8 Jul
2005
8 Jul
'05
3:45 a.m.
On Wed, 6 Jul 2005 21:00:29 -0700 (PDT)
Vintage Computer Festival <vcf at siconic.com> wrote:
On Wed, 6 Jul 2005, Scott Stevens wrote:
An important thing to keep a 'representative example' of in a 286
machine is one of the early 'full AT' motherboards from before the
'chipsets' hit the market. An original IBM-AT motherboard, or one of
the first cloners, will have the same Intel 8xxx series LSI chips as the
PC-XT machines and tons of TTL gates, and no 'custom' chips at all
(aside from PALs). Also worth getting ahold of are the early 'full-AT'
386 motherboards which have aprox the same design. Better yet if you
can get one that has a matching proprietary 'RAM Expansion' card.
Those early AT systems are eminently repairable, and 'understandable' on
the chip-level, since there aren't the 'mystery' chipset conglomeration
parts that came into fashion when the 'Baby-AT' boards hit the market.
Believe me, a day will probably come when people
who are in their
twenties now will wax nostalgic on that old Leading Edge or Packard
Bell clone they started out on as a little kid, and want one just
like it. And most of them will have been melted down.
I've got each in my collection ;)
I'm not saying they're rare or anything, but I've hardly seen any 286
or 386 computers come through my warehouse in the past few months.
The trickle has definitely slowed down. If you think you might have a
need for a 286 or 386 in the future, you should probably be wanting to
find a nice representative system right around now.