Well, on Wednesday of 2 weeks ago the Tandy 1000 and 286 + all my keyboards -1 and pointing devices made the 724 mile drive to their stop before their new home with me in another state. I did this as I had some family business to tend to while there. All hardware made it including my NEC MultiSync II CRT. I decided to spare the 486 for the load with the laptops and the main desktop because that machine is one that I care about more than the other two in a way so it gets special treatment.
Went to RE-PC in Seattle and Tukwila in search of the ever elusive 15" CRT in White/Beige on Saturday and came up empty handed pretty much. The closest finds were a 17" E-Machines and a 17" Dell that I would need to Krylon to have be that color. However, I did find Tukwila is starting to cater to us Vintage Computer/Vogoners.........on the edge of the work-area for PC's, I saw a STACK of Beige cases including a Macintosh II XI/CI/whatever, a bunch of Pentium 1 Era Dell OptiPlexes, and quite a few whiteboxes - I sure hope they put those out as complete systems for us. But the hugest glimmer of hope was the 4 bins of Motherboards they had nearby out for us to buy from - they had everything from 386 DX/SX stuff to Pentium II/Slot Pentium III in there.
I probably spent about 45 minutes just digging in that pile of motherboards to find a good spare for my 486 and a good replacement for the wonky Intel in the Gateway so when I give it to my friend he can trust it'll last awhile, and boot-up!
I found probably 6-7 Socket 3 486 boards in there - I started to drool (486 is my favorite era), I'd not seen a motherlode like this since 2002!!!! I bought only one because I know other people are looking for these things too (PC Chips M919, with the fake Cache 🤣, I like cantankerous hardware for my own stuff), and also to save cash on it (only $20). A few had CPU still in them, and some of them I tried to determine the CPU in them based on the jumper settings.
Quite a few 386's as well, 386 DX-20 full AT board, and a PSU for a full AT case to go with it (two actually), skipped on those, as I'm trying to force myself to learn to FIX these darned things rather than just replace them, and I already have a spare power supply (I need a spare XT for my 486 though - but that's further down the road). Lots of 386 SX boards, including some familiar ones I think I've owned before. Lots of Socket 5s including a dual CPU Socket 5 AT monster in a anti-static bag. There were some boxed motherboards including ONE Socket 3. Boards were going for everywhere from $25.00 to $150.00 depending on make and what they were going for online.
The Socket 7 dig I skipped ANYTHING socket 5, after my previous experiences with Socket 5, Socket 7 truly is super Socket 7. Socket 5 just feels like a glorified 486 to me performance wise, but with the added problems of flakly pre 1996 Plug N' Play. So I picked up a $50 PC Chips M571 with integrated sound and video.
Last night after a very dramatic weekend (wife got injured on Friday, no bites from job applications in my new home, lots of tenseness and arguing with family over family stuff....a bad scene all around) I FINALLY got some time to test these buggers.
The M919 does not POST but I figured out it's because the BIOS chip somehow is corrupted and is now looking for it's recovery diskette. It will be my first time doing a recovery. If the PC Analyser card is right - it's looking for a Track 0 on a boot floppy so I can load an AMIBIOS.BIN file off of it and re-flash the board. Nice opportunity to update this 486 board. Might be neat to see if it takes 128MB of RAM better than the FIC-486 PVT does. It has my DX2 66 in it right now, which had several bent pins.
The M571 is already up and running. Had to make some small tweaks to standoffs and other stuff inside the Gateway as it was not designed for this board (particularly one Leg under the DIMM slots and another under where the CMOS circuit is). LOTS of Jumpers - I think the #1 most annoying thing about PC Chips is the sheer number of jumpers they use (but it's kind of a benefit too). Spent upwards of an hour setting everything for the Pentium 100 chip - using several online guides. Then it roared to life with the VGA card in it, then I found the jumper settings for the on-board video BACKWARDS - so I switched that jumper and got it to boot with the internal video - so no more video lag in Windows 95 (albeit it's only in 16 color mode right now and I have not updated the drivers). Seems the PC Chips has a better Dynamic fan control than the Intel did, it makes the system much quieter when at idle. The performance is night and day though - boot time went down from about 55 seconds to more like 10. Plus bootable CD-ROM support is built-in. I set the video to 4MB - which is fine, it has 64MB of RAM - 60 is more than enough for the rest. Plan to get some USB and a PS/2 Mouse header installed in this beast and it's done hardware-wise, and it's finally happy. Been on overnight for burn-in - STILL no reboots on IDE activity or any other weirdness.
I'm selling the Intel board to offset the cost. And still continuing some purge of hardware. And I'm STILL looking for a bloody beige/white CRT monitor in 15"/17" - I'm even considering an older LCD panel at this point just because it might be easier to find.