13 Feb
2013
13 Feb
'13
11:05 a.m.
On 02/13/2013 09:40 AM, Scott Quinn wrote:
About a year ago I got a Turbo XT clone (8-ish MHz
V20, I think, full
memory). It needs a bit of work (HDD, looks like a cap blew on the
floppy, monitor needs a new CEE receptacle wired in), but it seems to
power up fine.
I've been shoveling it around for the past year-plus, and this is the
first time I've even turned it on, which gets me wondering whether
it's worth keeping or not, especially when virtualized PCs are so
easy to do. I have a 386 and Pentium with ISA slots, so that's not a
big deal. For those with old clones, what do you use them for, or is
it just mostly nostalgia?
Old hardware devices with drivers that were written during the days of
the PC XT. For example, I've got a Match Point PC disk card that needs
the slower CPU. So I keep a couple of the boxes around and they get
trotted out every so often. They both have VGA cards however--no way
I'm going to haul out an old monochrome or CGA monitor as well.
Both have NICs and are equipped with networking software, so file
transfer isn't a big deal.
--Chuck