Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Fri, 5 Nov 2004, sindi keesan wrote:

> James, is this onboard video?  If not, do you want a 1MB video card?
> It will at least give you higher resolution and more colors (not that
> linux will run any faster that way).

Yes, onboard.  I believe I already have one or more 1MB ISA video cards
tucked away somewhere in storage.  Then, there's the question of whether
it would even make any difference: your post seems to indicate negatively
on that question.  So, I think I'll have to decline your offer--but thanks
for making it.

> > Could be interesting, but we are probably flogging a
> > dead horse.  If I had your 386sx, I'd rip out the
> > motherboard and stick in one of my spare 486 boards.
> > But even then most people would consider it very,
> > very slow (but it would be a really fine Xterminal).

Yes, I've already thought of that.  And I do have old motherboards out the
bahooty as they say--well, some unsophisticated types with a rather poor
grasp of the technical nature of the phenomena we're discussing would say
it that way, anyhow.  Their inexpertise aside, I haven't run across a
board yet that would work.  This machine must have been really futuristic
in its day.  It's a Compudyne, a really tiny case.  It's got a ps2
keyboard plug and onboard video.  Those two features must have been really
unusual in the 386 era.  The main problem logistically here--apart from
the unlikelihood that a ps2 keyboard plug and onboard video plug on
another board would just happen to end up in the right spots--is that,
owing to space constraints, this board has a single expansion slot into
which a specialized riser board fits.  The riser board, in turn, can take
up to 3 ISA cards (one on one side, two on the opposite side), which
actually end up oriented parallel with the mobo.  So, not just any
mobo--in fact, no mobo I've ever seen--is going to work.  This thing might
be a collector's item:  I've never seen anything like it myself.  Final
statement?  I'm sort of stuck with it as it is.  Looks so nifty and is so
small, I'd really like to do something with it.  But it may end up being
too impractical to be useful for anything.

James