Getting a Classic PC Working After 25 Years? 533
tunersedge writes "Yesterday I dug out of my parents' basement a PC they had bought brand new in 1984: Epson Equity I personal computer; 512K RAM; 82-key keyboard; 2 (count 'em!, 2) 5.25" floppy disk drives; 13' RGB monitor (with contrast/brightness knobs); handy on/off switch; healthy 25-year-old yellowed plastic; absolutely no software. (My mom ran a pre-school, and they used it to keep records and payroll. I cut my programming teeth on this thing. GW-Basic was my friend. Kings Quest screens took 2 minutes to load when you walked into a new one.) When I resurrected this machine I pulled the case off, dusted out a little, and plugged it in. It actually fired up! I'm stoked, except the disks we had are missing. What I'm looking to do is either buy some old working disks with whatever I can find (MS-DOS 3.22, GW-Basic, whatever), or try and recreate some using a USB-based floppy drive and some modern software. Has anyone tried to resurrect a PC this old before?"
You already know where to go for disks.... (Score:5, Informative)
Ebay is your friend!
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True enough - I did the same thing with my ancient Mac Plus. Between Ebay and the dedicated enthusiast forums, I was able to get all the software I needed to get it up and working.
OT: sig (Score:5, Insightful)
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
I'd like my operating system to have more than two possible settings. Operating systems are complex because the world is complex.
Re:OT: sig (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like my operating system to have more than two possible settings.
1) ON
2) OFF
3) NEITHER ON NOR OFF
4) SOMEWHAT ON
5) ROOTED
6) FROZEN
7) DEAD
8) JUST MOSTLY DEAD
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Re:You already know where to go for disks.... (Score:4, Informative)
16 bit SCSI card, my friend. Adaptec 1542CF is what you want. Actually, a 16-bit IDE host adapter should be fine. I might even have one of those as well. Reply if you're interested...
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I think the issue is that a computer of that age is not likely to have 16-bit ISA slots, but rather only 8-bit ISA slots. Your 16-bit SCSI card won't work in it anymore than a PCI-E one would.
Essentially, a computer of that age just isn't going to take a CD-ROM driver. That's a technology from a later time.
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Some of the old AT cards would work in XT slots - that's why the notch was there! Half the card hangs out in space.
That said, many Adaptec SCSI cards did not work in 8-bit XT slots - I can't recall the specifics for the 15x1 cards - because they justifiable required all 16-bits for a data pathway.
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You're right. It's a 4.77 8088 with 8 bit ISA slots. Now I've seen 8 bit IDE host adapters, but they were odd-ball in 1990, let alone now. As for whether or not it would "take" a CD ROM driver, of course it would. DOS is the same on 8088's and 286's. You would just need an 8 bit host adapter to connect it to. That would most likely be SCSI.
I remember my first CD ROM with a proprietary 8 bit SCSI adapter from the DAK catalog. Expensive and slow, but it worked!
Re:You already know where to go for disks.... (Score:4, Informative)
Thrift stores.
You should check out thrift stores.
I see 5 1/4 inch floppy disks in those places all the time. Cheap.
Re:You already know where to go for disks.... (Score:5, Funny)
I think the Epson Equity was the one that had a typo in the BIOS when you inserted a floppy disk. The typo was in the word disk, and exhorted the user to insert a system dick when they booted with a non-boot floppy.
Re:You already know where to go for disks.... (Score:5, Funny)
I think that Windows 7 will have lower hardware requirements than Vista. Why not give it a try?
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Double density is what these drives used, and high density are easier to find. Is that what you meant?
Single density disks weren't that commonly used. The only reasonably common system I can think of that used them was the Atari 8-bit machines, and even then only if you had the original 810 5.25" disk drive. The later 1050 used double density disks (but could read and write single density disks with a lower capacity).
Re:You already know where to go for disks.... (Score:4, Informative)
I've used a couple models of Epson Equity. The custom DOS version 3.2 on the XT model (Equity I) is easy to find online, but there's really nothing special about it. The AT model (Equity III) had DOS 4.01 and it was a generic version.
MS-DOS 3.3 is probably the easiest to find and is the ideal version for an XT-class system. A full 3.3 will have GW-BASIC on disk 2.
-uso.
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The later 1050 used double density disks (but could read and write single density disks with a lower capacity).
You had to get the doubler ROMs to get true double density 180k, otherwise the drive did some weird 1 1/2 density 160k...
