Don't recall "$2500 SVGA monitors" in 1993 though. SVGA (as in 640x480x256+) worked fine with VGA monitors of the time.

leileilol wrote:

Don't recall "$2500 SVGA monitors" in 1993 though. SVGA (as in 640x480x256+) worked fine with VGA monitors of the time.

Actually, I think I paid close to $2300 for the following in year 1993

Intel 486dx-33
4mb ram
Intel chipset ISA motherboard.
128kb cache
120mb Hard drive
ISA controller
14.4 modem.
Sound blaster clone sound card.
Sony 2x CDROM with ISA controller
5.23 and 1.44 floppy drives.
Keyboard, serial mouse and speakers.
14" SVGA monitor
Mini-tower case.

reference the gateway 2000 486dx-33 build which did not have a modem, CDROM or sound blaster.
https://archive.org/details/pc-computing-maga … e-v6i1/page/n79

And I now have one of these Gateway 2000 486xd33 desktops and it is terrible.
it is really loud and I don't like the bios. I actually have two and I could only get one to work and it boots really slow.

CDROM's , sound blasters , and Modems were just coming out so I had to choose my own components for a custom build.
Pre-builts with these components were too expensive. I figured I could add more ram later which I did eventually upgrade it to 8mb or ram.

reference this add for an IBM PS/1 with 486dx-33 for $2699 and I think the monitor was not included in price.

That would have been a complete PS/1 set up including monitor. Here in NZ they were about a $1000 dearer in NZ$ Note it includes OS/2 v2.

High end monitors did get up to the $2000s though. More likely used in Engineering/CAD and Graphics houses.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

And I now have one of these Gateway 2000 486xd33 desktops and it is terrible.
it is really loud and I don't like the bios. I actually have two and I could only get one to work and it boots really slow.
..

Welcome to the early 90s. What do you mean by slow start? My 286/12 from 1990 boots to the Dos prompt in less than 10 seconds. Systems with Dos in rom quicker. Loading Windows or OS/2 obviously took longer. Some OEMs incorporated VLB vga video and ide built on the mobo. Helped speed things up as well as keeping manufacturing cost down. There was quite a variation between x86 systems . Backwards/cross compatibility was great.

Modems had been around for a very long time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem

My biggest gripe for the time was selling systems with too little ram(more expensive then it should have been) or too small a hard disk drive. Even found a 40meg hdd was too small when I had my 286/16 system running DrDos 6 and GeoWorks.

NOTE-If anyone is interested I've just located the OS/2 2.0 and PC Dos 5.0 restore images for those PS/1 systems..To restore your system to stock configuration. Go to https://ps1stuff.wordpress.com/download/downl … -for-type-2133/ Systems covered:

IBM Software FRU 93F2368 for Spring'92 IBM PS/1 systems. Refered to as "Software Level 1" for US in the service documentation. Composed of: OS/2 2.0, Microsoft Works for Windows, PRODIGY, PS/1 Club. Used on the PS/1 2133/2155/2168 configurations: W72, W76, S75, S76, G76, G77. Recovery Disk - 34G1537 Disk 1 - FRU: 34G1540 Disk 2 - FRU: 34G1543 Disk 3 - FRU: 34G1546 Disk 4 - FRU: 34G1549 Disk 5 - FRU: 34G1552 Disk 6 - FRU: 34G1555 Disk 7 - FRU: 34G1558 Disk 8 - FRU: 34G1561 Disk 9 - FRU: 34G1564 Disk 10 - FRU: 34G1567 Disk 11 - FRU: 34G1570 Disk 12 - FRU: 34G1573 Disk 13 - FRU: 34G1576 Disk 14 - FRU: 34G1579 Disk 15 - FRU: 34G1582 Disk 16 - FRU: 34G1585 Disk 17 - FRU: 34G1588 Disk 18 - FRU: 34G1591 Disk 19 - FRU: 34G1594 333Disk 20 - FRU: 34G1597
Manufacturer: Ibm Corp.

IBM Software FRU 93F2367 for Spring'92 IBM PS/1 systems. Refered to as "Software Level 1" for US in the service documentation. Composed of: Windows 3.1, DOS 5.0, Microsoft Works for Windows, PRODIGY, Promenade, PS/1 Club Used on the PS/1 2133/2155/2168 configurations: G11, G13, G14, G43, G44, G50, G53, G54, G76, G77, G78, P57, P71, S11, S13, S14, S43, S44, S53, S54, S75, S76, S78, W11, W13, W14 Recovery Disk - 33G4041 Disk 1 - FRU: 33G4045 Disk 2 - FRU: 33G4049 Disk 3 - FRU: 33G4053 Disk 4 - FRU: 33G4057 Disk 5 - FRU: 33G4061 Disk 6 - FRU: 33G4065 Disk 7 - FRU: 33G4069 Disk 8 - FRU: 33G4073 Disk 9 - FRU: 33G4077 Disk 10 - FRU: 33G4081 Disk 11 - FRU: 33G4085
Manufacturer: Ibm Corp.

you won't be able to get NVMe SSDs for your 486 rig

JudgeMonroe wrote:

If you really want the 1993 experience, build an EISA system.

EISA came out in about '89.
EISA consumer systems were pretty sparse, expensive and it's main use was in server systems with scsi hdds. VLB was used in high end early-mid '90s consumer systems and mainly used for i/o, fdd/hd as well as graphics. A lot of OEMs, Acer,DEC,IBM, Compaq etc integrated vlb on the mobo. Of course at the end of the 486 era pci was becoming available.