Funny Windows license key story. Back when I worked at Software Etc., I found jammed behind the shelves a packet labelled something like "Windows for Workgroups Workstation Step-up Upgrade". It was literally nothing more then a license key for WfW 3.11 and was intended to upgrade a 3.10 based …

Run the DOS version. The Windows versions (there was a Win16 and Win32 port) tended to be buggy. As for NT4, I have run it on a 486SX/25 with 12MB of RAM. It was actually quicker in day to day use then Windows 95 on the same machine! No idea why, but it worked.

I'll doublecheck, but thats likely the Intel 82350 series EISA chipset. One of Intel's first chipset efforts date back to 1990.

Got the 100Mhz DX4 overdrive today, so here are some SPEEDSYS numbers for this board. This program seems to ID the HD running at PIO3/DMA1, reasonable given that its an ISA interface. Testing the CF card lead to some amusing results. It pegged the HD speed bar on the bottom, but actual linear read …

The AIW 9600XT was a bit odd in that the fan wasn't actually on top of the CPU itself, but offset on the heatsink. Its seems that most AGP video cards from what I call the "era of crap hardware" had these cheesy little fans that broke and caused so many failures.

The MIDI driver implementation used can make OPL3 chips sound completely different. I was always a fan of how the Voyetra SuperSAPI! driver sounded compared to the standard Windows driver. I don't see any comparisons of Creative's infamous 20 voice "Creative Music Synthesizer" though.

I wonder if that will fit my ATI All-in-Wonder 9600XT. That fan makes quite a racket, but clearance always seems to be a problem with replacement coolers.

I ran across that revision of the manual (dated 1996). It seems to be from a later version of the card, but all of Adaptec's EISA config and overlay files simply don't show the option. I was hoping for a ROM upgrade, but the ROM Adaptec has posted for the cards is older then the one my board came …

The AHA-2740 series BIOS supports drives right up to the 8.4GB INT13H limit. Sadly it doesn't support CD-ROM booting, and I can't seem to get SBM to see my IDE CD. As for the I/O card, its a SIIG SC-JEE012 with a giant "Enhanced IDE" logo on it. Period documentation states it does DMA transfers up …

Until I get some photos up, here are some shots from the ebay auction http://www.nessales.com/ebay/15166/Micronics%20Computers%2009-00173-05%20Motherboard%20Intel%20486DX2%20Pic%201.jpg http://www.nessales.com/ebay/15166/Micronics%20Computers%2009-00173-05%20Motherboard%20Intel%20486DX2%20Pic%202. …

I figured I'd post this here since this is where the 486 gurus all hang out. About a month ago I got an itch to do a 486 build, but with a bus I never really encountered in my years of doing computer repair. I never had an EISA system, so some horse trading on ebay and digging the bins at the …

A lot of the newer drives have a firmware option for changing the interface speed, which can be set using the drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. However, some of the early SATA chips had issues with any drive over 1TB. I don't know if that's the case with the Via controller or not, but I know …