29 Apr
2010
29 Apr
'10
3:22 p.m.
On Thu, 29 Apr 2010, Ethan Dicks wrote:
On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 3:20 PM, Joe Giliberti
<starbase89 at gmail.com> wrote:
The huge spasm of recycle-mania over the past ten years has all but
eliminated the once-plentiful 486 machines. Best thing that ever happened
to eBay :-).
Steve
--
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.