The 1050 supported 130K "enhanced" density" [faqs.org]. The later XF551 supported true double density and apparently was also true double-sided [atariarchives.org], but that came out pretty late in the day and it wasn't that cheap by the standards of the time.
Re:You already know where to go for disks.... (Score:4, Informative)
Double density (AKA "standard density" or 360K) cannot reliably be formatted for high density (1.2M) use, or vice versa, because the coercivity of the media is significantly different.
IBM-compatible PCs have never used single density as a standard disk format, and many IBM-compatible PCs can't actually deal with single density, though some can. The first disk drives shipped on PCs were single sided, though IBM switched to double sided fairly early on. The format progression for media on the PC, AT, PS/2, and compatibles was:
There were, of course, other formats not supported by IBM DOS, but used by other vendors or other software.
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Plus I don't think I've seen a whole lot of 5.25" USB floppy drives; 3.5" USB floppy drives are much more common. I think one would have to scavenge a 3.5" USB floppy to use it with a 5.25" drive.
It'd probably be best to take the floppy drive out of the old computer if he needs to try to recreate install discs using a newer computer.
512k! (Score:5, Funny)
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har har har har. That stupid fucking joke is about as old and lame as his computer. It stopped being funny about 24 years ago.
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It stopped being funny about 24 years ago.
Well then I guess it's not quite as old as the computer then, is it?
Re:512k! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevertheless it's a tradition deeply engrained in slashdot culture.
In other words, you must be new here.
Re:512k! (Score:5, Funny)
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Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods?!
Yes, but do they run Linux?
Re:512k! (Score:5, Funny)
"Indeed, on Slashdot it is traditional to make the same retarded jokes over and over again."
In Soviet Russia, the same joke over and over again makes you retarded!
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If you want to mock an actual comment from the almighty one, I prefer "What's a network?"
Re:Sad Joke... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sad Joke... (Score:5, Informative)
Sad? No, actually it's annoying. Bill Gates never actually said what you think he said.
Re:Sad Joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
True.
And what Rumsfeld said about "known unknowns" was logical (albeit paraphrased in a place where the original quote would have been better.)
And Al Gore didn't claim to have "invented" the internet; he said he "took the initative in creating the internet", which given how you would expect a Congreeman to take initative (recognizing a good program, giving it attention and money) is true.
And Sarah Palin's speech was actually coherent, not beautiful but coherent, if you read it.
And Quayle's spelling of potato isn't the most common, but is technically a valid alternative. (Although the potato incident was dumb for other reasons.)
People who you dislike rarely say the dumb things you think they did, as you'll address a quote out of context (or misrepresentation of that quote) from someone you like, but not from someone you don't. You're more than happy to assume people you don't like are retarded.
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I actually liked the "known unknowns" vs. "unknown unknowns" speech. It made perfect sense to me, and I can think of a lot of stuff in my work that it applies to.
For example:
Setting up the test environment is a "known known"-- I know it needs to be done, and I know exactly how long it'll take.
Implementing my project is a "known unknown"-- I know it needs to be done, but I don't know how long exactly it will take.
On the other hand, a scope change from the client is an "unknown unknown"-- I don't know if it w
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I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didnt - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem.
So, maybe "640k out to be e
Re:Sad Joke... (Score:5, Informative)
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Deja vu... [slashdot.org]
Re:Sad Joke... (Score:4, Informative)
No, it isn't. Are you trolling, or just never botherd to listen to it? If you had listened to it, you 'd have to admit HE DOES NOT say "640 k should be enough for anyone".
The only part you could be referring to is:
Which if YOU READ THE FUCKING THING, is him speaking in 1989, years after the design was set (1980 or 81), saying that 640k was certainly not enough.
You found a paragraph where Bill Gates mentions "640 k". Unfortunately, it's not remotely close to the "quote".
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Think about how easy it would be to misinterpret it if you wanted to. "...640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time."
Digging through an old story here on /.: [slashdot.org]
Do a Usenet search on the phrase. Though usually dated 1981 or thereabouts, the first time it appears on the record is August 1992 (in a Mac newsgroup). Never has anyone cited the circumstances, the place and exact date, he's suposed to have said this.
-----
Quite so. The actual remark was made by Steve Jobs to Steve Wozniak regarding building a card to expand the Apple II's memory from the max possible on the motherboard of 48K to a full 64K (the "language card"). Jobs' statement "Who would ever want more than 48K?" has been misattributed and misquoted for years, as have many statements made by some that sound so much better coming from someone else. The answer was, almost everybody. When the IIe came out it had 64K on the board and could accept a second 64K card. The IIc came with two full 64K banks installed.
