There were two types of products discussed during Computex. The big one was AI and the insane builds required to run those workloads followed by CAMM2 memory modules. Just about every memory vendor had modules on display and just about every motherboard maker has boards to support them however, MSI was the only one sharing their vision.
When I established Ninjalane and later Hardware Asylum the goal was to feature high-end and hard to get computer hardware. Over the years this has served me well and allowed me the chance to deep dive into some of the best motherboard designs on the planet. However, that never made me rich which seems to be a trend with the products on display by Gigabyte during Computex
I remember when Cloud Computing was a popular subject at Computex there were cloud specific motherboards available from ASRock and the same was true during the Cryptomining craze. As a result it would seem out of character if ASRock was to skip AI and, you would be right.
SilverStone is hitting the Enterprise AI segment rather heavily during Computex 2024 with a number of new chassis designs to support multiple graphics cards which can be rack mounted in a data center or standalone as a private on-premise AI compute server.
Much like with CES there are a few companies that buck the trend and hold their presentations at alternative locations. Corsair was one of them opting to have a remote display showing off the latest in gaming gear, XLR audio interfaces, teleprompters, fans and keyboards.
One of the defining characteristics of vintage computers is the “beige” box. This was a rather neutral color for the time period and allowed other hardware vendors a sudo color standard to follow when offering up their accessories.
The motherboard in the Classic Case build had extensive damage that was targeted right around the motherboard mounting hole below the battery. My guess is that when this system was taken out of service it was stored on its side which allowed the battery contents to pool up and attack that one region.
The system featured in this ongoing project is a build from Magitronic. This was a Taiwanese based hardware maker that was able to design and build just about everything that went into their systems. I could not find any specific details about this particular build but, it features a Magitonic 602 motherboard along with some other parts with a Magitronic sticker.
For this Real Retro Gaming adventure, I’m going to play a game from my youth called “Hack”, or PC Hack as its official name. This was a freeware offering that you could download from Bulletin Board Systems or buy out of the back of computer magazines. I'll also be playing this on a 386 40Mhz with dual 5.25" Floppy drives.
During the service life of these computers there were reports of batteries exploding and/or leaking, sometimes they would destroy the motherboard and other times they just stopped keeping time. Either way it was an acceptable risk and usually when the board or battery failed it was time to upgrade anyway.
I have been in the process of collecting some old Retro PC hardware for some YouTube projects and before I started tearing into each of the computers, I wanted to take an image of each hard drive and then document the components in each system.
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