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Hot rodding an IBM PC/AT

I agree completely with AC. Patience is key on stuff like this. The audience for $150 expansion boards is people who have a mission-critical PC in a factory or somewhere fail and they need parts to get it running immediately because some exec is breathing fire down their neck.

A populated one might turn up next week, or it might be six months or a year. The question is when someone is going to get around to listing his disused pile of boards and seeing if he can get five or ten bucks for them. And it will happen. It's mostly a matter of you being in position to see it when it happens, so it doesn't go unsold and end up in the trash. Set up an automated search, and one will turn up eventually.

Case point: A month or two ago I purchased a hand-written receipt from the 1880s by my great great great great uncle. There was no other bidder. I paid 10 bucks for it and frankly I probably overpaid, but I wasn't going to let that get away from me. There are a whole lot more 2M expansion boards floating around than there are bits of paper scrawled on by my relatives in the 1880s.

So, sure, if dropping a 386DX-40 board into your AT is what's going to make you happy right now, by all means go ahead and do it. But I wouldn't let the shortage of parts right at this moment keep you from eventually building the ultimate PC/AT, either. In the long run, an ultimate IBM PC/AT is going to be a more exotic, difficult to find machine.
 
Dave Farquhar said:
I may still have a DOS 6.22 (or at least 6.2) manual. I'll look tonight. But I remember not being impressed with it. The DOS 5 manual was much better and still applicable. So I continued to use my DOS 5 manual for the rest of my DOS days.

Depending on your comfort level with DOS, you might do well to pick up one of the third-party books on DOS. I know the Dummies books are overrated, but DOS for Dummies was a very good book. It launched that franchise. You can pick up a used copies off Amazon for 4 bucks (a penny for the book, $3.99 shipping). You may still want a DOS 6.22 manual just to have it, but you'll probably want a better book when you need to look up how to actually do something.
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Those are great ideas. I'll get the books. Dan Gookin taught me a lot of good stuff about he Mac that wasn't in the manuals.

Thanks,
Sean
 
Anonymous Coward said:
Right now there are two AST Rampage 286 2M expansion boards on ebay for about $10 + $13 shipping. Though they are unpopulated. You can probably get populated boards for that price or less if you are patient. Last year I was trying to sell similar cards (populated) in that price range and could find no buyers.
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Don't you need drivers for a Rampage? I have a couple of disks that are labeled as being such.

http://elexp.master.com/texis/master/search/mysite.html?q=256k+dram

Sean
 
Two very good DOS books:

1) "Running MSDOS" by Van Wolverton [Second Edition] 1985
2) "Supercharging DOS" by VAN Wolverton 1986

Everything from simple batch files to how to make a CALL through the AUTOEXE.BAT. If you are into menu systems for example, a nice little program called REPLY.COM can be inserted into your menu. Lets you construct it with DEBUG. These books are still available if you choose to Google.
 
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