Jobs was frequently at odds with Wozniak over technical issues. Jobs wanted no more than 2 slots in the Apple II. Woz wanted 8 and put them in. Jobs argued against color. Woz put it in, first in blocky lo-res, then in an awesome hack that resulted in 16 color (including two blacks and two whites) hi-res. Other examples exist, but these two illustrate Jobs' penchant for one-upsmanship: When he built the first Mac, it had no color and no slots.
Jobs' quote was in many MOTD files during the late 70's and early 80's, until the misattributed Gates quote started replacing it.
(The part in your post starts at around 22 minutes in case anyone else is reading this and doesn't want to sit through the whole 1.5 hours.)
Re:512k! (Score:5, Funny)
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
USB 5.25 Floppy (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been wanting one of these for years... they need to make one that's compatible with all systems, not just IBM Compatible. I wonder if one of the numerous C64 floppy adapters (that uses parallel) would let you write to IBM format.
For DOS, I'm pretty sure FreeDOS would work.
FreeDOS (Score:5, Informative)
FreeDOS probably would boot on this machine.
I actually know the machine you're talking about - except I had a HDD. I know for a fact the thing will run MS-DOS 5.0.x
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FreeDOS probably would boot on this machine.
I actually know the machine you're talking about - except I had a HDD. I know for a fact the thing will run MS-DOS 5.0.x
Heh. I had the same Equity I also, but since my dad was something of a computer geek himself, he sprang for a 20MB hardcard for it. At the time, 20MB seemed like it would be enough space to last me the rest of my life :/
Re:FreeDOS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FreeDOS (Score:4, Funny)
It's "feign indignation at the high quality of life of the previous poster" + "state your childhood desires to have such luxury" + "state how much worse you had it" so that the next poster can follow up. Get with the program!
Re:FreeDOS (Score:4, Funny)
You had a hill? We had to go up a 20 mile vertical cliff
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I'm a pilot and had to fly around your 105,600-foot cliff, you insensitive clod!
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Getting home was much quicker, wasn't it?
You don't seem to have grasped the concept of "...uphill, both ways". : - )
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You had schools? In my day, we had to build our own schools, out of sticks and stones (bullies were readily available).
-dZ.
Contact Customer Support? (Score:5, Insightful)
They do host the manual [epson.com] that indicates you have a parallel port and a RS-232C serial port to play with and also something that looks like expansion slots designed for peripherals. Good luck and have fun!
Re:Contact Customer Support? (Score:5, Informative)
http://files.support.epson.com/pdf/e1____/e1____ps.pdf [epson.com]
There's a reference to a few HDD controller mentioned, jumper positions, etc.
I'd bet you could hack a modern fdd into it fairly easily...
Re:Contact Customer Support? (Score:4, Informative)
I used to do this all the time with game companies back in the nineties. Often times they'd send me free copies of their C-64 programs and whatnot. It is absolutely worth a shot even though nowadays the operator on the phone is probably not going to even understand your request and/or believe that such a product ever existed.
Re:Contact Customer Support? (Score:5, Funny)
imagine the tech receiving this tech support call. "hi, i'd like to get the original software that came with my system. ... 1984. ... hello?"
Just admit it... (Score:5, Funny)
Yesterday I dug out of my parents' basement a PC they had bought brand new in 1984: Epson Equity I personal computer
Just admit it, it was under your bed wasn't it? At least now it's on that thing you call a table.
Watch out on the usb floppy.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Watch out on the usb floppy.. (Score:5, Informative)
Just a thought - unless I'm mistaken, the floppy cable that plugs into a 3.5" drive also fits in a 5.25" drive - and the power connector for regular PATA hard drives also fits the 5.25" floppy drive. If that is still the case, all he needs to do is put his old 5.25" drive next to a new computer, plug in the cables and fire it up. Create a boot floppy using the Windows 95 'create a boot floppy' utility or however you make boot floppys now (I have a .img file of that boot floppy I use to create boot CDs, so it's been a while since I made a boot floppy - format a: /s maybe?)
Put the 5.25" drive and your new boot floppy back in and Voila! you are all set.
Re:Watch out on the usb floppy.. (Score:5, Informative)
Never tried that, but... (Score:2)
5.25" floppy disk drives (Score:2, Informative)
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No. the 286 and 386 are very different CPUs and the linux kernel cannot be compiled for it.
