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The Resurrection of an 18 year old PC - the 486DX2 66Mhz

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    #32
    Gyck
    Registered Users Posts: 693 ✭✭✭Gyck


    Fantastic tread, instantly brought me back to the days of connecting up 486 boxes with 10Base2 network cables for weekend Doom sessions. I still have miscellaneous components floating around from those days including a box of 486 SX and DX chips.


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    #33
    Alun
    Registered Users Posts: 21,432 ✭✭✭✭Alun


    Torqay wrote: »
    You'd have to be extremely lucky to find 20 year old floppy disks that are still working, they're way past their sell-by date by now. ;)
    Oh ye of little faith :D

    I've just put some the following through WinImage to test them (not every single diskette, just randomly picked ones) and they all passed!

    Windows 3.10 - 7 diskettes
    MS-DOS 6 Upgrade - 3 diskettes
    MS-DOS 6 Plus Enhanced Tools - 3 diskettes
    MS-DOS 5 - 3 diskettes
    IBM DOS 5.0 - 3 diskettes
    MS Office 4.2 - 25 (!) diskettes
    Windows NT Workstation 4.0 - 3 diskettes
    Windows NT Server 4.0 - 3 diskettes (original disk 1 damaged, replacement disk supplied)

    So if anyone wants them plus a bunch of other stuff, let me know. SirLemonHead gets first refusal.


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    #34
    SirLemonhead
    Registered Users Posts: 2,013 ✭✭✭SirLemonhead


    Alun wrote: »
    Oh ye of little faith :D

    I've just put some the following through WinImage to test them (not every single diskette, just randomly picked ones) and they all passed!

    Windows 3.10 - 7 diskettes
    MS-DOS 6 Upgrade - 3 diskettes
    MS-DOS 6 Plus Enhanced Tools - 3 diskettes
    MS-DOS 5 - 3 diskettes
    IBM DOS 5.0 - 3 diskettes
    MS Office 4.2 - 25 (!) diskettes
    Windows NT Workstation 4.0 - 3 diskettes
    Windows NT Server 4.0 - 3 diskettes (original disk 1 damaged, replacement disk supplied)

    So if anyone wants them plus a bunch of other stuff, let me know. SirLemonHead gets first refusal.

    Excellent! :) Am definitely interested, would love taht stuff, just give me a shout with what I can take


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    #35
    Alun
    Registered Users Posts: 21,432 ✭✭✭✭Alun


    SirLemonhead wrote: »
    Excellent! :) Am definitely interested, would love taht stuff, just give me a shout with what I can take
    You can have the lot!! .. I'm trying to have a bit of a clear out and it's actually getting in the way a bit at the moment. I see you're in Dublin, so you can collect it here in Bray if you have transport, otherwise I can drop them off at yours. PM me and let me know what you want to do.


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    #36
    Torqay
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,835 ✭✭✭Torqay


    Alun wrote: »
    Oh ye of little faith :D

    Not saying that it is entirely impossible, if they're properly stored. I still have a bunch of 5.25" floppies for the old C-64/1541 and many of them still work, at least they did, last time I hooked it up about a year ago. ;)

    I just dug around in my "OS Museum" and set up a virtual machine with Windows 3.11 on a "large" drive (1 GB) with FAT32:

    uvTYm.jpg

    It works fine on MS-DOS 7.1 but as you can see, the venerable Norton Commander struggles :confused::confused::confused: to determine free and total disk space. :D


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    #37
    Alun
    Registered Users Posts: 21,432 ✭✭✭✭Alun


    Yeah, I've got some 5.25" floppies of Turbo Pascal lying around here too, no idea if they work as I don't have a 5.25" drive any more. I've even got some 8" floppies up in the attic from an old NEC APC that I had once upon a time. That machine is currently in a computer museum in the Netherlands :D


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    #38
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Brilliant thread! :)

    I've plenty of gear like this sitting around at my parents' place. I kept a record of what I had back in 2007 so I attached it here. Most if not all of it should still be there. At some point I may give away this stuff rather than dumping it, but it would involve me getting it up to Dublin first.
    SirLemonhead wrote: »
    So you're saying they generally came without heatsink and fan? :pac:

    I didn't mean ALL I guess, mostly a lot. Mine certainally didn't but I did have a 486 that had a heatsink now that I think about it

    I had a 486DX2-66 with a heatsink and a 40mm fan but that was rare enough - most ran with nothing at all. Even most Pentium and Pentium II processors had just a heatsink.


