Maximum PC was by far my favorite computer magazine for the years it was published. It started in 1998 as 'boot' but was soon renamed to Maximum PC. It was published up until just a few years ago. The May 2000 issue includes:
Source: Maximum PC (May 2000)
None of the photos in this set are labeled or dated, however, they are likely from the 1960s or early 1970s.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (021-024)
Your Computer was a multiformat computer magazine published in the U.K. in the 1980s. It covered all of the popular computers in the U.K. The April 1984 issue includes:
Source: Your Computer (April 1984)
Compute!'s Gazette was a Commodore 8-bit specific spin-off of their main publication which was just called Compute!. While I mostly bought Commodore Magazine and RUN because they happened to be available within bike riding distance, Gazette was definitely one of the more popular Commodore 64 magazines. The November 1985 issue includes:
Super R-Type is a horizontal side-scrolling shooter published by Irem for the Super NES in 1991. This was one of the more popular genres in the 16-bit era and the R-Type series was one of the most iconic examples. Super R-Type was kind of a hybrid conversion of R-Type II with additional unique levels and features. Super R-Type was one of the earliest releases for the Super NES and one of the first games I owned for that system.
Source: Super R-Type (Super Nintendo)
PC World was still going strong in the early 2000s with issues weighing in at well over 200 pages. This issue from November 2004 is about 236 pages and includes:
Source: PC World (November 2004)
This ad is from the May 1996 issue of Computer Shopper. While Computer Shopper was a quality magazine with good editorial content, it was best known for the hundreds of vendors that advertised in its pages for desktop systems, laptops, computer parts of all kinds, and anything else you can think of that is computer related. The May 1996 issue had nearly 900 pages and this was probably near the height of its popularity.
All of the photos in this set have an August 1961 date stamped on them and were probably taken near that time.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 6 (001-004)
Maximum PC was by far my favorite PC magazine. It started life as 'Boot' in, I believe, 1998. It soon changed it's name to Maximum PC and it was a magazine for PC enthusiasts. Those who bought gaming PCs or built their own high performance machines. It survived later than most PC magazines but it ceased publication a few years back. The May 2003 issue includes:
Source: Maximum PC (May 2003)
The Inspiron 6000 was a low to medium-end laptop from Dell. Like many models, it had a variety of configurations. When this model first came to market, it wasn't the greatest value for the money. However, later configurations were better values. Mine has the following configuration:
All of the slides in this set have the date January 1981 stamped on them and were likely taken Christmas day 1980.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (125-128)
Emerald Rose performs 'Star of the County Down' at MegaCon 2012 in Orlando, Florida.
Source: MegaCon 2012: Emerald Rose (14) - Star of the County Down
Source: PC World (November 1988)
All of the slides in this set have the date January 1981 stamped on them and I believe they were probably taken Christmas day 1980.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (117-120)
This post includes the contents of STRANGE.DOC. This is a chat log that was forwarded in an e-mail. The e-mail is dated January 24th, 1985 and the chat log was from the previous night.
All of the slides in this set have the date January 1981 stamped on them and were probably taken Christmas day 1980.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (113-116)
Fantasy has always been my favorite genre when it comes to books. Having spoiled myself from an early age with the best fantasy series in existence (Lord of the Rings) and reading most of the great fantasy series since, it has become increasingly hard to find good fantasy to read. Recently, I pulled The Magic of Recluse off of the shelf (it's been there for years having been purchased at a library book sale for 50 cents long ago) and decided to give it a try. The Magic of Recluse is the first book in the Saga of Recluse series by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. and this is the first book of his I have read.
The world in which Recluse exists has two types of magic. Order magic and chaos magic. Chaos magic is active and destructive whereas order magic is passive and preserving. Without giving too much away, the story centers around a young man from Recluse named Lerris who is essentially bored with his life. Recluse is the Order capital of the world so to speak and any amount of chaos is seen as a threat. Therefore people such as Lerris, who are dissatisfied, are given a choice: be forever exiled from Recluse or attempt the "dangergeld". The dangergeld is a quest of sorts and as you can imagine, this is where the adventure begins.
