Over the years I’ve been hoarding a lot of different stuff, both electronics and mechanical! My goal here is to share all these curious items with the world!
Oh shit my first computer 1996!! Windows 95! Cyberia, pitfall, 3D pinball, MS Office 95+, Prodigy, CompuServ, MSN comic chat, IBM Information Superhighway, AOL. 28,600bps dial up modem later software upgrade got it to 33.6 😂😅
It won't run on a thinkpad and even less on a XP machine; the SRAM cards have a totally different bus from PCMCIA; they simply use the same connection but the protocol and internals are totally different. You need something like a 386 or up to a pentium machine to be able to read those directly, under W95; or need to get a very expensive USB SRAM reader, which goes for about 500 dollars or more usually. Whoever is able to make modern versions of those SRAM cards and sell them at a decent price will become rich overnight
I bought a HP 48G in 1990 and is such a great calculator for its time. My senior year of HS in 1990, the school had a Apple Macintosh SE/30 with Mac OS 6 and we used it for drafting class. A few years later I bought a Packard Bell computer with Win 3.11 and realized how Win 3 sucked compared to Mac OS 6 after using it. I think Microsoft tried to make it not look like Mac OS so as to not get sued. I upgraded my Packard Bell to Win 95, I thought it was finally usable when I did it. The 200LX upgraded to 95 would be awesome, but that it only has the 80186 would make that not possible.
Super cool! Would be great to see it with a “non-stretched” UI with more native resolutions. Also how it handles productivity apps like Word and Excel and Works. Also be cool to see it with the ELKS Embedded Linux OS
Great video, brings back a lot of memories ;-) would it be possible for you to please share the .bat files and file tree of the files you copied to the CF card?
You can get Windows to Install on the C:/ drive (the internal HP memory). So you dont really need external memory. You can even upgrade the internal memory but this one is factory original, no upgrades.
They don’t use Radium anymore on watches, so only vintage ones will be that radioactive. Today they use Tritium, which only emits low energy alpha particles and are nowhere near as hot since the alpha are completely blocked by the case and glass.
Great video. I had one of these that I eventually sold off. The SRAM cards usually require a 16 bit PCMCIA bus slot. I got it working by using an older Compaq LTE Elite (486 class laptop) as a bridge computer. You still need the appropriate drivers. I forget if I made a video on this but will check.
What are the top three most radioactive watch, do you know? Perhaps under 500 EUR. I would love to get some. These watch you were measuring are extremely low radiation actually.
Thats actually impossible to list. I have two exact same watches but manufactured in different years (3 year difference) and one is 20x hotter than the other. So it pretty much depends in too many factors. Obviously the ones with more luminous material on the dial are usually more radioactive. Usually, not always. The best way to know ir measuring. Yes, there are much hotter watches than the ones on the video, but as a watch collector I have not yet seen anything I would call dangerous for casual wearing.
I always find it way more convenient on XT class machines to have multiple partitions no more than 100 megabytes just because of that free-sized calculation so dang slow.
I really love my HP 200LX. You should feature some software you think is useful in 2024. I also have a 256 meg card in mine. I don't even think I'd go bigger even if I could because it already takes a long enough time for it to calculate the free space when you type DIR.
I love mine too. I’ll probably make a video about the software I use and how I have an ‘automated’ autoexec.bat file that removes the nasty low battery warnings and makes some other improvements. Theres also a way around that time used to calculate the free a: space and I’ll talk about that.
Thank you!!! Yes, this solution is simpler, cheaper and to me more convenient cause I can just unplug the usb flash drive and instantly be able to modify the whole C: drive of my XT without having to use CF card readers and adapters.
i had a gameboy DMG and a TI-82 calculator and some sony portable DVD player that were all stored in a box in the basement all get vinegar syndrome at the same time, the portable DVD player got it the worst
Yes, many vintage devices are been lost due to this problem. Some are fixable, but others arent. My gameboy color is on the waiting list to be fixed, also has vinegar syndrome.
Vintage watches are so beautiful, and they don't cost much. I feel really anxious about buying them because there are different opinions about it. All my watches were bought brand new during the last 5 years, but they lack the charm of vintage watches, which I don't buy just because of this radium issue and my anxiety. They say that most watches used radium in some way or another before the 70s. Your video is excellent, not only provides some peace of mind, but teaches how to use a Geiger Counter. Thanks, sir!
