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Scored a 486 machine

appleIImidi

appleIImidi

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Joined
Dec 19, 2012
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Hi, I've had 486 machines in the past but this is my first VLB board without any integrated interfaces. I bought it mainly for the 5 1/4" drive, not knowing if it was going to work or not (the computer as a whole). It was at a thrift store for 12 bucks. The name plate fell off the front and the turbo button is stuck but the back has a sticker that says "CT-168A". Unfortunately searches come up with nothing relevant. I found info on the motherboard, a no name with the model M601 V1.3A which has 3 VESA slots, 7 ISA, 256K cache installed, and 8 MB RAM. The video card is a Trident but I don't see a model number anywhere. It has a generic ISA CD-ROM interface with a Mitsumi double speed drive, ISA I/O controller with both 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disk drives, 250MB hard drive with DOS 6 and Win3.1, DB9 and DB25 serial ports, parallel and game/MIDI. It also has a generic sound card, 8 bit ISA, and a 200W PSU. Oh, and the proc is a 486DX screaming along at 33MHz. And I may put my DX2/66 that I've had lying around for a while in it.

WP_000492.jpg

The battery was leaking so I desoldered it and the CMOS header, but that was all that got damaged and it wouldn't start up without first taking those things out.

Any advice, tips, recommended software, et cetera would be much appreciated. :D
 
Is that lower 3.5" floppy an actual drive, or one of those cover plates shaped like one?

There may have never been a name plate in that spot. Although many, perhaps even most computer cases had that recessed badge area, I knew plenty of people who never put anything there. Local system builders would order custom badge stickers, so if it said something like "CBBCE" it meant you bought a system from "Cletus and Billy Bob's Computer Emporium". But you never know, there were at least a few case designs that were used by bigger companies, local shops, and private individuals.

Most newer cases lack the badge spot, but you can still get case badges from various sources. So if you want to put something cool or silly there, you certainly can. :)

The turbo button should be pretty easy to unstick, unless it was glued in place or something like that. I knew at least one person who did that. Otherwise it's probably just gooey with something. Probably wouldn't hurt to pull the switch from the back and hit it with some contact cleaner and lubricant, and make sure the plastic button and surrounding area are clean and smooth.
 
That's an M601 motherboard marketed under various names and manufacturers. I think I have one or two :) Anyone remember if this is one of the fake cache boards?

Nice find for $12. To my mind, the case is worth that, and everything else is bonus :)
 
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I've got a case that's almost the twin to the one you show. No fancy drive blanks, however. Try spritzing a little WD-40 around the turbo button. That should free it up without resorting to surgery.
 
Did the nameplate say "Computer"? Looks identical to my Computer computer. (Really!)

Nice score. If you haven't already put an external CMOS battery in, there's a connector near the barrel battery to plug in an external one. It's a pain to have to enter the setting in at every startup. That computer would make a great disk transfer computer, since you've got both 3.5 and 5.25 drives. I'd also put an NIC in it so you can grab disk images from say an FTP site. (Internet could be a little slow. :))
 
Awesome score. A computer like that will run around $100 on ebay. Fantastic looking case too. You were lucky you got in there and cut out the battery before it got too bad. Be sure to clean it very well, any electrolyte that remains will continue to damage your motherboard.

I would put that DX2/66 in there. Run speedsys and cachechk and doom -timedemo demo3. Check the vogons forums, there are plenty of benchmark results for similar machines, see how yours stacks up. Check what the turbo button does. Does it actually change the CPU frequency or does it just disable cache? Mine just turns off the cache.

I use mine for DOS and Windows 3.x games. Doom runs around 28fps with 256K of cache. Playable, but more enjoyable on a pentium. ROTT is perfect though. X-Wing runs wonderfully too. Check out how smooth the scrolling is in Jazz Jackrabbit. Check out Myst and The 7th Guest for some "multimedia" goodness.
 
Stone said:
It's a cover plate.

That's a generic case. I bought the same one at a computer show twenty years ago.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking, that it was a cover plate as I have vague memories of seeing them. I didn't start building my own systems until around 15 years ago, so I missed the 486 era, fake caches and all. The case reminds me of the first one I bought at a computer show to hold my K5, though mine was even more generic looking.
 
Thanks for the replies! I pried the cap off of the turbo switch and it works fine. It seems like the cap is too thick and when pushing it in to get it to turn off, it doesn't go far enough to trip the switch. I'll probably take a dremel to it.

As far as the battery goes, I've been trying to think of the best way to fit it in there. I think I'm going to put a dual sided header where the CMOS header was and use a small proto board to mount a coin cell holder. I'm just hoping three volts will be enough because in my experience sometimes it isn't. I've mostly switched these style batteries out in old synthesizers.

I think I have an ISA NIC around somewhere, but I'm too young to really remember these machines. I was 7 in 1993 when this thing's BIOS was copyrighted. I'm not really too familiar with FTP... or anything pre-www for that matter, but it's something I'm open to explore. I have an Apple IIe also and I've been wanting to use ADTPro but haven't gotten around to it yet, too busy learning Applesoft Basic. I actually wanted to use the DB25 port on this thing to link the two together, with the super serial II card in the apple.

The thing doesn't have any logos at all on it. I'm sure it's just a generic or someone's custom build. To other people with this case... is your motherboard also only held in be 1 screw? I thought it was insane how floppy the board is once you get the expansion cards out. The only thing holding the MB in is a single screw and 3 plastic snaps. :nervous:
 
Same here. The motherboard was for the most part, held on by the plastic clips. Actually, the snaps were bending the motherboard to where the ISA cards weren't ditting in properly, so I had to cut two of them off to where it wasn't bent slightly.
 
But those plastics were very friendly in removing-replacing the board. 1-2 screws together with them were doing a good job. It wasn't ideal, but it was good enough
 
Another plus is the removable "motherboard tray".

Just picked up an old serial mouse to use with it. An Artec AM-22... I have no idea what computer mice were considered good performers back in the day. I like my Apple A2M2070 because it's nice and heavy, it's a good feel. This Artec is a 3 button mouse that has a switch on the bottom that says PC-3KEY or MS-2KEY and it has a small thumb button on the left side. Not sure what the switch does but I'm sure I'll figure it out when I fire it up. Now to find an IBM model M keyboard with an AT plug, I was lucky enough to get my 42H1292 (PS/2) for 3 bucks.
 
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