The full kernel, probably not, but there are things like the Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset (ELKS) [sourceforge.net] that support Intel 8086 and 80286 CPUs.
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No version of Linux will ever run on this machine - unless you don't mind running everything as root.
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Linux requires a 386 or greater for the kernel. Back to square one.
Quality that lasts. (Score:3, Informative)
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Getting these things up and running is no surprise to me. It seems that they used quality stuff in them days. I have loads of these oldies that haven't been booted for 10+ years and upon plugging them in they start off as if nothing ever happened. Drives with a ST-506 interface in particular seem to be of an indistructible kind of quality-make. Feel free to contact me for disks, or as stated; check eBay of contact Bruce Damer of the DigiBarn [http://www.digibarn.com/].
Is it really quality, or is it more like that engineering principle that the more complex a thing is, the more likely it is to break down? Because today's machines are one hell of a lot more complex ...
Re:Quality that lasts. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
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Easy (Score:2, Funny)
Slap Vista on that baby and it'll run like a champ.
Re:Easy (Score:4, Funny)
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However as there is no hdd, and less than 1MB of ram your drive will likey be worn out from swapping the floppies around before you manage to open IE.
You're worried about the computer? The poor bastard swapping the floppies will have snapped long before the computer wears out.
Pimp tips ! (Score:4, Insightful)
Cool, it is very educational to work with old computer's
Nice things to do: :)
- add extra ram by using an ISA memory expansion card (up to 2MB !!!), running windows 3.0 would then be possible !
- 200mb+ IDE/MFM drive (the latter where mostly smaller though and a bit hard to get)
- ISA VGA card
- ISA Soundblaster
- ISA ethernetcard
- run Arachne and surf the WEB !!!!!!!!!!!!, heheh yes you can this baby on slashdot
- a lot more upgrade options, FPU etc.. etc..
Greetings and Enjoy and good luck hunting down Dos software
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Wrong. The old BIOSes would support drives of up to about 500MB, and past that you'd need your disk manager utility.
You're thinking of MS-DOS 3.3 and earlier not supporting disk partitions bigger than 32MB, and before 3.3 not supporting more than one partition per drive.
Amstrad PC1512 (Score:4, Funny)
My parents dug up an Amstrad PC1512 while tidying their house and called me up asking me what to do with it. I said throw it away. They said isn't it worth something? I laughed.
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Their keyboards are selling for about twenty bucks or so.
This might help... (Score:5, Informative)
This [wikispaces.com] might help with that part of the restoration (cheap and DIY)...
Disks? (Score:5, Informative)
Impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I'm more impressed with the 13 foot monitor. I'm assuming its some sort of front projection device. Wonder what the resolution is? :)
Re:Impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Yesterdays PC, todays Embedded chip (Score:2)
I'm assuming this is either an 8088 or 8086 chip. Many people learned embedded programming on these chips, and there are probably millions of them in use in embedded systems around the world.
This sounds like a great opportunity to program your own embedded OS for the machine. Get a PROM burner and your favorite compatible compiler and have some fun! You're a programmer, and you cut your teeth on this PC. Learn another aspect of programming with it.
TRS-80 (Score:2)
I got a TRS-80 working but try to find the BIG floppies for it, and you're headed to eBay and similar places quite a bit.
FreeDOS (Score:2)
FreeDOS has been discussed here before, at length. It should work on your machine well enough to get you started. There are a lot of resources available related the FreeDOS efforts; so, you may be able to find a lot of what you are looking for.
The USB drives likely won't work with this old machine -- but you now that are I'm assuming you're talking about creating the floppies. I haven't seen a 5 1/4" external for some time... You may need to put a 3 1/2" disk into the old machine initially.
Dear God, why? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess it must be the difference between ages that causes someone to think that a cruddy DOS machine is actually something worth bringing back up.
Me, I cut my teeth on Radio Shack Model 4 machines, quickly discovering how much more software I could run once I got Montezuma CP/M running on it and downloading public domain software from the local (multi-user) CP/M bulletin board system.
Once the actual PC came along, I think just about anyone who had run a CP/M system saw it for what it was: a crappy copy that took none of the good from CP/M and just about all of the bad, running on a machine that supported a bit more RAM (not 640K yet, RAM was way too expensive) and a slightly faster processor.
