Finally, a LUNCHBOX!

[Gorgonops]

What kind of upgrades are available for that CPU socket, jr? [] ]'>

I bet if you get the manufacture/model numbers off the board you'll be able to Google up, if not a whole manual, at least a spec sheet for that board showing the jumper values, etc. (There are at least two *very large* databases of that sort of thing floating around.)

Just looking at it, being a non-ZIF socket, I'd say if you're talking about just a bare chip you'd be *probably* be limited to a 486-DX2. The faster 486 variants (DX4, AMD 5x86) use a 3.3v core voltage instead of 5v, which means *poof* if you plug them into a socket that doesn't support that. (They sold upgrades which sandwiched a voltage regulator board in-between the upgrade CPU and the socket, you could use one of those or, if you did track down the SBC's manual, see if it supports split-voltage CPUs.)

Anything faster than a DX will need a heat sink. Is there clearance for it in the slot the SBC was plugged into? (Or would the backplane allow you to move the SBC to another slot, IE, is it *completely* passive or does the slot the CPU card goes into have additional connectors on it beyond the 16 bit ISA plugs?)

(Of course, your other option in theory would be to replace the whole SBC with a faster one. It looks like they still make boards with ISA card edges on them *today*, with Atom CPUs. They are *not* cheap, however, and... how does the internal monitor wire up to that thing? Is there a VGA card it's connected to or is it connected to the SBC?)

 

[Gorgonops]

(Of course, your other option in theory would be to replace the whole SBC with a faster one. It looks like they still make boards with ISA card edges on them *today*, with Atom CPUs. They are *not* cheap, however...

Actually, it's not as bad as I thought. This one is "only" $320 for a dual-core 1.8Ghz model. That's surprisingly reasonable. Has a built-in LVDS monitor plug, so if you could find a higher-res panel with the same physical dimensions as the one that's in it you could really go nuts modernizing your lunchbox and have it be completely stealth.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

By the way, this style machine still exists:

MaxVision 8200 ML

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

a MilSpec LAN party rig!

@ eudig: The white ribbon cable on the far left appears to carry the LCD and front panel signals, at least there are way too may lines to just be for the front panel bells-n-whisltes. The contrast slider obviously connects to the LCD, so it looks like there are plenty of lines for a monochrome LCD. Gotta count lines though, there's no telling what's going on under the cover panels of the BEAST..

The VGA connector on the backplane plate of the SBC appears to connect only to the VGA port on the back of the case. Since the setup verbiage lists three different Graphics standards, I'm hoping for spanned external monitor support, but mirrored would be fine. I'll be in the market for a True-Color 1600x1200 ISA VidCard. [] ]'>

Can't see the model number or name on the SBC yet, but the name Bustronic on the backplane looks like I'm in luck. [] ]'>

 

[Gorgonops]

@ eudig: The white ribbon cable on the far left appears to carry the LCD and front panel signals, at least there are way too may lines to just be for the front panel bells-n-whisltes. The contrast slider obviously connects to the LCD, so it looks like there are plenty of lines for a monochrome LCD. Gotta count lines though, there's no telling what's going on under the cover panels of the BEAST..

Ah. So it's likely the board has onboard a TTL LCD controller. That makes it a bit complex to use it with something newer. (That same place that has the ATOM card does still sell an SBC with a 300Mhz SOC on it that includes a TTL connector, you might be able to wedge that in there and use the original screen... I'd still say look for a higher-res LCD with the same dimensions as the original, though.

The VGA connector on the backplane plate of the SBC appears to connect only to the VGA port on the back of the case. Since the setup verbiage lists three different Graphics standards, I'm hoping for spanned external monitor support, but mirrored would be fine. I'll be in the market for a True-Color 1600x1200 ISA VidCard. [] ]'>

It's really unlikely in an ISA box that it supports anything other than mirroring (PC's *really* didn't meaningfully support multiple video cards before PCI, unless you count running a monochome text card alongside a graphics card), although it may support a higher resolution than the internal panel supports externally. Does the BIOS say how much RAM the VGA has? I'm betting no more than 512k.

