Reply 59280 of 59282, by Alesia
2 weeks ago I saw that my local tech recyclers had just gotten a 486 in but they had not wiped the drive so they wouldn't let it go or price it. I came back this week and to my suprise it was still there, and priced at only $30, on a week I had $30 of money I could spend on whatever I wanted. I never thought I would be able to complete my MS-DOS/Windows line-up with a 486 era machine but everything came together after many years of searching. Let me introduce the Zeos 486.
Featuring a Zeos Upgradable Systems Motherboard, 486DX on a daughter board, a Diamond Stealth VRAM, and Pro Audio Spectrum 16, Seagate ST3491A, and the weight of the core of a white dwarf it is the 486 of my dreams....kind of. It is missing the Intel Cache Module these could come with and that is a big bummer. They seem to be unobtainium and probably extremely expensive if there were any available, maybe someone super smart will figure out a homebrew replacement somehow eventually. The 4.5V CMOS battery is also proving to be a nightmare to find replacements for. Making a DYI battery holder requires tools that are somewhat expensive (for me) and no one seems to be selling pre-made ones on ebay which struck me as odd. It is also not the VLB capable motherboard that this same model could come with but I'm sure I'll figure that out as well if the Diamond card proves to be unsatisfactory. I couldn't find any real info on the performance of the Diamond card so I guess I'll see. Worst case it gets replaced with something faster (IDK what) and I can put the Diamond card in my 286 which is currently using a very slow integrated Trident graphics setup.
However, it came with all the core parts and it does just work despite having to punch in hard drive parameters in every time I turn it on, and the bios settings corrupting on reset (to the point of a soft-lock at times!) I got DOS 5.0 installed and I'm working on picking out a list of software/games I want to have on it. Also fixed the cable management and cleaned out the psu fan and the intake(!) fan as it has intake slots and does something other then move hot air around. Currently planning to hunt down 16-32mb of memory and run Windows 3.1 on it, probably upgrade to a 486DX2 which is the max the board can support aside from exotic things like overdrive chips. Also installed a CD-drive and figured out some jumper setting conflicts with the hard drive but I haven't gotten drivers installed to test it out yet. I have Red Baron CD and Dragon's Lair CD on hand to test everything out when I get all the core drivers and software figured out and stable. I know I've complained a lot here but new machine always equals new issues. I am jittery levels of excited over finally getting a 386/486 class machine and I can't wait for when I get it fully up and running even without any upgrades.
EDIT: Spammed the thread somehow, alerted the mods as the website won't let me remove the junk posts for some reason. Sorry everyone.






