Reply 48300 of 55036, by BitWrangler
- Rank
- l33t++
Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-03-03, 08:20:I would like to talk to some Dell experts to learn where this system fits into their history, because there is absolutely zero i […]
I would like to talk to some Dell experts to learn where this system fits into their history, because there is absolutely zero information about the existence of this machine online aside from the trademark registration in 1993 and one 20 year old post from someone saying they repurposed the chassis of one of these.
It's a Dell Exclaim 486/50 (DX2-50) desktop, with original keyboard, mouse and monitor in original box. As a bonus, someone had upgraded this with a Media Vision multimedia kit, so it has a PAS16, 2x SCSI CDROM and fancy Labtec stereo speakers! So far, everything works, and the CRT is absolutely gorgeous! Perfect blacks, excellent color.
20230302_202829 (Custom).jpgI found it listed recently and managed to get it for a great price in untested condition. Thankfully, the seller not only packaged it back into the box appropriately (base off of monitor, original packaging in place and double boxed to protect the artwork!!).
20230302_185123 (Custom).jpgInside it is incredibly clean and the CMOS battery is, thankfully, external. It had slightly corroded the battery negative battery pin but there appears to be no damage on the top of the board (haven't pulled it yet to check the back). Everything else seems to be working great though! I get a tiny bit of sporadic noise from the power supply so I will probably crack that open and see how things look in there.
To my astonishment, I managed to get the hard drive reading by just setting the drive parameters to auto (not as shown in the picture above... those are the defaults due to the lack of battery) and rebooting the PC. It has DOS, Windows 3.1 and an interesting startup program called Dell Library Menu.
20230302_204141 (Custom).jpgAlso, there are hand-written labels on the pull tabs on all of the drive ribbon cables... but not on the CD-ROM cable which was added later. Surely, the writing didn't come from Dell, did it? 🤣
20230302_191328 (Custom).jpgAnyway, I plan on making a thread about this but I had to post something now. I'm super excited to get it 100% cleaned up and to get all the kinks worked out.
From my reading online, non-business-oriented Dell PCs were barely a thing in 1993, which is when this was manufactured. It's very well built too. The back of the chassis is painted and looks very "premium", except for the fact that the keyboard "hole" is obviously DIN\AT sized but has a PS/2 port in the middle of it... which tells me this case wasn't tooled exactly for this machine.
Nice, just a point to note about Dells earlier history.. they were a system assembly clone shop at first, and for a couple of years, then branching into ordering machines built of commodity parts to rebadge from Asian and other manufacturers and then finally building up the financial muscle to custom order and custom manufacture. (Also much the same progression from Gateway, Packard Bell etc) This one is of an age that was either assembled at Dell USA from commodity parts, or built in Asia from mainly commodity parts at Dell's behest.
There's something of a 1987 to 1997 memory hole, practically everything went into magazines and periodicals 1987 and earlier, you at least made sure you got a 1/4 page ad and prodded for a "newsette" if you had a new product... but the whole business was exploding, so what was happening was there became too much going on to cover comprehensively, and at the same time preliminary "online" things were happening, in the form of manufacturers own BBS, mailing lists by email, AOL and Compuserve sections (and the also rans like Prodigy etc) Compuserve deserves a special mention for sucking.... up all kinds of tech info in it's conferences... then *poof* it's gone. By 1997 these proprietary online presences were recognised as being "over" in comparison with the non-proprietary WWW and more concentration on WWW happened. But, all that stuff from BBSes and special presences on AOL/Compuserve etc was not moved over in significant ways. The non proprietary info on usenet newsgroups has got archived in hard to access manners, try narkive and google groups but it's painful.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.