Dude there is no reason to be anxious buy a geiger counter and scan them before you buy them some have tritium that is not dangerous becouse after 30 years is not radioactive anymore only radium is very dangerous!!
Floppy drives were extremely reliable before the Windows OS. The problem is identifying the different types ( 360, 720, 1.4 single side, double side, layers) and modern OS of Windows needing to write on old drives. The last time accessed MUST be written says the Win OS and it can destroy the old disk when it writes. In the olden DOS days , the last time the file was accessed was NOT constantly written. If you have any old floppy disks do not run them on Windows due to the last access write.
I didnt know that. I also believe floppies got so unreliable right now because most of them are ate least 20 yo. I had no idea Windows introduced this constant time writing thing.
A minor but very important correction. That is NOT a USB programmer.... That early uldnprogram USB drives. That is an eeprom programmer, the hich connects via USB, but it programs eeproms rather than USB drives. There is a serious difference.
Great! I designed a 3D printable bracket for these cards. Also, FreddyV wrote some drivers that dramatically increase the access speed for these devices!
DOS 6.22 runs fine on XT machines. Sure, DOS 3.31 wold be more time correct and supports HDs up to 512MB, but when I was a kid DOS 6.22 was all the hype so I tend to use it everywhere cause it brings me back good old memories…
@electrohoard watching your video i recall with regret that we threw out a lot of original IBM XTs my dad had gotten from next to nothing when our consulate replaced them... but back then they were "old" not "retro". I guess I never thought to install a more modern DOS on them. I had just gotten my first pc, a 486DX4... so they were very slow...
@@LuminousWatcher yeah, I threw lots of hardware in the trash back then too. When I got my first 486 (SX-33Mhz) those XT just felt like total garbage. Now I regret 😂
Great Video! I always wanted to get a Xtide for my 286, but now I might consider this. Didn’t know I was already subbed, I had watched the smallest A4 printer video. Keep it going!
Thank you for the kind comment! I’ll make a follow up video because I gor some requests on how to make the 512MB partition with MS-DOS. That should help you too to get this going very easily.
A great collection! There are some choice instruments there. Just with regards to the yellowed fascia of the vintage computer tower on the desk, I came across an excellent tip for bringing it back to its original colour; using hydrogen peroxide. Some of the paste products for bleaching hair will make it adhere to the plastic in all the crevices, just make sure it's a basic one with not too many additives. If you put in a sealed plastic box or bag for a few hours (in sunlight for best results, apparently) and then wash it all in soapy water, it will be much closer to its original shade.
Yes, thank you for the tip! They call it retro brighting and I did try it on an old Monitor but the truth is that it just got yellow again after some a couple years. Im not really positive that this technique does not damage the plastic so I just decided to accept the yelowness for now :)
I _strongly_ suspect your watch(nice watch btw 🙂) has been relumed at some point with non radioactive lume tinted to look vintage. Original radium lume from this period tends to go a darker muddier brown. It also gives off a LOT more radiation beta and gamma* than slightly above background. I've a few trench watches and before I had the radium removed they were extremely 'hot'. They were the most active of any radium dialed watches I've owned(except for a 1930's Zenith pilot's watch which was insanely radioactive). Even examples with much of the lume missing. Their movements were also contaminated as radium breaks down into dust(especially if moisture gets to it) which scatters itself through the movement and case over time. It also breaks down into radon gas. Would I wear one that still had its original radium? Probably not tbh. Luckily they nearly always have enamel dials so can be cleaned of lume far more easily than metal dials. * home/basic alpha detectors are very unreliable. the glass of the detection tube stops it. You need very expensive lab based detectors to be sure.
