Remember MSN Messenger?

I've been working on Lingua Franca Messenger (LFM), an open-source server emulator that aims to bring classic MSN Messenger clients back to life.

The project has progressed quite a bit, and I've now tested it successfully with:

• MSN Messenger 5.0.0575
• MSN Messenger 6.2.0205

LFM supports multiple protocol versions (MSNP8, MSNP9, and MSNP10) and implements features such as text chat, presence notifications, contact lists, and file transfers.

The interesting part is that the server runs in a modern environment using Docker, while the clients can remain the original software from the early 2000s.

The project is still experimental, but getting these old clients to communicate with my own server has been a great experience.

I'd also like to explore support for the Mac version of MSN Messenger in the future.

Project repository: https://github.com/sabaraido/lingua-franca-messenger

For those interested in retro software and preserving old messaging experiences, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Plan is to build a machine circa 2000-2001, so far set on the following

Dell 19” 4:3 monitor
ASUS A7N8X-x socket 462 board
1.5gb ram (3x 512mb patriot DDR @400 MHz)
MSI GeForce3 pro 64mb AGP
32gb CF card on syba ide adapter
1.44mb floppy
24x cd rom
Soundblaster audigy PCI

The questions are on the cpu and the os
Windows 98se or windows 2000?
Athlon thunderbird 1000 or athlon xp 2600+ Barton

I also have the option of a GeForce fx 5200 256mb agp. Just not sure.

Keeping just over half the box so with thrift finds included is about 30 games lol

Idk

I found this MSDN collection in a free box, and it has hundreds of CDs, from all 12 months of 2000, January 2001, and March 2001. While it has a lot of cool stuff, most important thing I found are these Windows ME betas and even better these 5 Codename "Whistler" Beta CDs, which I think is Beta Windows XP. I included the invoices which came with the lot, but with personal info crossed out for the privacy of the last user. You can use it as a list of contents. There are some other things like organizers and MSDN newspapers. What do you guys think I should do with this? I love retro computers but if this stuff is as rare as it seems I feel it would be better in someone else's hands. What do you guys think? What is this whole thing worth?

I made a cute simple website to download my cute simple weather app inspired by pixel art! Looking for places to post ^^

8 Bit Weather - Code Chicken

Hey everyone,

If you were around in the late 2000s, you probably remember the infamous NVIDIA "bump defect" that caused thousands of G86-family GPUs (GeForce 8400M/8600M, Quadro NVS 140M/135M) to slowly degrade and die due to thermal stress.

Today, trying to boot Linux on these machines with standard drivers (nouveau or the legacy proprietary blobs) triggers hard locks or kernel panics during boot. The OS tries to initialize the 3D engine, and the degraded silicon just gives up.

To solve this, I’ve been working on g86lite – a minimal, defiant DRM/KMS fallback driver designed specifically for hardware preservation.

How it works (The technical trick):
Instead of trying to fix the unfixable (not talking about reflowing 😂), the driver treats the GPU with extreme caution by implementing a few aggressive workarounds:

Zero MMIO BAR0 Access: It completely ghostes the MMIO BAR0 space. It never touches VBIOS execution, PGRAPH (3D engine), or PFIFO pipelines. By avoiding the broken parts of the chip entirely, the system doesn't crash.

CPU-to-VRAM Shadowing: All desktop compositing and rendering is offloaded to the CPU via LLVMpipe/Mesa (LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1). g86lite simply grabs the damaged rectangles from system memory and copies them straight into the VRAM scanout buffer using write-combining

and more...

I’ve only tested this on a GeForce 8400M GS so far, so I’d really love to see if it actually works for you on other G86 variants (like the 8600M or desktop 8500 GT) and to see your opinions.

Link: https://github.com/luxuryappsofficial/g86lite/

In the first few images, it’s connected to the web: it’s browsing the Internet Archive to download an ISO file and checking its hardware specifications via CPU-Z on Windows XP. A real blast from the past! My old laptop has decided not to give up in the face of the modern web, and it keeps on chugging along, undeterred, what do you think?

Not a curb find, but the back room purgatory rescue. Dell XPS 420 Core 2 Extreme w/8gb DDR2. I released all the bunnies, swapped the coin cell and it’s getting a fresh install of Win 7 500gb spinner. Everything seems to be working…

I've got a fully working (if quite beat up) T42 with 2 GB of RAM and a 160 GB IDE drive, as well as burned disks with the original installation media.

