24 Apr
2008
24 Apr
'08
12:26 p.m.
On Thursday 24 April 2008 14:45, Jules Richardson wrote:
I have actually a bunch of those old boards around _and_ docs for them, if
somebody needs some help with that, either in terms of taknig some of that
old hardware off my hands or getting something working. OTOH I remember well
repeatedly rebooding some clone or other while trying one jumper or switch
setting at a time and then running some diagnostic program to try and figure
things out. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
But yes, fair point about the expansion boards. I
expect it was unusual to
see a 5150 without floppy drives, and I don't think the things would even
boot without a display adapter (something that's plagued server PCs ever
since!)
Heh. I have one machine (the firewall/router) that's built around a 486 board
that although it does indeed have a monitor attached it's almost never turned
on. I can see the utility of some boxes here that wouldn't even have a
monitor attached at all, too.
(Snip)
The company I
worked for at the time bought a PC on the day of release
(August 12, 1981), specifically to develop third-party peripherals and
software. The company was one of the first to market with a "combo
card", but was never as successful with it as AST, Quadram, etc.
I wonder how many such vendors there were? Every (IBM) PC I've ever looked
in seems to have a different multi-function board from a different vendor
in :) (and of course the documentation on how to set it up is long gone)