1600x1200x24 in an ISA card is a pretty tall order; that's 6MB of video RAM. ISA cards with more than 2MB are rare as hen's teeth. (And heck, cards with more than 1MB aren't common.) And to do high/true color with many ISA video cards you have to create a "Memory hole" in bottom 16MB of address space because the cards won't do true color unless the chip is in "linear framebuffer" mode, which with many BIOS/hardware setups translates to not being able to use more than 12MB of RAM. Also keep in mind that 6MB of video RAM on an ISA card translates to about a second and a half per frame if you're updating the whole screen with a straight-up RAM-to-VRAM copy. (There's a lot of reasons ISA was clearly not a viable place to put video cards after about 1990.) If you want a graphics workstation you'd probably better look elsewhere. (Or swap the CPU card for one with better video built in.)

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Wishful thinking about 1600 x 1200, wasn't really holding my breath. ISA got nice cards for 800 x 600 @ 24bit? :?:

I got those ^*+&^%^$!!! boards out . . .

SBC ID blurb:

© 1993 HM SYSTEMS INC

UNITED COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY, LONDON

HMS-486 D

Proc: A80486DX-33, so a 486DX/2 66 will be nice enough.

There are four chips on the back of the SIMM, parity?

SIMM tag says: AVED4M36 LSM-70

The little ribbon cable turned out to be for the FDD.

Pics in the AM, if and when my eyes uncross. |)

< kicks self for strewing parts from yet another bronze age computer about the place. : >

 

[NJRoadfan]

800x600 24bit isn't happening without something like VLBus. ISA is just too slow to push any serious screen data. The fastest CPU that you can pop in there is a AMD 5x86-133Mhz with a 3.3v adapter in the CPU socket. Most of the CPU accelerator companies had kits that was plug-n-play that included the CPU and voltage adapter in one package.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Somehow I knew that would be the answer. No wonder the Mac was the 800 lb. gorilla of the graphics world in that era. I thought it would be cool to have the BEAST set up on the KVM'd 1600 x 1200 LCD along with HP_Maxi and the Pismo. But now that I think about it, that KBD ain't happenin' on this tiny desk.

I've got the day off, maybe I'll see if I can get to the HDD, swap in the Dell's Win95 drive and try that just to see what I've got. :-/

 

[NJRoadfan]

Remember the machine's target market. Graphics weren't important. Your average circa 1993 486 usually had a VLBus graphics card with 1MB of RAM. High end machines came with 2MB (which can do 800x600x24bit). The cards performance on a local bus usually put the performance of EISA/MCA/Nubus cards to shame simply because they weren't bottle necked by the host bus.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

The SBC showed remarkable stubbornness and voiced its displeasure with two beeps when summoned to boot in slot 6, so I'll be wrestling with that #V<&!^% VGA loopback cable just to get SBC out of and back into Slot 8 for something as simple as upgrading the memory . . .

. . . the VGA out connector has also been confirmed to be a B&W mirror of the LCD . . .

. . . such is life! :-/









Did I mention that I haven't managed to put the BEAST down by poking around in there with my grubby little paws yet?

But I do have 17mm of clearance for a 486DX/2's heat sink, but right now it's time to see if Windows 95 can this thing!

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Gah!!!! : I figured out why I got the "no operating system" error from the BEAST with the HDD from the Dell from hell hooked up to it. It's password protected! Thank goodness the blasted thing (Dell PII) defiled my MacHackStation™ only long enough to figure that one out.

The open backed back is back on the BEAST . . . sort of. After hooking the UNIX drive back up and testing it, all is as well as it can be in the world of password protected $47,000 proprietary vertical market ISA UNIX boxen from 1993.

The four expansion cards, an appreciable percentage of the sheet metal and what feels like at least a quarter of the screws from the box are sorted out and stored in a file drawer. Now to find that dratted Win95 HDD so I can test and button the BEAST back up before I forget where all the screws go.

