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WTB - Older PC for Retro Gaming (486 preferable)

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ubertrout

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
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Oct 12, 2011
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So, this is a bit offbeat, but does anyone have a 30ish year old PC they're looking to get rid of? Been thinking about setting one up to play some of the games from my youth on the original hardware, but getting one is a crapshoot - and I figure there's people on this forum who might have one taking up space somewhere. If it has a vintage sound card in it all the better. It's fine if the hard drive doesn't work (I plan to use a CF card as a boot drive) but it would be good to see if it at least gets to the BIOS screen on startup. Having a working VGA or higher CRT monitor would be a bonus.

Not looking to pay a lot, but will cover shipping of course. Also willing to do a trade for something from my surround collection potentially.
 
Have fun. The power supply is probably shot from disuse. Just like old audio equipment, the power supplies lose their electrolytic capacitors.

And just try to buy 5.25 inch diskettes that still work. The ones I had shed their oxide,

I am trying to rebuild my Pentium 4 XP HP after a disk failure. I thought I had everything I needed to do it, but I am missing 4 driver files: sound card, widescreen monitor, CD burner, and ethernet.

I rebuilt it 6 years ago with the same disks and it worked.
 
The computer works fine. It boots right up. I actually do have a 5.25 drive I will throw in because I will never ever use it. It's a 350 mHz. I don't remember how much memory it has but all the slots are filled.
 
The computer works fine. It boots right up. I actually do have a 5.25 drive I will throw in because I will never ever use it. It's a 350 mHz. I don't remember how much memory it has but all the slots are filled.
Sweet. I'd love to have one for my crazy archival adventures, even if it won't get much use.

I'm pretty comfortable working inside PCs, both generally and in this chassis in particular, so whatever is there is fine.
 
Have fun. The power supply is probably shot from disuse. Just like old audio equipment, the power supplies lose their electrolytic capacitors.

And just try to buy 5.25 inch diskettes that still work. The ones I had shed their oxide,

I am trying to rebuild my Pentium 4 XP HP after a disk failure. I thought I had everything I needed to do it, but I am missing 4 driver files: sound card, widescreen monitor, CD burner, and ethernet.

I rebuilt it 6 years ago with the same disks and it worked.
If power supply doesn't work should be an easy fix. Bigger problem might be the BIOS battery if non-standard, but that's not the end of the world.

I've been able to read floppies from the 1990s with no problem, and had others that were so destroyed even low-level reads couldn't get the data off them. Like so many things, you take the wheat with the chaff.
 
I still have my old Compaq Presario(?) 486. It is like those old Apple computers.....monitor and CPU in one piece.

Still works too!
 
So much fun! I recall those are a pain to work on, but hopefully you're not doing that too often.
No, haven’t even used it for 15 years or more, except to power it on once. I recently came across a ps 2 keyboard so I plan on firing it up again and use it for “something.”

I remember buying it back in 1994 or so. My dad drove me out to the burbs to pick it up. He said “what do you need a computer for?” Imagine someone saying that now? And he bought the first Macintosh in 1984........so that was kind of an odd question from him of all people.
 
No, haven’t even used it for 15 years or more, except to power it on once. I recently came across a ps 2 keyboard so I plan on firing it up again and use it for “something.”

I remember buying it back in 1994 or so. My dad drove me out to the burbs to pick it up. He said “what do you need a computer for?” Imagine someone saying that now? And he bought the first Macintosh in 1984........so that was kind of an odd question from him of all people.
So, it's a lot of fun to play games of the era on original hardware. That was my reason.

That said, a working Presario 486 is probably worth $400 or more. The retro PC hardware market has been going way up.
 
So, it's a lot of fun to play games of the era on original hardware. That was my reason.

That said, a working Presario 486 is probably worth $400 or more. The retro PC hardware market has been going way up.
$400! Wow. I probably didn’t pay much more than that for it. It came with an integrated fax/ modem, and I used it for a answering machine for me and my four roommates. Each person had their own “mailbox.” Pretty cool for the time.
 
$400! Wow. I probably didn’t pay much more than that for it. It came with an integrated fax/ modem, and I used it for a answering machine for me and my four roommates. Each person had their own “mailbox.” Pretty cool for the time.
Or more! Hard to know since I don't see many comparables on eBay. A Pentium 2 like I ended up getting is easier to find, but a lot of the games from the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s don't run great on a Pentium, so people looking for games from that period typically look for a 386 or 486. Fortunately, I'm looking more at mid-90s and the Pentium 2 runs those fine.
 
Planned (and panned) obsolescence! They changed everything just so you would have to buy new software because the new machine can't run the old software.
 
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