Reply 28540 of 29597, by Thermalwrong
Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-10-17, 19:42:Well the Advantech PCA-6145 with a backplane is really quite a nice find IMO. IT's actually VLB connection to the graphics chip […]
RandomStranger wrote on 2024-10-17, 18:27:Some weeks ago I caught wind of having an "old PC" that was used to record phone calls. It's still in our inventory, but moved t […]
Some weeks ago I caught wind of having an "old PC" that was used to record phone calls. It's still in our inventory, but moved to a different section years ago to do what it supposed to do. Until it was decommissioned, so it was there collecting dust in danger of getting lost. And since it's our responsibility, I called that other section that it's very important for us to get it back. You know, it's in the books. So I secured it. I got a few minutes during lunch time to look into it.
It's a rack mounted single board PC. I'm both fascinated and mildly disappointed. I hoped to get a free 486, but I got the industrial version of the Am5x86 PC I already had, but with less RAM, and probably(?) downgraded graphics card. But it's still and odd, rare and old computer in decent condition at first sight. Even the Vartra battery didn't leak. It spent most of its life in 18-20 ˚C in various server and telephone switch rooms.
If anyone has any info about it, I'd be interested to hear.
Well the Advantech PCA-6145 with a backplane is really quite a nice find IMO. IT's actually VLB connection to the graphics chip and doesn't expose any PCI bus since the chipset is VLB / ISA only from what I recall. The video chip on there is a pretty good one and it can drive an LCD as well just like a laptop 😀 It has L2 cache on the back too which is pretty rare for a 486 SBC of that size.
I haven't seen a version of the PCA-6145 that has a Varta rechargeable battery before, usually they have a flat circular non-rechargeable lithium cell soldered there. Probably some different circuitry there to accomodate that?
In terms of BIOS modernity it is much more like a PCI 486 system, even able to boot from LS-120 drives and handles LBA drives and EDO memory without issue.While the Internet Archive is down I'm going through some files I downloaded from it to sort them out and have just discovered that the T4850CT hard drive image that someone uploaded to Archive.org has a full Toshiba installer for Windows 3.11 that makes it like factory - all the drivers and utilities as well as the Toshiba desktop wallpaper and the config.sys boot menu options. The best part of this is that this installer includes the full sound driver for the T4850CT / T4900CT for Windows 3.11 / DOS which couldn't be found for a long time. I've been testing it out on my T4850CT and the volume control in Windows finally works, of course it's still fighting me on the DOS soundblaster compatibility part...
But when Archive.org comes back I'm gonna make some restore packages for the T4700 / T4800 / T4850 / T4900 😀
Since discovering that there's a Toshiba factory reinstall of Windows 3.11 in c:\windows\instdir on systems that never got wiped, I've now found that I've got the factory restore installs of Win 3.11 for:
- Toshiba T1910CS (should work with T1910S and T1910 as well)
- Toshiba T2130CT (compatible with T2130 and T2110 mono, CS and CT versions)
- Toshiba T4700CT (compatible with T4700CS & T4800CT
- Toshiba T4850CT (includes sound driver that will also work for T4900CT in Windows 3.11 - this seems to be the Windows Sound System 2.1 software that was sought in this thread: Sound driver for a Toshiba T4900CT, Win 3.11)
Really hope the Internet Archive comes back online soon 😀
Also I've been playing more with the T4850CT trying to get WSSXLAT to work and it seems that just putting the "SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4" variable then wssxlat.exe at the end of the autoexec.bat file works as well as the Windows Sound System is going to. There's sound in Wolf3d with digital audio and OPL3. No sound in Doom yet (gonna try to see if FastDoom is better) but a few other games like OMF2097 and Star Control 2 are working properly, which is good because those are digital audio only.