I'm sure users of any of several pre-PC architectures would feel the same way - that the PC came along and the party stopped, kind of like that kid everybody hated at school showing up to a (previously fun) private party with a few of his friends.
Awesome find!!! Here's some software suggestions. (Score:5, Informative)
What an awesome find! You can actually download all the software you'd ever want for the system here - http://www.vetusware.com/ [vetusware.com] - which is a website with hundreds of abandoned software titles for download free. They do have various versions of MS-DOS, which I'd suggest MS-DOS 5.0 or higher because I still have nightmares of edlin *cringe*. They do have MS-DOS 6.22 for download along with GWBasic, QBasic, Borland C++ for DOS, etc for development. I assume since you said the system is from 1984 that's it's an 8086 or 8088 which rules out Windows 3.x.
After years of using TRS-80 systems I moved to an 8088 XT clone in 1990 running MS-DOS 3.3, and as you that's where I really started learning to code with GWBasic. About 6 years ago I had some stuff in my closet shift one evening and that old system fell from the top shelf to the floor never to boot again. I wish I still had it, but a few years ago I did pull out an old 486SX system I picked up used in college (around 1996) and played with some of these old DOS languages and games.
Have fun though... so many people cast away these old systems as boat anchors, but they're awesome to work with if you have some patience.
What are you guys talking about? (Score:2, Funny)
I went to school for programming, and I've only been out for a year, so I'm still pretty new to all this. But what on Earth does "Cut your teeth" mean?
I have experince with this. (Score:5, Informative)
You need to upgrade the RAM to 640 KB. Generally Radio Shack has some SIPPs you can add to the motherboard to add the last 128 KB.
You will need to find a Double density 3.5 floppy drive with a Card edge adaptor. This will allow you to use double density 3.5 floppies in the computer. (High Density will not work.)
You can network this be getting an 8-bit NIC that has a BNC and AUI port, then adding an AUI to UTP tranciever, but you can't use DHCP with it. The WATTCP stack for Dos will require a static IP.
If the video card is in an ISA slot, (and some times even it it isn't.) get a 16 bit ISA Trident VGA Card. This will give you VGA, EGA and CGA support. You can then plug the Computer into a standard monitor.
It's not that old... (Score:4, Interesting)
At work we have PC's much older than that, running manufacturing equipment. If any of them break down, I have a whole room full of old PC's that I could simply search for parts. Eventually we'll run out of parts (the equipment need ISA bus to operate), but at this rate, we're good for another 25 years or so.
Vintage Computing (Score:4, Informative)
Bootstrap via serial port? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, this may not help but then again it might...
I dug up an old Laser 128 (Apple II compatible) with no working software and was able to get it working using the following method. I don't know if your machine has a compatible feature, though.
http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/bootstrap.html#Starting_from_bare_metal [sourceforge.net]
In short: using a second machine (In my case, running Win98) and a homebrew serial cable, configure the machine to be revived to treat serial port input as keyboard input, then keyboard input direct into memory (like a DEBUG prompt) - If you can do that then the rest of the procedure might actually work with compatible software.
The support machine "types" the software directly into the host machine's memory and executes it. In the link above, you start with a ProDOS image which then gets written to disk so you can boot the machine normally.
=Smidge=
Another IBM PC Compatible (Score:3, Informative)
This looks like a more or less standard boring old IBM PC compatible computer. There are truckloads of great old DOS programs floating around out there if you look around (although sadly most people only feel inclined to preserve games, not utilities and such)
Probably the easiest thing to do is connect a 360k drive to a somewhat more "modern" networked computer that has an internal floppy disk controller, and write disk images or files directly to it. One hint though, do not write 360k floppies with a 1.2mb 5.25" drive, they usually won't work due to differences in the size of the magnetic track written. If you need 5.25 floppy disks, you can usually find them on eBay - heck there are still 8" disks and punch cards floating around!
That system might be able to run up to MS/PC DOS 6.22 or perhaps even FreeDOS, but if there is no hard drive you probably would be best served with DOS 2.x or 3.x, they take up less disk space and memory.
There are various other OSes for 8088/8086 IBM PC compatibles (CP/M 86, and Xenix come to mind) as well as GUI shells (Visi-On, GEM, GEOS, and Windows 1.0 through 3.0) but most of the useful stuff for that class of machine is for plain old DOS.
