’t ready to make a post about it until much later. As you can see, this was … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Photography | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Tech Flashback: iomega SCSI ZIP 100 Drive Internals

Posted on March 11, 2013 by lui_gough

Another big thanks to Robert for this one! I’ve briefly covered ZIP drives to some degree (really only covering the USB bus-powered drive) in an earlier posting, but today I was given a SCSI drive. This drive had a bit … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: SyQuest SQ5110 Drive Internals

Posted on March 10, 2013 by lui_gough

With my earlier mysterious loss of photos, today, I’ve gotten around to re-taking them. I’ve already covered the whole set once before with my camera phone, but I wanted to do it properly. I recently re-covered the cartridge and its … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: SyQuest 88MB Removable Hard Disk Cartridge

Posted on March 8, 2013 by lui_gough

If you said “Hold on a sec, didn’t you did this already?“, no you’re not insane. I did cover the topic of SyQuest drives and disks before. But now, the cartridges and drive are mine – after strenuous work with … Continue reading →

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A few interesting Hard Drives

Posted on March 6, 2013 by lui_gough

Aside from the IBM Deathstar, and the Quantum Bigfoot which I covered earlier, I did uncover a few more interesting drives from my collection which I’d like to share. Western Digital Expert 100BA 10Gb This drive is interesting – if … Continue reading →

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Salvaged: Canopus EZDV PAL PCI Card

Posted on March 1, 2013 by lui_gough

Another one of my salvages. It’s rare that I see one of these – this is a Canopus EZDV PAL capture/encode card. You would think that with a miniDV camera that it would be as simple as plugging it into … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Salvage | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Weekend Collation: Cassettes, Computers, Data Recovery and E-mails

Posted on February 24, 2013 by lui_gough

A new sort of post for a new sort of thing. A lot of the time, I have little things which happen all around me that don’t really easily lend themselves to a full-blown post, but I think are still … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: SyQuest SQ5510 88Mb Removable Hard Disks

Posted on February 21, 2013 by lui_gough

In another opportune moment, I had the chance to play around with a SyQuest SQ5110 88Mb removable hard disk system as part of a little data recovery challenge pitched to me by (one particular) Robert at UNSW. This particular drive … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Salvage and Tech Flashback: Pioneer CT-W430 and Compact Cassettes

Posted on February 20, 2013 by lui_gough

I guess today, I’m going to try and do a two-in-one post because the circumstances just so aligned. Another one of those UNSW Electrical Engineering salvage runs turned up this gem – a Pioneer CT-W430 dual cassette deck! This was … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Salvage, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Salvage: Unisearch PC-ECG ISA Card

Posted on February 13, 2013 by lui_gough

Another interesting salvage from UNSW – pulled from a disposed machine in Electrical Engineering. This one is a Unisearch PC-ECG v2.1 ISA Card. As one can guess from the name, this card is meant to perform electrocardiograph functions on a … Continue reading →

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Salvage: Axiom Technology AX5411/AX5411H DAQ Card

Posted on February 9, 2013 by lui_gough

A little while back, I salvaged these cards from boxes just outside of UNSW Electrical Engineering Room 201. Special thanks goes to Mr. Chris Lu for giving me permission to remove these and keep them. AX5411 (specs from here) 60kHz … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Electronics, Salvage | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Salvaged: Dranetz Series 606-3 Line Disturbance Analyzer

Posted on February 8, 2013 by lui_gough

Another day, another salvage – this time, a Dranetz Series 606-3 Line Disturbance Analyzer. Just a forewarning – this post is image-heavy! Anyway, this is another one of those items being thrown out by UNSW Electrical Engineering, who can resist … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Obituary, Salvage | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Saving the Adret Electronique CS201 Frequency Generator Synthesizer

Posted on January 31, 2013 by lui_gough

So I salvaged an Adret Electronique CS201, but I wasn’t able to test it owing to the fact that the power connection was made by an odd connector. One could always give in now and just throw it out or … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Salvage, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Salvage of the Day: Adret CS 201 Generator Synthesizer

Posted on January 31, 2013 by lui_gough

As the beginning of the year comes, it seems like everyone in EE at UNSW is cleaning out. One thing I managed to lug home today is an Adret Electronique CS 201 Generator Synthesizer. I’ve never heard of the brand … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Salvage, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Keeping Old Machines Going – Adapt-ing to the times …

