5 ms·

The expansion boards mentioned (Microsoft Mach, Orchid Turbo) are members of a product category I've ever only seen in ads, never in real life. Probably because

The expansion boards mentioned (Microsoft Mach, Orchid Turbo) are members of a product category I've ever only seen in ads, never in real life. Probably because they only made sense, pricing-wise, for actual-IBM PCs, not for the clones that pretty much everyone was running (often at a much higher clock speeds than the 'real' PC/XT or even PC/AT, which in my neck of the woods was never that popular: the 386SX was the first must-have upgrade due to its insanely higher speed). That OS/2 for such cards never sold well is not much of a surprise: OS/2 1.x was pretty much pointless anyway, and even the comparably-more-useful Windows 2.x releases were not exactly bestsellers. I did some OS/2 1.x development on a PS/2 Model 80, a full-height tower that was as expensive as it was heavy. It had a real 80386, VGA, 2MB RAM, plus a whopping 120MB of disk space. The new proprietary MCA bus wouldn't fit any existing expansion cards, and a lot of existing (DOS/Windows) software wasn't available in the new-fangled 3.5" floppy format either. Switching the thing on was the best part of the experience: the heavy-duty power switch made a very satisfying 'clunk' sound. The duration of the BIOS memory test and the OS/2 boot process were less fun, and software development was downright horrible: despite the US$ 5000 price tag, the OS/2 SDK was extremely limited and slow, and only used the 386 as a slightly faster 286 (whereas DOS-based tooling at the time would let you do some pretty interesting things already).

thewebcount 4y ago
I started home computing in the late 70’s to early 80’s. Over the years I’ve found that when I get to the point that I need to upgrade one part of the computer, it’s almost never worth it. It’s usually time to upgrade the whole thing. When I would replace or upgrade a single part, it would extend me for maybe 6 months before I ran into another piece needing an upgrade. These days, I tend to buy higher end computers and use them for a long time. For example, I just retired my 2013 Mac Pro this last week. It was running fine, but can’t update to the latest OS and some of my critical software needs the latest OS to run, or will shortly. If it weren’t for that, I probably would have waited another year or two to upgrade.
- FullyFunctional 4y ago
  It took me too long to understand this, but I'll toss in one exception to your rule: storage (short term and long term). I've found that it's frequently useful and economical to upgrade long term storage; eg. the HDs/SSDs until recently were on a price curve such that you were better off postponing buying more until you needed it. And quite a few of my systems have gotten a RAM bump midlife (where prices had come down). Alas, as more as more systems now come with soldered down memory, I usually max it out for longevity.
- Moto7451 4y ago
  That 2013 Mac Pro can actually keep on chugging with the latest OS care of OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Thankfully Apple doesn’t seem too inclined to force these into e-waste/retro computing.
tom_ 4y ago
You could get similar products for the non-PC compatible computers that were popular in the UK, especially during the late 80s/early 90s period when PC software was worth having but the hardware was still comparatively expensive. - Amiga: http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2386sx http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2386sx - Atari ST: https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv4n12/pcditto2.html https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv4n12/pcditto2.html - Acorn Archimedes: https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/32bit_UpgradesA2G/Aleph1_PC_minipodule.html https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/32bit_UpgradesA2... - BBC Micro: https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/Master512.html https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/Master... I used Amiga and Archimedes PC cards in the 90s - couldn't tell you which ones - and have seen a BBC Master 512 in use. I admit I've never actually seen an ST hardware emulator though. (I used the software-based pc ditto on an ST in the 90s, which did a decent job of being a IBM XT, albeit one running at about 1 MHz. But I'm sure it would have run very nicely on a Falcon or TT030.)
karmakaze 4y ago
Probably after the era of PC/XT upgrades, the 386SLC had the clock speeds and on-die cache that made close to the DX. I really enjoyed my time developing on OS/2 1.2 and later 1.3 with the IBM intern-developed VESA SVGA driver. It was multitasking that really worked. My first PC was a clone 386DX with socketed cache chips, 8MB RAM, and 11 MHz overclocked ISA bus to make the video updates faster. My next PC was a PS/2 Model 77 running OS/2 (and later Win NT). It was so hard finding an MCA SoundBlaster-compatible card (by Piper Research) so I could play Doom.
classichasclass 4y ago
Mac CPU upgrades were a big market, though. In the 68K era you had things like Daystar cards and the Radius Rocket, and Apple themselves made a PPC 601 card. Sonnet even made them for allegedly unupgradeable machines, like the 7200 G3 upgrade that took over a PCI slot. The extension shunted everything to the CPU on the card and disabled the 601 soldered to the board.
skissane 4y ago
> OS/2 1.x was pretty much pointless anyway It was the base for LAN Manager, IBM/Microsoft’s answer to Netware. Never anywhere near as popular as Netware, but some people used it. OS/2 1.x Extended Edition also had some mainframe integration bits (Communications Manager). Useful stuff if you needed to talk to an IBM mainframe.

