I don't even have a CGA monitor what am I doing with my life.
Okay so, I bought this thing. Pics later when my phone isn't dead. It has an AMD 8088 clone, neat. It has 640k of ram, neat. It has a very broken hard disk and a 5.25 drive. NEAT.
What... What can I do with it that I can't with my Pentium 2? Semi-related, bought an MT-32 which was a much better decision.
Some VGA cards will work in a 8-bit slot. Try it. At least you will get a picture on screen.
I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O
wrote:What... What can I do with it that I can't with my Pentium 2?
You can run composite CGA games on it.
If you're lucky, and it's a good clone, you may even be able to pull off 8088 MPH 😀
Play Alley Cat?
Like most PC's here experiment or recreate your youth playing games on similar hardware.
From a practical side of things Dosbox is better 99% of the time software wise but that's not the point!
If that doesn't do it for you then sell it on. Anything earlier then a 486 is cool to see but I have no desire to own one as they hold no nostalgia factor for me
An XT clone can be pretty awesome. There's loads of neat games that are too speed sensitive to run on your Pentium II. I love my XT clone it was very fun building it and i still feel creative trying to expand it.
If you do like messing with hardware you won't regret.
XT builds are fun and often can be challenging in a good way but it can very quickly become a money pit if you are not careful about the upgrades beyond that it is truly the real thing. Just don't look at those adlib prices /cringe
On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.
wrote:XT builds are fun and often can be challenging in a good way but it can very quickly become a money pit if you are not careful about the upgrades beyond that it is truly the real thing. Just don't look at those adlib prices /cringe
My XT build was about the same cost as any other of my builds. The most costly part was no doubt the XT-IDE but it was well worth it. I put reliability and functionality over "period correct". I think cost can be mitigated this way, and there's lots of 16bit cards that can work in an XT. 😀
Play Alley Cat of course.
Is this too much voodoo?
The title made me laugh a lot.
Unless you have any CPU-sensitive games of that period you want to play or you are serious about collecting hardware — sell it, before you start spending money on addons.
wrote:The title made me laugh a lot.
Unless you have any CPU-sensitive games of that period you want to play or you are serious about collecting hardware — sell it, before you start spending money on addons.
Yes, I just totalled up my ebay spending for the last three weeks.
My wife will not be pleased.
Sell it quickly, before you know it you'll end up with four spare CGA cards, three monitors, a couple of hard drives + controllers, 8-bit soundcards, and god knows what else...
Seriously speaking, if you had no interest in XTs before getting one, it's not gonna serve any purpose for you.
I do have 2 and they form the most important part of my retro-computing desk/collection, in fact I can't imagine myself dealing with old computers if there's no XT included. This was the first thing I had to get. But this is because I grew up with one so they reproduce so many memories. Especially the part where you wait for something 😀
I have fond memories of manually formatting databases in DbaseII on a XT. You should try it too. A bottle of scotch may help.
I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O
my xi8088 board is going to do duty as my CP/M machine and for tinkering with my own mini shell os thing.
--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--
wrote:I don't even have a CGA monitor what am I doing with my life.
I've got one, but I'm using composite instead.
wrote:I..and a 5.25 drive. NEAT.
NEAT ? Haha. 😁 (Please tell me that was a pun. because.. ..chipset name..)
wrote:What... What can I do with it that I can't with my Pentium 2? Semi-related, bought an MT-32 which was a much better decision.
You can run all the 80s software in an authentic way. It runs DOS in the nativeliest way. And it makes youi even more happy to have a Pentium 2. 😈
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//
It would be less of a pain if the HDD wasn't dead and the spare 5.25 I had didn't turn out to be bunk. I think so anyway, it's hard to tell if it's a problem with the computer or with it.
Unrelated: I have a Dell 320LT missing the power adapter, how hard would it be to adapt one?
wrote:It would be less of a pain if the HDD wasn't dead and the spare 5.25 I had didn't turn out to be bunk. I think so anyway, it's hard to tell if it's a problem with the computer or with it.
XT era HDD's fail very often. The technology wasn't very reliable in those days.
Also in case it hasn't been mentioned before, you could use it to play Alley Cat.
I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O
I have owned 8086s but always sold them again. After a while I get annoyed with the slow speed that games run at. 😀
wrote:The title made me laugh a lot.
Unless you have any CPU-sensitive games of that period you want to play or you are serious about collecting hardware — sell it, before you start spending money on addons.
I been already in that phase.. So what, you only live once.. Have some pleasure in your life. 😊 Some people spending a lot of money when they going to a pub an drink a lot of beer..
If i need beer i go to the supermarket and buying cheap beer..
Why would you only buy some simple parts to build op your XT system, and then few years later it doesnt work anymore, and you dont have any spare parts anymore.. Why in the first place did you such an effort to start build such a system.. Cause you would know it beforehand..
If you buy a pet, you know it would cost you money on the long run to maintain.
~ At least it can do black and white~
