Closed 8086/8088/286 pc

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commodorejohn

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I'd like to obtain an XT or AT-era PC or clone of some kind. Essential requirements:
  • Pre-386 processor (preferably.) Speeds higher than 4.77MHz would be nice but not required.
  • 640KB of RAM (or more, but that's not particularly necessary.)
  • Hard drive of some kind (PATA/IDE preferred.) A BIOS with flexible drive-size handling would be nice if it's a PATA/IDE drive, but not absolutely necessary.
  • A 3.5" floppy drive or just a controller capable of handling one (I have at least 4 on hand :D)
  • I'd take a laptop, but it must have a color display and an SB/OPL-compatible chipset.
  • CGA or EGA video preferred. (If it's an EGA, I'd like to obtain a compatible monitor, but that'd be dependent on shipping costs.)
  • A serial mouse would be handy, but I can get one elsewhere if you don't have a spare on hand.
Owing to the general bulk of these things, shipping from outside the US or Canada would probably be prohibitive, but I'm willing to hear all offers. I'm not looking to pay a lot for this, since I'm not actively seeking a collector's item like the 5150 PC; I'd be willing to pay between $20 and $50, depending on shipping costs. Anybody looking to unload something like this?
 
I'll be trowing a 386 system away in a couple of day's. :nod: It's from a friend who want's the data destroyed, so nobody can get his private data....
 
If you can wait untill tomorrow evening, I'll be more informative. Kind of lazy at 23:55 right know.

I need to format it anyhow, I promised to destroy his data, and it needs to move out..

But I am quite sure about the 386 part because my friend has a very high IQ and very good memory, does not know sh*** about computers, but he probably remembers what others told him. And I see a small tower case, small flops, big flop, AT, with speed leds, the old din keyboard plug, the dos-windows 3.0 fact so ..
 
Heh, interesting. I think typically the speed LEDs indicate a pre-386 processor, but I have seen exceptions. I think shipping will be the big concern, but we'll see how that turns out.
 
I have an orignal 086 motherboard and chip - all on ISA 1 - its looking for a good home

I will get it out tomorrow if you are interested to take some pics.
 
I have an orignal 086 motherboard and chip - all on ISA 1 - its looking for a good home

I will get it out tomorrow if you are interested to take some pics.
Well, again, shipping might be a concern, but I'd definitely be interested in hearing about it.

Crazily, I cannot seem to find any in my area. Even the local recycling center, which is stocked to the brim with discarded office equipment from days past (just picked up an amber-screen terminal, which they have a room full of) doesn't seem to have any pre-Pentium PCs. Huh.
 
I have two that I received as a donation. They're in my storage room at the moment, but I'll take them out in a few days and let you know exactly the specs. I know that one is a passive motherboard with all the active components on ISA cards and that they both use MFM/RLL disks. They're probably right what you're looking for. If I remember correctly, one is an AT, the other I can't be sure about.
 
Okay, cool. Shipping from BC would be a lot more manageable :) By "MFM/RLL disks," are you referring to the hard disk? Is that referring to a particular interface? I'm afraid my knowledge on HD technology pretty much only goes back to the AT...
 
MFM is defenetely very old school technology. I never had one mainstream.

It's technology from probably first 286 and before.
 
bad day's

bad day's

What a piece of sh** compared to an a3000. LOL HD is dead..

Boots and tells me 4 mb in one bank 386 no speed, speed indicator on 33 mhz.. Feeling frustrated, I am not going to power this piece of sh*¨once more...








The paper are written instructions what I need to do

Please note this is no build by me, normally the com ports are fitted in the case to free up isa space etc...
 
Is the hard drive an IDE drive? If it is you can just remove the dead one, since I have plenty of small-capacity IDE drives I can replace it with. Otherwise, this looks like a good potential candidate. Any idea what shipping would be to US zip code 55783?
 
it's ide.

Posting no idea yet, you can alway's ask at TNT won't be cheap.; I can check the Belgian post office
 
Hmm. When you get a chance to check, this looks like a potentially good candidate, but I do want to wait and see if TheRogue's systems are what I'm looking for, since it'd be a lot cheaper to get one from Canada...
 
By MFM/RLL I am referring to hard disks. They are old technologies predating IDE. MFM being modified frequency modulation and RLL being Run Length Limited. The drives were almost the same between the two interfaces, just the encoding differed. RLL offered increased capacity on the same medium. You could sometimes get away with using an MFM disk for RLL, but the disks specifically produced for RLL were produced with a better magnetic medium to account for the increased data density, similar to how using a DD floppy for HD data will often fail. The drives used an interface similar to the shugart floppy interface, with an additional cable on top of the regular 34 pin cable. Many early SCSI disks were in fact MFM/RLL disks with a MFM/RLL to SCSI converter. I will take the machines out after my girlfriend leaves and let you know what exactly they are. If you're interested I will take them to the post office for a quote.
 
Oh, I'm definitely interested. The odd HD format isn't a problem, I just wanted to know what an MFM/RLL HD was. Any idea what the capacity is, or whether the controller's removable so's I could replace it with an IDE controller if necessary?
 
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