by "Nibby" (nibby68)
Published 01/30/2017 at 21:33
by "Nibby" (nibby68)
Published 01/30/2017 at 21:33
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STARS: 5
HP Vectra VL5 200
Pentium 200MHz, 128MB RAM, 256K cache, 2MB S3 Trio64 onboard video card, 4MB DIAMOND STEALTH 3D 2000 Pro PCI graphics card, AMD PCNet ethernet card, and a Sound Blaster 16 ISA sound card. 3.5" floppy drive, 8X CD-ROM, 4GB Compact Flash (using CF to IDE adapter).
Before
After
Cleaned it up really well. Magic erasers are amazing things for removing scuffs, scratches and marks. The inside came out pretty nice as well.
dem ports
USB works fine in 95
The guts
dat onboard S3
dat DIAMOND
An SB16 with a Yamaha YMF262 OPL3 chip
It came with these two cards, a modem and some sort of card for connecting to mainframes. Took them out, waste of precious IRQs.
Also came with an HP keyboard and 2 button mouse. The keyboard is a C3758A and is surprisingly good. You can turn on the machine by pressing the spacebar, hence that little monitor icon on it.
Nice and compact size
dat BIOS screen
Now for the fun part... I got MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 95 to coexist on the same drive.
Installed MS-DOS 6.22 on a 700MB partition on my 4GB CF card. Setup all my games/programs/hardware/Windows 3.x stuff then installed System Commander 7. Used its OS Wizard to install 95 OSR2.5 on a FAT32 partition that claimed the rest of the free space on the CF card. Had to restore the system commander 7 bootloader after 95 installed but then it picked up both MS-DOS and 95 just fine.
System info from NSSI, a DOS program
a classic
Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Windows 95
The complete setup
Lastly, a new wallpaper I whipped up based on the BIOS screen
"PanchoVilleneuve ST" (PanchoVilleneuve)
01/30/2017 at 21:36, STARS: 0
Fuck yeah, time to play some Earthsiege on that motherfucker.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/30/2017 at 21:36, STARS: 0
DAMN RIGHT
but first I need to listen to some sweet MIDIs
"jkm7680" (jkm7680)
01/30/2017 at 21:37, STARS: 0
ERROR: NON MECHANICAL KEYBOARD, MODEL M THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT NOT FOUND
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/30/2017 at 21:39, STARS: 0
that HP keyboard is the most mechanical feeling non mechanical i’ve used
"FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com" (alphaass)
01/30/2017 at 21:40, STARS: 4
But without a modem how will you use all of those free minutes of AOL?
"jkm7680" (jkm7680)
01/30/2017 at 21:40, STARS: 0
A lot of older keyboards seem to be pretty good at that. I’ve heard good things about the Dell Quiet Key as well.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/30/2017 at 21:41, STARS: 0
I have not thought of that.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/30/2017 at 21:42, STARS: 0
The beige Quiet Keys I always thought were overrated. They’re average.
"jkm7680" (jkm7680)
01/30/2017 at 21:43, STARS: 0
That’s disappointing.
I’ve always wanted to try one of the rubber dome Model Ms just to see what they feel like. I’ve already got three buckling spring ones though, haha.
"FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com" (alphaass)
01/30/2017 at 21:45, STARS: 0
Never forget.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/30/2017 at 21:47, STARS: 2
wanna play frisbee?
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/30/2017 at 21:50, STARS: 1
keep one as protection
"jkm7680" (jkm7680)
01/30/2017 at 21:51, STARS: 0
That’s what the terminal one is for.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
01/31/2017 at 00:44, STARS: 0
I remember working on these exact machines back in the day when I worked at Hughes Aircraft. Decent machine before HP started churning out flimsy pieces of garbage. I loved their servers as well, especially the giant cubes, but we’re mostly a Compaq shop. I found an old picture of my cubicle with my Power Mac 7600 and the dual Pentium Pro HP - serious stuff for 1997.
It also reminds me of the first computer I built that supported USB. The motherboard was from Tyan and the manual stated that they didn’t know if the USB ports would work since the specs for USB 1.0 hadn’t been finalized. I didn’t really get into USB until purchasing an early Power Mac G4, and I still use some of those same peripherals today (Kensington Expert Mouse, Pi Engineering macro keyboard).
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/31/2017 at 08:40, STARS: 1
Awesome! Yeah it’s built very well and easy to maintain. Nowadays HP still makes high quality machines but only if you look at their EliteBook and workstation class lines. You can get USB to work on 95 OSR 2.5 by installing usbsupp.exe
Those older keyboards and mice I like more than today’s newer stuff. They’re not gimmicky or cheaply made.
