First post, by Jed118
- Rank
- Oldbie
So I've always wanted to build a 286, and lately I was really reminiscing about the time I built a good friend a 286 with spare parts I had in grade 8. From what I recall, his was probably a 12 MHz, 3Mb RAM and a basic era correct hard disk - It had one thing that I really would like to find - EGA.
I've been amassing parts in Poland through their version of eBay and I got (for about $90) all the parts I needed to build a 286. Interestingly, the case I picked up had a "dead" 386 DX-40 which restored itself to working order after I took the RAM out and took a white eraser to the contacts - Score, that'll be another build for another thread.
Onto the 286 itself - I've got a flip top style case, 1.2 and 1.44 Mb floppies, a Headland generic 286/16 MHz board, 512K VGA video, ISA controller, and a 43Mb IDE Seagate disk. Like my 386SX system, this one accepts DRAM and SIPP, but the configuration I've chosen does absolutely not work together 😵 So, it will stay as 1 Mb for now. I used era correct parts as much as I could. In the future, I will try to get an AdLib or an 8 bit soundblaster for it.
First, the case:
A bit beat up and definitely yellowed.
This is the motherboard - I've removed the offending cell and replaced it. I did my best to clean as much as I could, but some minor corrosion exists in the expansion slots (Yes, I took the BIOS chips out and cleaned underneath them)
Sub components:
The hard disk: It came out of my 386SX which got an upgrade to an 85 Mb Conner drive (no bad sectors!)
I haven't seen these standoffs in over 20 years:
I had to take out the power supply to get it connected to the motherboard:
Performance! It increased after I tweaked the BIOS
Yellowness
Shit, no room to eat breakfast
Never mind, found a spot:
More yellowness:
Now, to remove the yellowness. Disassemble the yellow components:
Apply the hydrogen peroxide gel
Wrap it in saran and let it sit for a few hours, rotating as necessary:
Rinsed parts:
It ate my ESCOM sticker, but I have a good one to replace it with once I find it. Also, the computer came with a warranty booklet underneath, all in German.
This is a happy little computer now:
This is the best I could do with ABS glue -
Looks like I'll be retrobrighting the monitor next!
Youtube channel- The Kombinator
What's for sale? my eBay!