2 Nov
2009
2 Nov
'09
1:52 p.m.
I have a chance to buy an IBM 5160 (pc-xt) with I believe an original CGA
(iirc) monitor. The interesting thing is that he seller claims it has a
386-16 upgrade board. What do we know about these? How much would that
upgrade board be worth? I'm trying to figure out if his price is fair.
brian
2 Nov
2 Nov
2:15 p.m.
At some point in PC history upgrade boards were boming..
Al kind of suppliers made them like, Boca, AST, and even Intel and some
Taiwanese firms.
Most time those board were placed in one of the ISA-slots and a connector
replaced the 8088-processor and off you go.
Most of the times you ended with a (slow)running 386 system that wasn't very
stable.
In my humble opinion the worth is what you want to give for it but no more
the say $30 to $50,-
I've some of those boxed never dared to put one in one of my Vectra's ..;-)
-Rik
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] Namens Brian Lanning
Verzonden: maandag 2 november 2009 22:52
Aan: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Onderwerp: 386 upgrade boards for IBM 5160s
I have a chance to buy an IBM 5160 (pc-xt) with I believe an
original CGA
(iirc) monitor. The interesting thing is that he seller
claims it has a
386-16 upgrade board. What do we know about these? How much
would that upgrade board be worth? I'm trying to figure out
if his price is fair.
brian
3:41 p.m.
386 upgrade??? Hmmmmm, I don't remember those - know there was the
Intel AboveBoard 286 upgrades for the XT's... I remember doing a lot of
those.
Curt
Brian Lanning wrote:
I have a chance to buy an IBM 5160 (pc-xt) with I
believe an original CGA
(iirc) monitor. The interesting thing is that he seller claims it has a
386-16 upgrade board. What do we know about these? How much would that
upgrade board be worth? I'm trying to figure out if his price is fair.
brian
8:12 p.m.
Most of the XT '386 upgrade boards used 386sx's. I remember putting a lot
of those in peoples computers when they were the hot item...
On 11/2/09 4:41 PM, "Curt @ Atari Museum" <curt at atarimuseum.com>
wrote:
386 upgrade??? Hmmmmm, I don't remember those -
know there was the
Intel AboveBoard 286 upgrades for the XT's... I remember doing a lot of
those.
Curt
Brian Lanning wrote:
I have a chance to buy an IBM 5160 (pc-xt) with I
believe an original CGA
(iirc) monitor. The interesting thing is that he seller claims it has a
386-16 upgrade board. What do we know about these? How much would that
upgrade board be worth? I'm trying to figure out if his price is fair.
brian
7:12 p.m.
Brian Lanning wrote:
I have a chance to buy an IBM 5160 (pc-xt) with I
believe an original CGA
(iirc) monitor. The interesting thing is that he seller claims it has a
386-16 upgrade board. What do we know about these? How much would that
upgrade board be worth? I'm trying to figure out if his price is fair.
They're fairly uncommon nowadays, so any normal price (ie. in the
$100-$150 range for both 5160+386 board in nice cosmetic and working
condition) is expected.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
8:36 p.m.
On Mon, 2 Nov 2009, Jim Leonard wrote:
They're fairly uncommon nowadays, so any normal
price (ie. in the
$100-$150 range for both 5160+386 board in nice cosmetic and working
condition) is expected.
It would seem that there would be a substantial gap in te
usability/pricing between major name brand ones, and those made by unknown
long defunct companies, particularly if drivers are needed, such
as "available driver is for DOS 3.30 or below", "Win9X only", etc.
8:44 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
On Mon, 2 Nov 2009, Jim Leonard wrote:
I think it's unreasonable to expect a 386-upgrade-board-in-an-8-bit-slot
to function in 386 protected mode or run Win 9x or similar. I don't
even think most of them could. I always viewed them as ways to run
real-mode 32-bit code, or 16-bit code at a (then major) speedup.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
They're fairly uncommon nowadays, so any
normal price (ie. in the
$100-$150 range for both 5160+386 board in nice cosmetic and working
condition) is expected.
