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First Dell pc's

Amigaz said:
I know Dell computers starting showing up under the late 80's...my DEll System 310 I got recently is from circa 1988-89...can it be the first Dell branded PC released?
http://picasaweb.google.com/jivemaster2005/VintageDellPC#
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The first products of Michael Dell were sold under the "PC's Limited" brand. He started out just assembling generic components, then his computers became more customized as his business grew.

FYI: In the early to mid '90s, Dell sold rebranded IBM Model M keyboards. The quality of Dell keyboards has gone downhill ever since! :mad:
 
pontus said:
cool :) Does yours run Xenix as well? And were did you find it :)
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Currently it runs PC-DOS 7, when I recieved it (shipped from NY, USA) it had MS-DOS 6 and Win 3.1 installed..it had been used in someones business since it had some labeling software on it etc

Another cool thing is that it came with the keyboard that the Compaq Deskpro 386 20mhz had...the first 386 ever made..released in 1986 but the keyboard chord is all dried it and falling apart..like it spent all of it's life outside in the sun.

The Dell unit has that odd, big external 4.5volt cmos battery I must replace :mad:

Will try and keep the machine in it's original state but I had to change the horrible, huge 256k WD gfx card that gave a blurry pic and was dog slow...I replaced it with a Hercules Dynamite Tseng ET4000W32 2mb gfx card and suddenly Wing Commander was more playable and got a descent framerate but the 386DX 20 is a bit to slow for this game :(
Also added a Sound Blaster Pro 2 and an MPU card so I can hook up my Roland LA synth's
 
Well, according to the website, I think you have the 2nd dell badged PC. They didn't specifically state the model of the 16MHz 386 model, but they listed the 20MHz 386 model as the Dell 310....they also said it was a real lemon :p
 
Anonymous Coward said:
Well, according to the website, I think you have the 2nd dell badged PC. They didn't specifically state the model of the 16MHz 386 model, but they listed the 20MHz 386 model as the Dell 310....they also said it was a real lemon :p
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It says it the cpu doesn't run DOS in 32-bit mode but isn't DOS a 16bit OS with 16-bit apps etc or have I missed something here? :confused:
 
I think what they meant to say was that DOS runs fine because it's 16-bit, but they had problems when running the 32-bit version of Xenix. It's likely Mr. Dell supplied them with the buggy early versions of the 386 chip.
 
Anonymous Coward said:
Well, according to the website, I think you have the 2nd dell badged PC. They didn't specifically state the model of the 16MHz 386 model, but they listed the 20MHz 386 model as the Dell 310....they also said it was a real lemon :p
Click to expand...

Nope, they even show a picture of the badge from the 16 MHz version and it says "PC Limited". So the Dell 310 was the first one with "Dell" in its name (and on the computer case).
 
ah... yes there were Dell computers way before Dell existed, as has been mentioned. :p

i personally have the first motherboard model produced by PC's Limited in 1986, called the "Turbo-XT".... in fact, i've been using it as a dedicated IRC server for a while now.

here's a pic of my board:

8088mobo-sm.jpg


and click here to get a high res image of it.

i love this board, it's been as or more reliable as any dual core i've ever seen. muahahaha!

the exact CPU on that board is actually an Intel 8088-2 and the board has pins that you can jumper or hook up a switch to for a clock jump from 4.77 MHz to 8.00 MHz. in fact you can see the pins there. very top of the board, in the middle, just to the left of that crystal and capacitor.

sorry it's almost impossible to read the labeling on most of those chips. i took this pic 4 years ago, and my only digital camera at the time was an awful toshiba 2.1 MP. ugh. never buy a toshiba camera guys. trust me.
 
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