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Hardware

Modern Retro computing 201

Sebby writes "This is pretty neat - the folks over at retrosystem rebuild old computers/consoles with new guts inside. They have Amiga 1000, Atari 2600, and also NES systems, with lots of options for configuration. If they only made a Sinclair ZX81 with the same specs, I'd be sold!" I mean, who wouldn't want a PC in an NES box ;)
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Modern Retro computing

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  • by Chicane-UK ( 455253 ) <chicane-uk@[ ]world.com ['ntl' in gap]> on Saturday July 27, 2002 @12:55PM (#3964722) Homepage
    Putting a PC into an Xbox case! Oh, wait..
  • it's up up down down left right left right b a start
  • being used for security purposes. Who's gonna steal an original NES? I don't think they've acquired antique status, yet... Other than that, why the hell would you want to do this?
  • I use an old 8088 case for my machine, it's nice because it has a hood like a car. It has two large buttons on the side to open it - no screws! It's built like a tank AND it was free.
  • Okay, I'll admit this is pretty cool. But a Celeron in an A1000? Why not a 2 gig P4?

    • Re:cool (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Inthewire ( 521207 )
      There may be a difficulty finding boards that small that support a P4. There's also serious heat issues - generally, the slower the chip, the less heat is radiated. Price is probably a factor (most of this computer's reason to be is to look cool, not to be a speed demon). Heck, I don't even know if a P4 heatsink and fan would fit in that A1000 case.
    • That's an upgrade that'll cost you $350.
      • Re:cool (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Inthewire ( 521207 )
        Sure, it says that on the page. But the illustration is a stick of ram. Trust these guys to build a PC when they can't see the difference between a CPU and a DIMM?

    • Re:cool (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <{ten.tsacmoc} {ta} {relyo.nhoj}> on Saturday July 27, 2002 @03:11PM (#3965109) Journal
      Thaat's a great way to celebrate maybe the single greatest personal computer ever designed (top 3, at the very least). Give it a piece of shit celeron, the shittiest cpu ever, made by the shittiest cpu manufacturer ever. Way to pay homage to the 68k, a paragon of simplicity and power. What better way to honor the first color GUI, a gui that fit on a single 880k floppy, than to put the cruddiest OS ever invented? They did put windows on it, right? It's some kind of sarcastic performance art, and the only thing that could contrast beautiful Workbench would be XP, which is lean if it installs in what, less than 300 megs?

      Now, I'm hardly a purist. Things don't have to have original condition. I'm fine with PPC's in a1000's, linux on amigas, someone doing a messy hack that gives it more ram. If you want to see a real A1000 hack, ask for pictures of the FrankenThousand on comp.sys.amiga.hardware. But don't pull this shit. This isn't retro-computing, it's vivisectiony at its most sociopathic.

      Go ahead, mod me down. Claim I don't know what I'm talking about. But don't come begging when you want to buy a 20mhz overclocking kit for your sinclair 1000.
      • I agree -- I'm actually not an Amiga fan (really don't like the UI, but don't want to start a flamewar.

        What bugs me is people modifying NeXT cube cases. They do awful things like put PC motherboards in them. One I saw had a plexiglass front, spray-painted silver, and with blue fluorescent lights. It was ghastly and they though they'd done the l33test thing possible. They'd really just destroyed a beautiful piece of history (that's still very useful as-is today!)
  • I just picked up a mini-itx board for a mp3/divx player in my car. These things are really tiny. I saw one project where they stuffed one of these boards into a playstation, old sparcstations, and lots of other strange places. [mini-itx.com] Not a gaming board, but those are starting to happen too - take a look at the small Shuttle boards that have a bit more kick (and heat) [ex168.com.tw] to them.
  • by ike42 ( 596470 )
    I want a PDA built into a slide rule ... even usable when the batteries die.
    • You could serrate the edge of the rule and use it to drive the gear of a small DC generator in the slide... but man, that could get nasty. ;)
  • Such a shame there is no CDROM for my^H^Htheir Amiga. But I'll still buy it, because it has firewire, and I happen to have an external IDE firewire box, so I can run a CDRW externally. Amiga did almost all expansion externally anyways, so this is great!

