My most least used is my IBM its got leaky caps. i have a 233mmx IBM I don't use that much because its just not as feature rich as some to make it interesting but i used to use it for testing react os but always ended up crashing and i just leave it there 😀
now its reactos on 64bit and still single core crap 🤣

Maybe I should just turn them into sleeper pc's i9 or sumthin

Probably the AST Premium II. Mostly because it's at my parent's place and not mine. But either way, a 486SX-20 is not that big a leap over a 386DX-40 and where that one would be too slow I have a K5-PR133 and some slower non-MMX Pentiums.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-08-02, 09:32:

Probably the AST Premium II. Mostly because it's at my parent's place and not mine. But either way, a 486SX-20 is not that big a leap over a 386DX-40 and where that one would be too slow I have a K5-PR133 and some slower non-MMX Pentiums.

yes i agree the 386 i gave the ex dad in law was almost as fast a my 486 i was astonished watching windows 98 load up just as fast

My set up is a single LCD monitor with a VGA and DVI input that I have two systems hooked up to, usually an xp/7 system and a Windows 98 system. I don't like clutter so I try to use one wireless USB keyboard for the two systems and just swap the little receiver around, but adding a PS2 mouse for the older system and usb mouse for the newer system.

So this means my 486 is the least used as it needs an AT keyboard and I don't like the idea of having two keyboards on my desk! I also need rear access to it for the CF card to copy over games which is a pain as it is a large under desk case, my windows 98 PC I will just transfer files over usb.

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2021-08-02, 13:42:

My set up is a single LCD monitor with a VGA and DVI input that I have two systems hooked up to, usually an xp/7 system and a Windows 98 system. I don't like clutter so I try to use one wireless USB keyboard for the two systems and just swap the little receiver around, but adding a PS2 mouse for the older system and usb mouse for the newer system.

So this means my 486 is the least used as it needs an AT keyboard and I don't like the idea of having two keyboards on my desk! I also need rear access to it for the CF card to copy over games which is a pain as it is a large under desk case, my windows 98 PC I will just transfer files over usb.

makes sense - that's part of it, the setting up time. especially when another system is already more than capable

when we think of duplicate vintage systems we often think in terms of CPU generation and so on, but functional duplicates are much broader in their tech and any win98 system able to play DOS games but having perhaps later features ends up being more useful as a one stop PC for things than firing up a variety of older PCs, as example

My IBM PC/AT.

It's a very nice system. Works perfectly. Has a lot of original stuff with it.

It's just so large that I haven't been able to find a place for it. Not sure how much I would use it otherwise -- I don't have that much 286-compatible software.

I do want to find a proper place and use for it at some point though.

gerry wrote on 2021-08-02, 08:28:

The reason is partly that its old and I don't want to break it! Mostly though it's that I have more powerful recent systems that do everything it does and more, and then there's dosbox and source ports that mean even games that may have setup issues on later systems are just fine

I'm the opposite! My childhood 486/66 was one of the most used BECAUSE of the sentimental connections. As such the POD83 didn't get used nearly as much even though it had better hardware.

Out of the machines I have connected to KVMs and ready to go now.

My least used is the Mac G3. I got it to try out the Mac versions of games like Warcraft, Diablo included on the CD, as well as compare a few other games. I got as far as installing Mac OS9 4 years ago.
I only fire it up when I have to move it to double check everything's plugged in ok.

I hardly use my Dell 1Ghz Slot 1 with a GF Ti4600 & V3 2000. Preferring the dual slot 1 P3 600 with GF2 MX and V2 SLI or AMD Slot A 3dFX Banshee.
The Dells the fastest but the other systems hardware interest me more. It probably gets used about 5 times a year, usually as a test box before trying something on one of the other 2 PC's.

The dual PPro and S604 systems also don't get used often but they were built mainly to mess around with server versions of NT 3.51 and Win2k so were never going to be highly used systems anyway.

I don't remeber powering up my xt system because it has an dead mfm hdd and they are crazy expensibe. That may not qualify as complete system so, also I don't remember powering up my 386sx25 and another systems just because I build then for the fun of bulding, configuring and os install, after that I lose interest on moust of then.

I'm currently have two old systems, which are a Socket 7 system with a K6-2+/450 CPU and a Slot 1 system equipped with a PIII-750 CPU.

