First post, by rarcher
So long time lurker of these forums over many years, and as I am going to be turning 39 this August I guess this purchase maybe means I am hitting my mid-life crisis? Anyhow I got an itch to 'relive' my youth in computers and wanted to buy the same computer as I had back in 1993. Which was a Packard Bell 486/DX2 pc with dos/windows 3.1. I cant recall the exact model but it was a full 'multimedia' enhanced option. Anyhow after some digging I found one like it but while it had a video and such showing it all working the seller on ebay wanted 550 some dollars for it. A bit too high for my taste. So I figured ok let's get a pc of that era with the same or better hardware.
The restrictions though were it had to have:
- Must have a 486/DX2 cpu with 66mhz cpu and 33mhz or faster bus
- Must have at least 1mb or higher video capacity either on board or by a half decent era appropriate video card
- Must have a working at the time of purcahse 1.44mb floppy and 2x or faster working cdrom drive
- Must have some kind of half decent sound card option either on board or by card
- Have memory options to support up to least 64mb
- Must have at least a 200+mb sized HDD and a bios capable of up to 2gb (last part here is optional but really desired)
- Be a machine that originally came with Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.1/3.11
- I could not spend more then 300 dollars for all the above must haves, including any extra purchases in the near future (memory, cache chips, etc)
With this all in mind I was SO overjoyed to find an ebay listing by a company out of New York called Sunnking. They had this beauty:
Which just arrived today after ordering it on Monday. The original listing was $300 + tax/$26 shipping. I contacted the company directly and got to talking to the tech and lister for the computer. After talking with them for 45 minutes on what I wanted to do with it (mostly display and maybe a little gaming), they dropped the price to 150 dollars including tax/shipping! I jumped on it on the spot and was SO happy to come way in under my budget.
The system as it arrived has a 486/DX2 66mhz cpu , 4mb of ram (I already expanded it to 128mb from buying the sticks separately), 128kb L2 cache which I'd like to expand to 256kb if I can figure out what exactly chips are needed, and 1mb on board video memory using a S3-864 chipset. Again i'd like to up that to 2mb so any insight onto where or what specific dram chips i need to get would be awesome! It is preinstalled with a 270mb HDD with DOS 6.22. The internal case is a lightly dusty but nothing major, coloring on the case is minimal from age which i love. Only thing I noticed so far i'll need to do to get a VGA monitor I got working with it is pull out one of the second row pins to make it work with the older VGA type it has.
Future plans:
- Upgrade to 128mb (done!)
- Install a 256kb L2 Cache
- Install another 1mb of dram for the onboard video OR buy a dedicated video card of better quality without going too expensive
- Install a 2gb HDD
- Upgrade the bios if needed for Y2k and other support/stability (must investigate this!)
- Maybe put in a better sound card with higher performance/quality then the one in there at present (need to ID current card)
- Install an ethernet card
- Install Windows 3.11 with networking support to access in home file server for easier file transfers
- Look at pricing and ability to install a higher 486/586 type CPU for faster speed provided price of part isnt too expensive
I'll get some more pictures posted up once I can, for now I hope I posted this in the right spot (I think I did?) but if not as a newbie I hope the mods wont get too angry on me 🤣
