Anonymous Coward wrote on 2023-02-28, 03:37:

That's just your opinion, it's wrong. Would you not agree that "obsolete" would mean the inability to run most available softwa […]
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zecahue wrote on 2023-02-28, 02:38:

Mostly 486 became obsolete when Doom came out in 93.

That's just your opinion, it's wrong.
Would you not agree that "obsolete" would mean the inability to run most available software?
By all accounts, DOOM was a pretty enjoyable game on a DX2 with VLB. At best DOOM made the 486 second rate to the Pentium, not obsolete.

Obsolete is something that is surpassed technology by others. In 1992 my 386sx 33 was obsolete facing the Ultima 7, in 93 a 486 non DX2 was obsolete facing the power of a Doom (and even DX2 66 struggle to play levels with a lot of enemies). That was not a reality for a CPU with only one year old before that.

"Opinion" and "wrong" don't stands well in the same sentence, or you are misunderstanding the meaning of this word, or you come from a culture where "opinion" is not a common thing, I don't blame you for that, sorry for the misunderstanding in this case. However, that's not my opinion, it's a fact when I said that a DX2 began the fast-pace race of CPUs because of the clock multiplier, when CPUs clock began to run freely from the BUS speed, and I gave you examples (VLB and higher clock allowed heavier games, a plenty of new multimedia products appeared, new sound cards... etc).

Good to know that you understood now the importance of the DX2 in the history when you say that a DX2 can run Doom : ) that's exactly what I mean. DX2 was very new when Doom came out and it is the bare minimum to play Doom without reduced screen, that's unprecedented in history!

In 1990, mostly people who had important work to do on their PCs had hard drives. Most families still had home computers, if at all.
Back then PC "gamers" were mostly snot nosed kids of white collar workers who probably weren't trusted to touch the PC without supervision...and unless dad liked games, soundcard wasn't happening.

Well, PC was not cheap and many families didn't afford to have or their priorities were just others, fact. But back then was very common also that the only PC at home was inside the kid's bedroom, not because they were snobby white-collar kiddos, but because they (better, WE) were nerds who enjoyed technology more than the rest of the family, and most of the time we priorize that above other things.

A father who worked with a PC at home back in 1990 had probably a very good job (not mine), and I am sorry, but really really sorry if you belong to that kind of authoritarian household that could afford to have a PC but the father monopolized it.

chinny22 wrote on 2023-02-28, 14:05:

[...]

Did say it's the hardest to find a role! I'm in a similar boat. I still have my very first PC rather then the family PC. A P2-400 sitting in my parents garage. Thing is that's the PC I had in my late teens so don't really want to upgrade it yet I've a very similar P3 600 AND P3 1Ghz PC which makes the P2 even more useless with similar but better PC's.

My only problem with the dos killer PC is most dos games work fine on a P166 where as you will run into more speed problems with the P2. With all that said though I'd definitely add an ISA card to anything possible as a lot of games also run fine on even faster PC's so why limit yourself.

It really depends on the systems you have. Yes, old DOS stuff hits issues on my P3-500, but almost anything like that will run fine on the 486SX-33. There might be games that fall in between, but none that I enjoy on a regular basis.

In the end, that's the thing though: everyone does different things. I like turn-based 4X games the most, and despite still being able to decimate my fellow engineers in Q3A, FPS really isn't what I do when not drunk in the lab, so my requirements are different to yours as both are to everyone else's. So long as stuff you enjoy works the way you enjoy it, it's good. If not, not. And for me, the fun of playing around with hardware is actually greater than the fun of playing old games. Or rather: I find I spend more time doing that in a seamless DOSbox window on my modern system than on vintage bare metal - and when I do, it's usually to try out some new weird sound thing (only to find out DOSbox staging already implemented it...).

zecahue wrote on 2023-02-27, 22:39:

Technically speaking I totally agree that 486s are Pentiums wannabes nowadays, but they are the only ones that represent the VLB era, and for the people who used PCs in that time they are somehow specials. I think it was the beginning of the fast-pacing PC iteration. Before that we could have 286/386s for years, the maximum you wanted to do is to add a sound card. After that, every year there was a new game requiring new hardware and the DX2 I think plays very well as the CPU that elevated the PC as something better than consoles and Amigas. Something to be desired when our 286/386 began to struggle to play UltimaVII/Indy Car Racing/Doom and CDROMs. So, there are a lot of emotional power in this CPU : )

I do remember back in the day that getting a 486 system did feel pretty awesome (especially since we were coming from a 286 system). Being able to run VGA games without issues and especially moving towards first person shooters was an exciting time.

