download/file.php?id=70971&mode=view
I've had a DECpc LPv+ 486sx25 with 486DX2/66 upgrade for over 10 years and never needed any disks to set it up at all. only thing I needed was to change the Dallas rtc. Mine has 16megs of ram and is running OS/2 v3 with OS/2 v4 network client.

It's a solid dependable slimline system. An old vcfed forum about my one https://vcfed.org/forum/forum/genres/later-pc … ecpc-lpv-series

DEC made good quality stuff, I'd love to have one in my collection.
never really had to do any hardware repair/upgrades on them back in the day but hear they do have the occasional proprietary part
Looks like RAM from the link above? I'm guessing i's not a DEC exclusive part and just wants Fast Page (not EDO) maybe with parity which want that uncommon of an requirement from this era, but that IS just a guess based on 0 facts

How's the built in S3 805 with video performance?

viper32cm wrote on 2021-08-12, 01:26:

How's the built in S3 805 with video performance?

As good as you would expect from a system that old...

I should add they are built like a brick shit house.

So the 80s Mercedes-Benz of the computer world? I'm liking the sound of this.

Avoid the DEC Rainbow 100, unless it titillates your particular perversion, it only sorta runs MS-DOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-08-12, 03:03:

Avoid the DEC Rainbow 100, unless it titillates your particular perversion, it only sorta runs MS-DOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100

I always wanted a rainbow 100 to mess around with...

It came in the mail today. I can already tell that this is going to be great.

There's some yellowing on the front and some scratches on the case, but nothing beyond what you would expect with a system of this age.

It came with two hard drives. A 120MB drive with Dos 6.20 and Windows 3.1 and a ~420MB drive formatted in HPFS, which I'm assuming is for OS/2. The boot manager says that it can't boot the HPFS drive, which is a shame, but I'll probably put it in one of my hard drive enclosures to see if I can read the drive on my modern system.

There are a few errors on boot up when it's going through what files to load, which I guess means the pervious owner removed certain software from it without modifying CONFIG.SYS and/or AUTOEXEC.BAT to tell the computer not to look for them anymore. There's also some info 0n startup about an HP "measurement coprocessor" that then lists some base addresses and IRQs. The Windows install also has a copy of Excel 5.0 on it.

I'd like to my best to preserve this install of DOS and Windows. However, I also need to be able to install a sound card a CD-ROM drive. Should I image the drive and/or is there a way to create back up discs of the current install?

Pictures please !

Here are a few pics. The drive with the DOS partition stopped working so I'm working to save what I can off that drive. The drive with the dos partition is digital branded drive, but the PCB says it was built by quantum in Japan. Date codes on the motherboard ICs, suggest a mid-ish 1993 build, and it looks like it was upgraded with a larger hard drive in 1995. The larger hard drive is a HP branded Seagate, which still works but has about 1/2 a MB of bad sectors on it. There was missing expansion slot cover, and I think this computer had an HP Measurement Coprocessor installed in it. It may have been in some sort of industrial environment, but, whatever it was doing, it definitely wasn't word processing.

Despite the yellowing it's very clean. I'm probably not going to retrobright it.

Here's some more photos, including of the original, digital branded HD.

When I could boot off that drive, DOS showed a disc size that was about half of what the drive lists. My Windows 7 and 10 machine insist that I need to initialize and partition the drive in order for them to see it through my USB to ATA convertor. I'm going to see if I can read the drive on one my Win9X systems. I know it has some bad sectors, but I'd love to keep it running.

Also, it came with 8MB of RAM. I think other than a Gotek, SB16 or Aztech soundcard, and CD-ROM drive, I'm going to keep this thing as is, presuming one of the hard drives will be reliable for occasional DOS gaming. No DX/2 66, no nothing else. If I need more power for DOS games, I have a Pentium 100.

Looks good. Great thing is the Dallas battery is socketed. These are picky on the ram type and size but can go up to 64megs 😉\

Managed to get 16megs for my one for OS/2v3 Warp.

Good news! The original, Digital branded hard drive appears to be operable. I'm probably going to use that drive for this system instead of the 400MB drive.

Also you have a nice one with 12 bit tag plus main cache chips. Plug them in.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-08-21, 01:52:

Also you have a nice one with 12 bit tag plus main cache chips. Plug them in.

Cheers,

That's the plan. I already have 128kb of the main cache. Once I establish a benchmark baseline, I'll try 128kb of cache plus the tag ram and see how it runs. I'll probably go 256kb in the end. Why not?

I do like the LPX "pizza box" form factor.
I wouldn't be able to help myself and upgrade the CPU, but that's just me. Rest of the upgrades make good sense.
120MB maybe a bit small once you install all your games, but only 1 way to find out!

Looks like you only have 1 IDE channel. I ended up disconnecting the CD drive on my 486 instead using a "large" CF card. That way I get the sound of spinning rust at start up plus something fast and convenient for all my games, install files, etc. I also have mine networked and find I've very little need for CD drive now. Just an idea

Back in the day, I had 80MB on my first 386DX computer I paid new from my work, not many games and voila hard drive is full via floppies.

80MB was large where 20MB and 40MB was the norm for buyers.

Shoot for 200MB or 340-370MB.

Cheers,