If I remember right if you want the middle of the road at the most that you want is a 66mhz dx2 with some ability to underclock on the fly. Without the turbo go for a slow 486 build as it will be the upper limit of some of the 386 era dos games and speed sensitive apps.

BTW, the point of these machines is day to day productivity and home use apps. Games will be a distant secondary thing as I've got DOSbox for anything I may want to do with that.

At the most, maybe educational or children's games, but nothing that I'd need to beef up the machine for. I'm looking for specs or specific models of machines that would have been bought by the typical family bringing home a PC for the first time kinda thing.

For the 286, I'd say:
CPU: 8-12 MHz
RAM: 1MB (640k available for DOS)
GPU: Anywhere from EGA up to 16-bit ISA SVGA

For the 386:
CPU: 386DX-33
RAM: 8MB
GPU: 16-bit ISA SVGA (ET4000 would probably be best?)
sound: Adlib or Sound Blaster, although it's optional for non-gaming software

This thread contains some pics from some PC mags circa early 90's, they'll give you an idea of specs for 386 / 486 systems.

Random pics from a computer mag, October 1994 edition.

Before internet, general home use was MSPaint, Descent and Chip's Challenge. Mostly, my computer was just an expensive and complicated CD player. Outside of tinker toy, a computer just doesn't really seem that useful to me unless it's on the web.

GXL750 wrote:

Before internet, general home use was MSPaint

MSPaint came in August 1995 when the internet was already starting to ramp up!

You could say Windows Paintbrush and Deluxe Paint (Amiga), though... the Amiga platform dominated for all those pretty pictures you could find on BBSes then.

GXL750 wrote:

Outside of tinker toy, a computer just doesn't really seem that useful to me unless it's on the web.

That's really a strange thing to hear, as someone whose pre-web PC usage wasn't all that different from what it is now - word processing, (school)work, gaming, amateur hobby programming, being creative with graphics and music, and of course communication.
The only major difference is with that last thing, which was limited to BBSing, and orders of magnitude smaller than it is nowadays.

WordPerfect 5.1 forever! It ran just fine on a 286.

I recommend Daniel's Legacy Computer Collection, which has a pretty kickass collection of screenshots and information (but no downloads) for common software of days gone by. Be sure to click the individual screenshots for more information.

If I was going to do any serious writing it would have to be on a PC with no internet access. My mouse hand seems to work independently of my mind when web access is only a click away, and before I know it I'm... wait a moment, what am I doing here again??

Well, for the 386 I would target a 25 or 33 MHz machine since 40 MHz was already close to the end of the 386 main lifetime. Still 40 MHz was very popular as reliable and cheap substitution for a much more expensive 486DX-33 system. The usual choice was between a 486SX-25 and a 386DX-40.
The graphics card was usually a Trident, Oak or some other cheaper brand with 256 kB, no VESA and maximum of 800x600x16 at 56 Hz or less. Also quite common was a Paradise PVGA1A. A TSENG ET4000 was a more expensive card and not so common in private PCs.
As RAM there was usually just 4 MB, for some extensive Win 3.x usage maybe upgrade to 8 MB though. Everything higher was much more expensive since you usually had then 8x 1 MB SIMM and upgrade would mean buying 4 MB SIMMs.

Jorpho wrote:

WordPerfect 5.1 forever! It ran just fine on a 286.

I recommend Daniel's Legacy Computer Collection, which has a pretty kickass collection of screenshots and information (but no downloads) for common software of days gone by. Be sure to click the individual screenshots for more information.

That site is fucking awesome. I remember the original abandonware site too.

If you're going to get online, you should hook the old PC up to a newer one via serial and limit your baud rate to the appropriate time period. I'll bet modern sites would be awesome via 19.2 + Trumpet Winsock + Netscape 1.0.. 😁

This has to be possible via a modem emulator or something.

The ideal way to do it might be to run Twinsock on the old computer, and communicate with the Internet via tshost running on a different computer. That's how some people with university shell accounts used to do it, apparently.

Very old web browsers have no chance of working with the current Internet, however, due to changes in the HTTP protocol. I saw a video not so long ago showing the different versions of Internet Explorer through the ages; the earliest ones are (even more) useless.

EDIT: Here we are. 1:25 or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5QqYVurImY

Stull wrote:

This has to be possible via a modem emulator or something.

Any Linux box with pppd running and attached to the serial port will do the trick. Then just stick a null modem cable between your old PC and the Linux box.

I'm doing something similar using my Raspberry Pi.

The point of this experiment is to specifically be offline. The closest I want to come to any kind of net access is maybe setting up a serial tunnel to one of my newer machines to get console access to one of my servers; telnet, ftp, ssh maybe? The graphical internet is 100% forbidden in this project.

Remember, period specific. Any of the machines I build up or find from before '95 or so will be non-web use only. Shit, I may try to find a way to set up some gopher access on some of them.

senrew wrote:

The point of this experiment is to specifically be offline. The closest I want to come to any kind of net access is maybe setting up a serial tunnel to one of my newer machines to get console access to one of my servers; telnet, ftp, ssh maybe? The graphical internet is 100% forbidden in this project.

Remember, period specific. Any of the machines I build up or find from before '95 or so will be non-web use only. Shit, I may try to find a way to set up some gopher access on some of them.

You could pop-in an ISA or PCI ethernet card, and telnet into some BBS' for good ole times, and BBS' are pre-internet. There's actually A LOT of BBS' still around, while not dial-in they are setup to be accessed via telnet "call-ins". 😀

If you use mTCP [it's a DOS only internet suite: dhcp, telnet, ftp, irc, etc] its telnet client has transfer protocols built in, so you should be able to make use of most BBS's filebases. Most of the BBS's still around, have their original shareware filebases, such as the infamous Night Owl CD series of shareware, etc. 😀

Back 25 or 30 years ago here is what a person might be doing with their home computer:

Productivity:

- WordStar 3.31 or an early version of WordPerfect
- Microsoft Multi-plan or Lotus 1-2-3
- Crosstalk, Procomm, Telix or Kermit (for modem use)
- The PrintShop
- Dbase ][
- PC Paint
- Fontrix

Entertainment:

- MS Flight simulator
- Lode Runner
- Bop N Wrestle
- Gato
- Etc ...

Programming

- Interpreted BASIC
- Borland Turbo Pascal 3.0
- Microsoft MASM

If you want the BBS experience without the phone bill, use a Telnet client to connect to a BBS through Telnet. The speed will be much faster than the 1200 or 2400 bps that I grew up on but the experience will be nearly identical. (ASCII art and ANSI animations!) With the latest version of the mTCP Telnet client you can even do X and Y modem file transfers right in the Telnet client.

Mike

Ok, here's the next question. Since I want to keep the hardware I pick up for this to as genuine as possible of what the typical home user would have found, should I look for a big-box branded machine and build from there, or try to piece together my own generic boxes from parts?

...I find that a very odd question. They had branded machines back then, and they had big-box machines; why shouldn't you do whatever satisfies you? Certainly, I wouldn't think it worth stressing out over if yo can't find one or the other; it's not like there's a large supply out there to pick from.