29 Apr
2010
29 Apr
'10
12:39 p.m.
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 3:20 PM, Joe Giliberti
<starbase89 at gmail.com> wrote:
Well, I'm probably going to be looking for a 386-based machine at some
point. I own several distributions of Xenix and Unix for the 80386
and I'd like a real machine to run them on. I even want to find an
80286-based machine for a copy of Xenix-286 that I have. I've got a
machine out in the garage but I haven't had a chance to see what shape
it's in. I'll probably do that this weekend. I also have an IBM
300GL (Pentium II-based system) that I was hoping to set up with OS/2,
but last weekend's attempt to bring it up after several years in
storage were for naught. It can't see the hard drive (which seems to
be ok), so that's another tear-apart and rebuild for the to-do list.
:)
Mark
200465382453
If this is representative of the market for 486s, my basement is a gold mine
I'm starting to see some interest in pre-Pentium systems from younger
enthusiasts who want to fiddle with DOS on bare metal (not with
virtualization). ?I was helping someone just last week with a 386DX20
because he has no cache and didn't know that a board could work
without it.
I'd consider a 486DX2/66 w/4MB of memory, especially with a VLB disk
controller and VLB video card plus a 16-bit Sound Blaster to be a very
nice platform for exploring the pre-1995 commodity computing world.
Yes, the Pentium was out before 1995, but it was at the time a
high-end technology. ?I was still installing WfW 3.11 on 486s w/200MB
of disk and 16MB or less of RAM right up to the introduction of
Windows95.
After Windows95 came out, the demand for that class of machine waned
considerably.
-ethan