PhilsComputerLab wrote:

Everyone will have their own "cut-off" time. For me it's the 386 😀

My first PC and I got very fond memories. 286 and earlier is just not my cup of tea.

I still can't remember what was my first... 😐 started out with Paratroopers and Dig Dug and Froggers on CGA though.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

$400 sounds obscene now, but fast forward 5 to 10 years...

Well, full-size ASUS Rampage and EVGA Classified boards and the likes are just like that!

No VLB slots, shame! If I was going to pay top $$ for a 486 board, I would demand a VLB slot 😀

A 486 needs VLB , PCI, or EISA to be interesting. There are some ISA only 486 that are interesting but they would be over engineered early slow 33mhz systems with Weitek chips.

Vintage gear should be worth enough to not just automatically junk it as worthless, but not too expensive (for common stuff) that people say heck with it and just go emulation. I have tons of spare 386 and 486 boards like I assume plenty of others here do as well. If the market goes up too much hoarders like myself will start digging stuff out to sell (to buy other overpriced gear) so I don't see the prices rising too much without them getting deflated. If you are new to this hobby then deals are going to be harder to find until the old farts who were users during the 486 era die off and their stuff is sold off.

Errius wrote:

10 years from now you'll be able to 3D print this stuff in your home.

I'm pretty skeptic about this. Even now is hard to produce with modern pieces and techniques cheap working clones from the old 386/486 era. Just now are starting to appear things like FPGA softcore simulated machines, or the 8086 board posted here, and them aren't cheap. And you are saying that in 10 years people will have access to 3D printers with enough precision to even print the chips necessary to produce a full working 486 board, in a cheap way? Lol, just 🤣.

And i'm not even talking about the rest of the parts to do that. One thing is a laboratory team actually printing simple circuits and standard visible-to-eye scale transistors to show viability of the procedure, and other very different thing is common people having access to an hypothetical 3D printer machine to actually print ASICs in the near time. And the materials, knowledge and skill to actually use it.

I don't think that 3D printing for electronic designs procedure will be ready for the next 60 or 70 years, at least for common civil people. As time comes, semiconductor manufactured chips will keep working for us in the foreseeable future. With different materials and methods, but chip fabs will not disappear tomorrow, or in the next 40 years.

hyoenmadan wrote:

I don't think that 3D printing for electronic designs procedure will be ready for the next 60 or 70 years, at least for common civil people.

Well, 3D printing is '80s technology, and typical FDM printers are working just like modified CNC machines which are '60s technology, I don't know why home 3d printers started to be popular in this decade, maybe because of microcontrollers like atmega or arduino boards becoming cheaper, but anyway I believe that such technology will be popular only among enthusiasts, and there isn't much that could be done to improve speed or quality of FDM printing. Of course alternative methods of 3d printing, which are more accurate do exist, but they will probably remain only in medical and high-budget prototyping use. There are some processes which use something like photosensitive resin which is stacked in layers, but you already can create electric circuits using screen printing, litography or photoresist. Maybe you could create a double-sided PCB for mainboard in home, but i don't think

Well, I also think that human race didn't invent so much new processes used for fabricating products in the last years.
In fact, we rely only on some basic processes, which are adapted or improved to fit particular needs, and actually a lot of things can be made using them.
For example:

We use processes which are based directly on classical photography, litography or other classical printing techniques: offset printing (newspapers), photolitography used to make CPUs and integrated circuits, resin-based 3d printing, ...

Most processes can be classified as additive:
Moulding: currently the only way to mass-produce plastic cases
Metal casting
FDM 3d printing...

and substractive processes:
Milling,
machining,
cutting...

We also know how to join two objects together:
Welding: lots of different techniques but it always ends up in joining two pieces of metal
Soldering
Glueing... 😜

and so on... but these techniques already existed for many years

Yeah, it is obvious that the technology in general has improved over the years, but I mean that we didn't invent any processes that for example accumulate cosmic energy and dark matter in order to make something out of nothing, we didn't invent teleporting, or fusion power with satisfying efficiency and similar stuff 😁

I'm not skeptical about technology, but I mean that our smartphones are just tiny computers, and the drones are tiny helicopters. And the airplanes are still burning fuel and are totally not ecological.

