So I should hopefully soon be reunited with my childhood Amstrad 286 PC! I remember it had a lovely slimline desktop case, the downside being that only gave space to two ISA slots.
My plan is to restore and preserve it as much as possible, battery, capacitors if necessary, cleaning etc. But then I also really wishing to make this PC useful and used, so I was thinking of the following upgrades and modifications. Would love to hear your comments, experiences and things I may have missed:
Besides the no-brainers:
Would love a GoTek floppy, but do those fit behind cases that have drives behind the bezel?
... I am also researching and considering the following:
But what I am also now thinking is what to do with that spare ISA. Maybe a SCSI perhaps? Those seem to still have a wide variety of devices still available at reasonable prices. Maybe a bluetooth transmitter on the audio out to hook it up to my amplifier too.
The file transferring thing is my biggest concern though. I don't particularly want to go down the floppy route, nor use up an ISA backplate with a CF card. I've seen a few serial port bluetooth adaptors on the market, and am wondering if those could be used as a null modem set up with one of my more modern machines...
Cheers guys!
My plan is to restore and preserve it as much as possible, battery, capacitors if necessary, cleaning etc. But then I also really wishing to make this PC useful and used, so I was thinking of the following upgrades and modifications. Would love to hear your comments, experiences and things I may have missed:
Besides the no-brainers:
- Max out the RAM
- Math co-processor
Would love a GoTek floppy, but do those fit behind cases that have drives behind the bezel?
... I am also researching and considering the following:
- 256MB industrial DOM to replace the hard drive. (low capacity to avoid issues with OS, BIOS etc as much as possible).
- Swapping out the adlib compatible with an SB16 or something like that, with wavetable, perhaps a DreamBlaster Synth S2 General MIDI Daughterboard too?
But what I am also now thinking is what to do with that spare ISA. Maybe a SCSI perhaps? Those seem to still have a wide variety of devices still available at reasonable prices. Maybe a bluetooth transmitter on the audio out to hook it up to my amplifier too.
The file transferring thing is my biggest concern though. I don't particularly want to go down the floppy route, nor use up an ISA backplate with a CF card. I've seen a few serial port bluetooth adaptors on the market, and am wondering if those could be used as a null modem set up with one of my more modern machines...
Cheers guys!