Do you have a picture?

It might be that little machine from Unisys. Does it have Ethernet and PS/2 ports at the back?

They should come with the ISA riser. I had an AWE64 in my machine because of the short lengh.

You are probably right, this used to be my cousins and he woud always pick up all kinds of wierd corporate gear. Once got a quad 486 made by Acer (think it was Acerframe 3000 mp) but had to sell it to pay some bills, sadly. It was a beast.

It has ps/2 ports on back, parallel and vga, also serial. It probably had an ISA riser at one point, but I think he may have yanked it to get the HD in there. There really isn't anywhere else to put it.

I can post a pic, but not now I am pretty beat.

Here are pics of the mystery PC:

Geez, that's a 1U case? I have hard drives mounted in cases that look like that.

Pretty sure it is a 1U - its only about an inch high. Not much room, just enough for 1 16bit ISA card mounted sideways. I am going to have a hell of a time finding a compatible riser for it. Then I have to either sacrifice the HD and go with compact flash or ditch the floppy and try and cram a laptop HD, CF card and low profile floppy in the 3.5" bay.

Software installation will be problematic since there is no way to hook up a CD-ROM to this thing. Unless I route the cables outside the box and set it on top, and just use it temporarily to get the OS on (I was planning on installing OS/2, and making floppy images for OS/2 off the CD is a nightmare).

It is a neat little box. I really didn't expect it to have that much RAM, that was a good bit of fortune. 16mb is really useful for 95/98 or OS/2. Wish I knew what sort of VGA chip it has (please Tseng labs - I hope).

What was integrated VGA from this era like? I'm trying not to get overly optimistic and there is no way to replace the VGA.

It must be bigger than it appears in the photos because I swear an Apple Xserve is a lot bigger than that and it's supposed be in a 1U case, or at least Apple's idea of a 1U case.

Maybe I'm mistaken, then, and its not a true 1U box. But its no more than 1.5" high, so whatever else it is it definitely qualifies as small form factor.

That looks quite like the Unisys I had, but without Ethernet. What does it look like from the front?

EDIT:

Found some pics from my 486 (unfortunately sold it). NEVER sell your Retro stuff 😢

It doesn't look like that. Its a very plain beige front with no badging or anything.

The onboard video is probably 1mb. My guess would be some variety of Cirrus or Chips and Tech.

It looks like it could be a fun project computer but actual useful value is probably low. I'd just install Windows 3.1 or Win95 and use the thing for old games. Systems of that sort were typically purchased with a specific purpose in mind. You could install an older copy of MS Office, use the box for documents and see just how productive you can be when you're not able to be distracted with internet, modern games and MP3s.

If you have any thrift shops nearby, I would check them regularly. I know around here, thrift shops are the best bet for finding vintage PC parts if you're not interested in buying off eBay or elsewhere online.

Yeah, I just thought it might be something fun to futz around with but wasn't going to spend a ton of $$$ on parts for it. Its a shame there is no riser for it, or that it isn't tall enough for a 2 slot riser. And given how much integrated graphics suck even today (compared to discrete) performance will probably be so-so.

I ended up having to order an AT keyboard adapter because all the keyboards I have are PS/2 or USB. I thought I had one but must have ditched it. Does anyone make ISA usb boards even? I'm guessing no.
A couple USB ports might solve a couple problems but I'm not sure theres enough bandwidth on an ISA slot to support USB 1.0 let alone 2.0.

I've never seen a USB ISA card. If you were to go out of your way to make the machine more expandable, I would find an ISA PCMCIA card which, in theory, might allow you to install a usb and a wireless card.

As for performance, I would expect it to be lower than the majority of 486 rigs showcased here but above the majority of 386 systems.

Problem with that is drivers. Most likely wouldn't be supported under 95.
I think this machine could probably handle 98, but I don't think I have a 98 license anywhere. I doubt OS/2 would support USB.

I'm not super worried about wireless, I have an ethernet adapter and there is always sneakernet.

I guess if I wanted to get the most use out of this, my main concerns are getting a soundcard in there without losing the HD, or finding a way to wedge in a laptop drive and a CF or SD card adapter so I can move files over from my modern PC and not worry about losing the floppy.

Might be nice to upgrade the RAM but 16mb is useable w/ 95 (probably 98 too) and OS/2 Warp. The OS/2 box I had didn't have more than 12 or 16MB back when I had it and ran ok.

And yeah, I'm not really expecting this thing to be a barn burner performance-wise but it might make a decent retro gaming system if I stick to non 3d games (no quake, but maybe Doom or Tie Fighter)

Trying to expand an old system (especially a limited form factor like this one) really makes you appreciate how much integration there is in modern systems that we take for granted.

So I just had a great idea as far as getting software on this thing ( since I don't want to make 20 some floppies for OS/2 from the CD)

I should be able to temporarily hook up a IDE cdrom as a slave to the HD, or hook up a scsi cdrom to a scsi card. IDE probably makes more sense, I don't have to bother hunting down a scsi cdrom.

Too bad I can't get a sound card/scsi board combo, that would solve the no sound and give me some external expansion.

I had this method to install W95B on my 486DX4-100 Unisys machine: Iomega Zip 100 Parallel. I had the W95 installation files on a ZIP Disk and a simple Boot Floppy with Iomega's GUEST.EXE.

I used to have a zip 100 parallel port drive. I'm not sure if I still do. If I do, the power adapter for it has probably gone AWOL.

snorg wrote:

I used to have a zip 100 parallel port drive. I'm not sure if I still do. If I do, the power adapter for it has probably gone AWOL.

Iirc the parallel external ZIP drives (the large blue ones) use a 12v PSU which should be relatively easy to replace. I'll go check mine now and edit this post...

Edit:Correction, it's 5v (and 1A), which is still pretty much standard. The only thing to watch out for is that the plug actually fits as there are several different sizes 😉

snorg wrote:

So I just had a great idea as far as getting software on this thing ( since I don't want to make 20 some floppies for OS/2 from the CD)

I should be able to temporarily hook up a IDE cdrom as a slave to the HD, or hook up a scsi cdrom to a scsi card. IDE probably makes more sense, I don't have to bother hunting down a scsi cdrom.

Too bad I can't get a sound card/scsi board combo, that would solve the no sound and give me some external expansion.

Actually, they do:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/150674259803

And if you want a soundblaster:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/370525522285

Only problem with the sound blaster is it doesnt have EXTERNAL scsi connection, but you might be able to jury-rig one.