Thanks to all for sharing your interesting finds, the knowledge I am gaining here has allowed me to really enjoy this hobby which has made the past year far more bearable.

I had been considering getting a 486 system for a while, previously my oldest active setup was my Pentium 233MMX (which was my daily driver from 1996-2001). My interest is in a compact desktop 486 for older games and software, not really a mid-90s powerhouse as I feel my Pentium covers that ground. I had a similar 486 back in 1994-5 time frame, prior to that I was an Amiga person. I ended up bidding on two 486s and won both of them, oops.

First one is a Samsung Deskmaster 486C/25. It is a 486slc system so kind of a 486-light, more like a 386 in performance. I will run some benches soon. This PC came in fully working and very clean condition, 8MB RAM, onboard 512K WD video, boots into DOS 6.22 and has WIN3.11 and MS Office on the original 120MB hard drive. This seems like a decent quality, heavy compact little unit (15"x15"x4"). I believe it is from 1993 and would have been marketed as an office PC. Speaking of the hard drive, it was completely full, <100K free space. The oldest files on it were 1997, it looks like it was never used after that, maybe the PC was replaced when the hard drive filled? Best thing was it came with a real SB Pro 2 installed. I have moved the HD contents to a 2GB CF on an IDE adapter with disk overlay software (on track) which went well. I had never used a disk overlay before, the bios only supports up to a 320MB drive. I would like to increase the video memory to 1MB, or get an ISA video card. I'm hoping this will be a decent gamer for 1992 and earlier titles. One problem, I can't find any manual and minimal information online for this one. If anyone has a suggestion, please let me know.

Second one is a Packard Bell 204CD, 486 DX2/66, 3x3 PB case (slightly larger than the Samsung). This one looks a lot like my old 486 which was also a Packard Bell. It came with no HD, and an Aztech/PB sound card. Unfortunately this one usually does not display anything on the screen when powered on, just sits there psu fan spinning. I tinkered with it to the best of my limited ability, and did see a boot screen a couple of times with a memory failure message displayed. Other times I heard beeps after a long wait; 1 long them 3 short. Most of the times the unit powered on but never displayed anything or any beeps. I tried minimal configs, with SIMM removed and with onboard memory disabled. Also tried am external cmos battery. My skills at troubleshooting an oem PC this old with nothing on the display are limited. Just don't have good working parts to swap in for testing. I may send it back (it was sold as working) or try to source a motherboard if I can find a compatible one at a decent price.

Thanks for any comments or suggestions.