Random computer thread chat

[Retro6]

So its 1996 you bought a desktop computer which has 16MB RAM 2GB hard drive Intel Pentium II processor... what would be the price for that in 1996 used I wonder? without monitor or keyboard/mouse It be about average for 1996

Fast forward to now 2026 a new used average desktop PC 16GB RAM 240 GB SSD i5 processor price between 30 to 50 pounds without monitor or keyboard/mouse seems to be cheaper than if you were to buy an average PC in 1996 right?

Back then 486 PC's were still widely used and considered more low end Windows 3.11 machines as the new Intel Pentium 133MHz PC's came onto the market often shipped with Windows 95 but the Intel Pentium II with MMX technology were also on the market with processor speeds ranging from 230MHz to 400 MHz those were quite a beast for the time and some of them came with 24MB RAM while 16MB RAM was about average and 32MB RAM being the ultimate upgrade although I do recall some machines having 64MB RAM around that time while other machines only had 8MB RAM. The older 486 machines running Windows 3.11 would have had about 4MB RAM.

Today in 2026:
Dual core 2 Duo = 486 specs of the mid to late 90s
i5 being about average = higher end Intel Pentium Pro mid to late 90s or lower end Intel Pentium II MMX 230 MHz.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Retro6]

I remember back in 2001 I got given an old AST computer which I think was a 486 100MHz CPU 8MB RAM 1.5 GB HDD running Windows 95 and it was very slow. 8MB RAM was about the minimum requirement to run WIN95 but 16MB was recommended for smoother operation. I remember trying to upgrade the RAM in that machine but it would not post with any other RAM.

 

[Retro6]

In 1992 I bought a 286-12.5mhz PC with 1mb ram and a 40mb hard disk with a 14" vga colour monitor and a local bus 256kb graphics card, keyboard and mouse, Dos5 operating system for £900 with a few educational games.

What could that buy now?

That is incredible 900 quid for a PC.

I remember going to a boot fair in 1998 and somebody was selling a PC an Intel Pentium PRO with the CRT and all the bits plus printer for 500 quid. I was only about 9 years old at the time and the next stall had an Apple II with green screen monitor and double disk drive unit with lots of 5.25 floppy disks all for a fiver. I spent hours on that thing learning about stuff and programming in Basic fun times. The setup I got for a fiver back in 1998 would be worth a lot today. I also bought an apricot color CRT screen monitor EGA with screen burn for 50p but it worked.

 

[Retro6]

I bought an Amiga 500 when they first came out so this would have been in the late 1980s.

I bought the official 512kb memory upgrade for it, it was a metal wedge that slotted into an access point on the underside, and it cost me £100. I bought 32gb of DDr4 in 2020, last time I can see I bought some memory, and it cost me £110.99.

If my maths is correct 32gb is 65536 times bigger than 512kb. I'm now doubting myself if that is correct.

I got given an Amiga 500 around 1999 but I had no PSU for it, it was a 5 pin if I can remember rightly with 5v&12v input and then when I eventually found a PSU for it... it never worked. I then got given an Acorn Archimedes A3000 with an Acorn color CTR and 3 button mouse and I loved that thing, a computer well ahead of its time.

 

[Retro6]

I remember RISC OS which in my opinion was better than Windows 3.1 but I preferred MS DOS 6.22 if only MS DOS had programming in Basic built in it would have been amazing but RISC OS had all of that.

I'm going to dig out my old homemade RISC OS PC tomorrow and revisit my previous work I did on it. I had an issue with having no audio and I also needed to solder in some 580 ohm resistors for the LED indicators and re-do the ROM its been a long time since I worked on it. I was going to do it today but other things came up so I didn't have time. I need to have a clear out and tidy up first so I'm hoping I will find it while I'm clearing things out tomorrow.

 

[Retro6]

I like my old 486 machines, I have two of them but I haven't used them in a while, the first one is a mini 486 machine 90MHz processor and 16MB RAM Sound Blaster and an IDE to CF Card adapter on the back for easy file transfer, I only run DOS on CF Cards. I have a bunch of CF cards with MS DOS 6.22 DOS 7 & FreeDOS. My other 486 has 4MB RAM and a 2GB CF Card as its HDD 25MHz processor and that one is better for playing Wing Commander as my other 486 doesn't run Wing Commander too well because the specs are a bit to high to run the game. I also have a sound blaster card in that too. I still run a lot of old games from floppy as its nostalgic for me to do so but I have all my games backed up on another CF Card with DOS on it. I think it took about 8 floppy's for the Wing Commander game.

 

[Retro6]

I have quite a few Acorn Electrons I used to buy them when they were going for 5 to 10 pound each, I have one that fails to read data but the keyboard works fine and I have a box full of old Raspberry Pi's mainly Raspberry Pi Zeros and Pi 1 & 2 versions... I can feel another RISC OS project build coming on... I could mount a Pi inside the faulty Acorn Electron but getting the keyboard to work with the Pi I'll need a board in between the Pi & the Acorns keyboard, something like a development board... I'll have to look more into it.

 

[Retro6]

It was around the same time I bought the first portable Sony Mini Disc recorder for around £500 which me and my duo used for backing tracks.
We used to have two cassette players and he would feed a tape per song into them while I introduced.
The disks could hold 74 mins with us doing 2x 45 mins spots, later they were 80 mins.
We couldn't afford DAT at the time and it was something I never had.



If I remember correctly the BBC Micro was around £450 and the Acorn Micro was a cut down version for £250.

It seems a lot of stuff was around the £450 mark that I bought

The Acorn Electron was the budget version I think it went for about 150 back then. These old computers are certainly holding there value now. I sold most of my BBC Micro's just one left. The price on those Acorn Electrons are now at 50 to 70 plus pounds on ebay. I'm keeping the ones I have I'm just down sizing my computer hoard.

 

[Retro6]

I would like to see somebody make this board which is about the size of a Raspberry Pi for playing old DOS games and programs... build your own DOS PC Project Board which will have a bootable CF Card socket and floppy header that you can also boot from with selectable RAM of 8MB to 16MB for game compatibility.

 

[Retro6]

An updated design

 

[Retro6]

What are you trying to do here that couldn't be done by more conventional means?

The purpose is to create a small single board 486 computer for DOS projects a cheap board that would retail 30 to 40 quid... a modern piece of hardware and cheap for those that don't wanna spend mega bucks on old deteriorating 486 gear.

 

[Retro6]

Final design in color

 

[Retro6]

I was going through some of my flash drives today trying to find a blank 16GB to write an ISO image file too, I found one but the computer wouldn't show it so I opened G-Parted saw it listed as unallocated so I partitioned it and it went ok then I formatted it to FAT32 and it formatted ok but its showing a hazard symbol saying the file system may not be able to be read so I think that flash drive might be no good but at least it shows now when its plugged in, probably not the best drive to use for flashing an ISO image but I'll see what happens. Just gotta get balenaEtcher to work now in Debian. I might give the flash drive another format in a Windows PC just to see if it chucks out any errors.

 

[Retro6]

Yep I think that USB drive may have failed, although it formatted ok without error when I tried to copy an 9 GB file to it, it reached 5 GB then gave an error to say data could not be written.