thinking of the "ultimate" retro x86 PCs - what bits to seek/keep ?

[Sean Caron]

On Fri, 3 Jun 2016, Sean Conner wrote:

> It was thus said that the Great Swift Griggs once stated:
>> On Thu, 2 Jun 2016, TeoZ wrote:
>>> The ultimate gaming 486 would have an EISA+VLB motherboard.
>>
>> Yes, I would agree on that. However, since I'm mostly interested in
>> running older Unix variants and DOS, games aren't at the top of my value
>> system. Don't get me wrong, I love games, and I'd surely have a few loaded
>> with DOS. However, I'm looking for something special. I have this foggy
>> memory of a small, white, NEC (or maybe it was NCR, or or or... crap. I
>> just can't remember) slimline desktop machine that was a 486 and had a
>> SCSI2 interface right on the mobo and had an external SCSI2 header, too. I
>> know it had two or three expansion slots, but I didn't get to pop open the
>> box to look at what kind of slots they were. I've been google image
>> searching for a while trying to find it again. I saw them while doing some
>> contract job back in the 90's. The green LED on a SCSI terminator caught
>> my eye (as well as the fact that I liked the case design).
>
>  Sounds somewhat similar to the server (email and web, on the public
> Internet co-located) I used up through 2004-5.  It was an NCR-3230 system
> and was a 486.  I used a similar unit at home as a router (fun times getting
> three network cards working on the thing).
>
> 	http://www.flummux.org/images/tower/index.html
>
>  -spc (I think I had that for five, six years.  And the few times I had to
> 	reboot it was due to moving it, or someone tripping over the power
> 	cord. It was a robust little box.)
>

Weren't those old NCR systems MCA-bus? I remember having ... I think it 
was called a System 3300 ... I used to have one way back in the day and I 
remember the onboard SCSI as well - unfortunately not supported by MCA 
Linux at the time, much to my consternation :| Don't recall if it was a 
486 machine or maybe a 386? I'm sure there were lots of variants.

Best,

Sean