I was pleasantly surprised with this book and found it to be quite a page turner. It didn't feel quite like the typical fantasy novel despite the existence of all the prerequisites but the story was interesting and engaging. It's definitely a series I will be continuing and I am already reading the second book. If I had to compare this book to another series I would say it feels a bit like the Riftwar Saga by Raymond Feist though so far I like this series better. If you are looking for that next fantasy book to read (perhaps while growing old waiting for the next Game of Thrones book) and you haven't read this series yet, give it a try.
Random trivia: There was no map in this book (or the next). Not a big deal but a little surprising given how much travel is involved. But if you just have to have one, the internet comes to the rescue: http://hellspark.com/dm/maps/recluce/candar.html
My rating: 3.5/5
The One was a computer gaming magazine that was published in the U.K. While it originally covered multiple platforms, by 1992 it was only covering the Amiga and was in fact titled The One Amiga. The December 1992 issue includes:
Source: The One (December 1992)
All of the slides in this set have the date January 1981 stamped on them and were probably taken Christmas day 1980.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (109-112)
All of the slides in this set have the date January 1981 stamped on them.
Compute! was one of the most popular multi-format computer magazines of the 1980s. In 1987 it was covering the Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, PC, Amiga, and maybe others. The September 1987 issue includes:
Source: Compute! (September 1987)
In 2001 Computer Shopper still had some good content but it was no longer the phone book sized monstrosity that it once was. People had moved on to the Internet for ordering computers and parts greatly reducing the number of vendors advertising in magazines. Windows XP was the big story at this time. The October 2001 issue of Computer Shopper includes:
Source: Computer Shopper (October 2001)
All of the slides in this set have the date January 1981 stamped on them though they were likely taken in December 1980.
By 2010 PC World and computer magazines in general were already in a state of decline. The Internet was taking over. PC World still had some decent content but the page court was barely over 100 pages. The April 2010 issue includes:
All of the slides in this set have the date January 1981 stamped on them.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (097-100)
Out in the distant reaches of the curb of my next door neighbor I discovered a small, towering beige monolith. To my expert eyes it was clear that it was a computational device of ancient origin. I immediately determined to ascertain whether or not it could be resurrected so I brought it and the accompanying cathode ray tube monitor and other accessories back to my laboratory.
Surprisingly enough, the pc and monitor powered on with no obvious problems except that the computer was missing a hard drive. No doubt the owner had wisely removed it and reused or destroyed it to prevent sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands. I found a spare PATA hard drive laying around and placed it into the machine. Unfortunately it had to rest in the bottom of the case because the hard drive bracket was also missing and I had no spare that would fit this apparent Micro ATX mini tower. I successfully installed Lubuntu 10.04 and was off and running.
This generic looking beige box contained a 700 MHz Celeron processor and 256 MB of RAM. I immediately set out to determine how much I could upgrade this thing and if I had any parts that would do the trick. The Celeron 700 is a Socket 370 CPU so theoretically it could be upgraded all the way to a Tualatin Pentium III running at 1400 MHz depending on the motherboard.
It so happens that I had a 1000 MHz Coppermine Pentium III in my collection so I decided to stick it in and see what happened. This particular motherboard recognized it as a 750 MHz Pentium III. Apparently, this machine was running with a 100 MHz bus speed but this was a CPU designed for a 133 MHz bus speed. The first step was to enter the BIOS and determine if there were any settings there that would let me change the bus speed. The multiplier of the Coppermine Pentium III is locked so there is no way to increase the speed via that route. It turned out that the BIOS had no useful options whatsoever. Not a good sign.
The next step was to determine if there was any way to change the bus speed on this motherboard via jumper(s) so it was time to open the case up again for a closer examination. There wasn't a whole lot of useful info on the motherboard either and there were no jumpers that looked like obvious candidates. There was a name, 'Trigem Cognac', so that was a place to start.
After a little google-ing, I found out that this particular motherboard was used in certain Hewlett Packard and eMachines computers. Oddly, HP's own site claims that this board supports 100/133 MHz FSB speeds depending on the processor (http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/bph05159). I suspect this is a misprint as other sources, including the documentation I found for this motherboard indicate that it only supports 66/100 MHz bus speeds.
