RetroFoxMar 28
Decent day for the flea market - first thing I saw there was this tower of old desktops. Guy wanted $10 each and to me, they all looked like stock PCs from an office. I must be crazy because I bought all six of them. It’ll be a fun(?) project to clean and test them.
Show threadRetroFox
Opened the cases and dusted them out and gave them a quick wipe-down. They look good inside, I think. Looks like there’s one or two 386s, Pent 1 maybe, a Celeron, and a couple P4 machines.
Mar 28 at 5:46pmWeb
Show threadRetroFoxMar 29
Started on the 386 machine. It was giving error beeps and no video, closer inspection revealed a leaky battery. Removed that and AT plug to clean the corrosion, beeped out some traces but I think two are broken. Have to circle back to it later.
Show threadRetroFoxMar 29
Checking out the Compaq Presario 850 today. Had to take the video card from the 386 because the vga onboard has a blocked pin - apparently that was typical before the vga was standard…
Show threadRetroFoxMar 29
The old HDD was grumpy at first and I had to swap a jumper to disable onboard video - but boots up. It’s some kind of 486 with 12mb of RAM. The video card from the 386 works as well. The HDD kind of works but gave non-system disk so booted from floppy to DOS for now.
Show threadRetroFoxMar 29
Gave the Compaq a fresh DOS 6.22 install and tried some games. Checkit clocks the CPU at 50mhz, also tried the HDD test and that passed. Fun machine, just no sound card - lots of ISA slots though, so could easily add an old SoundBlaster or compatible.
Show threadRetroFoxApr 16
I've been working on all the PCs from this lot recently. The 486 has come along nicely. I decided to add one of the extra CD-ROM drives to give more options and modded a VGA cable so I could test the onboard video. Fresh DOS and Win95 on 12mb of RAM and 270mb HDD. Happy with the results!
Show threadRetroFoxApr 22
This is fun - at VCF East, I picked up an ESS 1869 sound card (Compaq labeled) and a stick of EDO RAM. Put both in the 486, went from 12mb to 45mb and now it has actual sound/music instead of just beeps from the PC speaker!
Show threadRetroFoxApr 22
Sounds pretty good imho!
Show thread48kRAM but with parityMar 28

@RetroFox Dat Presario <3

(We all hated Compaq back then. Why do we love them now?!?)

Show threadRetroFoxMar 28
@48kRAM that one caught my eye, too. I think it’s just the brands were more visible back then and in the homes of family and friends, so we remember them more than non-descript beige cases.
Show threadChris LinstidMar 28
@RetroFox the first computer I fully built myself was a 386DX-40 ❤️