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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

We run into a lot of computers with specialized board/case combinations 
including Compaq, Packard Bell, HP, and AT&T, with this daughter-board 
arrangement for plugging in cards.  It is probably cheaper to build them 
this way than to assemble with cards and also makes the computer thinner.

Is this desktop 386 in any way superior to a 386 laptop computer apart 
from that expansion slots?  You can often plug in an external keyboard 
and/or monitor into a laptop to get the same effect in even less space 
than a desktop, and we have a 386 with 5MB RAM which you could play with 
instead if you do not mind the lack of backlighting (or want to invest in 
a new bulb and also CMOS battery).  We are strongly considering recycling 
even the laptops if they are older than a 486, tho they still work fine 
for DOS.

A suggested use for the 386 with 4MB RAM is to run DOS browsers.  Lynx 
with lxpic as a viewer runs in 3MB RAM -- not sure if your video is enough 
for running lxpic though.  Arachne if you delete the icons runs at a crawl 
but it will dial, and let you ftp, telnet, and send mail.  Nettamer ditto. 
You can put in an internal modem, sound card, and network card (ISA).

Have you tried playing with minix?  The 386 version I think called for 3MB 
RAM and 20MB hard drive.

I ran Newdeal on a 386 with 8MB RAM but 1MB is theoretically enough.  They 
used to have a downloadable trial version.  Office Suite with browser etc.
GEOS-based.

Wordperfect for DOS.  Win3.1.  We have a VGA CAD program for DOS that runs 
even in mono VGA.



> 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
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keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org