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Category Archives: classic computers

Emachines Etower 600is

Emachines was a computer brand that hit the market back in 1998. They were marketed as budget-friendly computers that could be easily used by the family for things like email, homework, and light gaming. They generally used lower-cost budget components and had a motherboard that, although capable, usually had fewer options and expandability to higher end offerings.

The emachine line did come with a branded mouse, monitor, and keyboard, but unfortunately, I only have the keyboard.

The keyboard features a number of special buttons to open up predetermined webpages. The overall quality is okay, but the keys feel a bit “squishy”.

The computer we will be taking a look at in this article is the Etower 600is from the year 2000. My particular machine is mostly stock, with very little upgrading done when I received it. Mine also seems to have the original CD-ROM drive, which, from what I’ve seen, is usually dead or has been replaced.

Let’s start by taking a look at the front of the case. These machines are somewhat infamous for their marketing stickers blazoned across the front panels. The most hilarious is the “never obsolete” sticker that is fairly common. Mine unfortunately only has a large sticker for a $75 rebate.

The case is a mini tower with only two 5.25-inch bays and a bay with a molded-in plate for a 1.44MB floppy drive. Mine actually has the original working CD-ROM drive, which seems to be fairly rare to find on these machines these days. The top of the case is slightly rounded, making stacking anything on top a precarious proposition. Below the floppy drive is a long horizontal HDD activity light, and under that a rather stiff power button with the power LED in its center.

I do really like the small door on the bottom of the case that opens to reveal a frontal USB 1.1 port and a joystick port.

Taking a look at the back of the case.

On the rear, we have dual PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, as well as one more USB 1.1 port. Below that, we have a single parallel and a single serial port, followed by a VGA port for the built-in video. Lastly, we have three audio jacks for line out, line in, and mic. At the very bottom of the case are four slots for expansion cards, though this particular motherboard only has three.

The Etower 600is came with Windows ME installed, but there’s nothing stopping you from installing an OS of your choice, such as Windows 98.

ok, let’s take a look inside

The power supply on this model, and from what I can gather, many Emachines have a mini PSU. It’s standard ATX, but the form factor is small. When these fail, that means replacing them with a standard PSU may be difficult due to the difficulty of mounting it properly.

My 600is fortunately, also came with its original and working 10GB TriGen hard drive.

The motherboard is a TriGem Anaheim-2. My board features three PCI slots, though I’ve read of variations with fewer PCI slots. There is space for an AMR slot above the top PCI slot.

1) CPU – Being a budget PC, the Etower 600is uses an Intel Celeron Processor as opposed to the more capable and expensive Pentium III in the motherboard’s Socket PGA370. The Celeron had half the L2 cache of the Pentium III and ran on a 66MHz front side bus as opposed to the 100MHz front side bus more common with the Pentium III. Theoreticlly an earlier Pentium III running on the 66MHZ FSB should work, but I was unable to test. The Intel 810 chipset and the PGA370 socket “should” allow for 100MHz FSB, but when I tried swapping the 600MHz Celeron out for either a 800MHZ Celeron or an 800MHZ Pentium III, the PC would not POST. If that’s the case, then the 766MHz Celeron running on a 66MHz FSB is the top CPU for this motherboard.

Despite being cut down, the Celeron in my tests performed pretty well for playing most games from around the year 2000, though you may need to reduce your graphical settings if you want better framerates. For older titles before 2000, most games shouldn’t be an issue.

2) Chipset – The 600is motherboard uses the Intel 810L “Whitney” chipset. This chipset does support 66MHz and 100MHz front side bus speeds, but I was unable to run any CPU at 100MHz on my 600is.

Video – The Intel 810 chipset has built-in video in the form of the integrated 2D/3D Intel 752i. This GPU is an evolution of the earlier Intel 740i GPU, which was available as a discrete video card. Despite being an integrated video, I found it to be fairly capable, and after testing a number of games from around the year 2000, I saw no graphical glitches or oddities, though performance wasn’t as good as you may get by upgrading to something like a PCI 3DFX Voodoo 3 or Nvidia TNT2. Be sure to install the latest video drivers if you want OpenGL support from the integrated video. Please note that there appears to be no way to disable the integrated video, so upgrading your video card may be a challenge. I experenced lock ups and conflicts and was not able to successfully install a discrete video card. I also confirmed with anouther emachine user with a similar model that they were unable to upgrade the video or even add a Voodoo 2 3D accelerator card to complement the integrated video.

3) RAM – The 600is motherboard has two slots for adding memory. Originally, the PC came with 32MB of installed RAM. Many spec sheets indicate that 256MB is the maximum amount of memory that can be installed via two 128MB SDRAM sticks, though I had no trouble maxing my memory up to 512MB via two 256MB RAM modules.

4) Sound – Sound is provided by a built-in CS4281 chip from Crystal. I didn’t find any issues with it in my limited testing, and it sounded okay, though upgrading to a Sound Blaster Live! would probably give better sound as well as EAX support.

5) I/O – dual IDE connectors for supporting up to four IDE devices, as well as a single floppy connector and a piezo speaker.

I did attempt to upgrade this machine, and to be honest, it was a bit of a nightmare. There appears to be no way to disable the integrated video, which seemed to give me a lot of issues when trying to upgrade the video card to a PCI Radeon 7000 and then a PCI Nvidia FX 5200. This resulted in a lot of headaches, such as OS lock-ups or no video at all. In the end, I gave up, though you may have more luck with an earlier PCI card, such as a TNT2 or Voodoo 3.

The Etower 600is is a budget PC, and you should expect budget performance. Despite that, I didn’t have an overall bad time with the PC in its mostly stock form, and it seemed to handle games from around its 2000 release adequately. The lack of ISA slots probably doesn’t make this machine the best build for a DOS PC, but as a Win9x PC, I think it does well.

