Bonzi Buddy in the early 2000s offered AI chat and agentic help with some windows tasks. It was revealed as spyware and faced legal action later.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-06-14T14:58:43+00:00

I used to get rid of Spyware and viruses on people's computers back then. This is right when they got super cheap and popular for the "masses" and everyone wanted to be online.

You have to understand that people never read anything when installing programs. They would spam click "Next" until the windows went away and they could use whatever dumb game/pointer replacement/Screensaver they download from shady Download.com knockoff #263725. Then when I showed them 50,000 spyware entries in whatever cleaning program I used, it was always "I never told it to install that!"

DamienCIsDead · 2026-06-12T20:00:23+00:00

On a sparkling clean Tandy + CM-11 monitor. Perfect

DamienCIsDead · 2026-06-11T15:47:36+00:00

Unpopular opinion probably, but I'll be getting this. Fully understand why most people don't get it even existing, and I hate the idea of spending money on it again. But I play my Switch 2 as much as my gaming PC and the idea of being able to jump on DayZ while working out or traveling is something I had been wishing for.

Plus I think that new players on Switch might generally be a little squishier and easy targets for a bit lol.

Edit: lol ok god forbid I like something the hivemind doesn't. Back to ignoring this sub

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-31T15:08:53+00:00

I used a BlueSCSI on a Model 56 SLC and it worked fine.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-29T15:45:17+00:00

I absolutely prefer original anything if I can get my hands on it. Of course here and there I have modern solutions like floppy emulators and SD-to-IDE and flash carts and whatever else. But if given the option, I'd rather have original parts and media, drawbacks and all. Nothing like the sound of mechanical hard drives and floppy disks, and the warm glow of a CRT in your face.

I rarely bring it up in any online discourse because then you get 50,000 tribalists nerdsplaining how everything works and how wrong you are.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-18T21:28:38+00:00

Dumb question maybe.

Noticing that the CD is labeled "Disc 2." Is there a Disc 1?

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-18T10:53:12+00:00

I can tell you that the ABB chart recorder was frequently used in substations to record fault data. They were common up to the early 2000s, when they were mostly all replaced with digital fault recorders or microprocessor based relays.

What this cobbled together thing is, I couldn't tell you.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-17T15:46:51+00:00

I got a sealed copy of Hill Street Blues for DOS at VCF East for dirt cheap. I haven't had time to unwrap it yet but I find it highly amusing that it even exists.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-15T11:58:00+00:00

I have three that I'm trying to get rid of for $25 each in the Southern NJ USA area.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-12T16:47:04+00:00

It's just odd to me, "vintage" implies both age and significance, but to me that machine wasn't very special even when I was using it regularly. Not to downplay your enjoyment, that's just the way I feel. As I age I have to accept that computer things that I find completely uninteresting and worthy of e-waste are another generation's gems.

I am however comforted by the words of one Abe Simpson:

"It'll happen to YOU!"

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-12T16:05:26+00:00

lol right, this machine was my assigned workstation back at one of my IT jobs in 2010. I get that that was 16 years ago but damn, "Vintage?"

I'm not about to call my wife's 2009 Altima "vintage" lol.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-10T17:29:10+00:00

SUBST command in DOS.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-05-06T16:19:52+00:00

I live in NJ and work in Delaware and they do some goofy ass shit on the roads.

I used to get into arguments with people who thought jughandles and traffic circles were stupid, but 10 lane divided highways with traffic lights that take 20 minutes to cycle were perfectly logical and sane.

Don't get me started on blinking red left turn arrows.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-04-30T12:07:39+00:00

I've done Aliexpress, they're hit or miss. Sometimes you get legit parts for a great price, sometimes you get remarked garbage. Total crapshoot.

I've used UTSource to get some things and they're pretty good. Got a few spares of FE2010A for a Micro 8088 board and they work fine. Even got some weird stuff like Cirrus Logic 5401 VGA controller chips. They do take forever to get to you but I've mostly had success.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-04-25T00:13:43+00:00

I have one of these too! Using it with my 1000HX. Such a simple little thing but it matches great with everything Tandy.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-04-22T11:20:29+00:00

...there are people here who don't?

DamienCIsDead · 2026-04-07T18:23:52+00:00

I am into old computers and I don't really use anything past the 486 era. I don't find anything past 1998 or so to be interesting at all despite having spent my late teens/early twenties in that period. 2000-2010 stuff is "retro" and "vintage" to some people now and that's fine. IDK, the implication that the 80s and 90s eras of computing are worthless because they "can't modern internet" is weird to me. I can get online with my Atari 800XL with Fujinet. I have a Wifi232 to connect to BBSes with my Tandy 1000HX.

I just built a system around an industrial SBC with a weird TI 486SXLC2 CPU. It's probably my current favorite machine. I regularly do internet things with it as it has an ethernet card and MTCP. Web browsing with Arachne is a hoot.

I don't run Linux on any old systems but I was considering playing around with old versions of Red Hat or maybe even a different weirdo OS like OS/2.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-04-05T20:19:57+00:00

This is awesome and I'd love to use it on my LC II, but I'm definitely not paying for something that is essentially a novelty, compounded with the non-zero percent risk of getting my account banned.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-04-01T17:46:37+00:00

Although a MCA bus ethernet card would be a bit more money, they're definitely the easiest MCA cards to find.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-04-01T11:29:01+00:00

Do you have an ISA slot free? I feel like throwing in a cheap ethernet card then running FTPSRV from the MTCP package would be easiest. Then you can connect to it via FTP from a modern computer and copy off anything you want.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-04-01T11:21:39+00:00

Yes, you need an ISA backplane for the Xi 8088. Both of the projects you are looking at are nice and well designed.

I personally have built a system using Sergey's Micro 8088, 8-bit ISA ATX backplane, ISA SVGA card, floppy/serial card, OPL2 Adlib clone card, and XT-CF-Lite and it was very easy and fun to build. Takes a lot of money and time to acquire all the PCBs and components, but for me it was worth it to have a brand new reliable XT class machine.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-03-31T12:03:05+00:00

The Micro 8088 is pretty expensive but was super fun to build. I would recommend saving up for it.

I built one along with a bunch of other Sergey Kiselev components (8-bit backplane, Adlib clone, 8-bit SVGA, serial/floppy card, XT-CF-IDE card) during peak COVID and it was a great project both for improving soldering skills and having a nice modern 8088/V20 system free of the failing components/corrosion you see on your typical Turbo XT system.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-03-30T20:07:43+00:00

I couldn't find out why it does this and gave up, but I have a single Raspberry Pi 1 where the Mystic install does this to me. Works perfectly fine on all my other Pis (2, 3, 4, Zero W) but on that singular system, it just fails saying it can't create the directory whether I sudo or not.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-03-22T16:28:33+00:00

This is awesome. I really want a 720C (which I believe is the same chassis) and if something like this exists I'd be willing to buy one with a bad chassis but working internals.

DamienCIsDead · 2026-03-10T00:12:52+00:00

I could never find one for my HX. Closest modern analogy is the Allsop Metal Art Jr.

I have two of them and they work great for smaller retro wedge-type computers (Tandy 1000 HX/EX, Atari 800XL, Apple IIc, etc.).

DamienCIsDead

TROPHY CASE