Text 133, 94 rader
Skriven 2006-04-13 00:42:00 av BOB KLAHN (1:123/140)
Ärende: MiniScribe
==================

 Forwarded from Classic Computer. Just cause it seemed
 appropriate.

 ...

 KW> I bought a $500 Celeron 533 system in 2000, then a 1.1 GHZ
 KW> chip for $40 in 2003, a new ATA-100 hard drive in 2004, and
 KW> just recently removed the guts in 2006 and replaced them
 KW> with a $25 P4 motherboard, a cast-off 2.2 ghz chip, and
 KW> 512MB in new RAM.

 My first pentium was a 533 mhz celeron EMachine. Cost $200
 closeout at Office depot. Upgraded the ram and hard drive, added
 a TV card, but it's otherwise standard. My step son is using
 that now.

 KW> As for classic computers, I'm considering an experiment -
 KW> running DOS only for a month and seeing what all of the
 KW> upgrades have really gotten me in terms of productivity
 KW> gains. I found a copy of DOS, packet drivers, email, web,
 KW> and 1-2-3, but I got rid of all of my older systems! I'd
 KW> love to find a working VLB 486 system with 8-24 megs of
 KW> RAM, that's what I used in 1993 or so when I first
 KW> discovered the internet.

 That sounds like my last 486. Started out with a sx 25mhz. 4 meg
 ram and 160 meg HD. Ended with a VLB, Intel overdrive 83mhz
 pentium upgrade, 32 meg ram and a couple gig HD.

 Recently almost revisted that time.

 Some years back I bought a 486 DX2 66 from a surplus outlet.
 Don't remember who now. It had 12 meg ram and a 210 meg HD. Had
 it in my storage locker for a couple years.

 Recently I fell into 4 72 pin sims 64 meg ECC.(error
 correcting.) I looked them up on the web, and the writeups said
 they may or may not work  in a computer that doesn't use
 error correcting. In my storage locker I had an Intel Overdrive
 CPU, which boosts a 486 to an 83mhz pentium. Of course I have
 several low gig Hard drives lying around.

 The logical conclusion was to change a 486DX2-66 w/12 meg ram
 and 210 meg HD into an 83mhz pentium with 128 meg ram and a 2
 gig HD.

 So, I settled down and took it apart.

 First thing I found was the HD was wiped. So, I had to reload
 dos. Which would not be a hard thing, but the CMOS battery had
 died, so it lost it's settings everytime I turned it off. Since
 I was mostly doing hardware work that was frequently. Then it
 did not automaticlly detect the hard drive. Some will, I have a
 486 laptop that does, all I have to do is reset the date and
 time. And that only if it's off for a couple days. I was doing
 this on the original Hard drive just to get it working before I
 hit it with the 2 gig job.

 So, every time I started it I had to go through the HD setting
 in the CMOS.

 Ok, I finally got dos running. Then I checked the ram. ECC ram
 is supposed to be installed in pairs, this thing had two
 sockets, so I installed two.

 Bzzzzttttt... No go. Won't even try to boot.

 Ok, so I'm gonna do just the hard drive and the CPU. Only thing
 I had forgotten. The boards that are compatible with the
 Overdrive CPU have an extra row of pins around the normal CPU.
 That's for the pentium functions. No extra row.

 So, no extra ram. No upgraded CPU. All right, I can just do the
 hard drive. Only I realized, if it didn't have automatic hard
 drive detect, it probably didn't have LBA. So the over 500meg HD
 won't work. I could use a boot utility like Ezdrive, but, about
 this time, I decided to use the recycle bin instead.

 Not too long after I remembered, 72 pin ram was fairly late in
 the 486 cycle, so it may have LBA after all. But I didn't
 bother retrieving it.

  Still got 256 meg of 72 pin ECC ram. And an 83MHX pentium
  upgrade for a 486. All I need is a use for it. And a good dose
  of enthusiasm.


BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... 1st law of computers: No such thing as too fast or too much memory.
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