    I really recommend these external firewire IDE drive bays by ADSTech, they're so useful when I go out on a service call with my laptop and this portable drive bay, I can do things like drive imaging and software backup at lightning speeds for my clients. They're a geek's best friend.

    Now I can use it to emulate my old A2000 that was surrounded by bizarre periphirals back in the day!

    Bork!

  • How about working on emulators so the tons of old game cartridges you see at flea markets and swaps can be used again.

    The hardware of an Atari2600 or an original Nintendo system were only fairly or moderately impressive when they were state of the art. However, the programming involved to eek every ounce of performance out of the hardware is simply gorgeous. Yeah, the graphics sucked, and were made worse when you pumped it through a modulator and rf generator to display it on channel 3, but impressive nevertheless.

    It's fun to play these games because they programmers didn't have unlimited memory for use nor to store the finished result.
  • Barbarians (Score:4, Insightful)

    by __past__ ( 542467 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:12PM (#3964779)
    This is stripping a piece of history down to the body and axles and rebuilding it to become a supercharged system of today for your work or home!
    In other words, it is destroying a piece of history to look leet at the next lan-party.
    • In other words, it is destroying a piece of history to look leet at the next lan-party.

      Yeah, but wouldn't it be sweet to tell your buddies, "Dude, J00'r3 50 W33k, I can smash you using an Atari 2600!" ;)

      The look on their face when you actually do it: Priceless.
  • Oh dear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kungfuBreaks ( 537144 ) <.kungfuBreaks. .at. .netscape.net.> on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:13PM (#3964781)
    "We are patenting this process of customizing old computer and game console cabinets to be Windows, Linux or other contemporary operating systems based on x86 systems. Contact us if you are interested in licensing from us."

    Is it just me, or does anyone else find this a bit disturbing?
    • Anyone have prior art? ;)
    • Well, if they have that then I'm going to apply for a patent on customizing old game consoles with a non-contemporary operating systems based on x86 systems. Surely no one else has thought of that. Contact me to talk about licensing.
    • This won't fly, prior art can be found in this comment [slashdot.org] and this comment [slashdot.org].
    • Yes it is disturbing. I have only been doing these sort of things since I was a little kid, I'll bet a lot of us have. Since this really is little more than some creative packaging of existing technology, there is going to be prior art all over the place.

      You would think that someone smart enough to consider a patent would also understand that the sort of people who would appreciate this sort of thing are also ones who see a lame patent for what it is. I am not buying anything --why bother? I can make my own and that is just how silly this patent would be.

      Anyone that licenses anything from these people is wasting their time. Pick a different console, make it better, let the buyers decide who deserves the reward, not the lawyers....

    • I don't find it disturbing so much as I find it completely braindead. There's stupid patents, and then there's ASTOUNDINGLY STUPID patents.

      You can't patent the idea of putting new stuff in retro boxes, so what could they possibly be asking the government for monopoly on? Their special mounting bracket process? Heh.

      I've got $100 that says that these people were probably suckered by some stupid/greedy lawyer, and that the patent has no... er... little chance in hell of being granted.

      --

    • Disturbing, no. Quixotic, yes.
    • Ok, I have a WORKING NES computer that I will have finished in the next few weeks, this moron cannot patent an idea he did not come up with first. I'll have pictures of mine, unlike this loser who just has a mock-up
    • I don't think there's any reason to worry, at least in this case. I distinctly recall something on the History Channel stating that one cannot patent something that is simply a combination of other things. I'm sure the fine, competent folks at the patent office will...

      Oh shit. OK, maybe we should panic.

  • Airflow/Heat (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FunkSoulBrother ( 140893 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:16PM (#3964789)
    I think the NES/Atari Boxes look great, but I'm curious as to how well they do airflow-wise with a 800Mhz processor inside??

    I seem to recall my those systems could get a little warm just playing their cartridges.

    Cool idea, though.
    • Actually, I have a torn apart NES case right next to me at the moment. Their whole airflow plan in the original NES case was just to use vents and let convection do the rest. There is a "T" shaped groove in the underside, to pull air in from the sides, and there is a large vent in the top.

