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Chat => Entertainment & Technology => Topic started by: bear on October 12, 2021, 13:16:12 PM

Title: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 12, 2021, 13:16:12 PM
I have installed using CF cards to IDE as hard drives (less noisy and much faster) DrDos 7.03 with ansiplus , 4dos , ftp server, Doug menu. Really fun with "fast" 486 can browse with Arachne sending and recieving  files to on my linux mint laptop :)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Clock'd 0Ne on October 12, 2021, 13:25:30 PM
That's quite cool. I wish I'd kept some of my older hardware with older versions of Windows on, mostly just for retro gaming but also because I want to play around with Vue D'Esprit renderer again and its 16-bit only, which means I have to faff around with VirtualBox and old images.

My most recent cool purchase was a powered SATA/IDE to USB cable, which worked just fine to boot up and read an old Fujitsu 20GB IDE drive :)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 12, 2021, 14:12:48 PM
sounds fun,I have one of those so I can get to my old
HDDs :) for the 486 I have several CFs that I can have
two at the time and swop from outside the computers
bakside. I have widows 95 with Lite Step shell,DrDos,
DSL (Damn small linux) and now I have started a freeDos installation, which
takes some learning.
I am posting this with Arachne on the 486 :)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 12, 2021, 14:19:42 PM
I f you have old pc stuff especially IBM  86-92, floppies, drives, books etc. keep it, I have sold for about £1800 on swedish "ebay" Tradera.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Clock'd 0Ne on October 12, 2021, 16:34:58 PM
That's incredible. It's amazing how much some of the hardware is worth now if its in very good condition.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 12, 2021, 16:51:23 PM
A good IBM kbrd model M goes for 100-200 £s (I sold one :) ) I have an even older in good condition, a model F which I will keep for a while as I tinker with my IBMs  5150 and 5160 before I sell them.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 14, 2021, 23:04:15 PM
Now posting using Arachne in FreeDos on IBM 486 DX100 :)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Clock'd 0Ne on October 15, 2021, 08:49:59 AM
What monitor and resolution are you using?
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 15, 2021, 12:30:29 PM
Viewsonic LCD  800x600 but 1024x768 also works but a bit slower. Does not look great but workable really slow though :)  Only fast thing is reading news with Microweb (a text only browser,works on 8086 and up)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 15, 2021, 12:57:12 PM
I tried Lynx (text  based with colors) works much faster and I could log etc. in to tekforums (Much faser)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Clock'd 0Ne on October 15, 2021, 14:49:51 PM
I would imagine text based browsers must really struggle with the modern web, aren't most sites almost unreadable, or does it rely on accessibility components like a screen reader?
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 15, 2021, 20:55:21 PM
Well lynx does not seem to struggle with tekforums at least arachne much slower but show gifs and pics.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 17, 2021, 20:31:30 PM
Now getting a bit more familliar with FreeDos it is quite good :) Now posting from DilloDos browser on the 486 seems faster than Arachne and things looks better :)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 17, 2021, 20:34:43 PM
Turned off pic loading when posting incresed speed quite a bit and still showed pics in cache it seems :)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Clock'd 0Ne on October 18, 2021, 09:26:46 AM
Now getting a bit more familliar with FreeDos it is quite good :) Now posting from DilloDos browser on the 486 seems faster than Arachne and things looks better :)

I very nearly mispronounced that :lol:
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 18, 2021, 14:28:32 PM
Easily done  :D
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: knighty on October 18, 2021, 19:31:18 PM
I've got to finally admit it... I never had a 486  :-o

had an amiga 1200 then jumped to a p90
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 18, 2021, 19:49:05 PM
This 486 is as fast as a p90  :) even faster as I run Compact Flash memory as hard drive.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Clock'd 0Ne on October 19, 2021, 05:01:24 AM
The first PC I ever bought was a P100 with 8MB RAM, but I I think my earliest machine I had was a 20Mhz 286 with 1MB RAM, which I believe had something like a 50Mb HDD. I was somehow able to get Windows 3.1 and Doom installed, it ran hideously though. I think at some point I had a 286, 386 and 486 machine kicking about as a network gaming machine, all networked with 10Base2 BNC!
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 19, 2021, 11:17:44 AM
My first was an Ericsson PC and 8086 (still have it bu HDD broken) used and Ericsson 286 for quite some time manged to have 4 mb memory ! Networked with paralell cable and NC links :)

Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 19, 2021, 19:17:07 PM
Posting with Dillo on DSL works faster under nix on the same machine :)
I now  can dualboot with GRUB and choose DSL or FreeDos :)
B.T.W didn't Doom come with networking ready made so it was an easy setup ?
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: knighty on October 20, 2021, 12:24:38 PM
my amiga 1200 had a 470mb HD and an extra 8mb of ram!!!   but... you couldn't have both of those, so had to flip a jumper to restrict the extra ram down to 4mb to get the HD working
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Serious on October 20, 2021, 15:48:42 PM
A very long time ago I had am AMD 133mhz 386SX/ With the Windows OS at the time and programs it didn't function badly. Unfortunately a lot of the business software written for MSdos was terrible and the manuals hopeless. I rewrote several of them for a company to actually make sense and get rid of the jargon.

Then I also had an Amiga, with HD. The custom video and sound chips made the games better and the system was far better overall, even if slower. Unfortunately Commodore killed it and successfully suicided.

Before that I had a Dragon 32MB and Sinclair spectrum and ZX81. The Spectrum was technically superior but the Dragon had a damn good keyboard.

The ZX81 pushes it back to a blistering 3.5Mhz and 1K ram onboard, which was a shame, they should have put the 16MB ram that came with the expansion pack inside regardless of cost. The ram pack wobble made it an issue and was pretty soon overtaken by others that had better keyboards. Spectrum keyboard was technically better but still dreadful.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 20, 2021, 17:49:08 PM
Have hard time beliving you had 133MHz 386, must have been a 486, I had a 40 MHz 386 with coprocessor 16 m ram and 256k cache, that was a fast for being a 386 :) I could run w98 on it !
This 486 100Mhz (50Mhz bus) is good and AMD 133MHz  486 would be sligtly faster,  AMD 120 MHz (33Mhz bus)) would be about the same as the 100 DX4.
What more to do ? It has 2 compact floash hard drives,64 mb RAM, 3½" floppy, 5 and a quarter inch 1,2 Mb floppy(it can read and write to a 360k floppy but not format them,
well it can but they will not work on a 360k drive only a 1.2 drive) , a CD writer/reader, Sound Blaster (with 2mb RAM on it ! ) and an ethernet card. Three OSs, FreeDos 1.3 RC4, Windows 95 with LiteStep shell and DSL(Damn Small Linux) using GRUB I multiboot betwix them all :)
On my wish list for it is a PCI riser  card as it has jumper to change ISA/PCI also there was 32 mb RAMs, but where,this IBM Machine type 6482 XVI can hold 128 mb RAM.
Riser Card PCI (6484) FRU 82G3555, 72-Pin Memory Module,32MB (70ns) FRU 73G3135.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Clock'd 0Ne on October 21, 2021, 08:25:58 AM
Yeah the 386SX would have been 33Mhz at best, not 133Mhz; I don't think it even had a floating-point unit (that would have been the 386DX). Anything over 100Mhz didn't really arrive until the 486/Pentiums (which I didn't realise but is obvious now, Pentium is a moniker for 586) that went from 50-200Mhz then MMX followed. I remember as at the time the P100 I bought was considered high end and was my first gaming PC, I bought Worms, and Duke Nukem 3D to go with it. I'm getting that warm, nostalgic feeling just thinking about it 8)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: knighty on October 21, 2021, 18:05:21 PM
omfg WORMS!

must have spent half my life playing that when I was a kid

Bear do you do anything with the system or is it just for a bit of fun?


