sandlot8625

joined 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Your kid would need reported W2 income to be eligible. Start a 529 plan instead.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Why would you ever consider reporting him? The last thing someone struggling to live needs is to be harassed by the community and abused by cops.

Consider treating him like a human being. Ask how he's doing. See if he needs anything. Keep an eye on local social media for people mentioning him so you can warn him before some nimby bootlicker calls the cops on him.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Oh man, the SGIs are so expensive nowadays. I always thought it would be awesome to replicate Nedry's setup from Jurassic Park but it would be like $10k in retro gear right now.

The MacBook and Amiga are pretty attainable goals still. Those early MacBooks were really hot stuff when they came out.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

The FMHY site has great curated recommendations https://fmhy.pages.dev/readingpiracyguide/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the Tetris disk is one I really want to archive. I think I'll try to write those images you linked to floppies and check compatibility across my Brother machines.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Depends on what era of games you want to play, but you can't beat a pentium 2 or 3 windows 98 machine. This will get you support for all but the earliest DOS games plus the heyday of 2D and the start of 3D windows gaming.

Any old beige box of the era will work. The larger the better, since small units of the era had more custom hardware like audio chips that may be hard to find drivers for.

Those are getting harder to get cheap, so if you want an even easier option ask you relatives and neighbors if they have any old computers. There are a ton of Pentium 4 and Core series pcs with Windows XP out there still that will play a ton of retro games still. Anything that had Vista or 7 should be downgradable to XP so you have a lot of options.

It's important to not start throwing upgrades at a new-to-you system. Only upgrade what isn't meeting your needs. There's a huge market for retro PC gaming now, and you can spend thousands on upgrading an otherwise unremarkable system with hardware you don't need.

For monitors, anything with VGA will work for these recommended options. VGA flat screens are worthless nowadays so ask around for a free or super cheap one. The XP option will better support modern USB devices while that can be a struggle with 98, so keyboards, mice, and flash drives are definitely easier on the more modern systems.

Use Archive.org for games and software. Don't bother paying for original media unless you're building a collection.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oof, that's a dream machine! Especially with a full video editing rig from the era.

 

What piece of retro tech is your white whale? What do you aspire to own but probably won't ever have the chance to?

I grew up around and was mentored by many DEC veterans. I even work in one of their old manufacturing facilities. I'd love to own a DEC mainframe from their peak in the early 80s. Even a minicomputer is unreasonable for most of us hobbiests. One can dream though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'll have to check it out on my c64. That's a gorgeous picture!

 

I've been trying to get the Racore memory expansion working for the past few months. Seems like the DOS drivers I found on archive.org aren't compatible with this hardware version. Oh well, the Jride will give me enough memory anyway.

What do you have on your workbench?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks! You still have that C16? Those are cool machines

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh man, I doubt have any experience with these AIO models, but I've heard they can be a pain. Much more proprietary than a desktop system.

I say take it super slow. Do lots of research. Ebay saved searches are your friend.

And don't forget to sit down and use it. I have a bad habit of not actually using all the computers I fix up. Using them tells you what needs to be upgraded. Otherwise you're just throwing parts at it for the numbers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I love these side-by-side comparisons. That spectrum screenshot is especially impressive given how most games looked when ported.

 

If anyone's interested I've created a new community for retro computing. Come and talk old computers!

 

I just got a greaseweazle to image floppies. I'm interested in archiving the software disks for Brother word processors. Before I start down that rabbit hole, does anyone know if any images are out there already?

 

Mine has bad floppy drives. Hopefully it'll get floppy emulator replacements soon.

1
Welcome! (lemmy.fmhy.ml)
 

Welcome to the retro computing community!

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