It would seem that there would be a substantial gap in te
usability/pricing between major name brand ones, and those made by unknown
long defunct companies, particularly if drivers are needed, such
as "available driver is for DOS 3.30 or below", "Win9X only", etc.
3 Nov
3 Nov
4:59 a.m.
On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:
I think it's unreasonable to expect a
386-upgrade-board-in-an-8-bit-slot to
function in 386 protected mode or run Win 9x or similar. I don't even think
most of them could. I always viewed them as ways to run real-mode 32-bit
code, or 16-bit code at a (then major) speedup.
He said he used to run windows 3.1 on it, which makes me think he has more
than CGA.
He's asking $200 for it which seems too high to me. He likes ebay though,
although doesn't like shipping the big stuff. If anyone's interested, let
me know and I'll hook you up.
brian
10:12 a.m.
On Tue, 3 Nov 2009, Brian Lanning wrote:
He said he used to run windows 3.1 on it, which makes
me think he has more
than CGA.
Windoze 3.10 can work with CGA (640 x 200); although not very well.
Hercules (720 x 348) is a better choice for 3.10. Some trivial
experiments seem to hint that MICROS~1 may have been using ATI EGA at 800
x 600 for writing it.
BUT, 3.10 wants HIMEM.SYS, and will refuse to install unless there is some
"extended" (NOT "expanded") RAM above 1M.
OTOH, 3.00 is very happy with CGA on an XT, and can even run with less
than 640K.
10:27 a.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
BUT, 3.10 wants HIMEM.SYS, and will refuse to install
unless there is some
"extended" (NOT "expanded") RAM above 1M.
3.1 wants HIMEM.SYS, but it most decidedly doesn't require memory above
1MB. It does require memory above 640kB. But 1MB memory works just fine.
Peace... Sridhar
10:56 a.m.
> BUT, 3.10 wants HIMEM.SYS, and will refuse to
install unless there is some
> "extended" (NOT "expanded") RAM above 1M.
On Tue, 3 Nov 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
3.1 wants HIMEM.SYS, but it most decidedly doesn't
require memory above
1MB. It does require memory above 640kB. But 1MB memory works just fine.
It is certainly true that you do not need to have MORE THAN 1MB.
In order to get Windoze 3.10 with 1MB to work, I had to configure it so
that 384K (or even just 64K) was seen as having address above 1M. The
botom 640K does not need to be fully populated - one of my 3.10 ATs had
512K starting at address 0h, and another 512K (surely could have used 64K)
starting at address 10000h
HIMEM.SYS, and consequently Windoze 3.10 require a working A20 line, and
at least SOME memory accessed with a 1 in A20.
1:49 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
That's weird. I never had to do anything like that... I just had
HIMEM.SYS in the CONFIG.SYS of my PS/2 Model 50 (1MB RAM, 286 at 10MHz),
and it Just Worked(tm).
Peace... Sridhar
> BUT, 3.10
wants HIMEM.SYS, and will refuse to install unless there is some
> "extended" (NOT "expanded") RAM above 1M.
On Tue, 3 Nov 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
3.1 wants HIMEM.SYS, but it most decidedly
doesn't require memory above
1MB. It does require memory above 640kB. But 1MB memory works just fine.
It is certainly true that you do not need to have MORE THAN 1MB.
In order to get Windoze 3.10 with 1MB to work, I had to configure it so
that 384K (or even just 64K) was seen as having address above 1M. The
botom 640K does not need to be fully populated - one of my 3.10 ATs had
512K starting at address 0h, and another 512K (surely could have used 64K)
starting at address 10000h
HIMEM.SYS, and consequently Windoze 3.10 require a working A20 line, and
at least SOME memory accessed with a 1 in A20.
2:24 p.m.