      If someone knew what they were doing, it would be incredibly easy to take advantage of the existing vents and airflow that is there, and improve it by adding some little old CPU fans at each vent. Or, with some real ambition and tinkering, you may be able to fit a water cooling system inside one, but you'd have a tough time finding a small pump and a place to put it.

      What I'm more concerned about is power. Did they get an internal power supply small enough to fit in it? Or did they just use an external power supply like the NESv1 [fast-mhz.com]?
    • I found out the hard way how hot these got when I was a kid. I'd bought a NES secondhand and only had one game (Super Mario Bros 3).

      When bored one afternoon I took of the top half of the case, squished all the innards down, and screwed a replacement lid of solid polished wood onto it.

      It looked great even though it was impossible to change the game - I think the ability to rest mugs of coffee on the machine made up for that!

      It died a few months into it's modded life. I suspect it was the heating that did it.

  • I had one of these little beasts. I cannot imagine who thought those chicklet keyboards would be a good idea...

    My key memory of it was actually writing programs that used all of the 4k + 64k RAM expander ;).
    • Yeah.... there's even a PC emulator for the Timex/Sinclair 1000/ZX-81 out there. Why you'd want to emulate one though, I dunno.

      I used to own a TS-1000, with the 16K RAM expansion. (I believe you couldn't go larger than that using anything sold by Timex/Sinclair. As I recall, there was a popular 3rd. party expansion cartridge made by MemoTech or somebody like that.... Those went up to 32K or 64K.)

      I even had the plastic Sinclair carrying case. I had to order it via direct mail. Apparently, only 2,000 were made or something... Supposed to be sort of a collector's edition item. It held all the cables and AC adapter, TS-1000 itself, memory pack, and 4 cassette tapes.

      The Timex/Sinclair 1000/ZX-81 had a flat membrane keyboard though, not even a "chicklet" keyboard. It was horrible, but back in the day, it seemed cool enough to me.

      My brother eventually bought a newer Timex/Sinclair. Can't remember the model number anymore... might have been a 1500 or 2048? Anyway, it was a silver plastic case and real chicklet keys, and I believe more standard RAM in it. I think it's the only one I ever saw, other than in magazine photos. (We used to subscribe to a Sinclair magazine called Sync.)

      Wow - that goes back a ways! I remember shopping for software on cassettes tape at the local K-Mart store, back when they had a "computer center". The Timex/Sinclair stuff was always behind the glass counter though and you had to ask for it. They had an Atari 400 on display too, also with sort of a membrane keyboard (but full-sized at least).
  • Kinda like (Score:4, Funny)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:28PM (#3964820) Journal
    turning a VAX into a keg dispenser with webmonitoring [networkcomputing.com]
    or maybe just a bar [arizona.edu] or how about a fridge [planet.nl]
  • by Rayonic ( 462789 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:29PM (#3964823) Homepage Journal
    Anyone wanna put an Atari 2600 in a PC case?
    It's just for the sake of cosmic karma balance.
  • Go to largish network parties Case modders have been doing this for years.
  • (Server is slow, please be patient)
    picture 1 [netcolony.com]
    picture 2 [netcolony.com]
    picture 3 [netcolony.com]
    picture 4 [netcolony.com]
    picture 5 [netcolony.com]
    picture 6 [netcolony.com]
    picture 7 [netcolony.com]
    picture 8 [netcolony.com]
  • A bit pricey... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:33PM (#3964835)
    I don't understand why someone just doesn't do this mod themselves.

    Their pricing is quite expensive @ $999-1099+

    I'd recommend getting a mini ITX form factor motherboard like VIA's eden. (Go check the specs on the motherboards vs. the console boxes because I'm not sure if they'll fit exactly)

    So for ~$150 for the motherboard
    ~$60 for the VIA CPU
    ~$5-10 for an old NES / Atari system
    ~Old PC Components

    You'd have a pretty decent setup. (Not to mention you'd be saving around $700!)

