Uncreative Labs

Joined: 29 Mar 2007 Posts: 14 Location: Clearfield, UT

Hy guys

Long time since i been here but i wanted to share with you the 486 that i got today from ebay.

http://s174.photobucket.com/albums/w86/jkman76/

What is exciting to me about this one is that it still was in its original box complete with manuals and all, and it looks to have had light use and all the original software is still on it even the backup files to create the diskettes.
Now i just need to find the ACROS 33D monitor it came with someplace.

What ya guys think?

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

nice, no dent or rust marks! Very Happy

the only vintage computer I ever got brand new would be a compaq deskpro 386. Your lucky to find one with all the packaging

Joined: 29 Mar 2007 Posts: 14 Location: Clearfield, UT

Yea i was surprised to find one of these 486 PC's all complete as most your lucky to even get the mouse and keyboard that go's with it. I think that i well keep this one completely stock since it is complete. I only paid $80 shipped for it and considering what these go for on ebay these days ($100 or MORE before shipping for just the yellowed PC) I felt it was pretty good. The software that came on it is:

MS Dos 5.0
MS Win3.1
MS Works 2.0
and demo versions of Word,Exel and Powerpoint.
WP 6.0 (added later and SLOW)

The hardware side of things:

486DX33
4 MB Ram
130 MB hard drive
1 5.25 1 3.5 in floppy drives.
2400 Baud Modem

Can anyone tell me how you reset the program manager defaults as i can't remember what command it is. Whoever had it messed up the icon spacing that i fixed but the resizing of the windows is messed up as you try and drag the progman windows and it snaps to some predefined settings and also the groups have some duplicate things in them like file-manager is in two different groups.

Thanks again guys.

Joined: 29 Mar 2007 Posts: 14 Location: Clearfield, UT

i guess this forum never really came back fully since it closed and was re erected? thats OK. i had hope for more responses or general activity.

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

Quote:

i guess this forum never really came back fully since it closed and was re erected?

That wasn't our intent anyway. OCHL has been around a long time and has about as many routine contributors as we do. We have to face the fact that obsolete machines only interest a few, and given what happens to lots of "newer" machines , we're just a lucky few that still have interest in older stuff... Smile

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

Try editing win.ini or system.ini by running sysedit or write

There are some that are still intristed in old computers were I live. two months ago some one dumped a 286 clone in the dumpsters behind the shop. I went back in to get a screw driver and when I came out some one
took the 286 and a monitor. Were I work half the guy don't what vista is.
We get one or two dos computers every week

Joined: 01 Apr 2007 Posts: 5 Location: Aachen / Germany

Great machine Smile

I like the desktop housing Very Happy

. If I were you I would install the 486-typical Win 3.11.

Joined: 29 Mar 2007 Posts: 14 Location: Clearfield, UT

Hy guys

Sorry about my last post i was having a rough time so if the statments came out wrong im sorry.

I have learned a bit more about this 486 and have run the backup program that makes disketts of everything and reinstalled the whole lot.

While this acer "excuse me ACROS" was a nice find given it still had the manuals and box and all i found that this machine is really a very budget model. The case design sucks as most of it is snap together plastic housing and drive sleds. The mother board appears to be not much more then a 386 board with a 486 socket that has 72pin ram. i say this since this is the first pc i think i have seen that didn't auto detect the hard drive and you have to enter the 3 sets of numbers manually. Second is the video chip used(oak-077)with only 512k video ram thats expandable to 1 meg using 4 256k chips..not sure where to find them and the book also said that to get higher color then 256 you also have to change out a RAMDAC chip? but yet the driver it came with well not let you go above 256 colors and i cant find another updated driver for it anyplace also there is no way to adjust the refresh rate so your stuck with the flickering.
I was going to upgrade it as i had put another 4megs in and put a 66mhz chip in and thay both worked as well as cd rom and sound card but in the end put everything back as it was since the video is poor and would hender the rest of it plus i dont think the bios is flashable and it is from july of 91.

overall it is good for word processing and dos games and is cool to see what pcs where used for back then.