On Tue, 3 Nov 2009, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
That's weird. I never had to do anything like
that... I just had
HIMEM.SYS in the CONFIG.SYS of my PS/2 Model 50 (1MB RAM, 286 at 10MHz),
and it Just Worked(tm).
Doesn't the 50 default to 640K at 0h and 384K at 10000h?
Or is 384K just unavailable in real mode?
In August 1991, I tried to install beta 3.10 on a TI "Travelmate"
(at Microsoft Developer's Conference) I was the apparently the first, of
eventually millions of people, to complain about it turning on
write-caching. Some of the MICROS~1 staff told me that the installation
failure was explicitly due to HIMEM.SYS not having access to anything
above 1 MB. Until now, I never had any reason to doubt their explanation.
I only had one 80286 machine that gave me a choice of where that 384K was
going to be, and it also failed to install with the 1MB being contiguous.
1:51 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
OTOH, 3.00 is very happy with CGA on an XT, and can
even run with less
than 640K.
...with the exception that pretty much the only thing you can run under
3.00 in real mode are the desktop accessories it comes with. Most 3.x
applications require at least standard mode + 2M of real RAM.
For the most impressive GUI experience on any XT, I highly recommend
GeoWorks Ensemble 1.0 or 2.0. Finding it takes some digging but is
worth it. More info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_%2816-bit_operating_system%29
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
2:11 p.m.
On Tue, 3 Nov 2009, Jim Leonard wrote:
...with the exception that pretty much the only thing
you can run under
3.00 in real mode are the desktop accessories it comes with. Most 3.x
applications require at least standard mode + 2M of real RAM.
I used to use a font editor that ran under Win3.00, but would not run with
3.10 or above. Other than that, I switched every other copy of Windoze
that I had over to 3.10.
Right now I can't remember the name of the font editor. IIRC, it could
do both HPLJ and Postscript fonts. It was not Poems font editor (which I
used for Cordata and HPLJ fonts), nor Fontographer.
2:19 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 5:11 PM
Subject: Re: 386 upgrade boards for IBM 5160s
On Tue, 3 Nov 2009, Jim Leonard wrote:
Windows 3.0 had adobe ATM fonts while 3.1 was Truetype (TT) correct?
...with the exception that pretty much the only
thing you can run under
3.00 in real mode are the desktop accessories it comes with. Most 3.x
applications require at least standard mode + 2M of real RAM.
I used to use a font editor that ran under Win3.00, but would not run with
3.10 or above. Other than that, I switched every other copy of Windoze
that I had over to 3.10.
Right now I can't remember the name of the font editor. IIRC, it could
do both HPLJ and Postscript fonts. It was not Poems font editor (which I
used for Cordata and HPLJ fonts), nor Fontographer. 
6:15 a.m.
I have a intel Inboard 316 and it was fairly full function
with only one problem, RAM. It ran dos and win3.1 fine with 2mb
but adding ram was not easily done as I never found the matching
stacking ram card for it. With only 2mb win3.1 ran but most higher
powered apps ran out of memory. Running win3.11 and Win95
was impossible due to lack of ram, it really needed at least 4mb
to be marginal and 8mb to be functional.
Mine was installed in a Leading Edge model D. The model D died
but the Inboard is still in my collection.
Allison
Fred Cisin wrote:
On Mon, 2 Nov 2009, Jim Leonard wrote:
They're fairly uncommon nowadays, so any
normal price (ie. in the
$100-$150 range for both 5160+386 board in nice cosmetic and working
condition) is expected.
It would seem that there would be a substantial gap in te
usability/pricing between major name brand ones, and those made by unknown
long defunct companies, particularly if drivers are needed, such
as "available driver is for DOS 3.30 or below", "Win9X only", etc.
5304
days inactive
5305
days old
16 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
ajp166＠verizon.net -
brianlanning＠gmail.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
curt＠atarimuseum.com -
geoffr＠zipcon.net -
hp-fix＠xs4all.nl -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
teoz＠neo.rr.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org