    If you need some motivation look at Project Jellybean:

    http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=120 [viaarena.com]
  • by Stephen VanDahm ( 88206 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:35PM (#3964844)
    The computers in the article are just glorified case mods. When you plug a modern keyboard monitor and mouse into those old cases and boot Windows 2000, you totally lack the retro look and feel. The coolest artifacts from the old days are green-screen monitors and heavy, loud keyboards. They are what create the retro look-and-feel that we remember from the old days.

    In middle school, we had these Apple IIe computers with green-screen monitors that tilted up and down in a stationary case. Those were sweet. At the time, we had a computer at home with a color screen (CGA graphics, baby). Even though the CGA screen was technically superior to the Apple's, I thought the Apple monitor was way cooler. Now I have a 19 inch Viewsonic monitor and its infinitely more useful than the old Apple screen -- but the Apple monitor is still cooler.

    Likewise, I miss those big-ass keyboards that click when you type. These flimsy, wussy keyboards that come with modern PCs are terrible! My favorite keyboard was an old IBM AT keyboard from 1984. My dad found it at work, and I used it for several years. The keys are covered with plastic caps, which are what the letters are printed on -- if you want remap your keyboard to Dvorak, you can reposition the printed letters by removing and rearranging the little caps. Pretty sweet. I had to retire it when, while moving from one dorm room to another, I broke off some of the caps that cover the keys. I've still got it in my closet, though.

    I guess my point is that, while this is a cool idea, it's somewhat misguided. Creating a retro look and feel is much more important than having a retro case, which you're just going to shove under your desk anyway. And to have the retro look-and-feel, you need cool-looking screens and clicky keyboards.

    Steve
    • Or you can remove the Esc keycap, and then go, "Oh, no! There's no Escape!" :)

      Incidentally, you can often find those old keyboards at local computer salvage shops, if there are any in your area. I found one selling them for only a couple of bucks apiece, so I bought two...one for just in case. :)
    • I agree. Those old-school keyboards were/are awesome.

      Where I work we have a few of the old keyboards that are of that style. I think they came from some old IBM machines we used to have. They don't replace the keyboards on new computers we get, but I use them for my own use. I ran one over with a car and it still worked fine. I don't think the same could be said for modern keyboards. There's just something nostalgic about the "klack-ching" sound they make when you press keys.
    • Here's a company [pckeyboard.com] that makes the type of keyboards you lust for.
    • Likewise, I miss those big-ass keyboards that click when you type.

      I missed them too, so I bought myself one from pckeyboard.com [yahoo.com], who apparently bought the rights/tooling/whatever from IBM/Lexmark, and still make keyboards that "click" (aka buckling spring). Hey, it looks like they even have a Linux version [yahoo.com] now!

    • "Likewise, I miss those big-ass keyboards that click when you type."

      You mean like the one I use every day at work? Vintage 1993, with the Blue "IBM" logo (it has drain holes) $5 at goodwill - oops, $3.75 at 25% off.

      "I had to retire it when, while moving from one dorm room to another, I broke off some of the caps that cover the keys. I've still got it in my closet, though"

      Key caps are still available from IBM. Actually, so are the original keyboards, although the manufacturing plant was bought by someone else.

      Live the dream - resurrect your old IBM Model M?
    • As far as modern clicky keyboards go, I can heartily recommend the Focus FK-2001 [focustaipei.com] keyboards. Good, solid, super clicky. Even comes with a dust cover for the keyboard.

      Not quite as big-ass as the old IBM keyboards, but quite nice.

      • Those were good except for the ridiculously huge Enter key. I still haven't figured out why anyone would want an Enter key that big. Maybe you'd want one if you had a gargantuan pinky finger.

        The dust cover is somewhat useless. Unless you mount your monitor on an 8" pedestal, you will remove the dust cover when you use the keyboard. Invariably, you will put the dust cover on a chair. At some point in time, either you or someone you know will sit down on that chair while the cover is there. *SNAP* Dust cover is now in 2 pieces and is practially useless. Anyway, the keyboard will last far longer than the dust cover.

