486 DX2-80 - A trip down memory lane

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Rob_In_MO

Rob_In_MO

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Well, for nostalgia I fixed up an old 486. Paid $5.00 for it at a flea-market and was given a large box of parts (sound cards, video cards, floppy drives, etc.) from a Ham Radio friend of mine.

It's a 486-DX2 80-MHz, 256 KB Cache, 48-meg of ram (almost unheard of back then), 1-meg Cirrus Logic Video Card, 2-Gig HDD, 8X CD Rom Drive, 3.5 & 5.25 Floppy Drives, a SoundBlaster 16 Sound Card, and MSDOS 6.22 & Windows 3.11.

While we laugh at these specs, in the early 90's this would've been one heck of a system. I hooked it all up, spend hours downloading abandonware, and have had a blast. I haven't played with Win 3.11 or DOS in years, not to mention ChessMaster 2100, Commander Keen 1-7, King's Quest 1-4, Leisure Suit Larry 1-3, Wolfenstein 3D, and Doom.

I have to admit, it's been a while since i've manually setup an autoexec.bat and config.sys in DOS, especially manually configuring the CD-ROM drive and optimizing memory management.

It even plays MP3's with a Windows 3.11 MP3 player - 256k encoding too, not the horrible sounding 128k mp3's.
Amazing for an old 486.

Now if I get really nostalgic and ambitious, i'll hook up a Commodore 64 one of these days (complete with 1541 Floppy Drives)...

Sorry about the poor pic quality. :oops:

front_on.jpg


doom.jpg


oregontrail.jpg


kq1.jpg
 
Awesome! Looks a lot like the system I wasted hours on playing Sam & Max and TIE Fighter.

I had a hand scanner and the Corel art program suite and thought I was large and in charge.

You should get a copy of Spyglass Mosaic and see if BoB is compatible.
 
puros_bran":onp3rzbw said:
Tie fighter .. YES

I Sometimes play abandonware via DOSbox.
Click to expand...
I've downloaded too much Abandonware to conveniently mention it all.
I have Tie Fighter - it's great!

I have used DOSBox but an emulator doesn't have the same look and feel for me.
Plus, with $5 invested, I didn't get hurt on this deal.
 
Oh no doubt.. kicking it old school is always cool.

That would be a bit much to put in a truck sleeper though. :-D
 
Rob_In_MO":85tvp8sx said:
Well, for nostalgia I fixed up an old 486. Paid $5.00 for it at a flea-market and was given a large box of parts (sound cards, video cards, floppy drives, etc.) from a Ham Radio friend of mine.

It's a 486-DX2 80-MHz, 256 KB Cache, 48-meg of ram (almost unheard of back then), 1-meg Cirrus Logic Video Card, 2-Gig HDD, 8X CD Rom Drive, 3.5 & 5.25 Floppy Drives, a SoundBlaster 16 Sound Card, and MSDOS 6.22 & Windows 3.11.

While we laugh at these specs, in the early 90's this would've been one heck of a system. I hooked it all up, spend hours downloading abandonware, and have had a blast. I haven't played with Win 3.11 or DOS in years, not to mention ChessMaster 2100, Commander Keen 1-7, King's Quest 1-4, Leisure Suit Larry 1-3, Wolfenstein 3D, and Doom.

I have to admit, it's been a while since i've manually setup an autoexec.bat and config.sys in DOS, especially manually configuring the CD-ROM drive and optimizing memory management.

It even plays MP3's with a Windows 3.11 MP3 player - 256k encoding too, not the horrible sounding 128k mp3's.
Amazing for an old 486.

Now if I get really nostalgic and ambitious, i'll hook up a Commodore 64 one of these days (complete with 1541 Floppy Drives)...
Click to expand...
LOL! If you need any software for your vintage machine I'm sure I've got plenty here. Our first PC (not counting a mini Data General in the mid 80s) was also a 486-DX4-100. I remember paying $600 for the 16Meg RAM. BUT...that machine is still in use today by my sister-in-law who refuses to give it up preferring it (except for InterNet & email) over her many times updated new machines. Go figure. I want it back to steal the old ISA SB sound card for DOS game box. Funny.
 
My DX-33 was the cat's meow! Massive 1 meg video card, stupendous 4 megs of ram, one X Cd reader/writer, dual drives. Back when the biggest news when a meg of ram finally got under $50.0!!! Finally ended up to the trash for recycling! Now I'm running a quad at 3.3GHZ. My e-mail is so fast now!!
 
I have my original Syndicate Wars CD somewhere. I can't find the CD key though. I loved that game.

I have a box of 3 Atari 1040 ST's I will one day piece together. What's cool about old gear is you can repair the CPU boards if they have burned out caps or resistors etc.

Congratz on getting an old beast running again!
 
King's Quest...that was some good stuff. I sunk a lot of time into those games back in the day.
 
If I had my druthers, I would STILL have my old TRS-80 Model 3 with 16K and two 5.25" disc drives. I'd be playing text adventure games on that thing every day! 8) I had terrific fun figuring those out, and drawing those huge handmade maps of all the locations. As it happens, just the other day I found and DLed Callahan's Crosstime Saloon for Boxer (A DOSBox emulator package) on my Mac. I'd still rather have the old original computers, though, if I had the space for them! My ideal computer room would probably have a TRS-80, an Amiga, a Commodore 64, and some sort of 486DX system.

I bet it even has a Turbo button. :D
 
Thanks for sharing this. Brings back the memories of when I used to be a sysop running a bbs providing fidonet on a 386SX with IBM OS/2. And the games, oh man I was really hooked on Wing Commander and Mechwarrior, and then there was Bard's Tale and Ultima.
 
If I had a dollar for every dollar I invested in computers, I be off on a world tour. My kickstart was a TRS-80 model 1. That went to an IMSAI with two floppies. Each of the floppy drives originally cost more than a computer today and that was in dollars that carried a lot less inflation along.

But, it also gave me the skills to make a living from it back in CP/M and then DOS days and a lot more personal gratification than my former work. There were times I saw the sun rise that revealed I put in an all-nighter without realizing it. That's isn't typical with a day job.

Doing things like rewriting the BIOS to get a piece of hardware going right isn't something anyone thinks about these days. It was primitive but solving a problem was so fulfilling. After decades of appliances, you couldn't drive me back there either. :)

As to games, my first was Colossal Cave. Meet you at twisty passages and be sure you know the magic word. (Text mode game -- drew maps -- it is still around to download for current systems -- the original was written in Fortran)
 
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