p6889k wrote on 2020-07-24, 17:36:

386SX wrote on 2020-07-24, 17:17:

....the only upgrade that PC did see was the 4 simm modules for 4MB of ram.

This reminded me of the time when I was saving all my money to upgrade from 1MB to 4MB and then when i finished saving and was ready to buy the RAM, literally within days some major memory factory burned up, the prices quadrupled and I had to wait a year before it dropped back down and I could upgrade.

Eheh I understand very well that situation. I remember there were moments ram prices got incredibly high. Being already an old pc the 386 with its 30-pin simms wasn't anymore a modern ram format so prices were still high but not that much. But still I remember we got four second hand simms modules and that was like an expensive upgrade (the only one we did on that PC that would have needed much better upgrades like the bad vga and the failing hd.. 😁).
Too bad the expectations were way way higher than the real world speed differences.. basically none beside in Win 3.1 I could clearly see things got better.

I did have CD-ROM drive connected to an ESS688-based sound card with an IDE port, on a 386 DX 40mhz somewhere around 1995. By that time, however, 486 and Pentium-based systems already existed, so I was swapping the CD-ROM between each of them when needed. Sadly, after a year or so, the sound card died, but the same CD-ROM drive continued its use somewhere up until 1999, when a CD-R/W drive replaced it.

imi wrote on 2020-07-24, 16:20:

jesolo wrote on 2020-07-24, 14:59:

I would even go so far as to say that having a sound card in your computer in 1990/91 was considered a luxury.

I didn't have a sound card as late as even 1995/96 and 96 is also when I got my first CD-ROM while still using a 386 shortly before upgrading to a pentium.

I remember that having the CD music play in command&conquer would slow down the game a lot on the 386 for some reason ^^

C&C can run on a 386? I remember the dos version struggled on a 66MHz DX2 (IBM Valuepoint). Also, C&C does not have CD-ROM music - not redbook audio anyway. If I remember correctly, C&C used .aud files for samples and music. The music was stored in the scores.mix file witch could be copied to the hard drive for better performance (in case you had a slow 4x cd-rom like I did), as the game would freeze for 1-4 seconds when loading a new music file from the CD and sometimes even when loading certain sound effects or voice clips.

In 1994 we got a 386DX25 system, bought from my uncle for a reasonably low price. It had a double speed CDROM drive. The kind that would get it's caddy out with motor and reading head and had to open a lid after.

It sure was not too common but my uncle was into gimmicks that would cost quite some money. My friends all asked: Does your computer really have a CD player???

There was no sound card, but it took years before I discovered it could actually play a cd over the adapter card that came with the CDROM.

Sold it in 1996 or 1997 for peanuts when we went to a K6 machine. Should have kept the cd drive...

Socket3 wrote on 2020-07-24, 19:40:

C&C can run on a 386?

barely ^^
yeah it not being actual CD-audio makes a lot of sense seeing how music being turned on slowed down the game to a crawl.

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-07-24, 17:25:

I got a CD-ROM SB Combo for my 386/25 in 1991. It came with the talkie version of King's Quest V. So I had a CD-ROM drive from very early on but from the other comments it seems like I was a bit ahead of the curve.

My father had a 386DX-40 that he used for work. It had a Mitsumi-Lu005 installed (single-speed). Along with a SB Pro (?) soundcard.
He also had many shareware CDs dated 1992 onwards..
Personally, I also had a CD-ROM drive in my 286-12. It came with a PAS16 Kit.
This was circa in the mid-90s.
In the 90s, a CD-ROM drive became a must-have, I think.
Back then, I couldn't imagine a computer being usable without one.
Don't get me wrong.. 5,25" floppy drives were still common, but a CD-ROM could hold so much more shareware, gifs, mods and demo software..
I spent nights (literally) browsing through the catalogue software and index files.

Jo22 wrote on 2020-07-24, 20:36:

My father had a 386DX-40 that he used for work. It had a Mitsumi-Lu005 installed (single-speed). Along with a SB Pro (?) soundca […]
Show full quote

Shagittarius wrote on 2020-07-24, 17:25:

I got a CD-ROM SB Combo for my 386/25 in 1991. It came with the talkie version of King's Quest V. So I had a CD-ROM drive from very early on but from the other comments it seems like I was a bit ahead of the curve.