thewebcount 4y ago

I started home computing in the late 70’s to early 80’s. Over the years I’ve found that when I get to the point that I need to upgrade one part of the computer, it’s almost never worth it. It’s usually time to upgrade the whole thing. When I would replace or upgrade a single part, it would extend me for maybe 6 months before I ran into another piece needing an upgrade. These days, I tend to buy higher end computers and use them for a long time. For example, I just retired my 2013 Mac Pro this last week. It was running fine, but can’t update to the latest OS and some of my critical software needs the latest OS to run, or will shortly. If it weren’t for that, I probably would have waited another year or two to upgrade.

FullyFunctional 4y ago
It took me too long to understand this, but I'll toss in one exception to your rule: storage (short term and long term). I've found that it's frequently useful and economical to upgrade long term storage; eg. the HDs/SSDs until recently were on a price curve such that you were better off postponing buying more until you needed it. And quite a few of my systems have gotten a RAM bump midlife (where prices had come down). Alas, as more as more systems now come with soldered down memory, I usually max it out for longevity.
Moto7451 4y ago
That 2013 Mac Pro can actually keep on chugging with the latest OS care of OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Thankfully Apple doesn’t seem too inclined to force these into e-waste/retro computing.

tom_ 4y ago

You could get similar products for the non-PC compatible computers that were popular in the UK, especially during the late 80s/early 90s period when PC software was worth having but the hardware was still comparatively expensive. - Amiga: http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2386sx http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2386sx - Atari ST: https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv4n12/pcditto2.html https://www.atarimagazines.com/startv4n12/pcditto2.html - Acorn Archimedes: https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/32bit_UpgradesA2G/Aleph1_PC_minipodule.html https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/32bit_UpgradesA2... - BBC Micro: https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/Master512.html https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/Master... I used Amiga and Archimedes PC cards in the 90s - couldn't tell you which ones - and have seen a BBC Master 512 in use. I admit I've never actually seen an ST hardware emulator though. (I used the software-based pc ditto on an ST in the 90s, which did a decent job of being a IBM XT, albeit one running at about 1 MHz. But I'm sure it would have run very nicely on a Falcon or TT030.)

karmakaze 4y ago

Probably after the era of PC/XT upgrades, the 386SLC had the clock speeds and on-die cache that made close to the DX. I really enjoyed my time developing on OS/2 1.2 and later 1.3 with the IBM intern-developed VESA SVGA driver. It was multitasking that really worked. My first PC was a clone 386DX with socketed cache chips, 8MB RAM, and 11 MHz overclocked ISA bus to make the video updates faster. My next PC was a PS/2 Model 77 running OS/2 (and later Win NT). It was so hard finding an MCA SoundBlaster-compatible card (by Piper Research) so I could play Doom.

classichasclass 4y ago

Mac CPU upgrades were a big market, though. In the 68K era you had things like Daystar cards and the Radius Rocket, and Apple themselves made a PPC 601 card. Sonnet even made them for allegedly unupgradeable machines, like the 7200 G3 upgrade that took over a PCI slot. The extension shunted everything to the CPU on the card and disabled the 601 soldered to the board.

skissane 4y ago

> OS/2 1.x was pretty much pointless anyway It was the base for LAN Manager, IBM/Microsoft’s answer to Netware. Never anywhere near as popular as Netware, but some people used it. OS/2 1.x Extended Edition also had some mainframe integration bits (Communications Manager). Useful stuff if you needed to talk to an IBM mainframe.