    • by ianezz ( 31449 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @02:43PM (#3965052) Homepage
      Likewise, I miss those big-ass keyboards that click when you type. These flimsy, wussy keyboards that come with modern PCs are terrible! My favorite keyboard was an old IBM AT keyboard from 1984.

      Well, to be honest, such keyboards are still sold as new [pckeyboard.com] (I doubt they are still manifactured, but there are plenty in stock). You can also order replacement parts there (after all, it's the ex-keyboard division of IBM and Lexmark).

    • I agree. Computers have a totally different feel today. The better projects of this type involve ways of getting the older machines involved with computing today --retro feel intact.

    • Several people have pointed to pckeyboards.com for the durable IBM-style keyboards. It's just too bad that they don't sell an updated ergonomic version of it. Does anyone?

      I *need* the split keyboard layout - there's no way I can go back to the wrist-twisting rectangle layout.

      --

    • Likewise, I miss those big-ass keyboards that click when you type. These flimsy, wussy keyboards that come with modern PCs are terrible! My favorite keyboard was an old IBM AT keyboard from 1984.

      Check your local university's [ou.edu] surplus department. I know here at OU, we have a decent surplus department with lots of old stuff for sale. (Anybody need a VAX? There's one down there.) Among other things, they have a large bin (i.e. large hotel laundry bin) full of keyboards, many of them IBM PS/2 (the computer PS/2, not just the 6-pin mini-DIN connector) models. About eight pounds apiece, nearly indestructable (very handy when you can't find that last bug, get pissed, throw the keyboard across the room...), and great feel. You'd be surprised what turns up at University Surplus.

    • Just go to eBay. I bought about 5 oldschool OmniKey keyboards from the old Northgate systems. I *love* them. I just wish there was a USB adaptor so I could use them on my Mac as well.
    • The computers in the article are just glorified case mods. When you plug a modern keyboard monitor and mouse into those old cases and boot Windows 2000, you totally lack the retro look and feel. The coolest artifacts from the old days are green-screen monitors and heavy, loud keyboards. They are what create the retro look-and-feel that we remember from the old days.

      There's an interesting project to build a modern version of the Commodore-64 called the CommodoreOne [geocities.com] from scratch. This one is far from a simple case mod! It features a 20MHz 65816 processor, a VGA display, 32MB RAM, and full hardware Commodore-64 compatibility.
  • Cheating. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Restil ( 31903 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @01:45PM (#3964868) Homepage
    Yes, I know we always talk about trying to get linux to run on an older computer, but gutting the case and replacing the innards is cheating. :)

    As far as appeal goes, consider you're intentionally purchasing a machine with limited upgrade options. In order to minimize the footprint, the boards won't have many PCI slots, and its debatable if they could be used anyway in that case. While old computer cases can probably be picked up for free, or very very cheap, there's still the labor cost of adapting them to fit modern components. That's going to jack the price a bit, not to mention a power supply will still be required, which is typically a good percentage of the case cost.

    Of course, people buying one of these are probably doing it for the novelty purposes and not because they're concerned about cost or usability.

    -Restil
  • I would rather get a console system inside a PC case. This way it would look like I'm furiously coding while playing old school galaga.
    • Hmm, cool idea... put 3-4 gaming system in one tower case, and use something like a DigitalDoc or other device to turn them on a off, and another thing to switch the video (modified KVM switch?).
      I am sure that you could rip apart a Gamecube, PS2, and an Xbox and fit them all in one system with a 400-600 watt power supply(modified) (or just use the ones that the systems came with). I have s Supermicro S-760 case that I know would fit the guys of all of them.

      That would be quite a system to show off, better yet, rackmount it in a 4U case... or even better make 1U rack products of each of the systems, with supercool looking faceplates, with an LCD on each to show the game name, or something about the system status at least.... Now that would be cool to have in the server room...