"fintail" (fintail)
01/31/2017 at 11:22, STARS: 0
When does this date from, 1996-97? I remember a friend of mine bought a Pentium Pro 200 machine in the summer of 96, 32MB, I forget the rest, it was like $3500.
"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr)
01/31/2017 at 11:28, STARS: 0
I’ve not been impressed with them, to be honest, but the ones I’ve used have all been old and possibly worn out.
"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr)
01/31/2017 at 11:29, STARS: 0
That’s what the 122 key Model F is for. Heavier than the M.
"Chariotoflove" (chariotoflove)
01/31/2017 at 11:29, STARS: 1
Nibby, I’ve become convinced that all your posts come to us through a hole in the space-time continuum that connects our time with 1990.
Thanks for all the vicarious trips in the Way Back Machine. Also, I envy your ability to play DOOM in its original environment.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/31/2017 at 11:32, STARS: 0
You can play DOOM too in its original environment!
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/31/2017 at 11:37, STARS: 0
Yeah, around 96. I’m gonna try feeding the serial # on HP’s site and see what pops up.... and nope, says invalid
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
01/31/2017 at 11:38, STARS: 0
Am I crazy or is that keyboard a licensed Model M?
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/31/2017 at 11:40, STARS: 0
Not a model M, but a keytronics keyboard made for HP. C3758A. I like it a lot
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
01/31/2017 at 11:42, STARS: 0
Got it. I’m not too much of an old keyboards weenie, but back in the day we *did* have a Lexmark model M license keyboard, and one of my brothers has recently gotten a new model M with trackball - which he has been using to run Windows 3.1 and 98 on a Pi and has connected to a Samsung droid phone. Because of course.
"Chariotoflove" (chariotoflove)
01/31/2017 at 11:44, STARS: 0
You mean on a DOS PC or on Mars? I have access to neither at the moment
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/31/2017 at 11:59, STARS: 1
DOS PC, it wouldn’t be costly to build one
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/31/2017 at 12:01, STARS: 0
That’s pretty badass, you gotta send me a picture of that setup sometime
"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
01/31/2017 at 12:04, STARS: 0
I didn’t realize that most Droid builds include native support for a mouse/pointer, but apparently they do.
"kanadanmajava1" (kanadanmajava1)
01/31/2017 at 16:31, STARS: 0
I’m feel slight amount of envy. I have quite a lot of old stuff, but not a single Vectra (except one car of course). I did mess quite a lot with late 90's stuff, but modern ones are so boring that I don’t even know what’s the color of my motherboard in the one that I’m currently using.
It might be quite fast compared to anything that came in ivory color, but my fingers don’t have itch to make it faster. It’s just a box that does something.
"Nibbles" (nibbles)
01/31/2017 at 19:00, STARS: 0
That other card is a NIC with 10MBPS RJ45 and BNC connector. Used to sell em for $20/pop ten years ago.
"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
01/31/2017 at 21:01, STARS: 0
Oh, and back then I was the only one who knew how to keep Windows 3.1/WfW running, so I got all of those jobs - lucky me. We skipped Windows95 and the various consumer-level products and went all-in with NT, starting with 3.51 but mostly using 4.0. I was so happy to get rid of those WfW machines, and I don’t think I’ve touched another one since those days 20 years ago.
A few years back I did scrounge up a bunch of spare parts that I had laying around and made a killer machine to run Windows 98 for retro gaming, something with the performance to rival the high-end gaming rigs of the day without having to spend the thousands that those things cost. I started having flashbacks to the WfW experiences because of the relative instability. One little BIOS change and *BOOM*, non-functioning computer. What a PITA.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
01/31/2017 at 23:00, STARS: 0
:( fuck bioses
"Retro Lenny" (retrolenny)
09/21/2017 at 23:35, STARS: 0
Nice retro PC! I have a similar Vectra, but P75 model. However, I’m having trouble getting the 4GB compact flash to work properly. I tried a bunch of drive parameter settings in the BIOS, but I keep getting errors when I use the drive in DOS.
Could you tell me what drive parameter settings you used in the BIOS? Thanks.
"Nibby" (nibby68)
09/21/2017 at 23:51, STARS: 0
Thanks... I don’t have it anymore but I think I just used auto detect
"Retro Lenny" (retrolenny)
09/22/2017 at 11:42, STARS: 0
Thanks for the reply...I figured it might have been that. I think the P75 is using an older non Intel chipset with a different BIOS, hence it can’t autodetect.
Will try some other things. Thanks!