Posted: 7/27/2025 9:57:41 PM EDT
[Last Edit: Klee][Edited]
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It's a Compaq Deskpro 8086 that I upgraded to a NOS 286 motherboard a few years ago since the original 8086 board started to have some issues. Haven't messed with it in a couple of years and noticed the power cable from the monitor to the computer apparently had gotten crushed a bit. It uses a unique way to power the monitor, it takes +12 volts and a ground from the motherboard via a special connector in the rear of the computer. The braided shielding to one of the pins was broken, so I had to solder it back.  Now it works again, this thing just keeps on going. Of course the motherboard battery was down to 3.15 volts so it lost some of the onboard settings but strangely enough the time was only about 4 minutes off and it lost the floppy drive settings. A: drive is a 3 1/2 1.44 mb and the B: drive is the original 5 1/4 360k. This thing does not have a onboard bios settings menu, too old for that and it has a floppy based setup program you have to use.  After fiddling with it and then saving it it rebooted just fine.  Played a Pac-Man clone to test it out.  Next is to hook up the new Epson dot-matrix printer, yep they still make them with a parallel port and a old printer port. I bought it a few months ago to use with my vintage computers, its not a vintage printer but its new and the printer ribbons are still available.  It's too late to try tonight since its been several decades since I set up a printer in DOS. |
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Upgrades over the years: NOS 286 motherboard> flashed the ROM's to the latest bios version that adds support for the 1.44 mb floppy drive. NOS Pine Technologies 16 bit IDE and floppy controller card. NOS 16 bit network card, not configured yet. 89 mb IDE hard drive that I bought used probably 25 years ago for ten dollars. I use it because it makes the old hard drive noises just like the original 20 mb MFM hard drive did. NOS higher wattage Compaq OEM Deskpro 386 power supply. Only parts that are original inside the case is the Compaq dual mode video card made for the dual mode amber monochrome monitor that can be switched between MGA and CGA and the original 360k floppy drive.  |
| I’m more amazed they ran a CRT off 12 volts |
ProTip: Never pick a fight with a tree planter. He swings a hoedad for 9 hours a day, carries 30-40 pounds of seedlings on his back, and has 12-14 friends just like him hiding out on the other side of the junk butt pile. They will fuck your shit up.
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That’s awesome. I finally shitcanned a bunch of stuff a few years ago & now I miss most of ‘em. Shucks, some are worth a bit of loot. IIRC: -Quadra 800 -IIcx with Rocket 68040 accelerator board & 8MB of RAM -IIfx - sigh, this one really hurts; if you know you know… -PS/2 Model 60 with RAM expansion card & a 20MB HDD - miss this one a lot too -IIgs -PacBell (I think) 8088 I kept an OG Mac Classic & a PowerMac 8600. Some of neatest projects were back in the day. -Upgraded the two DayStar Genesis machines at a local TV station from 4x PPC 604e’s to a single dual-core G3. Cut the rendering time by almost 70%! -Connected the print office’s Mac’s on a college campus via Farallon AppleTalk to Enet bridges. They asked why machines would be randomly unavailable… Well, AppleTalk limit was 8 nodes… :) -You get treated like a king when an ancient OS/2 server that did things for an AS/400 that did money things shits the bed & you’re the only person close to local that can fixer it. Great times. Always happy to see old stuff still in use & being enjoyed. |
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That's pretty cool. Funny thing, I asked a 27 year old guy in our office the other day if he knew what dip switches are. He's pretty sharp, having played with Arduinos, Raspi, and can program in python, but did not know what a dip switch was. If he had setup an old 286 PC, he would have known! |
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Nice, but you upgraded the gear, so not really vintage. But, you got it working, got the c:\> prompt and pacman. I remember those days of discrete ram chips, the various video cards and modes, and most importantly, word perfect. WP 5.1 was to ultimate geek word processor and sometimes I wish I could get to those embedded codes. Attached File |
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Originally Posted By belted_guns: Nice, but you upgraded the gear, so not really vintage. But, you got it working, got the c:\> prompt and pacman. I remember those days of discrete ram chips, the various video cards and modes, and most importantly, word perfect. WP 5.1 was to ultimate geek word processor and sometimes I wish I could get to those embedded codes. /media/mediaFiles/sharedAlbum/toast_gif-994.gif 5.0 was where it was at. You could put it in typewriter mode w/ the right printer. |
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