[pdfjs-viewer url=http://www.megalextoria.com/pdf/cognac.pdf download=true print=true openfile=true]The conclusion I have reached is that this mother board supports 66 MHz and 100 MHz socket 370 CPUs up through at least the 1000 MHz Pentium III but only the 100 MHz front side bus version if you want to get the full speed out of it. If you try the 133 MHz FSB version like me you wind up with a 750 MHz operating speed. Still, given the 50 MHz speed bump and a doubling of the cache from 128 KB to 256 KB I suppose it was still worth swapping it out. It's not like it cost me something. It also appears that this board will support up to 256 MB DIMMs for a total of 512 MB with the right memory. I managed to get 384 MB working (256 + 128). Here's what system information is reported in Lubuntu:
Some memory is used for the onboard video.
For a motherboard I've never heard of by a manufacturer I've never heard of, it was sure used in a lot of computers. Of course, as far as I can tell they were all HP or eMachines models and since I never owned one of those I suppose that explains it. Here is a list of computer models that I found that use this motherboard (and there are probably others):
The particular machine I discovered does not appear to be any of these. The specs most closely match the HP Pavilion 6745C and though the CD drive and keyboard found with it are clearly HP, the case appears generic.
I can't imagine why someone would have taken the guts from an HP and put them in a generic case unless the power supply died in the original and it was non-standard in terms of how it fit in the case. For now I have this slightly upgraded "classic" (700 MHz celeron -> 750 MHz Pentium III, 256 MB RAM -> 384 MB RAM) quietly sitting in a corner serving up some genealogy related content and crunching a few BOINC tasks.
Update 1:
This motherboard uses the circa 1999 Intel 810 integrated chipset which was typically used in entry level systems. It had relatively weak integrated graphics and did not support AGP. It also didn’t typically support very much memory. According to the motherboard manual, this particular motherboard only supports 256 MB of RAM but I currently have 384 MB installed and working. Not sure if 512 MB is possible (probably not). Having said all this, the Intel 810 chipset was still generally superior to the other integrated solutions available at the time.
Update 2:
Well, updating to Lubuntu 14.10 was a mistake… Or at least a real pain in the ass. After upgrading, the video wouldn’t show anything other than a white display, sometimes with stripes through it. I tried the usual solutions (e.g. adding nomodeset to the grub config, etc.) but to no avail. Not sure what the problem is (maybe Ubuntu just dropped support for the integrated graphics of the 810 chipset) but luckily I had a Radeon 7500 PCI card. I popped it in, disabled the onboard video in the BIOS and no more problems.
Update 3:
This machine is no longer running 24x7 though it still crunches BOINC tasks whenever it is on. The genealogy content has moved to my main server here.
Byte had already been around for a few years by 1980. It's page count was already near 300 pages and still ramping up but the introduction of the IBM PC was still more than a year away (along with other popular machines like the Commodore 64). The January 1980 issue includes:
Source: Byte (January 1980)
Compute!'s Gazette was a spin-off of Compute! and, along with RUN, was one of the most popular Commodore 64/128 magazines in the U.S. The April 1988 issue includes:
Source: Compute!'s Gazette (April 1988)
The photos in this set are all dated November 1980 but were probably taken in October.
Source: Vintage Photos - Lot 4 (081-084)
Advanced Computer Entertainment or ACE for short, is a gaming magazine that was published in the U.K in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was probably best known for its 16-bit computer coverage but it covered various platforms over the years including game consoles. This issue indicates coverage for the Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, PC, as well as Nintendo and Sega platforms. The September 1990 issue includes:
The photos in this set are all dated November 1980.
Most or all of these seem to have been taken inside the same fire damaged house that we've seen in the last several sets.
GamePro was the most popular gaming magazine in the U.S. after Electronic Gaming Monthly. They were usually pretty close in sales though I always preferred EGM. The April 1993 issue includes:
Source: GamePro (April 1993)