I remembering win 95/98/98SE... used to format and reinstall every other week back in those days
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 21, 2021, 22:22:05 PM
Yes I use them, playing pinball on windows, and racing games in DOS,scrabble, vpool etc. :)  Also formatting disks that i sell :) Freedos is "modern" dos I can read/write files in the windows files from it, it has a kernel.sys and is linux friendly.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: soopahfly on October 22, 2021, 08:56:22 AM
My first PC was an Olivetti PCS 286.  Had 1Mb ram and 20Mb Hard Drive.
Back then I didn't have enough HDD space to have both Windows and Games, so I had to choose.
I bought that when the P90's had just come out so it was already quite old.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: knighty on October 22, 2021, 21:11:22 PM
Also formatting disks that i sell :)

do you get many disks or do you just mean ones you have lying around?

I've bought a crap load of used SAS drives on ebay for storage server at work (cctv)  surprised how cheap they are, I've had 2 die out of 78 drives in use.... dead ones were the first ones I bought, 2tb and a bit old... didn't want to spend much at first incase my plan didn't work out, sas+disk shelves was a bit or a learning curve
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 23, 2021, 00:06:16 AM
Have a bunch of 5¼ inch 360 k floppies new and used :) Very few 1.2 mb floppies though.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Clock'd 0Ne on October 23, 2021, 04:38:55 AM
Have a bunch of 5¼ inch 360 k floppies new and used :) Very few 1.2 mb floppies though.

Are people still manufacturing all these old consumables? I can't remember at all, how long does a used floppy last before it degrades?
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 23, 2021, 09:49:20 AM
I do not know if any are made now, I just have two unopened boxes and a bunch of used ones with book keeping, dos installations, old dos games etc. and most of them works. Just sold two set of Lotus Symphony, 14 disks got 16 crowns each so about a £ each. I got the same price for 10 unused in unbroken pack.
I do not sell on ebay but on swedish tradera, have a look here: https://www.ebay.com/b/Vintage-Computers-Parts-Accessories/11189/bn_1637394 (https://www.ebay.com/b/Vintage-Computers-Parts-Accessories/11189/bn_1637394).  A nostalgic trip :)

Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: Serious on October 27, 2021, 11:49:01 AM
Have hard time beliving you had 133MHz 386, must have been a 486, I had a 40 MHz 386 with coprocessor 16 m ram and 256k cache, that was a fast for being a 386 :) I could run w98 on it !

Long time ago. it was a 386SX chip from AMD. At least that's what it said on the chip. When Intel went 486 the alternative manufacturers upped their speeds.

There were quite a few dodgy systems around at the time, including the issue with capacitors.
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on October 27, 2021, 13:48:03 PM
Still most likely a 33 MHz CPU, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I386#80386SX (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I386#80386SX)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on November 11, 2021, 15:51:14 PM
Still playing :) posting with links 2.25 , which I find easier to navigate without reading manual than lynx, otherwise similar, text based released oct 21 so quite modern :) also mouse frienly, lynx is not. so now I will click "post" using the mouse :)
Title: Re: Playing with 486 100 MHz
Post by: bear on November 11, 2021, 15:55:05 PM
adding this quickly from my lappy,
Updated Links web browser
If you want to browse the Web from a text-based browser, you might use Links. Version 2.25 was released earlier this month. The changelog shows this is a minor update, but definitely worth updating so you get the new Let's Encrypt certificates. The changelog says: "+ Delete the expired Let's encrypt certificate from the builtin certificate store + Set the flag X509_V_FLAG_TRUSTED_FIRST, so that Let's encrypt works with openssl-1.0.2." Download from the Links page at Twibright. We've also mirrored this release on the FreeDOS files archive at Ibiblio, under /net/links.

Posted by Jim Hall 2021-10-19