VOGONS


First post, by mscdex

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So a long time ago (back in the 90s) I came across a second hand desktop PC that I now can't seem to find anywhere on the internet. I was thinking the manufacturer was Wang but my memory may not be 100% correct on that. I want to say it was probably either a 286 or 386. Either way, the one thing that made it stand out (and I still haven't come across anything like it since) was that the BIOS would speak errors through the PC speaker. Specifically I remember when the keyboard wasn't plugged in properly, a digitized female voice would say "check your keyboard connection". It may have spoken other errors too, but that is the only one I distinctly remember.

I thought I'd try here in case anyone else ever came across the same machine or perhaps same line of machines, I have no idea if this was a common feature across multiple models or what.

Reply 2 of 10, by mscdex

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Horun wrote on 2024-10-28, 02:41:

Photos of it don't look familiar, so I'd have to say no.

I could barely hear the voice clear enough in the video clips I could find of the Emerson actually speaking, so not totally sure that the voice is even the same, but it could be since after all this was eons ago 😆

The only other brand name that kinda rings a bell that it *may* be is GTSI (those I think had a blue badge with rounded corners and white/silver lettering or something). At the time I think I was working on both brands of machines when I encountered the speaking BIOS.

Reply 3 of 10, by jmarsh

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This wasn't completely uncommon, A7V333 boards did the same thing. But it was annoying because it turned a simple diagnostic tool (high and low PC speaker beep patterns) into something that required amplified speakers and was less informative.

Reply 4 of 10, by Horun

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Hmm GTSI has a shady past. If you had one from 1990's am wondering how you got it since they were a Federal Gov supplier not a retailer. Generally you cannot get a gov computer as they destroy them to prevent any data leakage, even back then... just sayin.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 5 of 10, by wbahnassi

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I remember LGR covered one such PC. It's night for me now, so digging the video will be left as exercise to the reader.

Turbo XT 12MHz, 8-bit VGA, Dual 360K drives
Intel 386 DX-33, TSeng ET3000, SB 1.5, 1x CD
Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, Voodoo3, RTX2080Ti

Reply 6 of 10, by mscdex

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Horun wrote on 2024-10-28, 04:46:

Generally you cannot get a gov computer as they destroy them to prevent any data leakage, even back then... just sayin.

Back then anything that would have come from the government would have arrived without a hard disk generally.

Reply 7 of 10, by mscdex

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wbahnassi wrote on 2024-10-28, 06:20:

I remember LGR covered one such PC. It's night for me now, so digging the video will be left as exercise to the reader.

Hrmm.... all of my searches through his channel only uncover speech-related peripherals.

Reply 8 of 10, by Shponglefan

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wbahnassi wrote on 2024-10-28, 06:20:

I remember LGR covered one such PC. It's night for me now, so digging the video will be left as exercise to the reader.

I remember the same, but unfortunately can't remember the specific PC.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 9 of 10, by wbahnassi

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Here it is:
https://youtu.be/P_so2nUob1Y?t=11m38s

Turbo XT 12MHz, 8-bit VGA, Dual 360K drives
Intel 386 DX-33, TSeng ET3000, SB 1.5, 1x CD
Intel 486 DX2-66, CL5428 VLB, SBPro 2, 2x CD
Intel Pentium 90, Matrox Millenium 2, SB16, 4x CD
HP Z400, Xeon 3.46GHz, YMF-744, Voodoo3, RTX2080Ti