What have you bought recently?


My mother's Christmas present.

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https://www.carltonbooks.co.uk/wrinklies-guide-to-home-computing-hb.html
 
While finishing my Galaksjia clone (I had to buy a wooden strip and a piece of board, although I painted it to too light blue and it doesn't look as I wanted), I finally traced and bought a few Macs for my collection. Paid much, but I think it was worth it:
- Quadra 950. Working. With 2GB IBM drive from 1994. Large, heavy and takes half of minute to spin up. Probably 4 plates inside.
- G3 tower, not Power Macintosh, but "Server G3", inside it's still Gossamer mainboard. Working except HD that needed contacts cleaning.
- Power Mac 9600 Tower. These two Macs had lots of dust inside, they were probably used as servers.
- G3 all in one. These are rare in Europe. Working except flyback, as I could not locate new flyback I tried to re-insulate it which succeeded.
- 7220 "PC Compatible", unfortunately with blown battery. Someone cleaned it and recovered properly from accident, unfortunately removed PC compatibility board too. Instead, there was a 3D accelerator. CPU was not starting after the accident, so someone put another CPU... in L2 cache slot. Bare, no-driver OS 9 cannot run in this configuration without hiccups and installation took about 4 hours. Greetings to someone who labelled the main hard disk "Deep thought" :).
- Quadra 800. Working condition, with unknown video board with pinout also unknown.
- And I got a shattered PowerPC Mac Server, type 8xxx. I will try to restore it, but front covers are missing.
The biggest problem was to transport all these Macs to me.
 
PCXT said:
Quadra 950. Working. With 2GB IBM drive from 1994. Large, heavy and takes half of minute to spin up. Probably 4 plates inside.
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I've kind of toying around adding a later model Motorola 68k based Mac for my collection. With recent dealings with my new car, I'll have to wait a while before I can spend money on retro hardware.
 
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A durable 550g feather weight tenor trombone (with case and two mouthpieces), the second to last of this practically maintenance free student model flute with very nice case on the market (the newer version looks awful) and a clamp pickup for my hurdy-gurdy.
Cheap stuff, but it's all working surprisingly well!

I also ordered a mute for the trombone, but it will arrive later, so I have to practise at the workshop.
 
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Jjrc h68 quadcopter. Under $100, two batteries, FPV camera, and each battery is good for 20 min of flying
 
Hey, wanted to post this, I just made a video about it, Best controller I have ever used. I wish it was bigger, like the US size though. . .


I forgot how great the d-pad was on the Genesis/MD controller. I played a bit of Street Fighter and Killer Instinct and pulling off movies is much easier. Having fast/medium/strong buttons in a line like that is way better than using shoulder buttons.

Pain to set up in Retropie though, I set it up like a SNES controller ignoring what the buttons say and then edit the buttons in the Genesis/MD emulator to mach it.
 
Nice video. I did find it confusing as someone who watches a lot of electronics videos for you to be talking about resistance when you were talking about the shoulder buttons, but when you were prodding the rubber keymats it clicked; you're talking about the physical resistance or the springiness of the switches or pads. Also, a bit of brain freeze when you were talking about sega genesis emulators and pulled out what looks very like a shrunken us market SNES (which turned out to be your Pi case I assume). If you do make a video of you trying out special moves with different controllers (tricky when some are USB and others are DE-9 atari style, so you might not be able to do a side by side comparison I guess) then let us know.
 
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Making a lot of progress on it, roughly the same system as the tenor trombone and same key just one octave higher.
I'm amazed at how cheap you get an at least decent quality these days. It's not painted like the cheapest ones but has a layer of black nickel instead and was still not expensive.
The left one is an adjustable silencer (acoustic loudness control, yay) and the right one is a wah-wah plug with a cute tinny old school sound.
 
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It's a mute and pickup rolled into one and although it's quite expensive, it is simply amazing.
It doesn't affect playing as much as other mutes while giving you an authentic mute-less sound via headphones.
There are two reverb settings simulating different environments and you could use the headphone jack to connect it to effect pedals or mixers.
I'll definitely get one of those for my trombone as well.

Now I can practise at home with a decent sound without bothering neighbors too much.
 
Yes, there's a couple of apps out there but I have no idea as to how accurate those are... Just the difference between situation A and B would be nice to know in that case. 10dB difference is 10dB difference in that regard ;)
 
Eight Bit said:
Yes, there's a couple of apps out there but I have no idea as to how accurate those are... Just the difference between situation A and B would be nice to know in that case. 10dB difference is 10dB difference in that regard ;)
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Ok, I thought it was either me or the (cheap) trumpet, but as it turns out, that expensive Yamaha electro mute was what messed up the intonation regardless of how I tune the instrument, it was out of tune with itself.
The adjustable cup doesn't have this problem, intonation is ace with that one and it's not much louder when slid all the way down, so I'll measure that and send the other one back.
 
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