Nice score. Artifact Systems is becoming a lifesaver for things like that. I got my 20mhz board from him.

You do realize, though, that a 25mhz 286 is going to have speed issues with some early games right? The cool factor of having the fastest 286 and that not many other people have one kind of offsets that.

You are right, this thing will definitely run most '87-'88 games too fast, some of them even with turbo on (crazy thing working backwards, isnt it)
Fortunately, I am not particularly interested in the XT era (yet)... My first PC was a Headland 286.

I have just realized that it was my 10th purchase from the guy. The rest were smaller/cheaper items, though. Reliable dealer, fast shipper.

I've bought a few items from that guy too, wish we had more sellers like him as it would make the world a much, much better place, for a few people anyway.

The 286-25 is a fascinating item, so thats a 25mhz bus? Does that thing has external cache? Its a great board with the 30 pin ram slots and a miracle the battery hasn't self destructed, a great score!

Is it faster then a 386sx/16?

It is supposed to be... From Redhill to Vintage hw forums, many people remembered so... We will see the facts. I can run the benchmarks when I get the board but will need help with the comparison because I do not have any 386/486 SX systems.

Should be faster than a 386SX-16. I think Even a 286-16 was faster than a 386SX-16 (unless it had cache).

The memory chips on the 286-25 are DRAM. I am only aware of one single 286 motherboard that has the option for L2 cache, and I have never seen one in the flesh (or photos for that matter).

Magazines at the time wrote that a 286 and a 386SX are roughly as fast, with the 286 slightly faster because it didn't have to convert internal 32-bit stuff to the 16-bit bus.

We had a 20 MHz Harris 286 for a while, between an 8086 and a 386DX-40. Did run a lot of games, though from today's standpoint I don't really see the need for a fast 286 for gaming.

Fastest 286 I have is a 16 or 20 (could be a 20 running at 16 because of board limitations).

From what I have read, the fast 286's were around 10-12% slower than a 386SX at the same clock speed so that would make the 25mhz Harris chip in the range of a 386SX-20, maybe.

I have the exact same board at home, received some time ago without a BIOS chip. I have a couple of 27C512 EPROMs but I recently discovered that, rather than looking for an UV eraser and a programmer, it should be easier to just use a DIP-32 flash chip - it requires a bit of work to adapt, but nothing fancy... I can't wait to see if I have a good board or not (and if I do, it's nice to know I could get that much money for it 😁 ).

Great find! My question is (and I am struggling with this problem as well), how do you use expanded memory with that motherboard? I have Harris 20mhz 286 motherboard, but I cannot use my AST Rampage 286 card at that speed to produce expanded memory (even using wait states). I tried different drivers for the C&T chipset, as well as NEAT chipset expanded memory driver, without success. I tried all BIOS settings with shadow RAM, in conjuction with expanded memory settings, again without any results.

EMS must be simulated then. MM.SYS or HT12MM.SYS is the driver -if my memory serves -for the Headland chipset. EMM 286 Limulator worked for me with a CHIPS based 12 mhz 286.

Remember, your chipset must be explicitly supported by the driver.

http://ibm-pc.org/drivers/memory/memory.htm

Well, it seems vintage hardware is easier to find in our neighborhood. Meaning Eastern Europe.

That's natural. Recycling was not option - hardware, just like anything else was far more valuable by the end of the commie era than a western consumer could have ever imagined... This "spare it, save it, keep the old one kicking" principle still lingers around here - or better, is strengthened by the economical crisis.

Damn... People with 25MHz 286 and my Siemens 486 is only 20MHz... 😵

fillosaurus wrote:

Well, it seems vintage hardware is easier to find in our neighborhood. Meaning Eastern Europe.

Probably because that older hardware was kept in service longer over there because fewer people could afford to keep upgrading every time something new came out. Someone mentioned the Soviet era Spectrum clones. I did some research on these a while back and there were a LOT of them produced by dozens of manufacturers. Some of them even had capabilities that went beyond the original design specs. The Spectrum clones were like the Commodore 64 of Eastern Europe, everyone had one and they kept producing them long after they were considered obsolete.

idspispopd wrote:

Magazines at the time wrote that a 286 and a 386SX are roughly as fast, with the 286 slightly faster because it didn't have to convert internal 32-bit stuff to the 16-bit bus.

We had a 20 MHz Harris 286 for a while, between an 8086 and a 386DX-40. Did run a lot of games, though from today's standpoint I don't really see the need for a fast 286 for gaming.

Me too..

I have a turbo XT ( it wil run normal slow XT games and games that needed a little more speed run as well.) 1985 till 1990 area)

Iam going to build a 286 12mhz for faster games (for games that would run to fast on the 386 computer) and games that runs to slow (needed a 286 for it) on the turbo XT.. I guess 12mhz 286 was the standard from that time area.. 16mhz would be nice, but i guess 12mhz should fast enough for me..

And i have a 386 DX 40mhz computer.. (for game area 1992 till 1994)

I dont know why i should have a 20 - 25Mhz 286 computer.. Because most of the software you needed a 386 for it..

20-25mhz was more a late option for people who wanted a faster computer for a lower price (because a 386 computer was more expensiver then the 286 in that time..)

Could not agree more. I consider these being more of the base of an experiment than actual gaming computers. What are latest/last games and business apps it can run at an acceptable speed? What if we could not afford to upgrade to a 386? (I could not, my second computer was a Cyrix DX40...)
It was not nearly as expensive as buying a high-end 66 mhz capable 486 board (those are way over USD 200 by now). In the meantime I managed to build a stable 180 Mhz AMD 5x86 config on a Soyo SAW2, much more reliable than an oc'ed Cyrix which IMHO is not a real 486 anyway but a lobotomized M1... So having done with the 486 speed race I just decided to do this experiment.

I can imagine a 25MHz 286 must be able to run Wing Commander quite nicely. Wolf3D would probably be playable as well, though afaik that game really needs a 386 to run well.