Category: PCs

Our PC’s Limited (Dell) 286 computer came with a B.G. Micro vocal synthesizer card, which lets the computer “talk” in 1980s robot style. Two tantalum capacitors had failed on the board, so all were replaced. Photos Resources Resources we found related to this card components How it Works Here’s a very rough overview of how […]

After we recently added the Compaq Deskpro EN (Celeron 300A) system to our collection, I was eager to do a new OS install since the system seemed completely functional in original form. The machine came with both Windows 95 & NT badges, and we obviously decided to install NT since this was a business-class machine. […]

Ensuring that power supplies in vintage hardware are reliable and safe is extremely important. If voltage regulation in the supply were to suddenly fail, or even slowly fail over time, this can cause damage to downstream components that may be much harder to replace than the power supply itself. To that end, we’ve been working […]

Some progress has been made on the IBM ThinkCentre 8198 PC. When I recently pulled the PC out of storage, it would not power on. At first I thought just the PSU (HIPRO HP-A2307F3P / IBM FRU 74P4300) was defective, since the PC would power on when connected to a modern Corsair PSU. However, the […]

After installing a new 4GB CF card as HD replacement in the Packard Bell Platinum 2220, I’m attempting to restore the original Windows 95 OS with Packard Bell extras from the Master CD Archive.org has a great collection of original Packard Bell install discs, the Windows 95 group is here: https://archive.org/details/windows95mastercd My first attempt is […]

One thing people don’t miss about the “old” PC days is the old and slow mechanical hard drives. When we started working on the IBM ThinkCentre A30 system, its original Hitachi Deskstar 40GB IDE drive was particularly noisy. Windows XP was pretty slow to boot up as well. We purchased the NFHK SATA Disk to […]