Dell GXL 5133

Today, we’re going to take a look at another OEM Dell from the mid-90s, this time from the venerable Optiplex series of home computers. The computer we are looking at is the Dell OptiPlex GXL 5133. As you can see in the image above, this PC comes in the desktop format and, in my opinion, looks pretty stylish. In the center of the case, we have a large round power button with a power LED fixed in the center and immediately below that, a HDD activity LED, followed by a reset button. The case is pretty slim and only offers two 5 1/4 bays, which I have taken up by a CD-ROM drive and a 1.44MB 3 1/2 inch floppy drive in a 5 1/4 adaptor.

As we can see from the back, the GXL 5133 has a lot built in. On the far left, we have a standard power supply. Starting at about the center of the case, we have three 1/8 audio jacks for line in, line out, and mic. Also in the center of the case, we have a 10BaseT Ethernet port followed by two PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse. After the PS/2 ports are dual serial ports, a parallel port, and finally a VGA port for the built-in video.

Due to the slim style of the case, we only get three slots for adding any expansion, which should cover any basic upgrades like adding a sound or video card, but may feel a bit restrictive to the power user who is looking for dual Voodoo 2s, a USB add-on card, and an ATA133 HDD card.

Taking the top off and looking inside, we can see it’s a little cramped.

The hard drive is a 850MB Quantum Trailblazer 850AT. It has a Dell parts label, so I believe it may be this PC’s original hard drive.

The motherboard uses the Intel 430FX chipset, and mine has 512KB of L2 cache soldered onto the motherboard itself next to the CPU socket. I believe there are versions with a lesser 256KB of L2 cache.

The GXL 5133 uses a riser card for its expansion slots, and with it, we get 2 PCI and two 16-bit ISA slots, one slot being shared PCI/ISA. As I mentioned earlier, there are not a lot of slots for the power user, but considering what’s built into the motherboard, you may not need to fill them with a sound or video card, depending on what you want to do with the PC.

1) CPU – The GXL 5133, as the name suggests, has a 133MHz Pentium CPU installed. The board does allow for any non-MMX 75MHz to 200MHz Pentium to be installed. 133MHz is pretty much ideal for a fast MS-DOS PC. Some earlier or poorly coded DOS titles will run too fast, but the vast majority of titles, especially later DOS games such as DOOM, Quake, and Duke Nukem, should run great. It should also handle many mid-90s Windows games just fine.

2} Video – For video, we have our old friend the S3 Trio64V+ chip. The chip on this board supports a maximum of 2MB of video memory. This isn’t the fastest chip out there, but if you’re primarily going to be using this computer for MS-DOS gaming, it’s the standard for compatibility. For Windows 2D titles, it’s okay, but this is not a 3D accelerator chip, so if your focus is more on Windows 3D gaming, you may want to consider using one of those PCI slots for a more powerful 3D accelerating video card or pairing the Trio chip with a Voodoo or Voodoo 2.

3) RAM – Up to a total of 128MB of memory is supported, as well as EDO-type RAM. At its maximum, like I have here, 128MB should be more than adequate for any game this PC will be able to play. If you’re using this primarily as a DOS gaming machine, 128MB is overkill. The vast majority of games will play just fine, but consider reducing it to 64MB or fewer to avoid compatibility issues with a few stubborn games, and it should still be enough memory for most Windows titles you would play on a Socket 7 PC.

4) Sound – Sound is provided via a built-in Sound Blaster Vibra 16s chip and a genuine Yamaha OPL chip for FM synth. Overall, this is an excellent sound chip to have built in for its excellent compatibility and the widespread use of the Yamaha FM chip in DOS games. It’s also an excellent chip for Windows. If you want higher-quality wavetable MIDI tunes, you could consider adding an ISA AWE32 or 64 card, but for general sound, this chip is great to have built in.

5) I/O – Here we have a standard built-in floppy drive connector and dual IDE connectors supporting up to four IDE devices.

I like the Dell GXL 5133. As an “out of the box” PC for DOS and early Windows, I think it’s excellent. The S3 video and Sound Blaster sound built in give you high compatibility with DOS games and are quite adequate for Windows gaming as well. The CPU options are great, and it’s just a nice little slim desktop that doesn’t take up a ton of space and has pretty good build quality. It does lack slightly in the number of expansion slots in case you want to go crazy with IDE controller cards or multiple video cards, but I don’t think most retro gamers will find it to be a problem. Overall it makes a great “fast DOS” PC or early Windows 9x PC.

IBM XT 5160

On this blog, we previously looked at the original IBM PC 5150 as well as the much more advanced IBM AT 5170, but in this post, we are going to look at the machine IBM released in between those two iconic computers of the 1980s, the IBM XT 5160.

The IBM XT or IBM eXtended Technology was released in 1983, about two years after the original IBM PC 5150. Overall, the XT is more or less a small upgrade and refinement of the original PC. Many of these improvements were either refinements to the motherboard or simply included things in the stock configuration, such as a higher amount of base memory or the inclusion of a hard drive. The most impactful change from the PC to the XT, in my opinion, was the increase in ISA slots from the PC’s five to the now-standard eight. This increase of three 8-bit ISA slots gave a lot more wiggle room for expansion and set the standard for all IBM compatibles to come.

The case is extremely similar to the 5150 case in style and function, and you would be forgiven for confusing the two at first. There is a prominent IBM badge on the left side if you need to quickly confirm.

There are also two full-height drive bays on the right side of the case. Mine are taken up by two half-height floppy drives, a 360k 5 1/4 drive, and a 720k 3 1/2 drive, as well as a full-height 10MB MiniScribe MFM hard drive. Most models came stock with a full-height 360k 5 1/4 drive, as well as either a 10MB or 20MB hard drive.

Take note, most IBM XTs do not have screw holes for half-height drives, so you’ll need an adaptor or you’ll need to rig something up to secure the drives.

Looking at the rear, we again have mostly the same basic setup as the original 5150. The main difference is, of course, three more slots for expansion, but also the cassette deck connector port that was found on the 5150 has been removed on the 5160.