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    #39
    SirLemonhead
    Registered Users Posts: 2,013 ✭✭✭SirLemonhead


    Karsini wrote: »
    Brilliant thread! :)

    I've plenty of gear like this sitting around at my parents' place. I kept a record of what I had back in 2007 so I attached it here. Most if not all of it should still be there. At some point I may give away this stuff rather than dumping it, but it would involve me getting it up to Dublin first.



    I had a 486DX2-66 with a heatsink and a 40mm fan but that was rare enough - most ran with nothing at all. Even most Pentium and Pentium II processors had just a heatsink.

    Give me a shout if you do, I'd love that 5-1/4 floppy drive :)


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    #40
    hamster
    Registered Users Posts: 1,766 ✭✭✭hamster


    Thanks for feedback and tips AND sorry for being late to get back to all. :)

    Dazberry - It was np, its was a joy to see that 386DX in that almost identical SiS board - Vogons is a great site i normally use for DosBox. That whole section on old system there is amazing.

    Alun - thanks for the kind offers. I think I should be ok for software. I'll dig out FreeDos 7.1, fdisk and install.

    Torqay - Great tip on FreeDos 7.1. Thanks! I'll see if I can access the full 4.3Gb with this (beyond the 500Mb bios limit and the Fat16 2Gb limit). Good to know that 3xstart is a work around if i ever do try re-installing windows 3.1

    Gyck - We played doom over a serial cable using the com ports between that 486 and a 120Mhz pentium. Naturally at that stage i was playing from the pentium. Worked great.

    Network card wise i'll see what i can do. I'm assuming even if i got a card i'd need a TSR driver setup on bootup.


    I might also install Borland C (or Turbo C) just to do a primes.c count up to the 1st 25,000 primes and see how long it takes. This whole project was started off when i got my old P2-266Mhz running against my Raspberry Pi and the Pi beat the P2 on the primes count race. It would be extremely interesting to see how that would go lol. My p120 felt like a 400% increase at the time. The P2-266Mhz felt x2 that again. I would probably see a 10 fold increase in the time it would take to process 25k primes. FreeDos first though...... :)


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    #41
    hamster
    Registered Users Posts: 1,766 ✭✭✭hamster


    Installed djgpp c compiler on the 486 and compiled a tiny print primes.c

    It calculated and printed the 1st 20,000 primes (largest being 224,737). It took 34mins on the 486 - an average of 9.8 primes / second.

    The raspberry Pi took: 3mins 18s - approx 100 primes / sec (10 times faster)
    real 3m48.076s
    user 3m18.320s
    sys 0m7.090s

    A modern i3 core chip took: 13.7s - approx 1450 primes / sec
    real 0m17.012s
    user 0m13.713s
    sys 0m0.092

    compiling primes on the 486 took longer than the actual run on the icore3 run .


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    #42
    Procrastastudy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,224 ✭✭✭Procrastastudy


    Firstly its 4am - I relaise I'm here as well.

    Have you tried going outside? Obviously not now its dark.

    Joking aside - as a geek - kudos for entertaining yourself at 4am with out resorting to a website with a similar name to yours!


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    #43
    RUCKING FETARD
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,455 ✭✭✭RUCKING FETARD


    Procrastastudy wrote: »
    Firstly its 4am - I relaise I'm here as well.

    Have you tried going outside? Obviously not now its dark.

    Joking aside - as a geek - kudos for entertaining yourself at 4am with out resorting to a website with a similar name to yours!
    :D


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    #44
    velosolex
    Registered Users Posts: 103 ✭✭velosolex


    Apart from a Sinclair ZX81 this was the spec of my first computer from Dell, later I upgraded the standard RAM from 2MB to 4MB purchased from Dell at a cost of £125!


