Two brands met on one old beige PC: the comtech logo on the front panel and a PACOMP – Assembled in Germany label on the underside of the case. Tracing their origins opened an interesting chapter in the German computer market of the 1990s.
Core i7 Extreme, dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990, 24 GB of RAM, a 1500W power supply and water cooling for almost everything. After fifteen years, I got my hands on a system that in its day represented almost the absolute pinnacle of what could be built. Sometimes you come across an old computer worth saving. And…
This time I got my hands on a branded Siemens T-Bird computer, a typical representative of office PCs from around the year 2000. My configuration is equipped with a Biostar motherboard and a rather interesting Intel Pentium III processor. At first glance it looked complete and reasonably well preserved, but inside it was hiding a…
Every now and then something happens that delights any lover of old hardware. Exactly such a moment came this winter when I was walking home through the housing estate. Next to an e-waste container I noticed an old computer case. At first glance it was obvious that it was nothing modern – rather a piece…
Retro computers have a special charm. It is not just about performance or compatibility with old games, but above all about the atmosphere of a time when PC hardware was developing at an enormous pace and every new graphics card or processor represented a major leap forward. That is what I enjoy about collecting old…
I rescued an old Dell Precision 210 from the clutches of recycling. Despite its age and the place where it had been lying, the computer looked undamaged. It originally had Windows Millennium installed, but the system would not boot at all and crashed immediately during startup. I decided to take a closer look at the…
In August 2022 I bought an ATARI 800XE. It came with a power supply that was obviously not original, but it was well made enough to deserve a closer look. Original-era Atari power supplies are not always suitable for continued use after so many years, because ageing components can potentially damage a valuable computer. As…
In the 1990s, under the leadership of Winfried Hoffmann (77) and his partner Rolf Wiehe (75), one of Germany’s most important computer assembly companies of its time was established. The two enterprising managers, drawing on experience from their time at Commodore, founded Aquarius System International (ASI) in October 1989 with the aim of becoming Europe’s…
Let me tell you a story that every collector and retro-computer enthusiast would love to experience. I will skip where and how I got the ATARI and instead reproduce in full what the gentleman who rescued the discarded ATARI told me. So, I quote: So I’m taking the rubbish out to the container in front…
When I got my Amiga, I thought it would be nice to find some other original Commodore peripherals for it. Some time ago I bought a well-preserved Commodore 1084S-D2. It is stereo and sounds nicely retro, but for the sake of appearance it would still be nice to have a pair of separate speakers on…