If you are looking to add hardware, there is also plenty of old ISA stuff floating around on eBay. You might be able to add a 720k 3.5" floppy drive (check the physical bay size and connector compatibility) or a 1.4mb drive using an ISA controller card with a BIOS. 8-bit MFM/RLL hard drives and controllers, I'm sure I have even seen 8-bit IDE controllers before. There are ISA VGA cards that will work in 8 bit ISA systems (often they look like 16-bit cards but will still fit and operate in an 8-bit slot)
Anyway, lots of options but not as unique as TI-99/4a, Apple II, TRS-80 or such.
laplink (Score:3, Informative)
If you can get to a DOS prompt don't forget about the old trusty program called laplink. You can transfer files via serial or parallel port and you only need to have the laplink program on the one computer to get started but you gotta have da DOS first.
P.S. You gotta get a hard drive... you'll go mad with floppies very quickly.. remember 512MB is the limit for IDE without using the umm overlay ummm I've forgot what it was called... o well nothing of value was lost...
Modern DOS will work (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless the system has some funky ROM (like Tandy used that locked in a specific OS) there's no reason not to use a modern DOS. I still have a working XT and 286, and they both run M$DOS 6.00 -- it's MUCH faster than the older versions and a lot more capable, and is extremely stable (my very busy 286 routinely ran for up to *two years* between reboots). M$DOS7 from Win9x is the same as M$DOS6 but adds FAT32 support, and would work just as well. I presume one of the free DOS replacements, like FreeDOS, would also work.
The standard MSCDEX and Mouse drivers (v8.20 is best) should also work. You can get USB-to-some-other-port gadgets -- try cablenbits.com or tekgems.com, both are reliable vendors and carry all manner of oddball connectors and adapters.
What was the question again? :)
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I think they have been going for "funny", as in First Power-On Self Test.
But I agree with your "wtf is the point?", I can understand an older Amiga/Pentium system, 50/75/100MHz etc, they can actually do something, play media, file storage, work as an advanced router, etc or be "fun" enough for a kids (like 5-8 year old) PC.
Re:My advice to you (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually trying to use the machine is not likely to make him happy, either. When I've messed around with older nostalgic machines from my childhood, it was cool for the first 10 minutes until the nostalgia wore off and I started to see how painfully slow and primitive they are. These things were great in their time, but they don't age well.
Since the machine is so generic and non-interesting, he may have a harder time finding any sort of enthusiast group for it, but the Internet is vast, so who knows what he could find if he spent enough time digging.
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Hm. I've got an Equity I and I+ (with HD!). Maybe we should start a group...
Much like you said, I've got collections of old systems myself, and while some are significant in a universal way - an Osborne portable, for example - most are only significant to me.
The Equity I+ has actually seen some use, along with a Tandy almost-PC-compatible that my kids used to play Wheel of Fortune on a couple years ago. While they're nothing special, they are the oldest PC systems I have in working order, and I never had mu
Re:My advice to you (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be an incredible teaching aid. Students could be shown (not just told) how technology has advanced over 25 years. Real, side-by-side comparisons could be demonstrated using simple programs designed to run on both the new and old systems (first-hand demonstration of backwards compatibility, performance comparisons, etc). This could be an excellent system to teach the importance of efficiency in programming.
When my son is old enough to have an actual computer, I plan on giving him a system that has limited capabilities so I can teach him on a system that doesn't provide built-in distractions (I'll probably pick something newer than 25 years though). Of course, I'll teach him BASIC first, then maybe COBOL and some other simple languages before introducing him to modern languages and objects.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people... the Druids
No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains
Hewn into the living rock... Of Stonehenge
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Some admin at Epson is watching the logs as a 1984 manual gets slashdotted, and wonders WTF?!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I had on old 386sx (didn't belong to me originally). I decided to try to make something out of it. I maxed out the ram, which meant buying VERY expensive cache chips (total cost >$80). At the end of the day, I had a very nice, very slow machine. The Oak video on it could do 800x600 at 256 colors, but that was all. Granted, for that time period, it was typical, but not something I would have purchased.
Given that people will pretty much give you their old P4 boxes nowadays, I don't think I'll ever go through this exercise again (I still have the machine btw).
I've been down this road many times before, myself...
I guess my favorite instance of this was an Everex 386-25 that I got in the mid 90s and used to play games from the early 90s. The thing had been stripped of its cache memory so I had to replace that - the fun thing about the machine was it had an 8-character alphanumeric display on the front of the machine... A little research and I found out how to write text to it.
It was fun but after a while it just starts to seem like a huge waste of time, money, a