Before we take the top off the XT and look inside, let’s quickly talk about the monitor.

The monitor I chose to pair with my XT is the IBM 5153 CGA color monitor. The 5153 launched in 1983, the same year as the XT, and allows games to be played in 16 color digital RGB in CGA mode or low resolution EGA mode. Overall, it’s a great early color monitor and pairs well with an IBM PC or XT.

Taking the cover off reveals the inside of the case, which is very similar in appearance to the 5150.

The first image is the XT as I originally found it. The second image is the XT after I added the 720k floppy drive, as well as a few other upgrades.

After removing all the expansion cards, we can get a better look at most of the motherboard.

1 ) CPU – The CPU of the XT is the venerable 8088 running at 4.77MHz, which is the exact same CPU as was found in the original IBM PC. The CPU is even running at the same speed, with not even a built-in turbo option to 7 or 10MHz. It’s a great CPU, and there are a lot of early 80s games that run fine on it, even at stock speeds, but it’s one of the factors that make the 5160 not much of a step up from the 5150. For an easy and cheap upgrade, the 8088 can be easily swapped out with a 4.77MHz NEC V20 chip, which will slightly increase performance and retain extremely high compatibility with software.

2) FPU – Like the 5150, and many other 8088-class PCs, the IBM XT does provide a socket next to the CPU socket for the addition of an optional 8087 math co-processor. As far as gaming purposes go, adding an 8087 will have little to no effect in most circumstances, though there are a small handful of titles that an 8087 may improve performance.

3) Opps! I accidentally went straight to 4.

4) RAM – The 5160 originally came with a maximum RAM amount of 256k on the motherboard; later revisions of the motherboard allowed a full 640k on the board. My motherboard is an earlier revision with a maximum of 256k installed. ISA memory expansion cards could be used to increase the maximum memory to 640k on older revisions like mine. 640k was mostly sufficient for any games from the early 80s. Overall, memory limits are the same as they were on the IBM PC, with the difference being that the lowest stock XT came with 128k of memory, as opposed to the PC’s lowest stock configuration being 16k

5) Expansion slots – The increase in 8-bit ISA expansion slots is perhaps the most impactful and helpful upgrade the XT introduced. The slots available jumped from five on the PC to eight on the XT. This is especially helpful when you take into consideration that nothing was built into either of these machines, so you were already losing an expansion slot to a floppy drive controller, a video card, and possibly an HDD controller. Seeing as this was the early days of the PC and things like sound cards and such wern’t a necessity you certainly could manage with the five ISA slots but if you did want to push your systems usefulness and add more cards like a sound card, a hercules card to compliment the CGA card or add things like memory expansion cards, having the extra ISA slots of the XT was really nice.

Take note that slot 8 (closest to the power supply) is slightly different from the other seven slots and expects a “card selected” signal. This means not all expansion cards are 100% compatible with slot 8.

6) switch block – The XT was able to cut down the number of switch blocks from two in the 5150 to only one in the 5160. This block of switches is used to set things like memory amount, floppy drives, math co-processor, and video card type.

Switch block guide from DOS Days website

7) AT Power connector

8) PC Speaker

Cards and Upgrades

The first two expansion cards we will look at are the floppy controller and hard drive controller cards. They are basically the same cards that were found in the IBM PC. Since the XT did not have these features built into the motherboard itself, it required expansion cards.

The standard floppy controller uses an edge connector to connect the inner floppy cable, but supports both 360k and 720k floppy devices.

The stock hard drive for the XT was the MFM Seagate ST-412 10MB full-height drive; later models of the XT included a larger 20MB drive.

On my machine, the original drive was replaced with a Microscribe hard drive at some point.

Video

For a video card, you’re probably going to want to throw the same options as an IBM 5150 due to the same 4.77MHz CPU. Without an accelerator, the XT can’t handle most EGA or VGA games very well, so your best bet is a monochrome or CGA card.

My particular XT has a Paradise EGA card installed due to my accelerator upgrade that we will talk about shortly.

AST SixPakPlus

One of the best upgrades for an older 8088 IBM is something like the AST SixPakPlus or similar card. These cards offer more RAM so you can easily expand your machine to the full 640k, as well as adding serial and parallel ports, as well as a real-time clock.

I used a SixPakPlus in my machine so I could max my memory up to the full 640k. The card is also relatively small and easy to setup and use with its own jumper block.

Sound

I would say sound isn’t really necessary on an IBM XT, as the PC speaker is more than enough for games of the time. Sound cards didn’t really make an appearance until the late 80s, and by then, the 8088 was a little long in the tooth for games that supported sound. Nonetheless, if you do want sound or are using an accelerator, the most appropriate sound card would likely be an original AdLib card.

My original Adlib was being used in another machine, so I installed this excellent clone card that pretty much recreated the original card 1:1.

joystick/gamepad

For using a gamepad, I also installed an 8-bit joystick port card.

Accelerator

The final addition I made to my machine was an Orchid Tiny Turbo accelerator card.

I’ve added heatsinks to the 286 and 287 chips

The Orchid Tiny Turbo was specifically designed to work in machines like the IBM XT. It installs in the 8-bit ISA slot next ot the CPU and uses a cable to connect to the CPU socket once the CPU is removed and installed on the card.

The Tiny Tubro has a 7.2MHz 286 on board as well as a 287 math co-processor, which can be enabled via a switch on the card. This won’t make the machine quite as fast as a true 286 PC like the IBM AT, but it will give a SIGNIFICANT boost in CPU power, allowing the machine to play some of the more intensive games running EGA color and sound.

The Tiny Turbo can be set back to 4.77MHz 8088 mode so you can retain 100% compatibility with older software. Keep in mind, flipping the CPU switch while the XT is in operation shouldn’t cause any harm, but it will reset your PC.