GAWD I hope I don't have to take the nauseating (if much easier) route and use the Win95 drive in that freakin' Dell to run the ROM burner.

Bleh!

 

[CC_333]

I tried Windows 95 on a 486 someone gave me. Previously, all my experiences of 95 have been good overall, even a 300 MHz AMD K6 (aka NEC Ready 230T) seemed relatively speedy. But the 486, My Gosh! That thing was sooo sloww! I never believed Windows 95 could be that slow.

Anyway, I have a box full of old Windows 95 OSR 1 or 2 disks (complete with licenses; a local school was dumping them in preparation for moving to a new campus, and the computer lab aide rescued them for me).

If you can't find (or have lost) your disk/license, feel free to PM me, and I can send you one free for shipping.

By the way, in defense of the Dell, I also had a Dimension XPS D333, and it was a decent machine until the power supply died a few years ago (I got it at a yard sale back in 2007 for something like $15, so I think I got my money's worth out of it). I had fun with Windows NT Workstation 4.0 (of which I happened to have a valid license, which was bundled with a copy of Visual Basic 4 (or 5 or 6)). Sadly, I scrapped it, not knowing what else to do with it (I tried converting it to a regular motherboard/power supply, but I couldn't get it to fit properly, and I couldn't figure out how to connect the front panel lights and switches).

Managed to keep the nice 17" CRT, though.

c

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Thanks for the offer, but I'm only looking for the Win95 HDD for testing, I'll need anything from Win98 through XP to run the ROM Burner. Win98 is the only version for which I've got a license. Bought the OEM version along with the Socket 7 upgrade MoBo and stuffings for the 386 Mid-Tower under the Rug Rat's desk back in the day.

Dog slow '98 on a 486DX/2 in the BEAST for reading and burning ROMs ought to be plenty fast enough for me!

Back to the belly of the Beast: does that SIMM look like anything special? I can't imagine it's not a standard memory type. :?:

 

[IPalindromeI]

I tried Windows 95 on a 486 someone gave me.

I ran IE3 on top of Windows 95 and it was adequate. I had a 75 Mhz DX4 though - maybe you had just a DX?

 

[Bunsen]

Don't know why you keep calling it a "UNIX box", Trash80. What you described way back at the start sounded like a perfectly normal PC BIOS startup.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

Huh? :?:

Computer Model: HMS 486 (Mosquito) HMSystems © 1993BIOS: American Megatrends 1992

BIOS Settings:

Processor: 486DX or 487SX (whatever the heck that means?)

Video: VGA/PGA/EGA

Memory: 16MB

OS:

INTERACTIVE UNIX Operating System

System V NFS Release 3.2.5

Lachman Associates

1-2 user license

Neat stuff:

1) ESDI Controller, I've never had any ESDI stuff!

2) Token Ring Monitor Board

Maybe I shouldn't have called them "BIOS Settings" on a Unix Box, could that be the confusion?

 

[Bunsen]

My mistake. I read the seemingly normal bootup stuff at the top and moved on.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I kind of figured as much. This thing is way cool. I need to hook it up to the 21" Mag test CRT with the resolution/frequency readout panel.

It appears that this LCD might be running off an HD-15 Analog VGA output. If it is really doing that, I can watch for a more current PCI architecture SBC and a backplane to install in this sucker! Heck, I can just feed the loopback cable from a VGA card in another computer and see what graphics might look like on the stock LCD. [}] ]'>

 

[techknight]

I dunno, I used to have an IBM PS/2 486SX unit with 16MB of RAM, and windows 95 floppy version flew on that thing, didnt have any lack of speed whatsoever. it even had a SCSI bus. not ESDI.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I'm wondering about that ESDI part, I tried an IDE drive on the bus and came up with absolutamente nada! I need to look for my ISA SCSI controller, I've got a freakin' sack full of those teensy weensy little SCA server drives and a larger one of adapters!