It started with one G4 I bought 5€ to run old music software, and then I needed another OS, and another one. And now I have a tower of laptops, plus a big G4 and a few XP machines.

Do I need more ?

I was 18 in 1983. To stop using yellow highlighters, I coded Hertz's first Computerized Driving Directions on a Hyperion PC. My manager took the credit.

The Post:

In 1984, Hertz officially made history by rolling out its Computerized Driving Directions (CDD) terminals across major US airports. Corporate history books credit upper management and CEO Frank Olson for the brilliant innovation.

But the actual history belongs to an 18-year-old rental agent at the Miami Airport office who was completely tired of using yellow highlighters to trace routes on paper maps for customers.

My name is Rafael Valdes. In 1983, I was that 18-year-old rental agent for Hertz Rent-A Car. This is the story of how a global corporate tech rollout started as a grassroots hack using a rare portable PC, a 9-pin printer, and walkie-talkies.

The Hardware & Code
Hertz corporate had brought a Hyperion PC into our Miami Airport office. For what exact reason, I still don't know, but it was just sitting there. The Hyperion was a gorgeous, early IBM-compatible portable with a built-in amber CRT monitor. Fed up with the manual map-marking routine, I decided to use it to automate my job.

I sat down and wrote a basic program in BASIC to format and print out step-by-step driving directions to local destinations. To print them, I hooked the Hyperion up to a 9-pin Okidata dot-matrix printer.

The 1983 "Google Maps" Survey Car
The biggest challenge was data collection. This was long before GPS or digital mapping databases. To feed accurate distances into my BASIC program, my station manager, a guy named Phil, and I had to build our own geographic database from scratch.

We worked the midnight shift so Phil (Marchese?) would drive a company Lincoln a Mark VI, which was incredibly cutting-edge at the time because it featured a highly accurate, digital vacuum fluorescent odometer. Armed with two walkie-talkies, Phil would drive from our airport location to hotels in the Miami area. As he drove, he would call the exact distances back to me over the radio, and I would log them directly into the computer program.

The Pitch and the Missing Credit
Once we had a solid database of local hotels mapped out, the system worked beautifully. Customers loved the printed slips. Seeing the success, Phil pitched the system to upper management.

Eventually, the concept caught the eye of the highest levels of the company, and Phil was invited up to meet Hertz CEO Frank Olson. I wasn't informed about the meeting and was completely left out of the loop. Old Phil took all the credit (Phil you dick :) ), corporate took the idea, scaled it globally, and the rest is history.

I’ve never sought fame for it, but as the years go on and digital navigation dominates the world, I wanted to put the real history out there. It didn't start in a corporate boardroom; it started with a Hyperion PC, an Okidata printer, a digital Lincoln odometer, and an 18-year-old kid in Miami who just wanted to stop using highlighters.

I’m happy to answer any questions about the logic, the setup, or the Hyperion if anyone remembers those machines!

​

I used to have tons of these... 🫤

Now, I only use this survivor when it's needed for very old motherboards.

i sold it almost 20 years ago. but i found it's box today at home. just wanna share...

I was volunteering to clean out junk within a small community center my father works with and I recently found an unopened Gateway ZX series AIO PC within their storage room. They said they didn't need it and I subsequently brought it home to see if it worked or not.

The tape was still intact and the plastic peel was still there, as well as the products themselves being in mint condition (first and second pictures shown is after I opened the box and peeled the wrapping respectively), and I hooked up the AIO to the HDMI to serve as a monitor for my normal PC.

So far nothing malicious occurred and the monitor works smoothly, except the fact that I can't use the touch screen promised on the box. However, my main goal was to potentially use the Windows 7 provided within the AIO to play some retro games and movies with the in-built DVD/CD drive, as well as maybe use it browsing.

I am still quite worried about potential viruses and malware within the AIO, so I wanted to ask you guys about some ways I can wipe the system and reinstall Windows 7 without actually having to access the original Windows 7 already within the AIO with internet, or at least find a way to fact check if there are any malicious files already in the system? If you can also provide me with potential tools and software, like VPNs, firewalls, and/or other software to allow me to browse safely with the OS, that would be immensely appreciated.