That was a look at the IBM XT, IBM’s second machine for the home market. The XT is certainly an improvement on the original PC, but quite incremental. The most significant improvement is the addition of three more 8-bit ISA slots, making expansion much easier. If you love the classic IBM machines and want something for the early years, there’s no reason to go with the IBM PC over the IBM XT except nostalgia. That said, if you were having trouble running a particular game on the IBM PC 5150, you will have the exact same issues running it on the XT 5160. Overall, I’d still strongly suggest an IBM PC compatible clone over IBM’s offering for early 80s DOS gaming.

Amstrad PPC512

When I saw Amstrad labeled on my newest computer pickup I was a little surprised. I knew Amstrad as a European PC company but I wasn’t aware they had sold any portable computers in the USA let alone one that was as popular as the PPC512 which has quite a dedicated fan base. The PPC512 is an IBM-compatible meant to beat IBM at their own game by creating an IBM-type PC at a lower cost.

The PPC512 was a portable or “pluggable” computer released in 1987 and is notable for its good balance of low weight and power.

When I found mine it came complete with its carrying case as well as all the extras such as an external power supply, car adaptor, disks, and manual, all working and in good condition.

Before we move on I do need to address the Amstrad PPC640, this is virtually the same computer just in a darker color case a full 640k of RAM installed and possibly the optional modem included.

When closed up and in its “travel” mode the PPC512 is quite small and slim for a portable computer of its time.

flipping it over on its back there’s not a whole lot to see except for the battery compartment.

Despite being a portable PC many computers of these types in the 80s were still largely dependent on wall outlets and were mostly meant to be portable only in so far as transporting between two structures with electricity such as work and home. The goal wasn’t really to be able to calculate taxes on the beach. With the PPC512 you could break away from the need for a power outlet via the car adaptor (though you would still need a car or separate power source) or batteries. Using ten C-type batteries you could use your PPC512 in the middle of a forest if you desired for a whopping two hours. Technically there is a fourth way to power the PPC512 which we will address in a moment.

On the back of the computer is a small door which folds down revealing our built-in connections.

Starting on the left we have the very interesting “Expansion A-B” port, which is actually two ports that resemble parallel or serial ports. This dual port was meant for a series of external expansion options but to the best of my knowledge, none of these were ever released. Even more interesting is this port is ISA compatible so it’s basically a standard 8-bit ISA port in an oddball form factor. There have been third party homebewers that have taken advantage of this and released ISA port adaptors that you can plug into this port and in theory add anything form an XT-IDE to an Adlib card. The exact tolerances of the port still haven’t been figured out from what I was able to find and the creator of the adaptor suggested not using any more than a single ISA card, to be safe.

Above this expansion port, we have two other ports labeled “Mon DC In” and “DC In”. The DC is your standard port for the external power supply but the “Mon DC In” is another interesting forth way to power the computer which I mentioned earlier. If you have a Amstrad PC-MD, PC-CD or PC-ECD Monitor you can use this port to power the PPC512 via the built-in power supply in these monitors.

After this, we have three more pretty standard ports for serial, parallel, and video out port if you choose to use an external monitor rather than the built-in LCD display. The video output is monochrome/CGA so you’ll need to use a monitor that accepts digital TTL signals. The output is true CGA and I tested it with my Tandy CGA monitor and several games that tend to give cards using CGA emulation trouble but they all ran and displayed perfectly.

On the left side by the carrying handle are two 3.5-inch bays for single or dual 720k floppy drives. You can use standard 1.44MB floppy drives to replace or add a second drive but they will only be seen by the computer as 720k drives. I have read it’s possible to install a hard drive in one of these bays but it’s not a simple process. Apparently, some companies in the UK did sell the PPC512/640 with a small HDD controller and hard drive but it requires soldering.

Side 3.5-inch bays with cover removed.

Opening the Amstrad can be a tad confusing at first but once you see where the tabs are on the side the keyboard lifts up and folds down revealing the LCD screen which can then be tilted up.

Next to the LCD screen, there are a number of LED lights such as power on and floppy drive A/B activity lights. Interestingly there is also a CRT light that indicates if the PC is currently outputting video to a CRT monitor, if you’re not getting an image on the LCD double-check to see if this light is on. From my testing, it does not appear the PPC512/640 can output video to the LCD and an external monitor at the same time. Below these lights is a switch for selecting if you’re using an internal or external power source.

You should be able to BOOT from a standard floppy of DOS but the OEM Amstrad-specific version has a command that allows you to toggle between the LCD and a monitor if one is attached. You can get an original boot disk image from the OldComputer.Info website Here.

The LCD on my Amstrad looked great but I’ve read that the screen is somewhat fragile and can be damaged on acquired systems. The screen also is not backlit so don’t expect to use your machine in the dark.

The screen does emulate CGA though so you can play 4 color CGA games on the monochrome LCD screen.

As I said earlier the PPC512/640 does have an enthusiastic fan base and there are a few guides out there detailing how to replace your LCD screen with a full-color VGA equivalent though this is not a simple task. (link below)

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=amstrad+PPC512+VGA+screen&refig=852df1c8227e42659f784f120242eead&pc=U531&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3damstrad%2bPPC512%2bVGA%2bscreen%26form%3dANNTH1%26refig%3d852df1c8227e42659f784f120242eead%26pc%3dU531&mmscn=vwrc&mid=33672CD174F6EC3A32F133672CD174F6EC3A32F1&FORM=WRVORC

There is also this strange compartment next to the LCD that on my PC is empty but I suspect it’s where the optional modem upgrade would go. It would make a nice storage compartment for 1980s businessmen to store cocaine, however.

The PPC512/640 features an 8MHz NEC V30 so for a PC/XT class machine it’s quite capable and should be about as fast CPU-wise as a low-end 286. The CPU is socketed so CPU replacement is fairly easy and it also features a socket for a math co-processor.

You can upgrade the RAM on a PPC512 to the full 640k but this does require soldering as all memory is soldered onto the board itself.

