Greetings all,

(Pictures are linked because gigantic and I haven't a resizer in Ubuntu on this computer)

This computer was given to me by a retired prof as a bonus to his 386SX/16 system - It came pretty clean, all manuals and software, and an era-correct Windows keyboard. There is a decent amount of rust on the bottom panel, facing outwards (floorwise) for some reason. Otherwise, it's pretty clean. Straight away, the computer didn't want to boot because of an RTC failure. Joyous occasion - It contained the battery inside the RTC (A la Dallas DS1287) - Popped the IC and out came the dremel, soldering iron, and krazy glue to attach the new button cell housing to the top of the RTC. While I was at it, I put in an extra MOLEX for a ZIP drive.

It booted in the following configuration:

-TS54P AIO (Triton FX chipset) - I remember the VX chipset was the desired one...
-P100
-16 Mb RAM
-256K cache
-1.2 Gig drive (Quantum)
-4X Mitsumi CDROM (wretched drives - I remember these things spitting out CDROMS while still spinning, and this one is no exception)
-1.44 Mb floppy
-Soundblaster CT 2940
-ISA V.34 modem
-2 Mb Avance Logic CT 550 PCI video card
-A bare bones Windows 95 (1st OSR)

The previous owner said he received this machine in late 1995, probably around the start of the September semester.

Some soldering required:

I've worked in a computer store for several years in the mid 90s and I've been a keen observer of computers as a kid in the 80s and I've never come across the following case at any point in my life:

Post-upgrade:

Standard back (post-upgrade):

A look inside (post-upgrade):

I was moderately satisfied with the hardware, but I looked inside my bin of parts and they started calling to me to be used and honestly, I thought I'd never use them (I'm more of a 386/486 kind of guy). The call was answered and this is what emerged:

-A P166 CPU (max this board can support - I also found a 133 but a pin was broken off, as well as a 120 and several other166s and a 200)
-Another 16 Mb of EDO RAM (for a new total of 32)
-A 3COM Parallel Talking II NIC (PCI)
-A 4 port USB card (PCI)
-An IDE Zip/100 drive (most of my retro PCs have one, and I have two external ones for my retro laptops - Easy to move large files between them)
-A Quantum Bigfoot 6.4 Gig hard disk (for games, naturally)
-And finally, I ordered a Rage II+ 4Mb ATI video card (from Poland)

I loaded Windows 98SE on this machine and it works really well. Here's some pics of what's in there now:

And what came out:

The Bigfoot (Sorry, it's not coming out of there, it wasn't easy to mount)

Some POST screens:

And finally, some case shots (Yes, I did get that LED to work correctly, albeit with an AA cell instead 😉 )

Overall, the system works great - I use it for games mainly, and I don't foresee any additional upgrades. Total cost was a day's worth of cleaning and soldering some bits here and there, and the Rage II+ set me back 70 PLN ( about $25 CAD)

It is time to concentrate on my 486DLC now...