wirerogue wrote:

thinking about picking up a 486 machine and i don't much experience with them. […]
Show full quote

thinking about picking up a 486 machine and i don't much experience with them.

not alot of specs to go by but, what do you guys think of this?

https://orangecounty.craigslist.org/sys/d/hp- … 6965228151.html

thanks in advance.

I wish I had opportunity to get one of them, If you have spare 75 USD I would go for it 😊

I have a 486/25VL Vectra, Its major drawback is a missing L2 cache upgrade option. I wouldn't bother with that Vectra, if it doesn't allow to install L2 cache.

the blurry photo on craigslist was kinda hard to decipher but, after comparing to several different models, i think it's the HP VECTRA VE 4/66. not sure if this helps or not.

I personally really like the Vectra desktops for their form factor and for being a cheap and easy way to get a 486, but they don't tend to have much going for them in terms of upgradability. What are you planning on doing with it?

If it's to get to know 486 era stuff and shipping isn't too costly I'd say go for it. Varify that it is booting though. If it's $75 for all 12 HELLL YEAH!!

Caluser2000 wrote:

If it's $75 for all 12 HELLL YEAH!!

I don't think so. This has to be the price for one unit alone.

Turbo -> wrote:

Caluser2000 wrote:

If it's $75 for all 12 HELLL YEAH!!

I don't think so. This has to be the price for one unit alone.

You don't know untill you ask. Assuming is the mother of all F @#K ups.

Caluser2000 wrote:

You don't know untill you ask.

True.

not sure what my plans are for this other than clean it up and get dos loaded and working properly.

it will probably just end up in a box when it's finished. like my last 4 builds. 😒

Found the old marketing comparison materials I got when I picked up my VL2 4/100, comparing it against the VE 4/XXs and 5/XXs. Looks like the VE 4/66 should have onboard PCI-bus S3 Trio 64 VGA, 1 full length ISA, 1 short ISA, 1 PCI, and one shared PCI/ISA, and a 100W PSU. DRAM maxes out at 64MB, factory DRAM was 4 or 8mb 70ns. L2 cache maxes out at 256kb, not included from factory.

Again, decent specs but not much room for improvements or experimentation. Hopefully this helps.

Vectras were nice dependable machines that just worked. Not horrible, not ecstatic.

From what I remember these have noisy Seagate hard drives.
Other than that they are nice desktops.

Now the hard part begins... Waiting for the seller to respond. 😐

It looks quite discolorated on my monitor.

I have a Vectra 486/33vl. It's a nice little machine. Not the greatest 486, but it's ok. It came with a quantum fireball that died few years ago and it had no cache, but in mine there are sockets for SRAM chips, so I added cache
It's not the ultra best 486 you can get, but it's not a bad 486 in any means. Mine has a cirrus logic video card wired on the versa local bus, so there's no bottleneck whatsoever.

75$ sounds a bit high in my opinion, but if you're fine with that, go for it !