Hello and thanks for you comments :) This specific watch has always been in the family, so I know it has not been relumed. Removing the glass reveals a much higher reading, since most of the ionizing radiation been emitted are alpha particles. Radium lumed watches can vary a lot in terms of ammount of radium used, and many are hotter than this one, and it does not follow common sense, in the way that I have watches from the 60s that are way hotter than others from the 30s or 40s. It all depends on the ammount of radiation used at the time of manufacturing, and different suppliers of ‘undark’ similar products. As for the Geiger counter used, this is actually a professional detector, and does not use glass in front of the Geiger Muller tube, so that alpha particles can be correctly measured and detected. Actually no counters have a glass window. They actually use a special mica window to be able to correctly measure alpha. I do have higher grade counters (please check my other video where you can see some of my measuring instruments). I also have a video with one of these Pancacke GM counters on my channel. I may demonstrate these higher end pancake counters in a future video along with some ‘hotter’ watches. Thank you for watching :)
@@electrohoard The Gamma scout is a good geiger counter but I stand by saying its accuracy with alpha is low. For a start the tube is set around 10mm inside the device so any alpha will already be attenuated. Plus even if you had a very strong alpha source in the watch it wouldn't get past the crystal or case, so you're not detecting alpha anyway. I take your point regarding the different mixes and levels in radium paint over time. The very earliest, mostly from the WW1 period generally added much more than later examples and yours being from the 1920's might be expected to have less, if nothing else because it was an expensive material, though its true dangers weren't in the public domain yet(the Radium Girls lawsuits didn't start until the late 1920's) Though again I've personally never seen a trench style watch, even from the 1920's, that wasn't giving off _much_ higher gamma readings than your watch. That's why I was surprised. Undark came out in 1917 and there were radium dialed watches from circa 1912 and there were many suppliers of such paint(the French Lip watch brand appear to have been the first), so it's not a good judge as they were mostly a US brand and only really applicable if your watch was made in the US. Imho you make several claims that might give a false sense of security to people watching who own radium dialed watches. EG You confidently claim gamma won't penetrate the watch case or the crystal. It most certainly will. It's alpha and beta that won't(the latter are particle radiation, gamma is electromagnetic). That's before we consider the breakdown of radium into things like radon and further daughter elements like polonium and bismuth. It's nasty stuff. Plus your watch for whatever reason is a _very_ low emitter and imho unusually so. It's not a great example to use to demonstrate the safety or not of radium dialed watches. Does this mean I would be worried about wearing a radium dial watch? If it was occasionally no, but I'd not wear it all the time or say sleep with it on my wrist and I would _very much avoid opening the case_ unless I was outdoors wearing a mask and gloves. If i had a few of them I'd keep them in a box that I'd only open outside(radon buildup).
PS I do like your watch. It's a lovely example. 🙂 👍👍Even better that it's a family heirloom. I can't make out the brand, who made it if you don't mind me asking?
Hello. I have a 4MB White Electronics Desgins Linear PCMCIA card and an 10 MB Intel Linear PCMCIA card (both of them should be 16 bit, and can write/format on 12 V, i m not sure in that) Can you help me out, how to read/format on them? I cannot fined a proper hardware nor softwares to check whats on them and write new stuff on it. But i dont have 600-1500 dollars for a omnidrive. Can i contact you somehow you would save me.
You don’t actually need an Omnidrive. Your best (and cheapest) bet is to find an old (1994 or 1995) laptop in working condition and use it to read/write the card. Laptops later than that usually don’t have the 12V line anymore on the Pcmcia slot. There’s even a software called Memory Card Explorer that enables you to read write these cards, and it works under Windows as long as you have a laptop with a real full standard Pcmcia slot :).
Ahh okey, and can you help out with sofwares that i need? Or the cards will plug and play on old machines? Will win95 recognize them( i m stupid for ms-dos 😂)
@@dzsymy2805 hello and sorry for the late reply. Any laptops from 1996 or earlier should conform to original pcmcia standards. I have a 486 HP Omnibook that does :)
Tengo un montón de tarjetas en venta todas linear porque creía que no servían para mi 95lx. Ya mismo voy a ver si pillo el ACECARD en mi disco duro. GRACIAS! Quiero saber si consumen o no batería... Las otras si. Todas!
Hay una modificación que permite utilizar tarjetas en el 95LX sin agotar la batería. ¡Lo hice en el mío y funcionó! A ver si puedo hacer un vídeo sobre este tema.
I too hope to get this working and maybe even get a video about it. This was used by the military in field operations, but I dont know exactly what kind of data they were using this for. Its waterproof, dustproof and really built like a tank so I believe the military at the time did not have any other computer options that were these rugged.
