creepingnet
Veteran Member
Over the weekend,in between crap I'd rather not get into, got some more work done on the Compaq Deskpro 386s/20...
- fixed Dallas DS1287 chip (put on a CR2302 holder from a dead PC Chips board)
- Installed MS-DOS 6.22 w/ Supplimental Disk
- Ordered front cover plate, bought screws, so they are all the same ones
- Ordered Compaq branded PS/2 mouse
- Figured out the Keyboard clicker feature so I could turn it up and down (CTRL+ALT "+" or "-")
- Found out my 3com Etherlink II is dead (bad RAM on the card), replaced with the last boxed Linksys I had
- Got networking all setup and going (mTCP, Links), Links does not work so might try Arachne
- moved a bunch of games to it for testing performance: Wolfenstein 3D, Monkey ISland 1 & 2, Ultima VI, Leisure Suit Larry 1/2/3, Sim City Lemmings.....
Performance-wise, it runs about like I'd expect a 386SX to, just a few hairs faster than the GEM 286 runs. It's the perfect speed for things like Ultima VI and Wolfenstein 3D, anything newer it might be too slow for. Next up will be some ircjr and some telnet BBSing, and maybe messing with Arachne because Links Lite and Links makes the machine barf up at the DOS prompt.
It's future right now is still in the deciding phase. There's a part of me that wants to rip out the 75MHz 486 upgrade chip and run it as a true 386Sx, but there's another part of me that wants to leave it as/is because that is a cool thing to say it has (even though it does not seem to improve much). I'm thinking some benchmarks might be in order for the machine just to see how it does, as I am a tad skeptical about just pressing some thingy on top of a CPU as an "upgrade".
- fixed Dallas DS1287 chip (put on a CR2302 holder from a dead PC Chips board)
- Installed MS-DOS 6.22 w/ Supplimental Disk
- Ordered front cover plate, bought screws, so they are all the same ones
- Ordered Compaq branded PS/2 mouse
- Figured out the Keyboard clicker feature so I could turn it up and down (CTRL+ALT "+" or "-")
- Found out my 3com Etherlink II is dead (bad RAM on the card), replaced with the last boxed Linksys I had
- Got networking all setup and going (mTCP, Links), Links does not work so might try Arachne
- moved a bunch of games to it for testing performance: Wolfenstein 3D, Monkey ISland 1 & 2, Ultima VI, Leisure Suit Larry 1/2/3, Sim City Lemmings.....
Performance-wise, it runs about like I'd expect a 386SX to, just a few hairs faster than the GEM 286 runs. It's the perfect speed for things like Ultima VI and Wolfenstein 3D, anything newer it might be too slow for. Next up will be some ircjr and some telnet BBSing, and maybe messing with Arachne because Links Lite and Links makes the machine barf up at the DOS prompt.
It's future right now is still in the deciding phase. There's a part of me that wants to rip out the 75MHz 486 upgrade chip and run it as a true 386Sx, but there's another part of me that wants to leave it as/is because that is a cool thing to say it has (even though it does not seem to improve much). I'm thinking some benchmarks might be in order for the machine just to see how it does, as I am a tad skeptical about just pressing some thingy on top of a CPU as an "upgrade".