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

I would love a NIB 486 Gateway or other high quality machine of the time.

Currently I have (4) 486 machines in my collection (none are brand name)

486DX50 EISA (using a 68 PIN EISA SCSI card, for programming)
486/133 VLB (a nice DOS/Win 3.11 machine with 16MB caching controller and a high end 4MB VLB video card)
486DX2/66 VLB (currently a games machine, adaptec SCSI VLB, same Miro card as below)
486/120 VLB (Miro 20TD VLB capture card + TV Tuner with the good TSENG ET4000 chipset and 2MB)

I have 2 of the last generation 486 PCI boards (one with a 486/133 OC to 160 and the other with a cyrix 5x86/120) but I prefer the VLB boards and cards (have a drawer full of them) so the PCI boards are in storage.

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

I'm curious about your 4MB VLB card. What is the model, chipset and memory type?

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

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I'm curious about your 4MB VLB card. What is the model, chipset and memory type?

#9 GXE64Pro S3 chipset, 964 I think. Came with 2MB of VRAM and sockets for 2MB more (which I filled in).

I also have a diamond VLB card with a s3 chipset that is expanded to 4MB (has some kind of daughtercard and probably video enhancement circuits for playing video).

And I have a Matrox card with 2MB expandable to 4MB (Ultima Plus VLB I believe, need to find the correct chips to upgrade it to 4MB).

4MB VLB was not very common.

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

Hey, you're bogarting all the good stuff. I should have bought all those things on eBay a few years ago when they were easy pickings.

I'm currently in the market for a VLB card based around S3 968. I have a few 4mb capable cards, but I am less than impressed.

1. Mach64 Graphics Ultra Pro Turbo (ISA and VLB). This card uses proprietary memory expansion. I bought several upgrade cards for it, but none of them worked. You have to have the right part number.

2. ELSA Winner 2000 EISA/ISA. 4MB built in. Works well, but very slow in DOS.

3. Diamond Stealth 64. Uses S3 964 graphics. It has good specs, but the card is fried somehow. I think it might be a bad capacitor. It won't sync properly with any of my monitors. I'd like to fix it, but I don't have the tools need to test it.

Right now for DOS I am using a ET4000W32P card. It's nice in DOS, but stinks in Windows. My understanding that the S3 964 and 968 are the best all around cards. So, please let me know if you have a spare you can sell me, or know a place where I can get one.

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

I purchased most of my cards as a lot on ebay (super cheap), and a few from forums. The #9 was complete in the box never used.

The ET4000 should be decent in Windows (what version of Windows are you talking about?).

The reason I like 4MB cards is because I want 1024x768 @24bit mostly for decent desktop space and because I have some video capture cards in my old machines (Targa etc).

I need a new EISA card for my 486, the 1MB S3 based one works ok, but my 2MB ATI doesn't work at all. My diamond card is probably the Stealth 64 VRAM, and the 2MB upgrade might be faulty since I get weird streaks at high rez.

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

I heard that those EISA ATis don't work at all with Adaptec SCSI controllers. That could be part of your problem. Best of luck finding a good EISA graphics board. There aren't many to choose from. The ones I am aware of are:

-Compaq 1 and 2MB boards
-ATi Graphics Ultra Pro 2MB
-Elsa Winner 1000 2MB
-Elsa Winner 2000 4MB
-Matrox Ultima 3MB

...and a variety of TIGA boards, such as SuperMac Spectrum 24.

I was really lucky to get the ELSA. I ordered it from German eBay. In the mean time, I'll keep my eyes open for a nice s3 VLB. I am going to attempt to replace the capacitors on my Stealth 64 VRAM and see what happens.

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

There is a 3MB Supermac Spectrum on ebay USA now.

I did not know about the Adaptec issues with the ATI card, bummer since I am not parting with my Adaptec card.

A Matrox Ultima 3MB EISA would be nice.