  • What, no TI? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by repsychler ( 571158 )
    How about a TI99/4A? Just make that and Parsec 2002 and I can die a happy geek.
    • Re:What, no TI? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bowronch ( 56911 )
      Ahh, the TI-99/4a... What a great system... I had one of those and had countless hours playing car wars, hunt the wumpus and of course parsec... MESS [mess.org] will emulate the TI-99/4A, and you can find ROMS here [uwm.edu]
  • The NES case would be cool if they would dump the keyboard and use the original controllers (linux-parallel port)
  • The thing about gutting an NES that bugs me is that it's no longer an NES, it's just a cool case.

    I think that they can do better than this. How about a mini-itx board, a laptop hard drive, and an NES-on-a-chip connected to the cartridge and controller ports? If you want to make it come up as a computer, flick a switch, and video output comes out of the PC video card.

    There should be just barely enough space in the original US NES case to pull this off, although it would certainly be tough to do.
    • How about you just run an emulator instead of spending a half million bucks on chip fab and ending up with 49,999 spare NES-on-a-chip devices? ;)

      Of course, you might end up selling a few, but still....

      • Dude, you can *buy* them, you know.

        At least I'm fairly certain you can, since there are all those knockoff NES systems that look like an N64 controller with A/V out. The only trick is that those don't rely on cartridges.

        Presumably, you can purchase the chip from somewhere, or just gut one of the bootlegs. Either way, it's not about "just running the emulator," it's about the proper feel. Sure it's more expensive and complex. That's the fun!
  • I have always wanteda cluster of 4 to 6 Shuttle-type P4 MicroATX MoBos in one of my SGI Indigo Elan chassis. The thing that's tripped me up is putting all the PS in!

    Maybe I can fit this with some kind of Passive PCI plane, and add multiple Single-board computers...
    HMMMMmmmmmmm....

  • by bogie ( 31020 ) on Saturday July 27, 2002 @03:15PM (#3965114) Journal
    They only have inside pictures for the Amiga case. Well duh, big deal there are plenty of low profile commercial cases already out there. Nothing interesting to see there.

    I was really disapointed that there were no photo galleries for the Atari and NES cases. I mean for all we know those are just mockups and there are no pc parts inside.

    You also got to be kidding me with those systems specs. What brand of cpu is it? What speed is the Hard drive? What kind of Ram is that? What video card is in there and how much ram does it have? What type of warranty does it have?

    There is no way I would drop $1,200 with so little info, especially via Paypal.
  • Please bump the CPU up to atleast a 68020 and but Debian or something on it, BUT dont put a new mobo in it and call it an Amiga 1000! Those people should be shot! It's like loading a Linux distro and only putting VMware on it running Win 2K but still calling it Linux!!!
  • If I go for the "supercharged" Amiga 1000, do I still have to remove 19 screws to get to the floppy drive?

    I had a bad floppy drive in a 1000 once...talk about Proprietary hardware...

  • I'm assuming that's the same Kermit Woodall of SIDPlayer fame? For the C64-challenged, SIDPlayer was pretty much the 80's equivalent of WinAmp. Amazing what you could do with 3 voices. I always wondered what he'd been up to...
  • Is to yank the guts from an old TRS-80 Model III, replace the display with an old 13" CRT, and install a basic PC into it... Would look hella funny at a LAN party, IMO...
  • I think they ought to go even farther. How about using a TRS-80 Model 2 with dual 5" floppy disk drives and NO hard drive? I remember being just stunned, back in 1984, after shelling out what was big bucks for me to buy a 300 bps modem, at all the info and games available at my local BBS. A few years later, it turned out that my favorite MD BBS, called Network East, went down for good cuz the Owner/SysAdmin had stolen all his servers from Uncle Sam. (FEMA HQ in Washington, DC, no less.) Walked right out the front door with them, one at a time. Later on, so did he, with the FBI leading him out. There are good ole days and not-so-good ole days.

    MadDad32
  • Until they come out with a C64, using the C64's keyboard, I ain't buying.
  • .
    You can download ZX Spectrum Emulator in Java from Java Developer's Journal:

    ZX Spectrum Emulator [sys-con.com]

    Introduction [sys-con.com]

  • Going back to luggable systems! Get a PC with TV out and stick it in an Amiga 1000 box and use the keyboard garage!

    Doesn't get much better I think, even get the signatures of computing pioneers with the deal. :-)

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