Pretty sure things like this have been done before, but I'm sharing my little throw-together. What the base is... I had a 5155 for a little while that was missing its keyboard. In an attempt to replace the PSU fan, I broke the yoke on the screen. Most of the machine's remains were cast away, but I kept its motherboard, put it in a new generic case, and began putting things in it that I didn't want to put in my 5150 that I felt would lose some of the "experience", e.g. VGA card, Intel Inboard 386 upgrade...
I've sort of made it my goal to see if I can step it all the way up to pseudo-Pentium using upgrades. Specifically I'm ultimately curious to see if a Kingston 486 Now! (or some other equivalent upgrade that came with a socketed 486) will work so I can get an Evergreen or Cyrix part that mimics a Pentium. But as yet I haven't had any luck obtaining one, but I did come across a TI 486 2-50. As a reference, the Inboard came with a socketed 386DX-16. So I figure with the clock doubling, I have something like a 486-33 (though obviously not really
)
Here's an overhead shot with the Inboard in place:
Close up of the TI part
MSD showing a 486, though funny things include "BIOS Category PC/XT" (and BIOS copyright 1981), "Cascaded IRQ2: No"...
Obviously this will never be a REAL 486 in performance and I believe there's some compatibility issues here and there inherit with the Inboard, but it is noticeably snappier with the 486 upgrade. But this is just for S&G, just curious how far I can push the old motherboard. More than another CPU upgrade though, I REALLY hope I can find the elusive memory modules to the Inboard; 256KB extended is really limited what kind of fun I can have with it...
I've sort of made it my goal to see if I can step it all the way up to pseudo-Pentium using upgrades. Specifically I'm ultimately curious to see if a Kingston 486 Now! (or some other equivalent upgrade that came with a socketed 486) will work so I can get an Evergreen or Cyrix part that mimics a Pentium. But as yet I haven't had any luck obtaining one, but I did come across a TI 486 2-50. As a reference, the Inboard came with a socketed 386DX-16. So I figure with the clock doubling, I have something like a 486-33 (though obviously not really
)Here's an overhead shot with the Inboard in place:
Close up of the TI part
MSD showing a 486, though funny things include "BIOS Category PC/XT" (and BIOS copyright 1981), "Cascaded IRQ2: No"...
Obviously this will never be a REAL 486 in performance and I believe there's some compatibility issues here and there inherit with the Inboard, but it is noticeably snappier with the 486 upgrade. But this is just for S&G, just curious how far I can push the old motherboard. More than another CPU upgrade though, I REALLY hope I can find the elusive memory modules to the Inboard; 256KB extended is really limited what kind of fun I can have with it...
