This Old Mouse

The title of this blog post may sound a little misleading, but it is in fact the truth. You see the 386SX would have never come about had it not been for the popularity of the 286 and Intel did not like that popularity. Many companies had a license to produce the 286 chip and most of the chips sold were from companies other than Intel. That negatively affected their bottom line. When the 386 came out in 1985, Intel decided not to license it to anyone else, so all sales of the chip would end up in their coffers. The 286 continued to sell like gangbusters and the 386 was just too expensive for most people, so what was Intel going to do about it. Intel came up with the 386SX in 1988 and it was to the 386 just as the 8088 was to the 8086. A less expensive version that could be used in existing 286 systems with just a few modifications. The 386SX differed from the 386 in two ways. It only had a 16-bit versus 32-bit data bus and was limited to 16MB of memory versus 4GB. This made the entry i

One of my first builds getting back into retro computer in 2019 was a Slot 1 Pentium III. I wanted to do a Socket 370 Pentium III build for a long time and I now finally have that done. It was a long wait as I ordered a Socket 370 motherboard from a seller on eBay from the Soviet Union. I have bought several items from him and he always sells top quality stuff, so I don't mind the extra wait. The problem this time was that the shipment got held up in Poland for an extra month and a half, so when it finally arrived, I was relieved. There were 3 major versions of the Pentium III over it's lifetime, Katmai, Coppermine(T) and Tualatin. The 1.4GHz Tualatin is the one a lot of retro enthusiast go far as it is the fastest and last Pentium III. There is one caveat on doing one these builds. The Tualatin needs an updated chipset to work properly. The one I have is an Intel i815e revision B. I made sure of this when I got the motherboard.  I did something a bit different with this build.

My last blog post was about my HP Vectra 286/12 and how I never owned an AT class 286 computer until then. Well one other computer type I never owned until now is Socket 8 Pentium Pro. These were terribly expensive back in the mid 90s usually in the $4000-$5000 range and those were entry level models. The Socket 8 platform was built around the Pentium Pro CPU. It was the successor to the Pentium. It has some very advanced features was definitely designed around 32-bit Operating Systems. It could run 16-bit code, but unfortunately it did so slower than the Pentium CPU at the same clock speed. Intel would correct most of that with the Pentium II that came next. I got my current system on eBay for a very reasonable $200 plus $30 shipping. The asking price for a Socket 8 motherboard and CPU alone is usually much more than that, so I was very happy with this deal. Here are the specs of the computer as I bought it: Midtower case with four 5.25" plus three 3.5" drive bays. Three exp

I have had more computers than I can remember in the over 40 years I have been using computers. The one computer system that I never personally owned was an AT class 286. I had 3 Tandy 1000s before moving on to a Northgate 386/20 in 1990. I just skipped over an AT 286. Now I have had 286 Tandy 1000TX and 1000 TL/2 computers, but those are strictly XT class computers, with 8-bit slots and 640K of DOS memory. AT class machines have 16-bit slots and allow for more than 640K using extended memory. Getting back into retro computing, this was not high on list of wanted computers. It was only after getting most of the computer systems I wanted that I started thinking about adding a real 286 AT computer to my retro collection. I started keeping my eye on Craigslist and eBay. I didn't have to wait long before a batch of HP Vectra 286 computers went up for sale on eBay. The starting bid was $100 each. There were 3 ES/12 models and one 286/12. I did some research and found out the 286/12 was

I mentioned in my 486 Pentium Overdrive blog post that I had gotten a 486 motherboard that did not work out for that project. The motherboard had actually come out of an arcade machine from a company called Lazer-Tron. There was no documentation to be found, so finding jumper settings for the CPU would be a next to impossible task. I put the motherboard aside thinking I probably was not going to use it anytime soon. Time passed and I was doing some reading on Cyrix CPUs. Cyrix did not manufacture their own processors, they contracted IBM, Texas Instruments or SGS Thomas to do that. Part of the licensing for these companies was that they could produce these CPUs under their own branding. So if you see a 486 from one of these 3 companies, it's really just a Cyrix 486. That motherboard came with a SGS Thomas 486DX2-66. I had Cyrix 486DX2-80 from another project. While I could not change the jumpers for the CPU, the jumpers for FSB speed and voltage are silk screened on the motherboard

Is it in fact legal to use old software without paying for it? In the strictest legal sense the short answer is no. This is evidenced by the fact the companies like Nintendo guard their intellectual property very closely, going after sites distributing copies of their old console games going all the way back to the original NES console. Other companies turn a blind eye to the whole matter. I don't see Microsoft going after people using a copy of MS-DOS. They are well beyond that OS and are firmly focused on Windows. Retro computing is a growing in popularity and it may prompt some companies to take a second look at their old offerings and adopt a policy like Nintendo. I really don't see that being the norm, but rather the exception.  There is a concept in Retro computing called Abandonware. This falls under turning a blind eye notion  The software may still be under copyright, but the owner of that software is not actively pursuing a legal course to protect it. The vast majorit