VOGONS


First post, by igna78

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Let's start with some history: it was February 2020 and I was rummaging through eBay when I found this little gem (I've always loved the design of IBM computers, albeit with some exceptions). When I get to the computer it was pretty dirty, dust everywhere and rust on the case (but fortunately nothing serious). I start by cleaning it with the intention of restoring it, but between work and various problems I have to postpone everything to better times. We come to today, I'll make it short, I finally find the time and the opportunity to go back to work on the little gem and now I present the result.

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The plastics were washed with dish soap which degreased well
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The interior is neat
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And now some news, so that if you want (and I'd like to) you can give me some advice to improve the project.
The computer was equipped with a Celeron 366 Mendocino CPU equipped with a passive heatsink (and this I left considering that the PC will have to deal with late games was MS-Dos and before it was Win9x). Initially it had 64MB of Ram, but to be more comfortable I increased the Ram to 128MB (it shouldn't give problems in DOS - I use MS-Dos 6.22 on a dedicated partition).

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CPU and Ram
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Equipped with a DVD player, it has an 8 GB Quantum hard drive.
I added a SoundBlaster 16 CT2230 + Yucatan FX, and as you can see a 12MB Voodoo2 (Orchid Righteous).

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SoundBlaster 16 + Yucatan FX and Voodoo2
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Let's get to the sore point: original 145W PSU -> can it give problems?
I am waiting to hear what you think and thanks for your time.

Reply 1 of 4, by Caluser2000

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I had one of these for 5-6 years as the main family computer running the original Windows 98. We had no major problems with it in that time. In fact I'm in the process of getting our one back up after a 16 year hiatus. It has a 400 Celeron cpu.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 2 of 4, by igna78

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Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-12-14, 16:10:

I had one of these for 5-6 years as the main family computer running the original Windows 98. We had no major problems with it in that time. In fact I'm in the process of getting our one back up after a 16 year hiatus. It has a 400 Celeron cpu.

Did yours also have such a limited power supply? Did you use 3dfx cards? From what I found on the net a Voodoo2 should absorb 15W and considering everything else mounted, I'm afraid that under load the power supply, given the age, may suffer. However, before changing it, since it is an IBM specific format and therefore difficult to replace, I would like to understand if it can handle the workload. Thanks for sharing your experience

Reply 3 of 4, by Caluser2000

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Just give it a shot and see what happens.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