The 10$ "486"

[DankEngihn]

I regularly visit a local computer shop right behind my school, where I have gotten a lot of random computer stuff from over the past few years. A lot of times they don't have anything really interesting, and a TON of Pentium 4's and Core 2 machines, but occasionally I'll find something absolutely awesome. Well, it was one of those times.

Hidden away, amongst a pile of random junk, I stumbled across this absolute unit of a computer.

I was immediately attracted to it due to the 5.25" floppy drive, the big rocker-style power switch, and the MHz display on the front.

I pulled it out, and was told that I could take it, along with a few other machines if I wanted to. Hell yeah!

So after getting it home, I took a look at it to see if I could figure out what was inside.
I looked up the writing on top of the case, and found that it had come from North Park Secondary School.

I then saw this sticker; detailing the hardware inside. Or so I thought.

Honestly the only thing left to do at this point was to fire it up, and see if it worked.
And it did!
Also, I was greeted by this;

Wha..?? A Pentium? What kind of sorcery is this?

More coming later, on this machine and the others I picked up.

[Intel486dx33]

Nice case. That was my first 486 computer case but the smaller version.

[DankEngihn]

Thanks! I actually had the much smaller version of this case, and it housed a 1.6 GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB of RAM on some weird baby AT socket 478 motherboard.

[gdjacobs]

430VX chipset has good odds for supporting Pentium MMX which effectively gives you a 486.

[oeuvre]

that case is dope brb finding $10 AT rigs somewhere...

[DankEngihn]

Wasn't just this, there was also a Compaq prolinea 4/66, an Iconix branded Pentium 1 server, and a generic Pentium III machine

[DankEngihn]

Okay, I finally had some time to get around to digging deeper into this computer. (School and personal stuff )

I opened the case, and was expecting to see a lot of dust. To my surprise, the inside was VERY clean. Of course there was the usual rat's nest of cables flying around inside the case.

I started to dive deeper into the machine, and find out what hardware was installed, and any potential upgrades that I might consider.

Taking out the cards from top to bottom revealed;

An out-of-place Dlink ethernet card. This was most likely an upgrade, as it has a date stamp of 1998.

A PCI ATI Mach 64. A 2 MB PCI video card that apparently also has a sound card on a compressed ISA bus.

And lastly, a Sound Blaster Vibra 16C

Now, one of the reasons that I opened this thing up and removed the cards, was so I could replace the CMOS battery, which thankfully is a CR2032 coin cell, and not one of those horrid Dallas chips.

[chinny22]

Good period correct 486, Our DX2/66 we got in 95 also came with a Mach64 and SB16.
Mach64 is bit slower for dos gaming and having PCI you have better options for relatively cheap, but it's not a terrible card.

[DankEngihn]

It's been upgraded at some point in the past to a Pentium 166, and judging by the files on it's 5 GB hard drive, it was in use until mid-2018.

[Caluser2000]

that case is dope brb finding $10 AT rigs somewhere...

People drop them off under my car port when I'm away mate.

[oeuvre]

Will do, good sir!