The PPC512 is a really nice portable computer for 1987. As a retro gamer it’s more of a novelty as better options for retro computer gaming exist though if you don’t have an issue hooking it up to an external color CGA monitor you have a nice early 80’s CGA machine. As a collector’s item, it’s a pretty cool machine as well. If you wanted to go the modding route though and decided to upgrade the RAM and LCD to a color screen I’m not sure you could have a better “luggable” PC/XT class DOS PC for the early to mid-80s.

PC Positive 286

I came across the PC Positive 286 quite by accident. I was scrolling through the Facebook marketplace and saw an ad for a TV set someone was selling. Way in the back of the image was a small nondescript beige brick, most people probably wouldn’t even have noticed this, but my eyes immediately zeroed in on it. after getting an affirmative from the seller on whether the beige object was an old computer and if it was for sale I was on my way and found myself the owner of a PCPositive 286

A Google search revealed nothing about the company, PC Positive, or its computers. I will say this though, out of the box, the PC Positive 286 is one of the best OEM 286 computers I’ve ever run.

The case itself is a lower profile desktop case with dual 3 1/2 and dual 5 1/4 bays. Mine is configured with a 1.44 MB and 1.2MB floppy drive but there’s nothing stopping anyone from moving the 3.5-inch drive to a smaller bay and installing a CD-ROM drive or using a combo drive in one of the 5 1/4 bays. On the left side of the case, there is a keylock as well as two large square power and reset buttons as well as LEDs for power, turbo, and HDD activity. There is no turbo switch so initiating the turbo function is likely to be done with some keyboard combo I have yet to try. On the far right of the case is a smaller red power switch.

On the rear of the case, we have a standard AT keyboard connector as well as two serial ports a parallel port, and a VGA port for the built-in video. Above the I/O are five expansion slots leaving plenty of room for adding cards.

Let’s take the top of the case off and have a peek inside.

being a later 286 board this one is fairly integrated and with no expansion cards installed everything on the board is easily assessable.

Inside this PC was a venerable 45MB Seagate ST-157A hard drive, still working and still booting to DOS. I attempted to replace the hard drive but unfortunately, the BIOS is quite finicky about hard drives and in the end, I decided to just let the Seagate drive live out the rest of its life in this machine. I do have the box to this machine which states the original specs. It does claim it came stock with a 40MB hard drive so this 45MB Seagate may be the original drive and it was just misstated a bit in the box.

Let’s take a look at the motherboard itself.

The motherboard is labeled as a “286 Genesis Board” but I couldn’t really find any relevant information on it.

Thankfully most of the jumpers on the motherboard are arranged in one area and are conveniently labeled so a jumper guide isn’t absolutely necessary.

1) CPU – Unsurprisingly the CPU in the PC Positive 286 is a 286, a 12MHz 80286 to be exact. The 12MHz 286 is probably the 286 I encounter most often, and OEMs seemed to of loved it. Although not the fastest 286 it’s generally the standard for this class of machines and can run most games from the late 80s without too much trouble considering they don’t require a 386. CGA and EGA shouldn’t give this CPU too much trouble. The CPU is soldered onto the motherboard so replacing it if it fails could be an issue.

2) NPU? – not far from the CPU is another socket. I’m putting a question mark on this one because I can’t actually confirm the socket is for a math co-processor. It appears to be one as it’s the right size and it’s fairly close to the CPU but as I can’t find a spec sheet or jumper guide for this motherboard, I can’t confirm this. There also isn’t anything silkscreened onto the board to indicate it’s an NPU socket nor do I see any labeled jumpers to enable/disable a math co-pro chip.

3) RAM – According to the box specs this machine actually came stock with 1MB installed which, for a 286-class machine would probably have been enough for most home users. The first 1MB is installed via DIP memory and thankfully is socketed.

Thankfully, there are also four 30-pin sockets for memory expansion. Generally, on earlier 286 motherboards you would have only found DIP and/or ZIP style RAM sockets but having later and more common sockets really makes expanding memory easy. I believe the maximum that the machine can be expanded to is 4MB but mine already came expanded to 2MB which should be more than enough for a 286 PC.

4) Video – The built-in VGA video is provided by the POACH 51 AA chip. This chip is more or less a clone of the Trident 8800CS video chip and is also provided with 256k of video memory. The 8800CS while not a very fast VGA chip does have pretty good compatibility with games and for a 286 of this speed is more than fast enough. It provides decent, though not perfect CGA compatibility and should be just fine for all EGA/VGA titles that would run acceptably on this machine.

5) IDE/Floppy – One very nice and seldom seen feature of the PC Positive 286 is built-in IDE and high-density Floppy connectors eliminating the need for a separate floppy and IDE controller card. As I mentioned earlier the IDE is a bit picky about what hard drives it will accept though and generally seems to prefer smaller drives under 100MB. Installing an ISA SCSI or IDE controller card should alleviate this issue though I had trouble getting anything other than the Seagate ST-157A working.

EXPANSION

Adding expansion cards is done via a riser card with three 16-bit ISA slots on one side and two 8-bit slots on the other.

Thanks to having so many things already built into the motherboard I really only found myself needing to install a sound card. The card I chose was a little unusual but it’s one I’ve had sitting in the stash for quite some time, the AV206 from Zoltrix. The AV206 is also known by the name Audio Plus card. Zoltrix wasn’t a very well-known brand name but the AV206 is a decent Sound Blaster Pro clone and perfect for something like a 286.

The card doesn’t have a genuine Yamaha OPL chip but the clone chip it does use is very good and during my testing, it seems you’d be hard-pressed to tell it wasn’t a Yamaha.

I have to say I had a very positive time with the PC Positive 286. The built-in features like VGA, floppy, and IDE are great, even though the IDE is picky. Coming with these features out of the box and 1MB of memory, you would have been set to play a wide range of software in the late 80s and even into the early 90s. I tested several games on this machine and even more action-oriented ones such as Red Baron and Test Drive III were found to be playable. Despite a few issues, this is a great 286 that will give you a very positive retro gaming experience.

