The Gateway DX2 tower I have is fantastic. But I don’t see much advantage to a 486 if you already have a Pentium.

I have a Dell Dimension 386SX/25 which is a perfect sweet spot for older DOS stuff. It’s perfect for Wing Commander, for example. The case is nice - a little business-like, but with a style that suits an early 386. It’s fairly small, the inside layout is good (not too cramped), and looks like even the motherboard is fairly standard AT. Speaking of which, the motherboard is well built - coin cell RTC battery, FPU socket, onboard I/O and video with expandable video memory, sensible jumpers with adequate documentation online, etc. I’ve thought about selling it before since I have a PS/2 286, a 386DX and a 486SX - but I decided I like it too much to let it go.

My 486SX is an AST, which is also really nice, but a little more proprietary - it’s picky about RAM and I would not be able to swap the motherboard. I think the BIOS is Phoenix.

The nice thing about OEM systems pre-Pentium is you are way more likely to get onboard PS2 ports. Both of the above has PS2 mouse interfaces. My homebuilt 386 and 486 do not.

Yeah, my Gateway DX2 tower has PS/2 ports while my Insight DX2 tower is AT. I thought maybe the Insight had some custom case because I've never seen it before but perhaps it's actually generic and just really uncommon.

SirNickity wrote on 2020-01-06, 02:58:

The Gateway DX2 tower I have is fantastic. But I don’t see much advantage to a 486 if you already have a Pentium.

The difference between a 486 and a Pentium is quite big. For example, many Sierra games are unplayable on a Pentium due to timing issues but on a 486, they all work fine. That's why I mentioned a turbo button as well - so you can slow it down even further. Next step is disabling the cache. The Pentium 75, even with cache disabled, is too fast for some games you see.

I was building a small fleet of late 90's Dell GX1 PII/PIII machines and spare parts for a while. The desktop models are great because they are easily accessible. I got into them because the case design was as easily accessible as my Powermac 7500 and 7600 machines. You just fold the top up and everything is right there. The drive bay is also hinged to fold up out of the way when accessing the internals of the machine. Upgrades are easy to do because if you can find the right kind of socket 370 adapter (Not all of them can do this, so you have to research before you buy. Any old generic adapter won't work.) you can run up to a 1.4ghz Celeron in them. Max out the RAM and put in someting like a PCI 9500GT or GT430 video card and that opens up more modern operating systems that you can use. They are great for experimenting with stuff like that if you like to see just how far you can go with obsolete hardware. There used to be a few webpages where people have maxed out these machines with detailed instructions and benches, but I don't know how many of them are still online or if they're all gone by now. It seems like you want to go the other way, though, and see how much old software you can run and a lot of that stuff is timing dependent so you want to slow down a machine as much as possible, not speed it up.

Also ALR (Advanced Logic Research), Siemens Nixdorf, Dell, Samsung.

Horun wrote on 2020-01-06, 02:47:

Good brands of early 90's (assuming pre 1995) to collect: Acer, Ast, Compaq, Gateway, Packard Bell, HP, Olivetti, NEC, SuperMicro, Vtech's Laser, Unisys and Leading Technology are some....just off the top of my head. I stay away from IBM due to issues already mentioned above.

added: I really would like a Unisys CWD-4002 to go along with my CWD-5001 but prices when available are way too high....

That's a very good list, but I would like to add Epson, Dell and Digital to that.

pre 94 Packard Bells, Gateways, Compaq's are all pretty decent, a packard bell post 94 that still works is also cool just because they where flaky and prone to early death nothing special about them though.

Fairly old topic but I'd like to add that personally I'd be wary of at least some Compaq and Olivetti models ranging from 286 to early 486 if one wishes to actually use them. I'm talking about the ones that had their BIOS/CMOS setup info on hidden hard disk partition (or even in ROM) and you had to use special utility software to access those configurations. And if you didn't have the right utility disk or the original HDD broke... tough luck, no changes to BIOS anymore. It was highly infuriating practice to rely on software like that and doubly so now if you try to invigorate old machines without proper software at hand.

So... double check those Compaqs and Olivettis what kind of BIOS they actually have beforehand.

Yes, but at least for Compaq the support is still available (on the HP web) and you can still download both firmware updates and the necessary utilities and software. True, finding them in an unsorted pile of "softpacks" is a bit of a hassle.

An IBM PS/1 model 2133(386 SX 25) might be worth a look, it has ps/2 Kyb/mouse ports, built in Cirrus Logic VGA, standard IDE and FDD onboard, 72 pin RAM sockets, and uses a CR2032 coin cell for CMOS/time. Also the board uses standard AT PSU connectors. CMOS settings don't need a disk either. I'm not sure what the case and original PSU are like, I only have the motherboard, but it's very easy to pull out and setup on the bench(OK, in my case floor!) for some old DOS gaming.
Here's my old thread from 6 years ago(gosh how time flies!)
My new IBM 386 build
And also a pic I took yesterday as it just so happened that I set her up again after being in a draw for the past few years.

Only changes made since that 6 year old thread are the ULSI 387 is now in my 33MHz SX system after I picked up a dirt cheap intel 387 25MHz part from China a few years ago(I like playing with Fractint).
Anyhow, might be worth thinking about, a 386 with most of the modern conveniences built right in!