First post, by bjwil1991
- Rank
- l33t
Hello everyone:
Earlier today, I went to a thrift store that I never went into until today, and I found a Packard Bell Pack Mate desktop computer, as well as the mouse and keyboard, so I decided to purchase those three items for $18.02 after tax ($17 + 6% tax in MI) and the items are in the trunk of my car until further notice in case it smelt like cigarettes.
Here are the specs of the system:
Intel i486 SX2-50
4MB RAM (upgradable to 64MB) SIMM-72 (FPM or EDO)
1MB vRAM (expandable up to 2MB) <-- certain systems, like an IBM Aptiva 2168-M55 and the mentioned Packard Bell Pack Mate systems had that as an option since certain games required more than 1MB of vRAM, including certain programs.
210MB Seagate HDD with MS DOS and I believe it has Windows (or WFW) 3.11 or Windows (or WFW) 3.10 preinstalled on it and software, like Packard Bell Navigator
3.5" 1.44MB Floppy Drive
No Optical Drive, but as luck would have it, there is a header for CD drives (secondary IDE channel) and I don't know if ATAPI capable drives would work on such system
No Sound card, and luckily, I have 2 I'm planning on placing into the system: An Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro, and a Music Quest MPU401 Clone Card I purchased back in October of 2016 since some of my games run too fast, or have incorrect/missing music on my Roland MT-32
ISA Ethernet 10BaseT (I believe it's a 3Com EtherLink Plus III since it has the header for hooking up old 3Com hubs)
12000 Baud Modem (their version of it, which is hooked up using a proprietary cable for the card itself)
AT style PSU
Detachable bezels for personalizing the system
I was planning on getting the CRT itself, but I didn't know if it works or not, and they would've charged about $20 for it.
And I'm wondering, since it is a Socket 3 system, is it possible to upgrade from the SX2-50 to a DX2-66 Intel CPU, or am I stuck with it? If I'm stuck with it, it's no big deal. Also, I can't seem to find the rest of the model info, except for the Product Number and Serial Number, and it has a soldered on Lithium battery, which I know it's probably dead by now and it's the size of a dime.
Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser