SunSpotter
Experienced Member
Apologies if this is a lot of questions for one topic, I'm new here and I've recently acquired a very particular IBM 6586. It was missing system RAM, video RAM, and a hard drive. No graphics card, network card, or sound card either. But what it did have a lot of, is ISA serial expansion cards. Three of them in fact.
There are two of the PH979C cards, and one PH1609.
Picture of the back:
I'd really like to know if anyone knows more about these, because I can't find anything. I'd also like to know if anyone has any interest in them? Seeing as how I'm mostly going to use this system for reading old media and playing DOS games, I don't think I'll need all these if they really do nothing more than just add parallel and VGA ports.
More importantly, I'd also really like some advice on what to do about my RAM situation.
As far as system RAM goes, I ordered the max configuration allowable for this system (4x32mb SIMM), but I stupidly ordered it as EDO ram because it was cheap. The IBM manual for these computers doesn't indicate that 6x8x models support EDO ram, so I'm uncertain if it will be unusable or if I just won't have the advantage that EDO provides.
On the graphics side, I'd ideally like to restore the VRAM chips and add a 3d accelerator card later. But I can't find anywhere that's selling the 1mb chips for reasonable prices. Everything is either RFQ, or odd Russain sites demanding $600. It wouldn't surprise me if there are compatible chips out there that are more common, but I don't even know where to look for that.
If anyone needs clarification on the details, just ask. I did a fair bit of research before posting, but at some point just felt like I was out of my element.
There are two of the PH979C cards, and one PH1609.
Picture of the back:
I'd really like to know if anyone knows more about these, because I can't find anything. I'd also like to know if anyone has any interest in them? Seeing as how I'm mostly going to use this system for reading old media and playing DOS games, I don't think I'll need all these if they really do nothing more than just add parallel and VGA ports.
More importantly, I'd also really like some advice on what to do about my RAM situation.
As far as system RAM goes, I ordered the max configuration allowable for this system (4x32mb SIMM), but I stupidly ordered it as EDO ram because it was cheap. The IBM manual for these computers doesn't indicate that 6x8x models support EDO ram, so I'm uncertain if it will be unusable or if I just won't have the advantage that EDO provides.
On the graphics side, I'd ideally like to restore the VRAM chips and add a 3d accelerator card later. But I can't find anywhere that's selling the 1mb chips for reasonable prices. Everything is either RFQ, or odd Russain sites demanding $600. It wouldn't surprise me if there are compatible chips out there that are more common, but I don't even know where to look for that.
If anyone needs clarification on the details, just ask. I did a fair bit of research before posting, but at some point just felt like I was out of my element.