I also thought of some kind of "parenting" strategy, not so much to prevent us kids from using the pc, but primarly for the adult to be able to have some alone time with the pc.

However, we were easily fooled as 8 or 9yo having interacted with a PC very recently...

Although the EMU386 does seem promising, will take a look at that also. Thanks.

Veredict: its a no go, EMU386 seems to have been created around 1997/98.

The countdown message would appear only when booting from dos prompt and it would show on top left corner of the screen.

I used an XT-8088 clone, a 386SX, and never seen a time code for this condition. Maybe a TSR program, a Shell?
maybe your computer was used on some industrial environment, for starting a motor, CNC, production line.

Regards!

Hey you just remembered me that I can simply ask the guy! He just retired a couple days ago from the company where he worked his entire life and the source of the regular stream of "obsolete" computers (from the point of view of the company) because he would do the favour of "dispose" of the compurters. Directly into his home. I believe he only did this until the first pentiums came along, mainly because the software needs of the company remained consistent trough out the decades.

retardware wrote:

Early microcomputers had very primitive POST that did not take much time. Superboard II and PET 2001, the first microcomputers I […]
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Early microcomputers had very primitive POST that did not take much time.
Superboard II and PET 2001, the first microcomputers I played with more than 40 years ago, had practically insta-POST.
The original Apple II even dropped you in the monitor ROM, with no POST or initialization at all. Even the video RAM was not cleared.
But never saw a countdown 😉 This must be from a movie I guess.

It seems likely to me. After all, so. Some early micros did not have real-time clocks.

The Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I was interesting. If it did not detect a floppy disk controller, it would ask for a memory allocation (for machine language routines) and then in a few seconds be in Level II BASIC (cassette-based). If it did find an FDC, it would try to boot from floppy.