My father had a 386DX-40 that he used for work. It had a Mitsumi-Lu005 installed (single-speed). Along with a SB Pro (?) soundcard.
He also had many shareware CDs dated 1992 onwards..
Personally, I also had a CD-ROM drive in my 286-12. It came with a PAS16 Kit.
This was circa in the mid-90s.
In the 90s, a CD-ROM drive became a must-have, I think.
Back then, I couldn't imagine a computer being usable without one.
Don't get me wrong.. 5,25" floppy drives were still common, but a CD-ROM could hold so much more shareware, gifs, mods and demo software..
I spent nights (literally) browsing through the catalogue software and index files.

Now that I'm thinking about this again I think it could have been 1992 when I got this at the end of the year.

imi wrote on 2020-07-24, 19:52:

Socket3 wrote on 2020-07-24, 19:40:

C&C can run on a 386?

barely ^^
yeah it not being actual CD-audio makes a lot of sense seeing how music being turned on slowed down the game to a crawl.

I'm gonna give it a shot on my DX40 😀

In 92/93 we had a 1x CD drive that had a cassette. You'd put the CD in the cassette and the the cassette in the drive. It was loud and clunky but I thought it was super cool. I remember installing Fate of Atlantis with it and being pretty impressed.

I was always a bit behind with PC tech, as PCs were obviously very expensive back in the day and I was still using an 8088 PC well into the mid-1990s. I didn't get my first 386 PC (a DX-40) until around 1996/1997 and that came with a Mitsumi single speed CD-ROM. That was the first PC I owned that had a CD-ROM drive and since it was now the late 90s I used it quite a bit with cover magazines coming with CD-ROM software and CD-ROM software available to purchase in shops etc.

In the early 2000s I built up a small collection of lower-end 386 & 486 PCs that were mostly all given to me by friends & family - none of them had CD-ROM drives. So while it was not very common to have one on a 386, it was getting more common from the late 486/early Pentium era onwards.

The cassette is called a "caddy", and they are indeed cool. Plextor actually made 32X drives that used caddies, and they are fairly silent.

I would say that before 1992 any PC with a CD-ROM drive was rare. 1992-1993 it was uncommon, but there were some multimedia 386s being offered by OEMs. To be fair, before 1993 not many people had PC compatibles in their home anyway (too expensive). The 486 boom started in late 1992 when the DX/2 came out. In 1993 you started seeing CD-ROM drives being offered in new PCs (but it was more of a gimmick than a necessity). In 1994 it became fairly common for 386s and 486s to get CD-ROM drives through multimedia upgrade kits, particularly 2X kits from Creative and Mediavision. I personally knew a bunch of people with CD-ROM equipped 386s in 1994...most of them were 386DX-40s.

I had to petition my dad to get me a CD-ROM in 1994. It was a Toshiba 4x caddy loader (XM3501B), and cost the not insignificant amount of AUD700, so I understood his reluctance. However I'd been mowing lawns for months to save up to buy a sound card (MV Pro 3D) so I guess he felt sorry for me. It went into my by then 3 year old 386SX-20, I used it mainly for DOS games and some educational titles for high school work. Full multimedia bundles were around $1k locally at that time, it wasn't until the next year or two that they seemed to become common, and prices started to fall - then everyone had one in their DX40s.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-07-25, 12:20:

I would say that before 1992 any PC with a CD-ROM drive was rare. 1992-1993 it was uncommon, but there were some multimedia 386s being offered by OEMs. To be fair, before 1993 not many people had PC compatibles in their home anyway (too expensive). The 486 boom started in late 1992 when the DX/2 came out.

Two of my friends fathers were in some facit of the computer industry .

The one haD a 386Dx33 system right after it was released , he had a sound card and cd-rom in it before 1991 and I remember him sort of being “that guy “ as there were fancy PC games that the rest of us never saw. Seeing a sound card and cd back then was eye opening.

The first friend to get a 486 was right after the SX released, he was the only one with a 486, I had just gotten a Tandy 1000rlx 512k and no hard drive.
I was always disappointed that I never seemed to have enough ram for most of the cheap games on the shareware shelf

In 1993 my other friend with a software programmer father got an IBM P60 along with a Jaguar game system , then he became (that guy)

Interesting times back then.