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    #45
    Procrastastudy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,224 ✭✭✭Procrastastudy


    velosolex wrote: »
    Apart from a Sinclair ZX81 this was the spec of my first computer from Dell, later I upgraded the standard RAM from 2MB to 4MB purchased from Dell at a cost of £125!

    Thats about what they still charge!


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    #46
    puffishoes
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 690 ✭✭✭puffishoes


    Have you looked into picoBSD? it's based on a FreeBSD kernel but not sure if it's maintained anymore. It can off a floppy disk and 4mb RAM


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    #47
    the_syco
    Registered Users Posts: 37,295 ✭✭✭✭the_syco


    Want a better graphics card?

    VGAcards_small.jpg

    A
    fastware ag240d (8MB on board) - the manual says it's a 3D PRO 740. possibly 8MB

    B
    rage pro turbo agp 215r3bja33 - low profile card - has 4 vg3617161dt chips on it, so I'm guessing it has 64MB on it)

    C
    S3 Trio 3D/2X 4MB AGP VGA Video Card S3 QCE2HC

    D
    Creative Labs CT7260 - ports; line out, spdif out, tv out, vga out (blue 3*5 vga connection), vga in (round 3/4/2 connection). has four m11b416256a chips on it, so I'm assuming it's 16MB.

    A, B, and C were in static bags. D wasn't. Unknown if any of them work.


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    #48
    RUCKING FETARD
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,455 ✭✭✭RUCKING FETARD


    If you've eight floppy drives you could do this, lol.



    http://www.geeksugar.com/Ghostbusters-Theme-Floppy-Drives-24529277


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    #49
    mach1982
    Registered Users Posts: 760 ✭✭✭mach1982


    velosolex wrote: »
    Apart from a Sinclair ZX81 !

    I've got one of those, just need the power pack and and video out cable


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    #50
    Orrid
    Closed Accounts Posts: 59 ✭✭Orrid


    Just for fun I rebuilt an original Proliant server. Strange beast with 2 Pentium P90 (90Mhz) chips mounted on the board. This one has an enormous raid array consisting of 5 1.2Gb drives and a giant 'bigfoot' 3.5Gb drive which takes up a full size CDR drive bay.

    Slow as sin. It works but I have no clue what to use it for.


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    #51
    Torqay
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,835 ✭✭✭Torqay


    Orrid wrote: »
    Slow as sin. It works but I have no clue what to use it for.

    NT 3.51 should be flying on this baby. Don't forget to install Service Pack 5, it will fix the Millennium Bug. :D


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    #52
    Orrid
    Closed Accounts Posts: 59 ✭✭Orrid


    I think my (deceased) dad's house has a real treasure in the loft. I put an old Amstrad PCW 8256 up there as obsolete around 1990. It was fully working at the time: spare 320kb single sided disks 16Kb RAM update and a box of games.

    Anyone want a 3Mhz firebreathing blazing green screen monster circa 1985?

    Anybody remember Locoscript???


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    #53
    imitation
    Registered Users Posts: 1,815 ✭✭✭imitation


    Ah man, If Id known there were enthusiasts for building old 486s I wouldn't have thrown out a pile of them I had about 7 years ago, my uncle gave them to me and I had an ambition of setting up a unix server farm. I was glad to be rid of them though, the motherboards must of been knackered as nothing would ever install on them.

    I'm happy enough to reminisce on these old PC's, I would probably be more inclined to try building old Amigas or Ataris, 486s and the like bring back memory's of horrible old office PC's with no sound card. They weighed a Ton and cost a fortune and up until Doom they had no real gaming potential ( that wasn't bettered by other machines).

    Edit: Forgot to say that I LOVE the way the bios boot up screen on the 486 is identical to the one I had on a Core duo machine I just upgraded. Sadly new UEFI bioses have removed that last legacy item (apart from the ATX standard I guess). Then again, hurray for PC's that can boot into windows in the time old ones needed to do a RAM check


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