It's funny to me that in retrospect I find the 486-era of CPUs to be the most redundant. I have a 486 DX2/66 build that I'm actually thinking of downgrading to a slower setup, simply because it's too fast for the 386-era games I want to play, but also too slow for games better suited to a Pentium.

A 486-25 or 486-33 might be more ideal as a 486-era machine.

Yes, the redundancy I'm gonna try to deal making experimental builds as I don't need all these to cover the end 80s to early 2000s. But my idea is to play with each one CPU gen of these eras (386, 486, P1, P2.....) , and to making each of them somehow "interesting usable machines" is the trick you guys are helping me : )

As someone who has been doing exactly the same thing, I certainly can't argue with that. 😉

zecahue wrote on 2023-02-28, 15:37:

[...]

A father who worked with a PC at home back in 1990 had probably a very good job (not mine), and I am sorry, but really really sorry if you belong to that kind of authoritarian household that could afford to have a PC but the father monopolized it.

It wasn't just being authoritarian - those things were expensive, VERY expensive. Our first home PC (a PS/2), which I could use in 1990, cost more than our cars (plural - both parents had old rusty 2nd hand Citroens) at the time. And that was despite my mother working for IBM and getting 50% off on the purchase of her PS/2. Now, she'd been in computing for 20 years by then, but she still didn't really understand the beast, and was paranoid that I would damage something which would be more expensive than she could afford to fix. That's all the more ironic as I'm now older than she was then, in ICT too and probably with a slightly more senior job, but in real terms, after a few decades of inflation, she earnt a lot more. Still, she was paranoid about me destroying something, so I was only allowed to mess around with the 30MB PC DOS 4.01 partition (and not upgrade that to DOS 5.x either). The other 30MB OS/2 1.1 partition was sacred, even though she never used it herself. I only used it for school projects, at least, the ones I didn't do on my old Sinclair Spectrum.

Anyway, I turned out OK I suppose, but TLDR don't blame my mother for being cautious when her PC cost more than both the family cars together, even if they were rust-buckets, and can well imagine others being similarly cautious.

dionb wrote on 2023-02-28, 21:23:

Anyway, I turned out OK I suppose, but TLDR don't blame my mother for being cautious when her PC cost more than both the family cars together, even if they were rust-buckets, and can well imagine others being similarly cautious.

I guess your mother was just being jealous because she liked the computer : ) How old was you?

My first one was paid in several monthly payments, but I agree that the thing costed almost like a rusty car, but generic computers cost less than a IBM one. My mon made me do a DOS course before as part of the agreement after I convinced her that would be an investment, I was 11 in 91.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-28, 19:56:

A 486-25 or 486-33 might be more ideal as a 486-era machine.

Yep, this is the sweetest spot. I got the DX2 because it was the one I found for 20bucks with a leaked varta, beside the emotional attachment.

zecahue wrote on 2023-02-28, 21:43:

[...]

I guess your mother was just being jealous because she liked the computer : ) How old was you?

No, she honestly didn't know what to do with 'toy' computers like that. Her expertise was in old Nixdorf and later IBM mainframe machines. It was lack of experience/knowledge combined with worry about price.

In 1991 I was 14, and already rather unhappy at having only 30MB to play with. It would take until 1995 until I got a PC of my own with a huge 540MB HDD (it was that or driving license as 18th birthday present - my life would have been very different if I had chosen the car).

I can relate, our first computer was a Apple IIe. (Dad was a teacher and as that's what schools used would have been the deciding factor)
I'm not sure when that was exactly but lets say 1990 which would have made me 10.
Our most expensive items would have been the house, 5 year old car (mum on the other hand has kept her 74 beetle from now till this day) then the computer. Even that Dx2/66 cost $1000 in 95 which was below the going rate at the time a family's friend needed to rid of a pallet of computers quick is how we got that deal 😉 One of the first things I did was delete the dos system files and we had to call someone to come fix. So I've no problem with parents been a bit protective of expensive stuff because as parents love saying "money doesn't grow on trees"

Does amaze me how cheap things have got. Computers are basically throw away now and even 2nd hand car prices were crazy low, at least before the whole pandemic/chip shortage/whatever else in the last couple of years turned the world upside down)