Top products from r/retrobattlestations

Get yourself a 2Gb (or whatever size you want really) compact flash card and a CD to IDE adapter and replace that spinning drive. You'd not only gain some speed, but you also gain the ability to simply unplug the CF card, throw it into a USB reader and copy the data from your newer PC to the card. Quick and easy.

I own this one, and it is pretty awesome. You can mount it so the CF card is accessible from the 3.5" external bay, or via slot in the back.

If you did not want to replace the spinning drive in there, then you could just install it as a second drive and use it to copy data to and from the machine.

As for the 486 keyboard adapter, the larger old AT connector is compatible with the smaller and newer PS/2 keyboard connector. Adapters are available in most of the usual places for about $6.

https://www.amazon.com/SF-Cable-Female-Din5-Keyboard/dp/B0016RTMQE/

ISA sound blaster card I would recommend eBay. If you want a genuine ISA sound blaster, you can go with pretty much any of them from the original 8-bit all the way to an AWE64 model. Prices will vary based on type and model. Perhaps around $20 shipped. If you don't need an actual sound blaster but are good with any number of the clones, those will probably be much cheaper.

The same thing will be true for an ADB keyboard and mouse. Ebay would be my recommendation, or perhaps craigslist. Perhaps around $25 + S&H.

A good tip, if you're not familiar with it, is to check the 'sold' listings on eBay. Those will give you a good idea how much something is worth before you go bidding on it or buying it on craigslist.

Thats awesome, where did you get one of those from?

I have a copy of this on my desk, I am planning on getting an FPGA to do something useful with it. A real PDP-11 would be a 100 miles better.

It is, there are some fascinating stories to discover. I suggest Brian Bagnall's incredible book, Commodore - A Company On The Edge, which is the best account to date of what went on inside Commodore from it's founding up until Tramiel's departure in 1984. The Plus/4 is well covered here. The sequel, Commodore - The Amiga Years will be released in a few months time, also. I cannot recommend his books enough.

What a coincidence.... the day you posted that photo i was reading your book :-). It was a great read, btw, i love reading such "diary/autobiography-like" books (i also read A Microsoft Life yesterday by Stephen Toulouse).

I got an ide/pata to CF card adapter and use a 16 GB card as the hard drive. It's great because you can easily transfer files between your modern PC. Just partition the flash card and format and the computer will see it as hard drives. Pretty quick too.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000T9QQP0/ref=psdcmw_15874201_t2_B000YUMLPI

Nice. I wanted one of those, the Atari Portfolio or one of the HP line for a while, but I wound up getting into Psion Series 3 instead.

Probably the most useful thing would be a compact flash card formatted with FAT16 or FAT32 and a PCMCIA adapter for it. That's what I used to get files back and forth to similar Windows CE machines years ago.

TMK works just fine as an inline adapter. You can build it however you want.

Otherwise, you're pretty much looking at this: https://www.amazon.com/Griffin-2001-ADB-iMate-Universal-adapter/dp/B000067V8L

"Theory Z - How American Business Can Meet The Japanese Challenge"

BTW, I still use that keyboard. IBM made the best mechanical keyboards back then.

If you don't own it already, the Brian Bagnall book on Commodore, Commodore: A company on the edge, is superb.

Okay that's one impressive bag of PCMCIA accessories. I had the same 10baseT card and the CF card adapter. But you're missing the most important one.

Thanks! I found a used copy of the book via Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Giant-Book-Computer-Games-Hartnell/dp/0345316096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500166471&sr=8-1&keywords=tim+hartnell%27s+giant+book+of+computer+games

Hey, Shuttle! I had one of those with an Athlon XP, Geforce 2, and a pair of 40GB Seagates inside.

Turns out they're still in business, selling new machines in the same form factor

Wait, how is it 122 pounds? I found mine for like ~35$ dollars.

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Heres a link for the one I was referencing: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Power-supply-internal-connector/dp/B00006B8CH/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=startech+psu&qid=1557174114&s=electronics&sr=1-3

Beats me. The same PSU on Amazon UK is £122! I could import it from Amazon US for much cheaper, even if I do get hit with a customs bill on the receiving end. I'll keep it in mind though if I can't find a similar option locally for the same price.

still available complete with reviews from 1999

What about these two:

• https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Yellow-Pages-3rd/dp/0078821827/
  
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Directory-Guide-Usenet-Bitnet/dp/0449908984/

Those pictures remind me of an old book I have somewhere called 'Wall Systems and Shelving'.

That's only going to work if the motherboard has a header for it, and since it has a DIN port, I'm guessing it doesn't. You're going to need this for the keyboard, and a serial mouse.

Had to change capacitors once. Thats about it. Had to upgrade my gaming rig last year to a flat panel due to space. I absolutely hate it. CRT is so much better.

This was the love of my gaming life

I was just researching some retro gamepads, I wasn't prepared for this this early. On the plus side, I somehow scored an old parallel port Sidewinder for $2.24 with Prime shipping.

It's the StarTech.com 3.5-Inch Drive Bay IDE to Single CF SSD Adapter Card Reader.

Fair warning, though: The eject lever on mine was broken when I got it. Probably just a one-off mistake, but it doesn't say great things for their quality control.

The network cards are generic Intel 21143 network cards - they are a "reference design" card, tons of manufacturers made identical cards. (Intel made the schematics available for free!) Nearly every OS made since Windows 98 SE should have drivers for it built-in.

Dear $deity, whipper-snapper! That "first motherboard" is roughly equivalent to the one I bought for the computer I built when I was in college! Nice board with onboard Matrox graphics. Sad no AGP. The port shield for that should be readily available - that was the "standard backplane layout" (the VGA port location was generally either VGA or a second 9-pin serial port.) Ah, here you go: Standard ATX I/O Shield - $3.49

To find out how fast the "second motherboard" Pentium is, take the CPU out, it will say on the labeling on the underside. And THAT PORT IS NOT POWER!!! That is an AT keyboard port. (The predecessor to PS/2.) You can use a standard PS/2 keyboard through an adapter. You'll want a PCI video card - ISA will be painful. You also might want serial and/or parallel back-panel cables. (Single 9-pin Serial, Parallel, Dual 9-pin/25-pin Serial.)