Category Archives: PC hardware

Have You Ever Used One of These?

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Michal Necasek

Still on the theme of unusual hardware… in my junk pile there’s one of these rather special little parts: As the label on the PCB says, this is a 486 pod for a Periscope IV debugger. The Periscope Company of … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, PC hardware | 35 Comments

Early PCI Board

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Michal Necasek

Since some of this blog’s readers are very good at recognizing obscure hardware, I thought I’d post photos of one more somewhat exotic graphics card: This board was one of the early PCI graphics adapters. It’s old enough that it … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, PC hardware | 27 Comments

Two More TIGAs

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Michal Necasek

Since some readers appear to enjoy identifying prehistoric graphics cards, I thought I’d post photos of two more TIGA boards from my junk pile. I know what these are, but do you? One of them ought to be fairly easy … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, PC hardware | 14 Comments

Another Vermont Microsystems Board

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Michal Necasek

My junk pile turned out to contain another board by Vermont Microsystems, Inc. (VMI), probably no less exotic than the mystery board. This one is a Microchannel board built around an Intel 82786. An in this case, VMI was kind … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, PC hardware | 19 Comments

Have You Seen These Cards?

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Michal Necasek

While cataloging my junk pile, I came across two graphics cards that I could not identify. Both are high-end ISA graphics accelerators from the early 1990s and both utilize Texas Instruments GPUs (long before the term “GPU” was first used, … Continue reading →

Posted in Graphics, PC hardware | 38 Comments

SMD Fun

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Michal Necasek

I recently tried to revive an old ThinkPad 600 (with a 300 MHz mobile Pentium II processor). The system wouldn’t boot up and reported errors (173, 163) which are usually a good indication of a dead CMOS battery. In a … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware, ThinkPad | 2 Comments

Dongle Bungle

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Michal Necasek

A few weeks ago I needed a 3Com 3C589 PCMCIA network card to run Solaris on a ThinkPad Power Series 850. The Solaris PowerPC HCL only listed 3C589 and 3C589B as supported models (and no other network adapters were listed … Continue reading →

Posted in Networking, PC hardware | 11 Comments

Cracking a ThinkPad 755C

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Michal Necasek

Note: Most of the following information does not apply to any Lenovo-made ThinkPads or even IBM-made ThinkPads manufactured after circa 1999. If you have one of those laptops protected with an unknown password, please look elsewhere. Imagine you bought, found, … Continue reading →

Posted in IBM, PC hardware, ThinkPad | 16 Comments

Don’t Let This Happen to You

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Michal Necasek

I recently got an old ThinkPad on eBay for a modest price. The seller marked it as defective, with absolutely no warranty. Since the ThinkPad came with a port replicator (the kind with two PCMICA slots) and an external 2.88MB … Continue reading →

Posted in PC hardware, ThinkPad | 10 Comments

Ctrl-Alt-Del Myths

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Michal Necasek

In a recent interview at Harvard University, Bill Gates claimed (around 16:35 mark) that Windows uses Ctrl-Alt-Del as a logon key combination because “IBM didn’t want to give [Microsoft] a single button”. This statement is curious because it takes several facts … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, PC hardware | 8 Comments