Uncreative Labs

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Well, since having a couple days off due to some O-P surgery, I figured I'd tinker around with a few things. Found an old Texas Instruments (AST) Bravo 386sx-16 in the pile of "stuff" and set in on bringing it "back from the grave" so to say (mainly to test internal modems and sound-cards). It had a noisy P/S fan and was filthy both inside and out. It did at least have a 8MB expansion card (bringing the grand total to 12MB) inside. So, now, with the "huge" Conner 104MB HDD it now has this:

WfWG 3.11 (w/all updates)
2X IDE CD-Rom
Generic ESS1868 Sound Card
33.6 Internal Modem
PC-DOS 2000
Full copy of MS-Office 4.2
IE 3.03 (Opera 3.62 kept on crashing)

Now only have about 8MB of HDD space left (even after trimming everything down to the bone..)

Surfing from the front page to here has taken all of 25 minutes (and it's now 4:00 a.m.--I can even out-type this thing by 20+ characters( Mad

) ) Think I'll go check my mail on my DSL machine before retiring for the evening.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

I have a big drawer of ide drives many under 528 m in size. (1024/16/63 or less.
a few like some of the 420's have 1800 cyl and muct be run in "translation" mode.
I tossed all the drives with errors.
note my posting on the xt/pc's
I have some ide/io cards.
when you "get into" 486 VLB "let me know, also.
we are retired , planning on moving, and need to "downsize"
my friend, ralph ,in NJ works for a company that is now testing a ton of 387's and they want 386 deasktop ( not tower) systems with an aceeible 387 socket. I sold them one, looking for more. ( in my garage)

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Thanks Walter, but given my basement shop looks something like this:

I think I'll pass...

There's everything from an XT to an Duron 700 in there...

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

wdegroot wrote:

I have a big drawer of ide drives many under 528 m in size. (1024/16/63 or less.
a few like some of the 420's have 1800 cyl and muct be run in "translation" mode.
I tossed all the drives with errors.
note my posting on the xt/pc's
I have some ide/io cards.
when you "get into" 486 VLB "let me know, also.
we are retired , planning on moving, and need to "downsize"
my friend, ralph ,in NJ works for a company that is now testing a ton of 387's and they want 386 deasktop ( not tower) systems with an aceeible 387 socket. I sold them one, looking for more. ( in my garage)

What do you have in the way of VLB?

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Yeah, I need some high end VLB graphics adapters.

Joined: 03 Feb 2006 Posts: 488 Location: pennsylvanai

as I uncover vlb boards systems and cards I will list them HERE
and the deal is:
refund my postage/shipping costs as soon as you can
NO packing or handling charges.

glad to see it all go to a good home.

o genoa videl
dtc ide io cards etc.
old drives suitable for 3/486's 30 pin 1 meg memory
a few complete vlb systems. I will fire up things before i ship it so I don't send any DOA stuff.

AND could I add a few light in weight items.

I also have collected backups of old software
( disk images for test purposes only)

MY WIFE will thank You.

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 264 Location: Ohio/USA

Happen to have a copy of Media Cybernetic Halo Desktop Imager? I lost a disk for it and cannot install it (have the manuals still).

What side of PA are you at wdegroot? I am in Youngstown close to Sharon PA.

Any 50 pin SCSI HDs >500MB would be usefull to me (same for IDE). I like SCSI devices in general. I also collect video capture cards.

4MB 30 PIN SIMMs would be usefull too (I have 1MB ones)

Joined: 22 Apr 2007 Posts: 20

wdegroot wrote:

as I uncover vlb boards systems and cards I will list them HERE
and the deal is:
refund my postage/shipping costs as soon as you can
NO packing or handling charges.

Hopefully you'll list more than just VLB stuff Smile

You can be sure that anything you offer on this forum will go to good homes.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

Hey T-R-A, If you only have 8mb hdd space left why dont you intall arachne. Arachne is a small WWW broser that work on 286s, 8086s

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Believe me, I tried. No matter what I did, it (v1.7) just wouldn't work with Bell South's dial-up. I actually got it back up to 15MB of free space (both Office 4.2 and Word 2.0 were on there---so I ditched Word 2.0), but now back down to around 8 MB (added a few diagnostic programs and compressed drivers for the big boxes of modems/sound-cards/video-cards I need to test). Figured that if they can work on a 386sx/16, they should work on about anything. Thought having WfWG3.11 would make things a little more tolerable (using some Windows/DOS hacking, a better video driver, and 32-bit disk/file access) but believe me, anything on the internet (even with a 33.6 modem) is still sssssssssssssssslllllllllllllllloooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Still not a bad little machine for "Commander Keen", "Electroman" or "Jill of The Jungle" (all playable from floppy)...

Joined: 28 Feb 2006 Posts: 127 Location: LI, NY

386er, I've never had luck connected to any website w/ arachne. Be it cable or dial up. *shrugs*

T-R-A... I thought I had clutter! my lord! Razz

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

Heck im using it right now on a 386. I have SBC DSL, a linksys wireless router, and a 3com 3c509b-c. Heres how i did it, Run a small packet driver program, for me its 3c509.com. Then run setup and setup your video option and other stuff. When it ask you how you wana connect put in BOOTP. that should work, good luck

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

T-R-A... I thought I had clutter! my lord! Razz

It's actually "slightly" neater that that now (but not by much). I'm planning to get back into the PC repair/upgrade business since my current "full-time" employer has strong indications of pulling up roots and moving "south-of-the-border" Evil or Very Mad

Never made a lot of money in it (the repair business), but it would, at least for a while, help to pay the bills. But I did something really stupid yesterday...blew a 15GB HDD that I was planning to use for an external drive (plugged the power cable in backwards Mad

)---don't know how many customers I'd get back or keep if they knew that one...

Quote:

I have SBC DSL, a linksys wire router, and a 3com 3c509b-c. Heres how i did it, Run a small packet driver program, for me its 3c509.com.

Hmmm, sounds interesting. May have to borrow the DSL modem from my "big" machine upstairs just to try it out on the old TI386sx. I kinda miss using Arachne; it worked well with my first dial-up ISP, even on an old Compaq 386DX20.

Posted: Thu May 17, 2007 4:49 am

T-R-A,

How did you accomplish that? Are the new SATA power connecters not keyed? The IDE drives I've used have always had keyed connectors.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

I was using an external USB to IDE connector and the power pack that came with it. The beveled edges on the power connector to the HDD are more of a soft rubber type than the hard plastic of the connector inside a PC, so it didn't give much resistance when I plugged it in backwards (I know, should have checked anyway). Thus the magic smoke escaped.

Frustrating thing is I just had it plugged in correctly, had it almost formatted and then knocked the USB connector loose from the machine that was formatting it. Didn't realize that until after I had already unplugged and re-plugged (incorrectly) the drive Evil or Very Mad

Oh, well. A 80GB (with an external case) is on the way from Geeks as we speak. Very Happy

Next time I'll be more careful... Embarassed