Re: Best OS for a 286?

Posted on 2015-04-11, 03:18

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by Caluser2000

in Milliways

in Milliways

How does disk #2 on this page fare, StickByDos? https://sites.google.com/site/rugxulo/ It booted up fine on my 286, had a bit more conv. memory free and apparently supports Fat32, which I've yet to try out. You can only use boot options 1(no memory manager) or 2 (loads FDXMS286 which will bump free …

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Re: Best OS for a 286?

Posted on 2015-04-10, 23:50

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by Caluser2000

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It's available on Trixters ftp server and Vetusware. It's a shame BreadBox doesn't make 1.x available though, even at a minimal cost, because it is a different code base than v2.x up.

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Re: Best OS for a 286?

Posted on 2015-04-10, 23:17

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by Caluser2000

in Milliways

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You are right, it's 542k free(unaltered installation disk so has a few drivers loaded). Bit of random moment on my part. That's with no memory manager. It's still quite a difference.

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Re: Best OS for a 286?

Posted on 2015-04-10, 21:06

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by Caluser2000

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I didn't even think about MS-DOS 7.10 or any other with FAT32 support being able to run on a 286 or not. You definitely have a point. It is a 286 thread after all ;) Just tried the current FreeDos 1.0 boot disk. It certainly doesn't boot off a 286 ;) I would have thought it would come under the …

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Re: Vogons IRC?

Posted on 2015-04-10, 19:02

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by Caluser2000

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I , and a few of Vogons members, visit couple of computer related chat rooms on a daily basis. Nice thing about irc, as mentioned earlier, is it can be used with just about any system, for instance my OS/2v3 486 or in Dos on my 286/12. Some clever and interesting people still use it to nut out ideas …

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Re: Best OS for a 286?

Posted on 2015-04-09, 19:20

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by Caluser2000

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It is irrelevant insofar as Win9x won't run on a 286, but it is useful if you just want to have lots of storage without having large clusters or multiple partitions. So Fat32 on a 286 system is possible using freedos or DrDos 7.01 up ? The reason I ask is because other alternative Dos that natively …

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Re: Best OS for a 286?

Posted on 2015-04-09, 07:06

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by Caluser2000

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Me too I have a 8MB 286, this one is a 12.5MHz SBC based on NEAT chipset, from 1989. POST lasts 30s due to unskippable memory test BIOS reports itself as an IBM 7531 Industrial AT I bought a bunch of EPROM off eBay, I need to upgrade the BIOS. Original one is so buggy. the most obvious is that it …

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Re: Vogons IRC?

Posted on 2015-04-08, 07:34

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by Caluser2000

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There a few good classic computer related IRC chat rooms out there. And they're not terribly hard to find.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-04-06, 06:10

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What hurt GeoWorks was the cost of the software tools to create software for the platform. These are freely available now from Breadbox though. The included software bundle was pretty good for the time, which was it's main advantage. I've used both Win3.x and PC Geos. PCGeos was slow at adopting …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-04-05, 05:04

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

https://orig14.deviantart.net/a968/f/2015/091 … roy-d8o24b7.jpg Bloody nice haul K_C That shell on the 286 is Dos Shell. Easy enough to disable. It should run GeoWorks Ensemble quite well to.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-04-05, 02:18

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just been mucking around with networking in windows 3.1 in Standard Mode on the old girl. Turns out the ftp and telnet clients bundled with the tcpip32b package for wfw 3.11 appear to function just fine on it. I was expecting them to be 386ehn only applications.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-04-02, 23:28

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just playing around one of with my Acorn A4000s, 2megs of ram, 203meg hdd, trialing the software I got last week. The software only PCEm x86 emulator(the multi tasking MDA/CGA/EGA version) is quite interesting. About the speed of an XT Turbo. Really needs a 4meg system though as it takes up 960k.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-04-01, 04:54

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I certainly understand the wasted hours getting things up and running ;) I had RH 6.x/ Mandrake on my Compaq all-in-one 486DX2/66 until the hdd died. Opera 8.5 static might work, albeit a bit slow. That runs ok on my P200mmx system though. You can use a boot disk to initialize the linux boot process …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-03-30, 06:45

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The wifi usb stick started playing up so fitted a pci wifi card, after a bit of a search, to this linux box. Worked straight away on the next start up. Put the 10mtr Cat 5 cable back to were it belonged, hooked up to the switch in the "lab" were my old boxen reside. IRCd into the vc chat room on my …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-03-30, 04:10

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Cool. The system I've got mine on it was the only OS which install on it's particular hdd for some reason so left it there. Sorta OS of last resort ;) Added the Warp 4 server network client which has a few added extras compared to v3 Connect, such as dhcp support. Runs quite well. That system has …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-03-29, 17:54

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Could be the cmos battery is getting low. Systems can do strange things when that happens. I've got OS/2 v3 Warp on one of my 486s on my home network. It's an interesting OS.

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Re: 286 board identification / max. ram expansion

Posted on 2015-03-28, 04:31

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That question is quite easy to answer- Because you can. I've 8megs on mine. Its a my one is bigger than your one thing you see- http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?40708-Zenith-Data-Systems-Model-ZCV-251-EC Ram for these systems now are a lot cheaper than what they use to be when …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-03-28, 02:29

by

by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I didn't buy these I got them for free but it's still cool and certainly retro. :D Sorry don't know much about this system yet except that it's a microcomputer with an 8088 cpu (I think) and it is not working / is missing the keyboard. It switches on and the screen works but it doesn't appear to be …

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Re: 286 board identification / max. ram expansion

Posted on 2015-03-28, 01:22

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have any references for your mobo for the max. amount of ram it can take? Some 286 mobos only supported 4megs total and some 8megs. If it can take 4 x 4meg sticks 30pin sticks the ones you have are most likely the incorrect type.

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2015-03-28, 01:06

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by Caluser2000

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not too shabby a job NeXT.

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