Behold: A 386-computer (kind of) currently still in production and available in the market! \ VOGONS

Behold: A 386-computer (kind of) currently still in production and available in the market!

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First post, by aries-mu

Posted on 2023-09-25, 13:27

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I thought, why not to make a post about this little nice beauty I noticed in 2017:

https://www.transduction.com/transduc/tr386.htm

RAM and drive seem just 'a little' too small... Otherwise it's nice!

(and too bad for the 16 Bit bus)

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Reply 1 of 5, by CharlieFoxtrot

Posted on 2023-09-25, 13:50

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AFAIk those EX cpus were used a lot in different industrial/embedded systems and intel manufactured 386EX till 2007 or so. As for the system here, it is practically useless for any general purpose computing tasks.

Reply 2 of 5, by aries-mu

Posted on 2023-09-25, 13:55

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it seemed so indeed

Reply 3 of 5, by Disruptor

Posted on 2023-09-25, 14:45

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386 EX = 386 SX SOC with 26 bit address bus

However, this computer seems to have soldered SRAM and the manual does not say anything about upgradeability.
And it looks like it has no graphics card installed, so you have to use the serial line.

Reply 4 of 5, by Grzyb

Posted on 2023-09-25, 15:06

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512 KB SRAM + optional another 512 KB... very little even by 386 standards.
No sound, and no way to install ISA sound card - very bad for gaming.
No ISA slots also means no other options, eg. GPIB.

Edit: and indeed, nothing about video - must use serial console, which pretty much limits it to STDIO software.

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Reply 5 of 5, by aries-mu

Posted on 2023-09-25, 20:45

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Grzyb wrote on 2023-09-25, 15:06:
512 KB SRAM + optional another 512 KB... very little even by 386 standards. No sound, and no way to install ISA sound card - ver […]
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512 KB SRAM + optional another 512 KB... very little even by 386 standards.
No sound, and no way to install ISA sound card - very bad for gaming.
No ISA slots also means no other options, eg. GPIB.

Edit: and indeed, nothing about video - must use serial console, which pretty much limits it to STDIO software.

Disruptor wrote on 2023-09-25, 14:45:

386 EX = 386 SX SOC with 26 bit address bus

However, this computer seems to have soldered SRAM and the manual does not say anything about upgradeability.
And it looks like it has no graphics card installed, so you have to use the serial line.

Yeah good points. Hence the "(kind of)" in the topic title

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