Old 486 computer & external CD reader advice needed
Steven Ringwald
asric at asric.com
Wed Feb 1 00:23:35 UTC 2006
On Tue, 2006-01-31 at 16:17 -0500, Thomas Taylor wrote:
> Hi All:
>
> I've got an old 486 computer (Dolch PAC). It's what was called a
> semi-portable computer - requires AC power. It's housed in a ruggedized case
> and the only media it can use is a built-in floppy drive. It has two serial
> ports (mouse is on one) and a parallel port. It also has a network port,
> supposedly 10 MHz, but I haven't been able to get it working. The bus
> structure is ISA with room for two cards.
>
> It currently has Windbloze 95 on it. I would like to replace that with FC4
> but don't have a way to do it currently. I was thinking of getting one of
> the CD-ROM external devices that uses the parallel port for communication
> (called a backpack originally). There are a couple of these on ebay but I'm
> not sure if it would work as the BIOS doesn't allow booting from anything
> except the floppy or hard drive.
>
> Anyone got a suggestion?
If it has a working floppy drive, there are PXE boot images out there
that *might* work...
Another option would be to remove the hard-drive, install it on a
*similar* machine (486/isa) and then put the drive back into the Dolch.
I have several of the 586 versions of this box, and had to do something
like that when the built-in CD-R failed on one.
Steve
--
I am having the time of my life, but I would rather be whisting in the
dark.
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