VOGONS


First post, by DeafPK

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I took the time to clean up and reassemble this budget-oriented pc from 1993 / 94. At one point I had etchy fingers and wanted to put in a DX-33 or DX2 and more cache, but I decided to keep it low-end mostly just to see how it performed. Also, I did spend quite some hours of my childhood on an SX-25.

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The machine and its parts. 8 megs of parity ram, 128k cache is integrated, S3 924 video card in 32-bit local bus mode. Also it has a Mozart sound blaster clone with a 2x Mitsumi drive that goes with it. Possibly one of the early "multi-media" bundles.

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It's not fast for a 486. There were some ussues with the ram, hence some figures with only 4 megs. I will supply further performance details using the DosBench pack supplied by our good guy Phil.

"an occasional fart in their general direction would provide more than enough cooling" —PCBONEZ

Reply 1 of 3, by chinny22

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Nice stock PC, nothing about it is highly desirable but that in itself is the beauty. Its a true representation of countless PC's in offices and Schools everywhere.
I would have scratched that itch and upgraded, your stronger then I am!
Always liked the "Pizza box" form factor, something about the dimensions are nicer then full height desktop cases.
Mitsumi drive is quite handy on systems with just the 1 IDE channel as well, wish mine still worked.

Reply 2 of 3, by DeafPK

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I agree that it brings back memories of these cheap pcs in schools and offices. I also happen to like the compact form factor - actually I have a weak spot for powerful systems put in a sleek little box, that is when the components and power supply are fairly normal and can be replaced or upgraded.

So for some more benches - I think it can be interesting to compare this to a high-end 486 or even some 386 builds.

3Dbench - 13,5
PcPlayer - 3,6
Doom (for slow computers) - 2943 realticks
TopBench - 87

I also ran the full screen Doom bench but it suffered heavy lag, partly due to the slow read speeds from the CD-ROM drive (have the bench suite on CD).

"an occasional fart in their general direction would provide more than enough cooling" —PCBONEZ

Reply 3 of 3, by BSA Starfire

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That is a great little machine! Glad you left it stock, not many left like that these days 😀 A real piece of history that has all but vanished.

286 20MHz,1MB RAM,Trident 8900B 1MB, Conner CFA-170A.SB 1350B
386SX 33MHz,ULSI 387,4MB Ram,OAK OTI077 1MB. Seagate ST1144A, MS WSS audio
Amstrad PC 9486i, DX/2 66, 16 MB RAM, Cirrus SVGA,Win 95,SB 16
Cyrix MII 333,128MB,SiS 6326 H0 rev,ESS 1869,Win ME