So You're Into RC Cars. WTF Else Do You Do?

[limestang]

I sit by popular bridges and intersections while carrying this sign

- limestang

[GreenBar0n]

My interactions with computers were mainly at schools until '95 when we got our first home computer. It was a DFI (Diamond Flower Inc) with a Cyrix 686 processor, and 14.4k modem. I would have loved to be a part of the BBS era but alas, I was a bit too young. I did catch the very tail end of it though likely in '95 as well when my friend and I would dial into some to play games.

Nice! I had a couple DFI mainboards for AMD Athalon X2's back when, pre-2006 Intel Conroe core, the one that killed AMD for years, also had a Cyrix at one point too, but without the FPU or math co-processor, Cyrix couldn't do some games very well, namely Quake/III.

We got our first computer when I was 10 in '83, a Commodore PET 4032 with the cassette tape data drive .

Was 14 for most of '87, and was lucky to have a dedicated phone line back then for the C64 BBS, in fact I traded my Tamiya Frog away for another C64 and 1541 drive, so I could leave the BBS up and play games at the same time.

Got out of computers in '88 when they hit the performance and applicability plateau, could only go so far back then - without a lot of money. Skateboards, girls and dirt bikes took over, and then got back in to PC and windows exclusively around '94-'95 while going to school for it, made a career out of it eventually, and am an IT admin to this day.

A client recently had me build them the best PC money can buy - at that moment - which is a rare request these days, as I deal with servers and workstations, in small-medium office buildings. Built him a MSI Z790, i9 14900KF, DDR5 32Gb, but the Gen 5 SSD is what really sets this apart, those new Gen 5 SSD's read at 14,500Mbps, and write at 10,000Mbps, insane throughput and snappy performance.


Just blogged my entire tech life there.


The peroxide did an incredible job on this old relic, these were out of my price range as a kid, and all of this RC mid 80's nostalgia made me dig this Mac SE out and restore it.

Before:


After/during:


Makes that last yellow space bar on the keyboard stand out like a road sign now

[racerjam]

Holy nostalgia trip! C64 BBS trading and vintage Mac restoration? Respect. That Mac SE looks mint now. The new build sounds beast too - that Gen 5 SSD speed is no joke. Keep geeking out!

[RC10th]

I sit by popular bridges and intersections while carrying this sign

- limestang

20241219_113739.jpg (15.18 KiB) Viewed 726 times

20241219_113739.jpg (15.18 KiB) Viewed 726 times

[GreenBar0n]

Holy nostalgia trip! C64 BBS trading and vintage Mac restoration? Respect. That Mac SE looks mint now. The new build sounds beast too - that Gen 5 SSD speed is no joke. Keep geeking out!

Another vintage computer enthusiast, nice!

It keeps getting worse over here with the retro computers. Finished the Mac SE last weekend, used 12% peroxide hair creme and a 10W UV LED light to lighten it back to the original color.


The SE now has a BlueSCSI SD card in it, instead of an old hard drive:


Can remove the SD card to make new hard drive images, or add files.


Works better than new.



Then out of nowhere, the coolest octogenarian I know, at a place I work with, gave me the first portable color computer in the world, a 1984 Commodore SX-64. It's currently waiting on a KernalROM/JiffyDOS chip from Canada, then it will get a full recap.


Realizing that I had contracted the computer restoration bug, I just bought and received a Mac SE/30 today.


All the caps are ordered, and the case will be whitened back to the original color.


This Mac SE/30 was the TOTL 4Mb RAM, 80Mb (megabyte!!) hard drive model, for $6,569 in 1989 - that's $16,150 in 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_SE/30

Buying them cheap and fixing them can be fun, if you're in to that sort of thing.