Come back to us with the testing results. I'm kind of curious about that 286.

Robin4 wrote:

Do you maybe have a picture of that LCD MHZ display on the back of it.. Iam curious what its written on the PCB.

Ahhh I didn't get a picture of that at the time, and now I am about 600 miles away from the machine in question - I didn't get to bring it back with me. Maybe in a few months, as I should be going back there.

Not quite hardware but worthy of a retro dumpster dive none the less. I found this book dumped in the bin a couple of days ago.

Published 1998 - 2000

I'd love to find a P55C 300 or 333 MHz 😁 (or 266 for that matter)

rgart wrote:

Not quite hardware but worthy of a retro dumpster dive none the less. I found this book dumped in the bin a couple of days ago. […]
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Not quite hardware but worthy of a retro dumpster dive none the less. I found this book dumped in the bin a couple of days ago.

Published 1998 - 2000

Had a call off my mother today saying she was having a massive clearout and came across one of my old "computer" cases. I couldn't remember having anything left at my moms so was slightly puzzled. Well to my surprise i bought this beast home. Its my old Yeong Yang "Borg" cube case i had back circa 2006. This thing weighs an absolute tonne! Its missing the casters so i don't know where they got to but a box was still inside with all the case screws and drive rails! Can feel a project coming on with this behemoth!

Got to thank my brother for this one. Got a message asking me if i wanted this board with ram and chip as his work were going to dispose of it. Of course i said yes.

Board is a Foxconn DG33M03 with 2x1gig DDR2 Samsung sticks and an unknown CPU.

Removed the HSF to find a Q6600 lurking underneath! Score! Going to stick this in the EVGA Nforce 780i SLI board i picked up the other week and see what it clocks too. Well Chuffed!

Nothing too special, just an ESS AudioDrive 1688F found at the bottom of the (rather empty) bin, next to some Dell and HP front bezels, some keyboards, and an ISA modem. One can never have enough ISA sound cards, IMO.

I found a real gem on my way home from work a few days ago. A complete 486 tower in absolutely pristine condition. It's rare that I find stuff older than P4 and Athlon XP rigs these days, so a 486 was a complete surprise. The fact that I didn't even have to clean it was a bonus!

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to even hook it up, let alone play games on it. I had it plugged into an outlet for a few seconds and heard it POST, so it seems to be in good working condition.

Instructions Per Cycle 486. Windows. Intel Inside.

A nice, clean rump.

Looks like the CD-ROM uses a proprietary sound card interface. I hope that IDE/FDD controller card supports two IDE devices on a single cable.

Hmm...I wonder what's under that heatsink. DX4 would be nice. 😀

What a gorgeous machine!

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I found a real gem on my way home from work a few days ago. A complete 486 tower in absolutely pristine condition. It's rare that I find stuff older than P4 and Athlon XP rigs these days, so a 486 was a complete surprise. The fact that I didn't even have to clean it was a bonus!

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to even hook it up, let alone play games on it. I had it plugged into an outlet for a few seconds and heard it POST, so it seems to be in good working condition.

...

Yes, awesome 486! Tell us the story of how you came across it. 😀

@Standard Def Steve Wow that thing is pristine! like it was just built!

rick6 wrote:

http://i1383.photobucket.com/albums/ah283/rick62008/IMG_20160429_222708_zps07lpnkob.jpg […]
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Is there a particular brand that the little black case is? I've used several like it for cheap builds, most recently from rosewill that's all black. For some reason i rather like the design of it. Something a bit classic about it. I'd like to find other colors if i could, but the only ones i've been able to find are the ones from Rosewill.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Instructions Per Cycle 486. Windows. Intel Inside. http://i.imgur.com/NsFqSku.jpg […]
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Instructions Per Cycle 486. Windows. Intel Inside.

THAT is a beauty.

