First post, by BitWrangler
- Rank
- l33t++
Hey Folks,
I know you can see cray, cray BIN prices on eBay and arsy versy, get steals, but what's the 486 system specs that is most averagely expensive to put together now? Also not really intending to include shrinkwrapped NOS/NIB here, since after you use it to assemble this system it isn't. So good and working part standard.
I put (Gameable) in the title to try to focus discussion on parts that are supported in games, some "pro" midi cards and maybe $4000 workstation graphics that needed a particular fixed res monitor aren't what I'm going for here. I guess really the parts that are "too" popular that the price has go a little out of hand on, or maybe those aspirational, rare, yet still reasonably usable parts.
This is for fun really, though it might eventually come about that enough parts coalesce together out of my own stash to be a reasonable representation of "most expensive 486" and we can all have a giggle about how it's benchmarks compare to "fastest 486" or others in 486 ultimate benchmark thread.
So my rough ideas so far, based on what I've heard is expensive...
CPU: Cyrix 5x86 120GP.... or possibly AMD or Intel DX4s???? (The AMD 5x86 seems half price of those)
VGA: VLB Mach 32
Mobo: Late VLB board I guess, suggestions?
RAM: eh you can go to the moon on amount I guess, but keeping it down to something that we can be reasonably sure will work with rest and is era approp, then 4x 16MB 60ns, gold plated or something?
i/O: Something VLB by Promise with LBA BIOS and maybe raid functions???
Drives: IDK what was the era appropriate performance desktop drive that ppl will spend money for, I'm thinking maybe quantum fireball, but not sure. 5.25 High density floppy, 2.88Mb 3.5 or LS 240 ??? Optical drives are a bit of a fuzzy target, think you could get 16X ROM and 4x4x8 CDRW before 486 era was really done. However on price, is something like a 4x Soundblaster/mitsumi/sony non IDE interface one the spendy unicorn or what?
Sound: This might be a "most expensive soundblaster" question really, unless you can prove that someone would actually buy X card and have a hope in hell of using it on a good number of games.
Case: Full tower AT???
PSU: was there really an archetypal PSU people will spend $$$ for? Should we just go with common sense and say this should be the NIB startech or other NIB AT psu you can buy today.
Keyboard: Model M compact???
Mouse: I do not have a clue about what might be classic meeces, won't be surprised if something logitech or microsoft fits in here.
Other: USR V Everything ? What NIC? Any other cards you can make a case for?
Did we spend $1000 yet? I'm kind of spitballing around $800 so far...
Let the arguing commence! 🤣
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.