Apple

Despite being absolutely inundated at work, I've somehow managed to spend a few thousand dollars recently on a range of vintage systems. I suppose it's a case of geek retail therapy to deal with the stress Here are some of my buys:

1. G4 Cube - 500 Mhz - came with 192MB, I've upgraded to 1.5GB. Has a weird random reboot problem, but more on that later. I'm actually typing this up on the Cube. It's a nice addition to my collection, since I already have its ancestor, the Next Cube. I was going to crack a Darth Vader/"I am your father" joke here, but on second thought, I'll spare y'all.
2. Apple II GS [Yet to arrive] with display and some games.
3. Commodore 64C - I've also ordered an SD2IEC cartridge which allows SD cards with C64 sw images to be plugged in [Has yet to arrive]
4. Mac Color Classic [Yet to arrive] - has a power on issue which I suppose I'll figure out when it arrives. Hopefully this won't be a wasted purchase
5. Mac Plus 1MB [Yet to arrive]

Also picked up a Fujitsu Stylistic 5010 Tablet PC at the local Goodwill. Didn't have an hdd, Athereos wifi, RAM or any of the back covers, but it was cheap so I gave it a shot. The thing actually powered up. The "really really custom" IDE cable was missing, so I added some RAM & booted off USB (Linux). It worked great, other than the fact that it had a missing Wacom stylus. I was pretty intrigued with what could be done with this, so I gave ebay a visit to see if I could get the missing parts. Before I knew it I had convinced myself that it was a "better deal" to buy a lot of 5 of these things, with some extra bits!!! Other than one, they all work and have good battery life. I've been messing around with different OSs on them and am pretty impressed over all. Now thinking of ways in which to use these.



The other projects I've been doing involve setting up a DOS/Win 3.1 environment on a TU Vortex86 PC, setting up some Raspberry Pis with ownCloud, rebuilding the kids' desktops and getting a couple of older (but still respectable!) laptops upgraded. Want to share more on all of these, but probably as separate posts.



The SGIs are not to be ignored, however. Thus, an O2 was upgraded to 1GB RAM - I had bought the RAM more than a year ago from a fellow nekochan comrade, but didn't have time to install it until recently. Unfortunately two of the 128MB modules are causing issues (mem errors - despite reseating and switching slots) and the plastic latch on the top (black) cover broke during the upgrade (!!!). But other than that, the O2 is so much slicker than before I suppose I will have to look for replacement memory modules at some stage.

About 20 of the Indigo2s and Indys from the big haul of 2011/2 are still in the garage waiting to be brought back to life. As is the Sparcstation 10, an Origin 300 and a couple of Octanes, but a man can only do so much!!

I'll add pics and updates on my adventures with all this stuff in subsequent posts.

the Stylistic looks interesting, I remember reading about it as one of the computers with a Wacom sensor behind the display. Wacom also made solutions that combined touch and pressure-sensitive stylus sensors in the same chipset. How much stuff is inside the docking station?

If you're buying old Apple machines you should be aware that many of them have PRAM batteries that can leak or explode, and should be removed as a precaution. The electrolyte in the batteries is highly toxic and corrosive and reached the age (20-30y) when they start to fail en masse. Some interesting pictures can be seen here . I found that thread by searching, because an old IIgs that I just happened to look inside had become filled with corrosive muck.

Thanks a lot for the battery tip. I will be careful about that and will do some web searching on recommended replacements.

I don't have docks for the Stylistic tablets, but yes, they do have a wacom sensor. The stylus works very smoothly once you get used to it. I've managed to have the wacom recognized under Linux... Xp tablet edition works great, ofcourse, and I was quite impressed with the handwriting recognition! You can't install windows 8 on these, but win7 should work. I will try that and see if it affects performance any. These things can be beefed up quite a bit - more so than modern tablets. 5010 and 5021 tabs have a 1ghz processor and the chipset should do 2GB RAM, even though Fujitsu officially supports 1GB. The ATA/IDE drives are a bummer, but I am researching CF IDE + a high speed CF card as an alternative. There are Transcend and Kingspec IDE SSDs available, but pricey for old gear like this. Here's a link to the Kingspec: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/B008RVN9 ... f=mw_dp_cr

Wow, that is quite a find on the fujitsu Tablet. I was not aware they made newer versions of it.

I myself have an older stylistic Lt-500. Came with a fancy little dock and a serial pcmcia card. Actually makes a really nice tiny serial terminal.

http://s20.postimg.org/ms8lp5mp9/fujitsu.jpg

^


The pen in sgifanatic's photo looks almost exactly like the pen from a very early Wackem - Artzpad, maybe ? I had one sitting around for ages from when the pad died and I didn't have the heart to throw it out.

it doesn't look exactly like any wacom pen i've seen before, seems like they put a hole for a lanyard in it (as you might want if you were carrying it around a shop floor). the various pens used similar mechanisms, though. behind the nib is an xtal that reacts to the change in pressure by oscillating at a different frequency. this allowed pen movements that were very smooth and natural, without any physical click.

the buttons on the right of the LT-500, are they membrane switches or do you need to use the stylus to point to them?

Cool! There are a number of later-model Stylistic tablets that developed the series beyond the models I have (5021 and 5022). For example, this recent one:

http://www.fujitsu.com/fts/products/com ... stic-q702/

I've attached a picture of the stylus that came with the 5021s. Ordinary styli/touch won't work with these tablets.

What I like most is that there is a LOT of room to expand the capabilities of these systems. There are several expansion ports available, such as:

2xUSB ports
1xMemory Stick/SD slot
1xPCMCIA slot
1xIR port
Headphone and Audio jack
Built in Ethernet jack
Built in Modem jack
Built in Bluetooth
IEEE 1394 Firewire (not b, sadly, but 400Mbps isn't too bad!)

The internal HDD can be replaced with an IDE-SSD, RAM can be maxed to 2GB, and with a 1Ghz processor, you have a pretty decent system. I'll post a video soon demonstrating a few common tasks.

Yes, no lanyard. But the rest of it ... found it. It was sitting in front of my nose

Nice helpful error message, eh ?

Pretty sure it was from an Artpadz ...

I can send it to sgifanatic, would be interesting if they just recycled an old part.

That depends on your definition of natural

I can use the pad but it's kinda fonky, actually. Got one for the Assist, she won't touch it so we sold it for half what we paid. Why do I still want a Cintiq ? Hope springs eternal, or I am stupid ?