NBI 4200

NBI or NBI Incorporated was a computer company based out of the state of Colorado that went out of business in 1991. They seemed to have mostly focused on word processing but they did release IBM-compatible computers, one of which we will be looking at today.

The NBI 4200 is a 10MHz 286-based PC. The case is a beige desktop and pretty standard-looking for the era with three 5 1/4 drive bays on the far right.

On the left and below the case label we have a keylock system as well as a reset button and lights for power and hard disk activity. The reset button seems to use a dome switch and only requires a light press to activate, overall it’s pretty unsatisfying. The power LED is a bit interesting as it has the default CPU speed listed under it. There is no turbo button on this case so I assume there is some keyboard key press combo that will downclock the system speed and presumably change the LED light color. There is a jumper (JP 11) which does control startup CPU speed (10 or 6MHz) so a switch could conceivably be hooked up.

I also have the matching keyboard that goes with this machine. It’s a standard AT keyboard but it does have four LED lights on it instead of the usual three, with one being a power indicator LED.

Let’s take a look at the back of the case.

On the back, we have a power switch along with a three-prong connector for attaching a power cable as well as a connector for hooking up a monitor directly to the PC’s power supply. Other than that we have an AT keyboard connector and eight expansion slots conveniently labeled, no built-in I/O at all.

On the label, we do have MPF-PC/900 listed as the model number but if you Google NBI 4200 you can find a jumper manual for the motherboard

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/nbi-4200

Taking the top off the case we can see inside.

There are two cards currently installed. One is the floppy drive/hard drive controller card and the second being a parallel port/MDA video combo card. There is a bay for a hard drive located to the left of the 1.2MB 5 1/4 floppy drive. Unfortunately, I removed the drive before documenting it so I’m not sure what model it was but I believe it was either a 10 or 21MB Seagate MFM drive.

The floppy/hard drive controller card is a 16-bit ISA Western Digital WD-1003-WA2. This card can support high-density 1.44 and 1.2MB floppy drives as well as MFM and RLL hard drives.

The video card installed is a Multitech MGA-PC PB85005-7F. This is a combination of parallel port and monochrome MDA video card. This card is interesting being that Multitech from what I gather was the company that eventually became Acer. This card also supposedly supports Hercules video mode though I was unable to confirm this.

The motherboard is also a Multitech branded board with the model designation MPF-PC/900-2. It also appears other branded PCs use this board as well in the same case but with different branding such as the Accel 900. The motherboard itself is also very large with a high chip count which is typical of earlier 286 motherboards. The board features a typical eight ISA slots, six being 16-bit and two 8-bit.

*Note that I was unable to access any type of BIOS or setup for this motherboard nor could I find any directions from the scant information online. It may use an uncommon key press combo to access it OR this machine may require a setup disk much like early IBM and some early Compaq systems.

1 ) CPU – the CPU, although unmarked here is a ceramic 10MHz 286. This puts it in the mid-range of power for a 286 and should still be able to acceptably play all your CGA and EGA titles as well as some early VGA ones as well. The 10MHz 286 is a bit of an uncommon sight as I’m more used to seeing its 12MHz big brother. The chip and socket are also in the LCC form factor. There are no pins on the relatively flat chip which is kept in place with a latch mechanism. This latch presses the CPU down on contact plates to create a connection to the board.

2) RAM – currently there is 512K of memory soldered onto the motherboard directly with sockets to add an additional 512k for a 1MB total. 1MB is enough for most 286-oriented tasks as well as enough for most games this machine would run acceptably. Unfortunately having the first 512K soldered onto the board can create issues when RAM goes bad as it necessitates removing the board itself and desoldering bad RAM and either preferably soldering on a socket or simply soldering on good RAM in its place.

Unfortunately with this particular PC, some of the initial 512k RAM has gone bad resulting in random lockups when in use.

3) NPU – There is a socket which I strongly suspect is for adding a 80287 math co-processor but was unable to confirm this. I also could not locate any jumper for either enabling a math-co processor chip or for setting synchronous/asynchronous speed with one. The jumper manual on Statson does indicate a 287 as an option for this board.

4) There is a large switch block located at the edge of the motherboard. It seems to mostly be used to set settings for “BIOS selection” between 27128 and 27256. My guess is this has something to do with ROM size. Switch 4 does select between if you’re using a monochrome or color monitor.

5) Piezo speaker

6) AT power connector

The NBI 4200 is an interesting example of an 80s mid-tier 286 and could make a capable retro DOS machine for primarily earlier CGA and EGA titles. It could be made more powerful with the addition of a modern hard drive solution, an ISA VGA card, and perhaps a memory expansion add-on card. The case is also nice and large with solid construction. There are better solutions though such as any of Tandy’s offerings from the era or a slightly later and more integrated 286 motherboards featuring a 12MHz CPU and higher reliability, the NBI doesn’t really offer any unique features besides its case with a little 10MHz label and a power LED on the keyboard. The soldered-on memory is a big negative since it is prone to fail and leaves the user with no simple solution to easily replace it.

Compaq Deskpro EN/SB

Today we will be looking at, yet again, another Compaq Deskpro. This machine is quite similar to the Deskpro EN we looked at a few months ago.

The case itself is a dual desktop/tower style and can be placed in either orientation. There is a power button as well as an LED for power and HDD activity near roughly center of the case. There are also dual 5 1/4 drive bays as well as a single molded 3 1/2 bay that looks like it only accepts floppy drives but it may be possible to mount a zip drive or something of a similar style.

On the rear of the case, we have a standard 3-prong power connector. Looking at the rear connectors starting on the left we have dual USB (1 or 1.2), dual PS/2 ports for the keyboard and mouse, a parallel port, and dual serial ports. This is followed by six slots to add any expansion cards.

Taking off the case top we get a nice sticker with some switch settings.

Looking at the sticker it appears to only have settings for early 66MHz slot 1 processors.

And here is the motherboard with the case top removed.