FPGA is the microelectronics' equivalent of 3D printing. 😀
I've been dabbing into both. If you want you can replicate a full working 486-class machine core components (CPU+chipset) in FPGA, then attach externals (slots, memory etc) to get a full motherboard. It won't be very cheap, or easy.

PeterLI wrote:

10 years from now the people who have nostalgia for the DOS era will be really old or will have moved on.

I'm 38 now.. are you telling me that when I'm 48 I'll be really old??!

Half-Saint wrote:

I'm 38 now.. are you telling me that when I'm 48 I'll be really old??!

well someone else here said that youll die off you old fart and your stuff is gonna be sold 😁
j/k of course ;]

Ahhh.... Guess I have one of my legs in the grave allready. I am 40. 🤣

brostenen wrote:

I am 40. 🤣

absolutely, now only conservatives can save you

You should come to my vigil tomorrow. I'm 47. 😀

mrau wrote:

well someone else here said that youll die off you old fart and your stuff is gonna be sold 😁

You'll have to pry my precious Lucent Winmodem from my cold, dead hands!

I'm 30-ish and already looking into science and tech of rejuvenation/youthing/agereversal/lifeextensionblahblah. I'll live to 200... at least!!! 😈 Unless I got bored long before then and decided to go to another realm (but there's so much to do!)... or maybe I'll get into another body and just carry on. 😀 😀

That said, we all here know a couple of regulars (cough cough A***x) that just have acquired a little too many collections worth looting, er... waiting for. 😜 😁

On 3D PRINTING -- "people, common civil people" -- oh, come on, they won't do this kind of thing, EVER. So the tech will be here sooner than you think, and it's gonna reach only those who really want it and are willing to afford it, or just lucky enough to have access to it, just like it's always been. Think about super-eager computer engineering students + uni labs / facilities. Those are the ones who.

archsan wrote:

On 3D PRINTING -- "people, common civil people" -- oh, come on, they won't do this kind of thing, EVER. So the tech will be here sooner than you think, and it's gonna reach only those who really want it and are willing to afford it, or just lucky enough to have access to it, just like it's always been. Think about super-eager computer engineering students + uni labs / facilities. Those are the ones who.

I have a 3d printer. Built it myself. And I'm not a super-eager computer engineering student, also I don't have access to university labs.

That's just an example, and I'm sure you have much more in common with that group than the rest of the "common people". 😀

archsan wrote:

or maybe I'll get into another body and just carry on.

Isn't that what we are doing already? Maybe you just don't remember...

feipoa wrote:

archsan wrote:

or maybe I'll get into another body and just carry on.

Isn't that what we are doing already? Maybe you just don't remember...

Aw shuck! But I mean another body! One with big, um, boobs.

OK so I see that the answer to this thread title is... "nope".

Boobs - sounds like you're asking for suffering.

In response to your direct concern - I inquired with esapcsolutions 5 years ago on these boards. They no longer make the boards with the ALi chipset because the chip "manufacturer stopped producing the chipsets a few years ago". That was a quote from the guy at ESAPC. Those were the only boards which interested me because you could actually use socket 3 CPUs in the boards. Because of this, the company switched to that integrated chipset/CPU combo unit. It doesn't even have SIMM sockets or cache and is merely a 486 compatible board. It would be interesting to see some benchmarks on such a system, but it is missing the vintage value to the board, and will likely run some benchmarks, then sit in a box until the owner sells or dies. If one person here wants to do some very elaborate group buy, I'd put in $2. I don't care who ends up with the board. Otherwise, I might pay up to $25 to own the board, provided it is the version with 128 MB of RAM. It is interesting that they are using SDRAM. On my 430TX board, I found that 72-pin EDO RAM was better able to handle tight CMOS timings compared to SDRAM - a chipset limitation most likely.

It would be neat to see where the 486 system itself could go if a lot was reimplemented in FPGA and still had slots for components.

You mean to create a 486 CPU out of an FPGA? That would be interesting, especially if you could clone the Am5x86 and take it up to 1 GHz.

feipoa wrote:

the owner sells or dies.

ill beter not buy one, sounds like you have a plan...

can an fpga be clocked at 1ghz nowadays? also i thought the biggest fpga have like 0,5M elements, thats just about what the 486 processor did have;