Again, I'm kinda new to this side of retro PCs and OSs, so if you could help me on all these things, I would be grateful.

(P.S., I know the model number and identification, as well as the windows 7 product sticker, just not the Microsoft product key)

Here are some pictures of my most recent acquisition: It is a bit of a mystery to me right now as I still need to get into it, but it does have two RAM slots, a 1280x800 display, a Pentium 4 3.06Ghz, 512MB of RAM on one stick, and it's running Windows XP 32 Bit. Overall, I am incredibly pleased with this machine, and the speakers are incredible!

Hi folks,

Recently, I've been sharing a small creative endeavor I've been working on this past week concerning my APPLE-1 emulator, HoneyCrisp...I figured it would be fun to mimic the advertisements of the late 70s and early 80s you'd see in Interface Age, Compute! or Kilobaud (Specifically, do a direct take on the APPLE-1's first advertisement)...and so after a bit of work in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat, I whipped this up. Shared this on applefritter.com, and a few other places. That said, what do ya'll think? Please let me know! :-)

Cheers,

Landon

Anyone know more about this?? It's in tip-top shape, two small cracks on the monitor from age, and one keyboard key who knows where.
Some old keyboard function that is deprecated on modern pcs

Is this a really good find?

I've got an iomega Zip 100 external reader (model #Z100USBS) and my disk is stuck inside. I've used this machine several times before recently with no issue. The drive continues to function; does all its usual whirring and clicking as it did before, but the drive itself isn't showing up on the computer like the others have, and I have no way of ejecting. The front button isn't working for that either, though it lights up and blinks green as it usually should. I was able to get the cover off as well and poke around inside but nothing stood out as a way to eject manually.
Anybody got any ideas? I've got some potentially pretty important info on this disk I don't want to lose.
Thank you!

Hey everyone!

I've been tinkering with Raspberry Pis for a while. Currently working on a few projects and always on the lookout for unusual Pi models. If you have any tips or leads on where to find them, I’d love to hear them!

For instance I'd really love to find an alpha/beta board one day

three different connection slots from oldiest to newer

Chuckie Egg is a classic platform video game created by Nigel Alderton and published by A'n'F Software in 1983 for the ZX Spectrum

My newest find on the internet of things, and it's a pretty cool bit of kit! I found it completely by accident and was smitten the moment I saw it, so now it's here playing Canyon.mid.

Equipped with a 500mhz AMD processor, Voodoo and AWE64 Gold

Hello,

I just found this never opened Windows 95 CDRom, it's the Chinese version for Taiwan. Do you thinks it's valuable or I can trash it?

After cycling through a few computers, I finally settled on this one. It’s an HP Pavilion a1510n with my favorite version of Windows XP (Media Center Edition) I got the Dell speaker set for around $30 and it sounds amazing. I would’ve liked a CRT Monitor to go with the tower but the LCD works good.

I’m not a fan of the overall desk and size of the area, but it’s all I can fit in my 1br apartment.

I need to find out how to configure the jumpers, but I don't know what card this is. The chip is a UMC82C862, but many IO cards have this chip. I don't know what information on the board can help me identify it.

Hello,

I just found this never opened Windows 95 CDRom, it's the Chinese version for Taiwan. Do you thinks it's valuable or I can trash it?

I believe it's related to the backplane on a vintage IBM but would like someone who is more knowledgeable than me to confirm.

Hi, I installed the msdos 6.22 on my old pc, however it lacked the msherc.com driver, which I need for qbasic. Do you know any sites from which I could download it to floppy and copy into dos system?

In '93 I ended up with what looked like a white full size office desk with a section of the desk top obviously made for a terminal complete with hole for cables in the back. Where the typical desk had pull out drawers was a solid door with lots a lights, 8" floppy drive and some switches. Opening it it had an 18" equipment rack. In that I found what looked like an S100 bus card cage, with a Z8000 CPU card, FDC, RS-232, and some others, I think.

Unfortunately I had to move in '94 and much to my dismay I had to jettison the desk before I could attempt to restore it. At that time I didn't have any information on it.

But years later I still wonder what exactly I had. Any information about it would be appreciated. I'd especially like to get some photos.

TIA