True 486 experience

Would it be wise to build an 486 PC?
The costs of it is likely the main problem?
Also parts may be difficult to find.

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I've done it recently. It takes more troubleshooting knowledge that not everyone in the modern computing age may want to deal with or has the ability to. Considering the price of increase of individual parts in the last year, difficulty in finding drivers for some hardware, difficulty in locating documentation for some hardware, and the subtle nuances of operating older hardware it can be a frustrating hobby for some people who are not accustomed to older hardware. That being said, if none of that bothers you then by all means enjoy your new hobby.

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Yes, you're about a decade too late for old, cheap parts.

it depends on what part you're looking for. there are some parts that sell for ludicrous amounts of money. the software and drivers you need are likely not easily found and any errors that go along with that also have somewhat non-existent documentation
wise? for what when you can emulate 99% of it?

Yeah, just trying to find a good "486 looking" AT case on eBay for a nomrla price is a challenge. That is not to say it's impossible, but you have to scout out fleamarkets and classifieds to get exactly what you want. A few weeks ago i saw a cheap Socket7 motherboard at the fleamarket but didn't get it because i already have one. Checking the prices on eBay after that made me wish i had gotten it...

>you can emulate 99% of it
I hate when people say this. It's not about the end game. It's about building it, playing with the hardware, the experience of it all. If some one wants to use the hardware ,saying emulate it is like telling a mountaineer to use a helicopter to get to the top.

Order parts from people in Eastern Europe.
Many of them still have these.

If there's a recycling center nearby you can try getting some deals from there. We have a bin out front of my work and I've gotten 2 Pentium class machines out of it and two voodoo cards. YMMV depending on your area but people will just chuck these old machines without realizing there's a niche market for it all.
As for if 486 is worth it, I'm more of a fan of the Pentiums. You can disable cache and get the machine to run at 486 levels for those games that run too quick like Wing Commander while having access to newer titles.

wouldn't emulators have the issue of some part of games running too slow and other parts too fast?

example: UFO Game
tactics screen, scrolling too fast
world map screen, scrollng too fast
but when you drop the speeds for nice scrolling, your units start to move slowly, sound is lagging behind the action etc

I believe it has something to do with the fact that the math coprocessors werent a requirement for this game in 90s

Like 99% of them have been recycled by now. Even Pentium 4's are considered junk.

Pentium 4 are true junk and have no nostalgic value and will never have nostalgic value

This is partly why it is so interesting, 386 to pentium 1 machines will be forever a kind of device people might want to acquire but nobody will ever want a Pentium 4 for any purpose

The problem is that we've already moved on from seeing 486es in recycling centers to Pentium IIs and IIIs now. And yeah Socket7 is my favorite - there's such a rich selection of non-Intel CPUs from the fairly common AMD K6 and Cyrix series to more obscure chips like IDT Winchips and Rise MP6es

I have 5 775 socket PC about the house. 2 with P4s. I have plenty of nostalgia for it. It's the oldest intel setup that can be used relatively easy with modern operating systems and software or 20 year old stuff. It's a great go between.

The thing with P4s is that anything you would want to do on that platform can be done on newer hardware with minimal issues. They're also power hungry space heaters. I have a Coppermine Celery that runs better than a 3GHz P4, even under XP. Only thing they have over a P3 is more RAM.

This, Ive ordered 2 SB16s from a guy in Latvia for like $5 a piece.

I've had to maintain a custom Novell 286 network for a company that required it for, reasons that are basically insanity - wouldn't run on anything higher than a 386. Finding parts is a bit of a pain, but there's places that specialize it. Not always cheap, and often involves overseas shipping.

Biggest problem is computers of this era were very often composed of proprietary parts to force reliance on the manufacturer, so you need to find as generic a rig as possible. You at least need to be able to replace the CMOS battery, and the PSU's tend to be on their last legs as well.

486's are a bit easier than 386's though - they were kind of the beginning of the age of "build it yourself" computers, when unique proprietary cables and the like started to be phased out.

These guys do fair quality stuff, saved my ass a few times:
abcresellers.com/store/page2.html

I wish I had all these case badges

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just install FreeDOS as VM

The issue I run into with 486 machines is that a lot of them still didn’t support LBA on their BIOS, and if there was a patch, good luck finding it. I mean it could be on VOGONS somewhere but still, it’s tough. Without LBA you’ll be limited to 503MB of space on a disk, which if you want to use it for games, it will fill up quick.

For me it’s easier to just get a Socket 7 or Slot 1 board, they still give the nostalgia factor but are much easier to configure, and can also take more RAM. Some even come with USB onboard if you want that.

Do you also love woodgrain?
youtu.be/fbjYkPKRm-8

Use bootable SCSI card and SCSI hdd in an 486: no more LBA trouble

I’ve tried that but the Win95 setup still only formats 503MB. Am I doing something wrong?

That's a FAT16 limitation, isn't it

Ya might have to go 98, or use ye old partition magic/norton, not sure off hand.

Should go up to 4GB, though 95 might not like that.

I mean that’s what I thought too but other people don’t have the issue. I’ll try out 98 and see what happens, it’s just a bit heavier.

Win95 OSR2 (95B) was the first to support fat32

And I knew that, but I think maybe it’s my boot disk then. It might be outdated. I’m using the OSR2 CD but the boot disk is just some random one from winworldpc.com for Win95. I’ll see if I can just use a 98 bootdisk to get around the problem or find a newer one for 95.

Forgive my retardation

FAT16 has a 2GB limit for a partition. NT4 (not sure about 3.5) supported a special FAT version with a 64KB cluster size that let you have 4GB partitions, but that gave you a filesystem that only NT could read, and if you were happy with that you used NTFS anyways.

ebay.com/itm/Commodore-128-PS-working/183417474835?hash=item2ab4888f13:g:NUYAAOSwLNpbj9mn

Nuts, someone pinged him about the 80 column switch being set wrong and now he doubled the price over what it was before. I should be more careful about talking too freely. Could have gotten that thing for only $20.

>486's are a bit easier than 386's though - they were kind of the beginning of the age of "build it yourself" computers, when unique proprietary cables and the like started to be phased out.
Proprietary hardware disappeared because Microsoft bitched to PC manufacturers; they got tired of having to support hundreds of weird hardware configurations.

>Proprietary hardware disappeared because Microsoft bitched to PC manufacturers
It disappeared because people weren't retarded and wouldn't buy proprietary shit like non-IBM compatible x86 systems and later the IBM PS/2s

>and wouldn't buy proprietary shit like non-IBM compatible x86 systems
Those had already stopped existing by the late 80s.

I wouldn't say the old x86 computers have gotten expensive in general, ebay prices are always highly saturated. If you get a one you're planning to use, then ditch the old PSU and forget about installing anything to original drives they come with. Check the caps and acquire parts you can get drivers for.

PCem is less of a hassle for playing old games in their faithful form, but it's also a hassle to set up.

I have never once had an issue with running X-COM on DOSBox.

The sorts of thing they tended to do didn't affect the software end of things. It'd usually be a strange power or data cable - carrying the same power and/or data, but not easily replaceable. Plus, Microsoft's dick wasn't quite so monolithic at the time.

Emulators are usually pretty good about that sorta thing - it's actually a bigger problem with the original hardware.