That mini tower makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. <3

Wow... that mini tower really is amazing. What kind of sound card is that anyway? 😀

A coworker of mine just told me today that he's going to bring me his uncle's old PC that has a turbo button and Windows 95. It's apparently a mid-sized tower, which is good (my only other AT tower is gigantic). If its even half as cool looking as the one posted in this thread, I'll be super happy. I guess he has a monitor for it as well... we'll see if that's worth keeping.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I found a real gem on my way home from work a few days ago. A complete 486 tower in absolutely pristine condition. It's rare that I find stuff older than P4 and Athlon XP rigs these days, so a 486 was a complete surprise. The fact that I didn't even have to clean it was a bonus!

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to even hook it up, let alone play games on it. I had it plugged into an outlet for a few seconds and heard it POST, so it seems to be in good working condition.

1: Great find! Last time I came across an AT tower was in a thrift store and it also contained a s3 mainboard (with PCI and coincell battery) which had been upgraded by the previous owner. Very rare to come across one of there and yours looks to be in excellent condition! 😁
2: Remove that barrel battery ASAP!

This wasn't a new fiding, but i found stuff in a dumpster here and sometimes i find PCs laying around the street, mainly near the trash containers

In a dumpster find, i found:
- 3Dfx Voodoo 1
- 3Dfx Voodoo 2 8 MB
- AMD Athlon XP 2200+
- 3 motherboards
- 2 dead Kryo II cards
- Geforce FX 5500 and FX 5200 AGP
- Several Soundblaster PCI128 and Realtek Network cards

My largest find was 3 Pentium 4 towers around July 2015, i had to take out the motherboards and cards from it since it was too much (i can't load 3 PCs 🤣)

Here a pic of the 3Dfx cards i found in that dumpster

Got a chance to install DOS 6.22 and play a few games on the 486 today. Turns out that the CPU under that heatsink is the legendary Intel DX2-66, and there's 16MB of RAM.

She handles quite well. The fans just make the most soothing sound, it really takes me back to the early 90s! 😀 But--and it pains me to say this--as cool and awesome as the 486 is, I do enjoy using the Bitchin'Fast! PC99 quite a bit more. It's just a much more flexible machine that can handle far more than just DOS games. So I'll only be using the 486 for the few speed sensitive games I have that don't work properly on BFPC99.
Like Jazz Jackrabit:

clueless1 wrote:

Yes, awesome 486! Tell us the story of how you came across it. 😀

No story really. Just found it in a nearby alley on my way home from work. Spring cleaning is great! 😁

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Wow... that mini tower really is amazing. What kind of sound card is that anyway? 😀

A coworker of mine just told me today that he's going to bring me his uncle's old PC that has a turbo button and Windows 95. It's apparently a mid-sized tower, which is good (my only other AT tower is gigantic). If its even half as cool looking as the one posted in this thread, I'll be super happy. I guess he has a monitor for it as well... we'll see if that's worth keeping.

Not sure exactly what card it is, but it has two Crystal chips on it. I have a spare AWE64 somewhere that I plan to use with this machine. Only thing that about the AWE64 that concerns me is that it doesn't have the proprietary CD-ROM connector. I really hope the HDD controller supports 2 devices/cable so that I can just put in a much faster IDE CD drive.

Tetrium wrote:

2: Remove that barrel battery ASAP!

Yep! That'll be one of the first things I do when I get some time to work inside this machine.

rick6 wrote:

Come back to us with the testing results. I'm kind of curious about that 286.

Just cleaned it up, connected a known good PSU and powered up. It worked but reported some sort of RAM error. Next, I decided to hook up a hard drive. While the hard drive was spinning up, power cut out so I switched off the PSU as well. When I turned it back on, the system wouldn't post but the HDD managed to spin up.

Now it doesn't work no matter what I try 😀

Half-Saint wrote:

rick6 wrote:

Come back to us with the testing results. I'm kind of curious about that 286.

Just cleaned it up, connected a known good PSU and powered up. It worked but reported some sort of RAM error. Next, I decided to hook up a hard drive. While the hard drive was spinning up, power cut out so I switched off the PSU as well. When I turned it back on, the system wouldn't post but the HDD managed to spin up.

Now it doesn't work no matter what I try 😀

That doesn't sound very good. It's possible it was tossed because it was having these issues. A good way to prevent this, is by dismantling the system and start testing the relevant parts individually.