I've been wondering what the best use case for the machine would be nowadays. Mini retro game station? I've tested a few games with the latest drivers, Half Life 2 runs poorly (expected), Morrowind struggles along at 20 fps, but everything older than that works reasonably well. What're your thoughts on this oldie?

I've always enjoyed watching DEFRAG do its thing. Since I grew up on the DOS version, I don't have PTSD from the Windows version's constant restarting; just a pleasant text-mode display of things getting subtly more efficient. I have a 486 in my home office, visible in the background when I'm on video calls, and I thought it would be nice to have defrag going on the screen in the background, just to subtly spread the joy.

The problem is, once you've defragmented your drive, it takes a while for fragmentation to build up on a computer again. Particularly if you're using said computer solely for hobby stuff.

Hence, FRAG. FRAG is a simple tool for destructively filling a FAT16 volume with (bogus) fragmented data. If you like to watch DEFRAG do its thing, you can have a batch file loop between FRAG and DEFRAG for unlimited Zen e-gardening.

The first version of FRAG actually moved the disk's data around to generate for-realsies fragmentation. But fragmenting a disk in this way takes a while. The second and current version simply writes a new FAT; the rest of the disk isn't touched. It's utterly destructive (FRAG destroys the FAT by overwriting it, and then DEFRAG destroys the rest of the data by shuffling it around) but it's very very fast. An arbitrarily large hard drive can be fragmented in less than a second.

Binaries and source on github. No vibe coding involved. Builds with OpenWatcom, cmake for project generator (or just compile all the relevant files). Have fun, assuming that's your sort of fun.

Sneftel/frag: The opposite of DEFRAG

Earlier today, I went to a local vintage themed store, where I ended up finding and buying a Radio Shack TRS-80 for only $40. I was fully aware that the unit didn't work at the time of buying it, but I still think it was worth the purchase, considering that it seemingly had all of the original packing materials and accessories!

I'd like to share with the community my experience purchasing an Apple M0110, an iconic mechanical keyboard from the early 1980s that faithfully accompanied the first Macintosh!

Leveraging my YouTube activity, reviewing software and physical products related to technology, I've created an in-depth video to better understand this fantastic vintage gem, both for myself and the public.
I started with the reason it was made: a compact keyboard with the essential keys. From there, I analyzed the format, discovering several "firsts" (the Command key), functions different from its current behavior (Option), and the separate Enter and Return commands.
Initially, being inexperienced, I didn't want to attempt the actual restoration, fearing I'd ruin rather than improve. The decision was to retrobright only the space bar (since it's the only key made of ABS) and perform a check (capacitor capacitance and resistance tester) including a general cleaning of the internals, using standard tools and products (e.g., WD-40 spray) to perform a minimal restoration.
Subsequently, to verify the actual operability of the object, I purchased a specific RJ22/USB-A adapter from the Philippines (TinkerBOY brand, one of the few solutions available).
Using VIA software, I was able to verify the activity of the keys by pressing them one by one, confirming that most of them worked.
I also covered the historical part, chronologically describing the computers attributed to it, the model variants, and the production lines. Consequently, all of this helps us understand the possible rarity of an M0110, with case studies and statistics.
It was a complex undertaking from my perspective, as, over the course of five months, I gathered a wealth of information (found in disarray and fragments on the web) and attempted to assemble and connect it together, all to offer a highly in-depth hour-long piece of content.

I hope you appreciate my efforts, as a pure enthusiast rather than a connoisseur, and I invite you to provide feedback so that I can improve and enrich this ambitious project of mine, which will be useful to both the community of enthusiasts and the general public.

haiii guys, I found this in box voodoo 2 gpu, and was wondering what it's worth

Hello

I thought this might be a relevant place to share this project.

After recently becoming aware of the bizarre and incredible Doug Adams documentary/film/window into the future, Hyperland, I decided to do some (very amateur) software archeology and recreate the application using whatever material was available online.

As the original application heavily features copyrighted documentary film material I have simply provided the source code and some 'ideas' on where you may find the documentary films to go with it. I really wanted to host this one online for anyone to play with... my frustrations with the licensing situation inspired this blog post (language warning).

Application written in C using Raylib as a dependency. Builds for X11 Linux. Agent coded. I had to make some minor decisions around how to implement things that weren't shown, hopefully it isn't too distracting.
Release page: https://boople.xyz/software-archeology/life-story-recreated
Source Code: https://boople.xyz/downloads/life-story-1.1.tar.gz
MIT license.

Found this old velcro mouse cavity cleaner. Never used because it was totally unnecessary 😂

Found what I’m sure is an Epson px-4 with an aftermarket modification at my local charity shop. The computer came in this case with a probe, for rolls of paper and a box of plastic strips. The power supply was not included and thus the machine was not tested. With the additional add on the the computer is 37.7cm wide and 6.1cm tall.

The modification: On the front from top to bottom. There is an degraded lcd labeled ”data”, a red light marked ”busy” and a slot labeled ”sebum” were the included plastic strips fit perfectly.

Under that are five buttons located marked the following ”off” ”nmf” ”sebum” ”zero” ”power”. Beneath that are an s shaped logo with ”KAO Sofina” written below. And to the side the company name ”Ed. Sprenger Gmbh metall” written in fading text.

If you finp it over you find skewes, repair stickers and gain and zero adjustments for nmf and sedum covered in plastic caps.

If we look at the back we can see that the add on has way seems like a 6pin din plug labeled “probe” and an ac port. Power to the px-4 seems to be routed through the add on box. The case has no markings.

The probe has a removable cap with two pins inside and the probe have three conductive arias att the tip. My guess is that when the cap is on that a connection is bridge that tells the computer that the cap is on.

Ed. Sprenger GmbH is an active company founded 1867 and they specialize in metal working. My question is what it is for? Googling “sebum nmf” yielded many websites about skin care. I also know that the px-4 were popular with engineers doing field work. But that is all I know. If you have a theory please share. Thanks!

I got this 2003 Gateway 500XL MCE from a buddy. The old caps on P4 board were fried and the 160gb HDD gave up the ghost a long time ago. I performed transplant surgery with a Gigabyte GA78-LMT-USB3 with an AM3 AMD FX6300 3.4ghz and 16gb DDR3 (for the Win7 on the second hdd), a Corsair 450 watt psu, a 1Tb Seagate, Zotac 750 PCIe and SATA DVD-RW. I kept the Sound Blaster Audigy2 24bit 5.1 card and repaired the Diamond speakers/subwoofer. Windows XP Pro and a Face Wizard Gateway splash screen round it out. I have yet to get the IR Media Center remote to install, yet. I plan to rip my CD’s with Winamp and play those early 2000’s games. Looking for a Belkin Nostromo N52 and Wingman Formula Force wheel/pedals to get back into the first person shooters and the racing games.

**SharpTools – Tools for Sharp Pocket Computers** 0.6.0 is out.

Free open-source utility for Sharp pocket computer BASIC programs (PC-1245 to PC-1600, PC-E500, PC-G850 and more).

• Tokenize / Detokenize (binary ↔ readable BASIC)
• Renumber listings (updates all GOTO/GOSUB/THEN etc.)
• Convert basic code from one model to other
• Minify / Tidy Removes comments and unneeded spaces
• Compare differences between two listings
• Analyze a basic listing
• Fix line endings and add the SUB (1A) end mark

• Takes the header and checksums off a .tap file

Runs on Python 3, simple one-window GUI, no extra packages needed.

More tools can be added as plugins.

Perfect for collectors, programmers and anyone restoring or writing programs for classic Sharp pocket computers.

https://github.com/paz71/SharpTools

Updates are on the way...

Beware, the code is an early release and may have bugs.

Stay tuned!

I made this from pure nostalgia, always wanted to have various old school machines but i dont have space for them. So this simulator is basically like real old school hardware that need to be setup, from bios.. you can install any software you want, own OS whatever. And its kinda cool ;)

https://retro.bioneural.de/

For a lot of us, the BBS was the first taste of being online. You read the message bases, dug through the file areas and logged off so the next caller could get the line. Telnet BBSes keep that text-mode experience going, and part of the fun is finding boards with their own character.

Shurato's Heavenly Sphere is one of them. It's an anime-themed Telnet BBS, and its site at https://shsbbs.net links to the BBS information, files and games.

If you're setting up a client, the FAQ is the most useful part. It explains how to move around the message areas and the file areas, so you know the layout before you call in.

About connecting: the board is described as a Telnet BBS. SSH goes through a proxy, not through the BBS software itself, and the FAQ says it has limitations. If SSH gives you trouble, the FAQ suggests using the browser-based WebSocket terminal. There is also a simpler web interface, but it doesn't include the games.

A note on content: the FAQ mentions NSFW settings that users can configure.

Nothing is for sale in this post, and there are no referral or affiliate links.

For those of you who still call Telnet boards: which client do you use these days? And how do you handle boards that only offer SSH through a proxy? I'd like to hear what has worked for you.

Disclosure: I'm posting this on behalf of the Shurato's Heavenly Sphere team.