The motherboard chipset is the Intel 440EX chipset, this is the budget version of the Intel 440LX. This budget chipset limits front side bus speeds to 66MHz and was primarily aimed at supporting the Intel Celeron budget CPU line.

1) CPU – As we could tell from the case sticker this machine was sporting a 300MHz Intel Celeron processor. Early celerons like the one I have installed lack any L2 cache and are known to be terrible performers though this board should be able to run later Mendocino core Celerons as well as 66MHz FSB Pentium IIs though I didn’t test any other CPUs. The 300MHz Celeron should be adequate for lighter Windows gaming and do well for older DOS titles. I’ve read of people putting some pretty fast CPUs in this type of machine via slot adaptors but test this at your own peril I’d say the risk of something catastrophic is fairly low. It should be noted I didn’t test any other processors due to the slot having physical plastic tabs in the way. To test any other CPUs would of required either breaking off pieces of the CPU slot or taking the shell entirely off of any processors I wanted to test.

I found the bare-bones heatsink on this processor to be a bit unusual and very ugly though it seemed to do its job.

2) RAM – There are only two slots for expanding memory via PC66 (or PC100/133 clocked down to 66MHz) SDRAM. If you are running DOS or Win9x maxing things out to 512MB via dual 256MB sticks is more than enough for anything this machine would run well. I went with a more reasonable 256MB via two 128MB sticks for my machine.

3) The complement of expansion slots on this board is quite nice with a single x1/x2 AGP slot as well as three PCI and three 16-bit ISA slots giving this machine a lot of options for being used as a retro gaming PC.

4) floppy connector as well as dual primary/secondary IDE connectors for four total IDE devices such as hard drives or CD-ROM drives

5) CMOS battery

The sound card that came with this machine was a Creative branded PCI Audio card. I’ve heard it said that these have decent DOS compatibility as far as PCI sound cards go but I’ve never had much luck with them in DOS or Windows. Always glitchy terrible quality in my opinion. If I was using this as a retro gaming build replacing this card with either a quality ISA card or something like a Sound Blaster Live! PCI card would be my first priority.

The video card was a bit more interesting in my opinion.

The card installed was an AGP Matrox G100. These are mostly known as business-oriented cards with excellent image quality but they are also known to be fairly competent at gaming as well. My personal experience has been with the later G200 cards and they have always run well for me but this was my first time experiencing the G100.

In my testing, the card performed surprisingly well in titles like Shogo: Mobile Armor Division for Windows and DOS titles like Simcity 2000. The card is known to have no Alpha blending and things like shadows or transparencies are not rendered correctly but overall it wasn’t a bad experience. Paired with a Voodoo 1 or 2 this would be an adequate card for a system like this. I’d still probably recommend replacing it with something more gaming-oriented like a TNT or maybe at least a cheap and more powerful G200 card. Until then though this card should be adequate to tide you over.

In conclusion, the Deskpro EN/SB can be built into a decent Windows or DOS gaming PC though it doesn’t really accel at either. It’s a bit too fast for DOS and a bit too slow for Windows 98. It would probably perform best as a Windows 95/late DOS build but that’s a bit niche and there are other builds that would fill the role better. regardless with some care and a few select parts, it should work fine for most people looking for some 90’s gaming fun.

Dell Dimension L series (L433c)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’ve always been a fan of the Dell Dimension series from the late 90s. They are aesthetically pleasing, are generally pretty powerful and capable for their time, and make great Win 9x machines. Today I’ll be looking at the L series, Dell’s more budget-oriented Dimension computer, specifically the L433c.

The case still has that signature Dell Dimension flair to it but it is smaller than other Dimension cases we have looked at here prior. Prior Dimensions we have looked at both have two 5 1/4 bays as well as three 3.5-inch bays. The L series case has much more limited expansion opportunities with only a single 5 1/4 bay and a single 3.5-inch bay, though there is a dedicated bay for a 3.5-inch floppy drive so the upper one can still be utilized for something like a ZIP drive if so desired. The case does have a slightly rounded top which can make stacking an issue.

On the rear of the case, we have standard color-coded PS/2 ports for the keyboard and mouse along with two USB 1.x ports, a serial port, a parallel port, and a VGA port for the built-in VGA. The PSU is interestingly next to the IO ports and at the bottom of the case, we have four expansion slots.

The sound card I currently have installed is a Sound Blaster Live!

Opening the case doesn’t reveal much as the power supply covers a large percent of the motherboard. The green tab on the upper right corner of the PSU can be used to allow the PSU to lift up on a hing and out of the way, very convenient.

The chipset is a version of the Intel 810 chipset which also tells us the VGA port we saw on the back is for the integrated 810 graphics. I’ve found the integrated graphics on the 810 chipset to be surprisingly good though you can add a discrete graphics card if you would like, provided it’s a PCI card.

The on-board video is running on an AGP bus and my implementation of the 810 chipset seems to have an AIMM (AGP Inline Memory Module) which would boost the performance of the on-board video. Unfortunately, the particular version of they chipset on this board also seems to limit the CPU choice to a Celeron.

1) CPU – The CPU on this machine, as indicated by the label, is a socket 370, 433MHz Intel Celeron running on a 66mhz FSB. The C in the L433c label indicates this board is Celeron based and unfortunately will not support Pentium chips. It should be able to be upgraded to a Mendicino core 533MHz Celeron though I did not attempt this. I have read that a user claimed to be able to upgrade to a 600MHz Coppermine core Celeron but this wasn’t confirmed and I would take it with a grain of salt. The Celeron was Intels budget CPU generally running on a lower FSB than the equivalent Pentium and utilizing less on-chip cache.

2) RAM – The L433c has two slots for PC100 SDRAM. The maximum amount of memory you can upgrade to is 512MB via dual 256MB sticks. seeing as this PC runs best under Windows 98 and Windows 98 tends to have issues with memory over the 512MB mark this limitation isn’t too much of a hindrance unless you really have your heart set on running Windows XP.

