286s were almost always came with drives (if they had any) around 40MB in size, also in here. But... When I bought my first ever […]
Show full quote
286s were almost always came with drives (if they had any) around 40MB in size, also in here. But... When I bought my first ever PC in early 1992 (a cheapo 386SX-16, I had a very limited budget), 386DX was the king, 286 was something nobody buys, 486 was the (very) high end. 386DX-40s were going with 80 or 120MB HDDs. And 200 and more MBs were definately high end. Mine came with a 40MB drive, not because it's mainstream, but because I was poor. In late 1993 though, I supplied it with a second drive, an 240MB one.
When I finally upgraded my whole system into a 486-33 in mid 1994, I used the same drives, but by the end of 1994 and during first half of 1995, 540MB limit was already reached, VL bus controllers with their own "8GB" limit BIOSes was mainstream. This was the time of (not so) late 486 and early Pentium.
When I get my first Pentium in late 1996 / early 97 , It already had bigger-than-a-GB drives which I transfered from my last 486 system (Cyrix 5x86).
So, 250MB HDD being a thing for late 486 / early Pentium is a bit off.
All aside, my 486 build today has a 20GB and a 30 GB drive on it. My 386SX build has a 3GB. I don't see any point in limiting myself in HDD capacity today, which was a thing of the past, due to lack of money and BIOS limitations.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that all the HDDs I talked about above in my 386/486 builds are real mechanical HDDs. I use real HDDs in all of my retro builds. Actually 6 of the 7 HDDs in my daily modern(?) PC are also real HDDs. I love mechanical HDDs, both SCSI and IDE, just not the oldest and relatively expensive small capacity ones. 😊