Well, I've been back at it again, long overdue....this is all spanning the last month or two.....
Just put the NEC MultiSync II monitor on the 486 and fine-tuned the focus and the voltage - by god I got that thing crisp! 31 years old and it still looks like new now. Actually, the 486 has been upgraded completley and is pretty much done....
- Upgraded to AMD 486 DX4-100 SV8 Processor with WriteBack Cache
- All 4 RH17 HDD caddies are populated and have OS loaded on them as follows...
- - 15GB - MS-DOS 6.22/Windows For Workgroups 3.11
- - 20GB - Windows 95 OSR2 with all the latest updates
- - 40GB - Windows 98 SE w/ all the latest updates
- - 80GB - Windows 2000 Professional SP4 with all updates applied.....
And the Windows 2000 install is quite interesting to say the least. SP3 gave me the login service timeout error - I forget the specific message - but now that I got it all down - I don't really care. I also got the last version of Firefox that runs on Windows 2000 on there and lo and behold we have a 486 (very slowly) surfing the modern internet and managing to render and show about 95% of the content....well...uh....I guess it works. Found I have to use one of my Microsoft Dove Bar mice with 2000 though because my PC-TRAC trackball does not register as a Microsoft Compatible mouse, hehe. Also, no high speed VLB drivers either for my hard disk controller, as expected.
Of all those I've been using Windows 95 and Windows For Workgroups/DOS the most - Windows 95 because I designed and built a Fuzz Pedal and I've found the 486 is bloody awesome for making gerber files for PCBs of my own design. Windows for Workgroups I've been practically daily-ing as I'm still working on the artwork and programming for 4 games. Went to England in November and showed off my work to some pals, they were quite impressed.
But currently now is figuring out if I still want to hold onto the 286 and 8088 I have. I'm moving, with my wife, hopefully by May at the latest (NV), and I'm not so sure dragging 2 other x86 PC I hardly even use as of late with me is the answer. The 286 has been in the closet all year, still runs, still works, just never feel like using it, and the Tandy 1000/8088 I enjoy playing every so often but we'll see on that one. On one hand, I enjoy Tandy, but on the other hand, it's not as sentimental to me as the 486 era is. Plus the 486 has been a really good all-arounder retro-machine...but it could always share it's monitor with the Tandy (that monitor takes 9 pin and 15 pin connections, Digital and analog). I've still got the Pentium 100 and Pentium 4, those are going no matter what, just have not had time to bring the P4 down to Seattle and have not had time to really figure out weather I want to put the P100 on E-bay modified or stock.
Right now I'm just waiting for about 30GB of Data to move to the 1TB Drive in this computer, some of that stuff I've stored for my vintage machines.