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Could it be any more obvious?

DOS lives on!!

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Mar 14, 2011
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Location
East Tennessee
I got this 486 computer yesterday. Very nice condition, just need to put a hard drive in it.
IMG_0775[1].jpg

And then I found out the brand of it......
IMG_0776[1].jpg
Could they show it in any better way?:D
 
better put that in a safe, undisclosed location ;) it "could" be the first one that ever happened!
 
So I got this computer made by Computer computers at a computer recycling event where people brought in many computers. Typing twister!

I do like that badge. Neat design with the stars.
 
I'm going to have nightmares now.

When I first started at my current job they had a old 386 in that exact case, sans awesome case badge, running some machinery
It chewed up in no particular order, a 1.2M floppy drive, a PSU, 2 more drives, a keyboard, a monitor, and quite a few cables.
Whoever put that thing together had no appreciation for airflow and must have used the longest internal cables he had on hand.
Add that that to the lovely sharp edges that were honed to a range between Ginsu knife and fresh scalpel.

I had many a lovely lapsed moment of sanity telling Mr. 386 about the hot new babe in town, Ms. Thermite.
The HP Pavilions I used to replace all the older systems must have been listening from the other room; nary a problem from them.
 
Boy am I kicking myself! Back before I knew how to work a computer other than my 98 machine, I found one of these! It even had a freshly formatted HDD! When it booted and told me to insert a boot disk, I didn't know what the heck that meant and figured it was broken. I threw it out. That was one of the worst mistakes of my life. I haven't owned a 486 since, and they are my favorite type of PC!
 
It seems like those case styles were very popular, with the big sized power switch on the right side. Just find the video of "Ultimate DOS Computer."
I'd like to add a MHz display to it since it does have the space for it. I hope the motherboard has a plug-in for it.
 
Ian, those Mhz displays didn't actually pull anything from the motherboard. The ones I've seen were configured using jumper blocks on the back of the 7 segment display board. One set for turbo, one set for non-turbo. The turbo switch typically piggy-backed off that board in order to change the display when it got pressed.

g.
 
Yep. That's exactly how those work. A long time ago (before I knew what a vintage computer was), I had a similar computer to this with a display on the front. Somehow this one was configured to display the time, date, custom messages, and the MHz reading by a program on the computer. (Is that how a PS/2 Server 95 does it?) I'd love to pull that configuration out of it and put it in this computer, but since it didn't have a hard drive, I threw it out.

And then I've amazed my friends in the past by setting the jumpers to display a custom mesage. They still don't understand how a computer can read "Hi" on the display.
 
I personally hate the "HI/LO" on the display... I always found it MUCH cooler to have the MHZ displayed... but now, with swapping boards in and out of a case, all of which may have different speed ratings... I've went to the hated hi/lo display. Just for functionality.
 
And with it just displaying Hi or Lo, you can't really tell what Mhz presets the motherboard has been set to when the turbo button is pressed. I think it is much neater to see what speed the computer is running at, then actually use the computer at that operating speed.
 
Unfortunately, the clock speed has only a tenuous connection to the actual performance of a system. The CPU itself, memory and peripherals all have a material and substantial effect on performance.

I'd like to hail back to the old 1960's GE days when the operator's console had an analog meter calibrated in "thousand operations per second".

FWIW, my old systems all indicate "Hi" and "Lo". It was just too much trouble trying to figure out the display jumpers every time I changed out a motherboard. A simple sticker on the case indicates what's inside.

(BTW, I place the manual for the motherboard inside the case as well--it never gets lost that way)
 
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