First computer with CDROM for me was late 1993 and had a 2x CDAT Wearnes proprietary type, was so glad when 4x cdroms came out with either ATAPI/IDE or SCSI interfaces but they sure were expensive back then ! added: had a 8x Phillips scsi in late 1995 that cost nearly $200, still have the invoice.

p6889k wrote on 2020-07-24, 17:33:

Edit: and it looks like here's a vogons.org user that actually has a copy: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

I have this CD too. The imprint is similar with a little difference.
However, the language of the software is German.
It also contains Works für Windows 2.0
There are 31.729.664 bytes on that CD.
Windows is uncompressed. If you don't have the disk space, you can even make a network installation and keep the disc in the drive. I know the CD-ROM access times 😉

HighScreen is a brand of Vobis Computer (Germany, Austria).

To the topic: CDROMs were not common on 386 computers. However, at this time there were kits to add CDROM drives, sometimes bundled with a sound card.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-07-25, 12:20:

The cassette is called a "caddy", and they are indeed cool. Plextor actually made 32X drives that used caddies, and they are fairly silent.

Thanks for that information, now I finally know what it was! I have a lot of fond memories of learning on that machine. It was a Dell 486dx2 upgraded to 32mb ram and a 14.4 modem. A real beast at the time, used for an early telemedicine setup. Would have been 92.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-07-25, 12:20:

In 1993 you started seeing CD-ROM drives being offered in new PCs (but it was more of a gimmick than a necessity). In 1994 it became fairly common for 386s and 486s to get CD-ROM drives through multimedia upgrade kits, particularly 2X kits from Creative and Mediavision. I personally knew a bunch of people with CD-ROM equipped 386s in 1994...most of them were 386DX-40s.

Yeah we got a Creative entertainment pack I thought it was 1994 but could've been 95?

It had a soundblaster 16, 2X CD-Rom, creative powered speakers and a heap of software.

Included that disk that has Strike Commander/Wing Commander 2, Ultima 8 & Syndicate

The other disk included EA compilation

Pretty sure it had rebel assault, probably forgetting a couple of games.

https://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=eacompilation

A bunch of other educational software and encylopedia

Felt like an absolute bargain at the time considering how much the games were.

This was for our 4mb ram 386-SX33.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-07-25, 12:20:

The cassette is called a "caddy", and they are indeed cool. Plextor actually made 32X drives that used caddies, and they are fairly silent.

I have two Plextor 6x scsi cdroms that use caddys, seems Plex used them on and off for a long while.

p6889k wrote on 2020-07-24, 17:33:

Grzyb wrote on 2020-07-24, 17:20:

p6889k wrote on 2020-07-24, 17:01:

I remember being in a computer store selling HighScreen brand (I think) computers and them having a Win3.11 install CD.

Some OEM variant, right?
I think generic Windows 3.11 was only on diskettes.

Yeah, it was OEM - labeled HighScreen.
Edit: and it looks like here's a vogons.org user that actually has a copy: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

I have some CD's from the MS Dev Network back in mid 1990's, one CD has all 16bit OS which has Win 3.1 expanded plus Dos 6, Dos 6.22, WFW 3.11 plus bunch other stuff. So there are CD versions of Win 3.1 though they are a bit rare....Oh the CD is Dev Network Disk 2 dated April 1997 but has July 1996 pub date but I do not have the July 96 cd's to see if it is just a reprint.

added: Ok found the info: the April 1997 Disk 2 16bit OS disk is a reprint/update of the July 1996 Disk 2 but Disk 1 is Win95 OSR2, SDK and Tools where the July 1996 disk 1 is Win95 OSR1, SDK and Tools. Not that matters but thought I should figure that out 🤣

p6889k wrote:

Edit: and it looks like here's a vogons.org user that actually has a copy: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Hi, by coincidence I also have got a WfW 3.11 CD-ROM (different look) .. ^^
A photo can be seen here -> Re: Installation of DOS 6.22 from cd-rom disk
I've also taken a video of it at some point, along with MOD4WIN CD-ROM -> https://youtu.be/eWBysH5L48c

(Sorry for the shameless self-promotion, btw.. 😅)

@Horun @Jo22 any sources for a copy of this win311/dos622 CD? I am interested in doing a win3.1 install but my gotek hasnt arrived yet 😎 cheers