VOGONS


Another orphaned 486

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First post, by Liqu1d82

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When I see an old PC in the street I always try to give it a clean and a new home, then if the PC in question is very old: so much better! Part of the appeal of this passion is the patience in restoring the old glories. A short time ago I remedied a lot of nice stuff, offices in the city renewed the buildings and they were throwing away a lot of computer equipment, very dated and not - among the many things that I managed to save from the trash, there's also this 486, even if incomplete - a partially completed case desktop, motherboard Gigabyte GA486IM rev. 2, CPU 486 DX4-100, VLB card, memory but no hard disk and other drives. As soon as possible I'll try to work on it, for now I've only seen that lights up:

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Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
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Reply 1 of 8, by Liqu1d82

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Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
http://liqu1d82.tumblr.com [My Tumblr] // https://twitter.com/Liqu1d82 [My Twitter]

Reply 2 of 8, by artiemog

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Nice! I love the case! What do you plan to do with this system?

Reply 3 of 8, by Liqu1d82

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Hello! I'm going to bring it back to life, finding the missing parts and giving a nice clean. At the moment my home machine with FreeDOS is too powerful, being a PIII @450 - in fact I would like to own a nice 486 (though the one I had when I was a child was much more modest with specs: an Olivetti M300 486 SX @25MHz, if I'm not mistaken) intended solely to MSDOS titles I have always loved (SimAnt, LHX, 688, etc.. etc. - too many!) I did a quick test by inserting as VGA an S3: PC turns on but the speaker is muted and there isn't signal to the monitor, maybe the slots contacts are oxidized - if you have suggestions on builds to design I'm here to listen deeply interested.

PS: yes, I like a lot this case too! Beautiful times...

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Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
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Reply 4 of 8, by MaxWar

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Nice find!

I used to find them around here. But lately no more computers on the street. I have not seen a single one this last year. I used to see dozen in a summer.

Thanks to new legislations and the new city funded recycling centers they are now sure to be reduced to component materials before repairmen en retro enthusiasts find them.

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The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run.

Reply 5 of 8, by artiemog

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Just a thought...You mentioned having FreeDOS on another computer, but if you're planning to use this computer mostly for games, I would reccomend using a copy of the real MS-DOS or PC-DOS, as they will have much better compatibility.

Reply 6 of 8, by Liqu1d82

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DelFuego wrote:

Just a thought...You mentioned having FreeDOS on another computer, but if you're planning to use this computer mostly for games, I would reccomend using a copy of the real MS-DOS or PC-DOS, as they will have much better compatibility.

Well, I have to tell you: until now, I did not find any compatibility problem with FreeDOS - indeed, is in effect a MSDOS improved! You should try it, I personally feel very comfortable using it... I also would like to have the 'classic' MSDOS, but not having the original media, I chose FreeDOS boot cd to begin my adventure. Maybe when I will have a nice floppy emulator, I'll use one of the DOS 6.22 images which can be found on the net 😉

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Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
http://liqu1d82.tumblr.com [My Tumblr] // https://twitter.com/Liqu1d82 [My Twitter]

Reply 7 of 8, by chinny22

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Really hope the motherboard/RAM is OK, everything else is easy to come by. Good work saving it!

Reply 8 of 8, by Liqu1d82

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chinny22 wrote:

Really hope the motherboard/RAM is OK, everything else is easy to come by. Good work saving it!

Thanks! 😉

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Without change something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.
http://liqu1d82.tumblr.com [My Tumblr] // https://twitter.com/Liqu1d82 [My Twitter]