The Slot 1 system gets hardly used because I'm mostly focused on DOS and it is mostly as a testbed system.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2021-08-02, 15:45:

My IBM PC/AT. […]
Show full quote

My IBM PC/AT.

It's a very nice system. Works perfectly. Has a lot of original stuff with it.

It's just so large that I haven't been able to find a place for it. Not sure how much I would use it otherwise -- I don't have that much 286-compatible software.

I do want to find a proper place and use for it at some point though.

thats the machine i use the most! 5154 monitor, 80287, mt32, and every single slot is filled - IBM EGA adapter, SB Pro 2.0, HardMPU, 3com nic, AST Rampage 286 plus with 2mb of RAM, factory IBM I/O and drive controller (to drive the floppies), and an adaptec SCSI adapter. The goal was to keep the original machine as 100% intact as possible while having upgrades that could have conceivably coincided in the timeline.

I have a few, I think?

Memory isn't that good these days.

Oh yeah the 64-bit Core 2 Duo gaming thingy which I transplanted the mobo out of. It should be recycled in to bottle caps by now.....

Of ones in active use (not storage), I don't have one. I literally rotate from one to another day after day, oldest to newest - that way I get to use all of them equally and have around 5 games going on at one time. I suppose I could technically say the test-bed "PC" on my test-bench, which is a ss7/mmx233, but I am not sure that counts really it only exists to test components when I need to.

Of anything I could just plug in and use, doesn't need stuff installing or messing around with, the one I use least is probably the PIII-933 Compaq (M700??) laptop I've got that has been on maybe an hour in the last 3 years. Some of the "broken" stuff has more power on time 🤣 ... yah I don't know what's up with that, I guess it just doesn't hit the spot for any software I'm currently interested in... should I stick something on my PII Armada and it struggles a lot, then maybe it'll get some love... unless it runs fine on the Pentium-M class machine with XP on.

Heh, must be my IBM 5150 (at least that is what I think it is), 8086 cpu, 10Megabyte harddrive with 1mb to spare... (size of a brick, not to mention the sounds!). Worked last time I turned it on, but the AST SixPacPlus blew a tantalum when powering up... Still worked though.

I must admit I find 5150s, 5155s, 5160s and 6mhz 5170s painful to use. Guess it's because I first owned "turbo XT" type machines before I got any of those. Although with Amigas, I had a 1200 before I got a 500, and I don't find it the same, it's slower of course, but not teeth grindingly slow. Maybe I need to "humanise' them somehow by putting a red blinkie in that goes "thinking... thinking... thinking..." when it's busy and a green that goes "ready" when you get the prompt or input back. I get out the sharp PC-4600 once in a while and that's XT class, and don't get annoyed with it, even though compared to anything else currently running it's a real plodder.

My least used system is definitely a 64mb K6-2 500 + 8mb Verite 2200 AGP rig running Win95c. It pretty much only sees action whenever I feel like playing a couple of races on the Verité version of Fatal Racing.

kolderman wrote on 2021-08-03, 19:34:

Of ones in active use (not storage), I don't have one. I literally rotate from one to another day after day, oldest to newest - that way I get to use all of them equally and have around 5 games going on at one time. I suppose I could technically say the test-bed "PC" on my test-bench, which is a ss7/mmx233, but I am not sure that counts really it only exists to test components when I need to.

an excellent approach, maybe i have too many functionally similar machines or they aren't set up differently enough to be worth swapping around often, i do tend to go through periods of using 1 or 2 machines more though, so i guess in a year I'll use most, but some hardly ever

bestemor wrote on 2021-08-04, 02:17:

Heh, must be my IBM 5150 (at least that is what I think it is), 8086 cpu, 10Megabyte harddrive with 1mb to spare... (size of a brick, not to mention the sounds!). Worked last time I turned it on, but the AST SixPacPlus blew a tantalum when powering up... Still worked though.

as interesting as these can be, anything of this age is limited in comparison with a later but still DOS compatible machine and they are also older, quite rare and possibly ready to fail. I dont have one, but if i did, i imagine it wouldn't get used much either

Sadly it's my Socket 4 system. It just falls between my 486 and Win98/WinXP dual build. Even if I have to go to something inbetween I go to one of my trusted Socket 7 builds.