3) PCI expansion – Unfortunately we are limited to four PCI expansion slots with this PC making running DOS or Windows XP achievable but less than desirable on this computer. I went with a Sound Blaster Live! card which is a great card for Windows 98 gaming and even DOS to a degree. For video, I tried running a PCI FX 5200 which I did find to get bottlenecked somewhat by the CPU.

4) floppy and dual IDE connectors

5)PSU connector – This board does use Dell’s proprietary power connector that uses an AUX style connector.

6) CMOS battery

7) Pizo speaker

I didn’t really love the L433c but as a budget machine it wasn’t bad. I was surprisingly impressed with the on-board graphics and under my Windows 98 testing it gave decent results in games from the late 90s. I feel this PC shines most when built into a Windows 98 machine as reasonably fast PCI video cards for gaming can be acquired and a Sound Blaster Live! or Vortex2 based sound card would make playing a good amount of games from the late 90s a reasonably good experience especially if you can get yourself a PCI TNT2 or faster and perhaps a PCI Voodoo 2. You could build this PC out as a DOS machine though the lack of an ISA slot for sound will hurt compatibility. Building this computer out to be an XP gaming machine is technically possible, especially with a powerful PCI video card but I suspect anything but the earliest of XP titles will likely chug along pretty poorly.

Apple IIe Platinum

In 1987 Apple released its newest and final revision of the venerable Apple IIe, The Apple IIe Platinum. This final version of the Apple IIe would simplify the motherboard, include many of the Apple IIe enhanced upgrades such as the 65C02 CPU and extra memory, added a number pad to the keyboard and it all came in a new platinum colored case. If you’d like to learn more about the IIe in general or its associated monitors I’d suggest clicking on the previous link.

Besides the new color, the case itself is more or less the same in terms of size, weight, and overall design. The biggest difference is the inclusion of a number pad on the right side of the keyboard as well as a larger power LED located above it.

The inclusion of the number pad itself is of somewhat dubious utility since no games take advantage of it and it’s really only useful if you’re doing a lot of number crunching on your Apple II. I suppose this would have been more useful in the late 80s if you were doing business tasks though as a retro gaming computer, it has little to no use. The inclusion of the pad does offset the keyboard so If you really prefer a centered keyboard the older Apple IIe is probably the better choice.

The rear of the Platinum is identical to the older IIe. In the lower-left corner, we have an RCA-style composite color video jack with the same capabilities as the IIe.

  • 40 and 80 columns text, white-on-black, with 24 lines
  • Low-Resolution: 40×48 (16 colors)
  • High-Resolution: 280×192 (6 colors)
  • Double-Low-Resolution: 80×48 (16 colors)
  • Double-High-Resolution: 560×192 (16 colors

next to that are dual 1/8th audio jacks for connecting a tape deck and finally a DB-9 joystick port.

Expansion capabilities are the same as the IIe

finally, we have the power supply with a standard three-prong connector.

The top of the case removes the same as the earlier model, via two plastic tabs on the rear.

Compared to earlier versions of the Apple IIe the motherboard in the Platinum has fewer chips and is more integrated.

1) CPU – The Platinum uses the 65C02 processor running at 1.023MHz on an 8-bit bus. This CPU is an enhanced version of the 6502 CPU found in earlier Apple IIe computers and offers bug fixes, lower power draw, and some performance improvements. This CPU as well as its accompanying chips was standard on the Platinum, whereas on the IIe it was an optional upgrade. This newer chip does break compatibility with a very small number of early and “poorly written” software titles.

2) RAM – Although the Platinum contains the same amount of memory soldered onto the motherboard as the earlier IIe, 64k , the number of RAM chips has been reduced from eight to two chips. This has led to overall higher RAM reliability on the Platinum as there are fewer chips on the board to go bad. It’s also possible the memory in the Platinum is higher quality as well as just being newer produced chips in general.

3) Expansion Slots -Like the IIe, the Platinum features seven 50-pin Apple IIe Bus slots for expansion. This worked very much the same way as it does on any IBM compatible as you can buy various compatible expansion cards and simply install them in the slots. These cards ranged from the disk drive controller to modems, sound cards, and even hard drive controller cards.

My IIe Platinum came with the newer style floppy drive controller which is compatible with the Duo Disk Drive. I believe this controller was sold standard with the platinum.

My Platinum also came with an Apple Super Seriel card II which I believe was installed after purchase by the previous owner. The super serial card functioned as both a modem and a Serial Interface Card for connecting a printer.

4) Auxillary slot – Also like the IIe, the Platinum motherboard features an Auxillary slot for adding memory cards and accelerators. The Platinum did come standard with an 80-column 64k memory card for a stock memory size of 128k.

The memory card that came with the Platinum also appears to be much smaller and more integrated than the previously sold 80-column memory cards meant to upgrade the IIe.

5) Sound – Like the video, sound was not improved for the Platinum and is provided by a cone speaker.

If you’re in the market for an Apple IIe should you stick with the older IIe or choose the Platinum. The answer mostly depends on which case you prefer, as they are more or less identical machines. From what I gathered online most people seem to prefer the classic look of the Apple IIe as well as the positioning of its keyboard. That said the Platinum does have a few practical advantages. The first is that they appear to be more plentiful than the earlier IIe and thus tend to sell for lower prices. They also can save money in the upgrade department as with an IIe you may need to acquire things like the 65C02, an 80-column memory card, or a newer floppy drive controller if you’d like to expand your machine’s capabilities. On the Platinum, these features were standard (though previous users may have removed these options).

being a newer machine overall with a lower chip count also seems to have improved the general reliability of the Platinum over the IIe, especially in the memory department which is another good reason to grab a Platinum over a IIe.

Overall the differences don’t seem to be too major when comparing machines. The number pad really doesn’t add much at all to usability and the improved reliability is likely marginal so if you enjoy the Apple II I’d suggest grabbing whichever one you prefer.

Compaq Deskpro EN Full Desktop

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