Posted on January 28, 2013 by lui_gough

For retro-enthusiasts and hobbyists like myself, it can be difficult at times to keep old computers going. As the old AT form factor met its demise about a decade ago, parts for these machines can be hard to come by, … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: Tektronix 1106 Oscilloscope Battery

Posted on January 25, 2013 by lui_gough

Those who are my direct friends on Facebook and have been following the comments on the BWD 141 Function Generator posts would have seen my friend Charith talk about this. Also thrown out in the same pile of trash in … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Tech Flashback: BWD 141 Signal Generator

Posted on January 24, 2013 by lui_gough

Just the other day, roaming around UNSW’s Electrical Engineering building, I saw an old signal generator carelessly discarded into a pile of rubbish. Look at it – it is so pretty. It looks like an old radio! Nice large analog … Continue reading →

Posted in Electronics, Tech Flashback | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Allied Telesyn International MC103XL Fast Ethernet Fiber Media Converter

Posted on January 17, 2013 by lui_gough

One of my friends (William) got a bulk lot of old ex-Railcorp equipment, some of which he gave to me. Most of them were 10Mbit/s fibre with ST connectors, except these units which were 100Mbit/s with SC connectors. Most equipment … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: AMR, CNR cards

Posted on December 31, 2012 by lui_gough

In the Pentium 3 era, some bright mind came up with the idea that they could make a special slot which could provide network/modem capabilities more cheaply by providing the ability to interface with the onboard components directly rather than … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: PCI Graphics Cards

Posted on December 31, 2012 by lui_gough

Here’s another tech flashback (and about time too!). The first graphics cards I knew of were in the ISA 8-bit and 16-bit form factor, then came VLB – the last hurrah for ISA. Then the higher-bandwidth PCI, boasting 32-bits. This … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: Citizen 3.5″ Floppy Drive

Posted on December 4, 2012 by lui_gough

I just managed to find an old Citizen drive that’s a bit borderline, and a head-clean didn’t help, so I thought I’d throw it out – but before I do that, I’ll open its guts for all to see. This … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: Kaypro Keyboard – It’s still alive!

Posted on December 3, 2012 by lui_gough

After writing my last post about my efforts to bring the Kaypro (donated to me) back to life – one thing still nagged me. Why was the keyboard dead? Was it really dead? It didn’t look dead … Seeing that … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: Reviving the Kaypro 4

Posted on December 1, 2012 by lui_gough

Just yesterday, the RJ10 phone cables arrived. I unpacked them, and they laid on the desk, staring at me. I decided to take the plunge – I decided to start the Kaypro 4. (For Physical details, see my last post … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: Internal Modems

Posted on November 29, 2012 by lui_gough

So earlier on, I made a few posts showing my external modem collection. First it started off with the Banksias, then the rest of them. Now it’s time for my Internal modems. I think after this post is done, it … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: SCSI Controllers

Posted on November 29, 2012 by lui_gough

Look at that port. It looks just like a regular DB-25 female connector. If it didn’t have that yellow label beside it, one could easily mistake it for a PC Parallel Printer port. But it’s not. It’s a SCSI port. … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: Madge Smart 16/4 Token Ring Network Card

Posted on November 29, 2012 by lui_gough

Say hello to the Madge Smart 16/4 Ringnode PCI. This is the only Token Ring Network Interface Card I’ve ever seen. For those who don’t know, Token Ring was a competing network protocol to Ethernet. In the early days, there … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: Jayton Hollywood Plus DVD Decoder

Posted on November 29, 2012 by lui_gough

The other day, I posted about the Zensonic Z400 Networked Media Player, and while looking in the internals, I commented on the “magical” Sigma Designs REALMagic SoC. Then I thought, “Hey, I’ve seen this somewhere else before …” It’s the … Continue reading →

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Tech Flashback: The Golden Age of Sound Cards and Creative Labs

Posted on November 29, 2012 by lui_gough

As computers have evolved over time, many peripherals have been integrated into the base system. Nowadays, it’s commonplace to find onboard Ethernet, sound and even video capabilities on many motherboards. This wasn’t always the case though – in the early … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Tech Flashback | Tagged , | 3 Comments