Posts tagged intel

Addition – Amstrad PC1512 DD

4
3 years ago
by Andy in ,

Another machine for the collection – a Amstrad PC1512 DD. It has a 8Mhz Intel 8086 CPU, 512k RAM and 2 360k 5 1/4 disk drives. It did come with a collection of floppy disks, including the Red, Yellow, Green and blue Amstrad disks. If these disks we missing, you download disk images from the Retro Computing Archive Site here. Here is some information taken from Wikipedia

The Amstrad PC1512 was Amstrad’s mostly IBM PC-compatible home computer system, first manufactured in 1986. It was later succeeded by the PC1640.

It launched for £499 and sold very well, as it was one of the first cheap PCs in Europe. It significantly helped open up the European PC market to consumers as well as businesses, and Amstrad’s advertising of the PC1512 was aimed at homes rather than offices. The 1512′s influence was such that the UK PC magazine PC Plus originally targeted itself at the “Amstrad PC 1512 and compatibles”, since home ownership of other PCs at the time was rare.

The PC1512 shipped with 512K of RAM; it could be upgraded to 640K of RAM with an expansion pack. Video output was compatible with the CGA standard, with an extension allowing all 16 colours to be used in the 640×200 graphics mode. The CPU of both the PC1512 and the later PC1640 was an 8 MHz Intel 8086, which was sufficient for playing The Secret of Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Prince of Persia. The power supply was located in the monitor, which made upgrading difficult.

Ultimate 486 PC Update

2
4 years ago
by Andy in

My 486 PCThe ultimate 486 PC now consists of the following hardware…

  • CPU : Intel 486 DX2 66Mhz
  • RAM : 32Mb
  • Video : Cirrus Logic CL-5428 VESA Bus
  • Sound : Creative Labs SoundBlaster AWE64 Value
  • IDE/FDD/COM/LPT : Winbond VESA controller
  • SCSI : Adaptec ISA 25 pin external/50 pin internal
  • LAN : Novell NE2000 Plus 3
  • Storage : SCSI CD-Rom drive, 520MB HDD and 250Mb SCSI Zip drive
  • OS : MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11

MS-DOS, SCSI drivers and Windows 3.11 installed without any issues. Having the Windows source files on the Zip drive sped up the process a hundred times! No floppy disk swapping for me!

Next job was to download the drivers for the AWE64, LAN card and the Cirrus CL-5428. Again, the ZIP drive here sped the transfer of files from my main PC. Will be even quicker once the LAN card has been configured. I had to use the “PLUSDIAG.EXE” application to configure the LAN cards IRQs etc.  Also used the utility to tell the card to use the RJ-45 connector. The Sound card and the VGA card installed without issues.

It was a challange getting all of the hardware to work together. Brought back memories of IRQs, DMA, memory addresses and the like. Sound kept cutting out, and the Zip drive would stop working after I have used the LAN card. After about 1 hour of tinkering, I got it all working.

Ive also copied some games over to get me started. These are all old shareware games. Titles included Jill of the Jungle, Duke Dukem, Doom, Heretic and Commander Keen. Time to have some fun, then maybe try and install a Linux distro on it!

Photos of the machine can be found here. These photos were taken a while ago, but the hardware changes are internal, so you cant see the changes!

Ultimate 486DX PC!

0
4 years ago
by Andy in

Ive built myself a ‘Ultimate’ 486 PC this week. Its specs are…

  • Intel 486DX2 66Mhz (Wont take my spare DX4100Mhz…)
  • 32Mb ram (8 * 4mb 30pin 60ns EDO SIMMS – that would have cost a lot when they were first purchased!)
  • VESA Local Bus IDE/FDD/LPT/COM controller
  • Cirrus Logic VESA VGA card
  • SCSI CD-ROM + controller
  • SCSI 100Mb ZIP drive
  • 3.5″ 1.44Mb FDD
  • 5 1/4″ 1.2Mb FDD
  • Orchid SoundWave 32 ISA sound card.
  • 2Gb IDE Hard disk (Its actually a 20Gb drive, but ive resticted the drive to 2Gb with jumpers on the drive – no LBA on this controller!)
  • MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11

I feel a game of Wolfenstein 3D coming on – on proper (semi)retro hardware! Probably dig out Syndicate out too as ive not played it in years! Maybe find a few old demos too – second reality for example!

Im also going to add ISA network card with RJ45 interface. I have one in the post as we speak!

Photos will be posted later!

New additions – old PC's

0
4 years ago
by Andy in

In a pile of old PCs I was given yesterday, there we two old machines. A IBM PC AT and a Olivetti M380/C

Ive not tested these machines yet…

Photo of the IBM

Photo of the Olivetti

There were also some 486, Pentium and Pentium 3 pcs in the pile. The Pentiums will probably go on Freecycle.

Also got a stack of SIMMs, ZIP drives and hard disks.

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