Found a Dolch Pac 486 for sale... personally not interested though.

Jimi14 · 03 Mar 2015, 18:53

I was browsing through a local buy/sell site today and came upon this (rare?) thing.

: 90-talare-4475235.jpg (39.67 KiB) Viewed 5499 times

Should come with blue Cherries and PS/2 connection as far as i can tell, but since he probably wants to sell the whole computer, i'am not really that interested. So i thought i share it with somebody here who might be.

Link:
https://citiboard.se/90-talare,2243439/#

guk · 03 Mar 2015, 18:59

That's like 30€? You totally should get it, imho. :p

Findecanor · 03 Mar 2015, 19:02

I have sent a PM on the site. I might call him as well.

Edit: Talking with him now. I am the buyer. I'm picking it up tomorrow.

scottc · 03 Mar 2015, 19:39

I'll take the keyboard off your hands if you don't want it! G80-1800s are my favourite.

Jimi14 · 03 Mar 2015, 19:45

guk wrote: ↑That's like 30€? You totally should get it, imho. :p

Maybe, but since i also practically live at the other end of the country, it would probably been way more trouble than its worth.

Findecanor · 04 Mar 2015, 21:02

I picked it up today. It turned out that the seller and his wife are the parents of a former work-mate, so I stayed to chat a bit.
The seller would have got it recycled if it hadn't been sold.

Neither the keyboard or the machine looks as good as my older Dolch keyboards, but that could be just the exterior. I'll open them up tomorrow and see. Hmm.. I wonder if I should do something with the machine this time.

SL89 · 04 Mar 2015, 21:20

scottc wrote:I'll take the keyboard off your hands if you don't want it! G80-1800s are my favourite.

Are you doing there leeku tx1800 group buy

And congrats to fidecanor! Lots of dolchy goodness.

scottc · 04 Mar 2015, 21:27

Nah, it was a bit expensive for my tastes! I'd rather get an aluminium TKL for that price. Looks incredible, though.

Mal-2 · 05 Mar 2015, 02:30

Findecanor wrote: ↑ Hmm.. I wonder if I should do something with the machine this time.

These are usually a cut-down AT form factor inside, right? So in theory you should be able to get some sort of cut-down ATX board in there, or Micro-ITX, or something. Whether that's worth it or not is another matter entirely. Too bad that LCD will only speak analog, or it'd be pretty simple to throw an RPi in there.

SL89 · 05 Mar 2015, 02:57

Take out the screen and put in an lcd

Findecanor · 05 Mar 2015, 04:41

It is a monochrome LCD with a special ISA graphics card. A guy at the Swedish "Elektronikforumet" board is working on interfacing a ISA VGA card to a microcontroller - maybe you could use his results to write a driver for Raspbian that would interface using the GPIO pins.
However, I would be more interested in putting a mini-ITX with a nice CPU in there.

Compgeke · 05 Mar 2015, 07:51

My PAC 486 is a colour LCD, however mine's also a 486 DX4. Has a standard Baby AT board inside and whatnot, even the PSU is standard AT with the exception that it's smaller than usual.

Pics of mine:
http://imgur.com/a/c4inz

Mal-2 · 05 Mar 2015, 08:56

If you want to swap out the power supply for a standard (though smaller) ATX unit, one of the keywords I've found useful in locating them is "eMachine", a brand that used such power supplies extensively.

Good luck, it's kinda fun to show up somewhere with a vintage luggable and have it run like the current generation machine it really is.

ramnes · 05 Mar 2015, 10:27

I feel like Dolch is a must-have that I don't have.

Findecanor · 05 Mar 2015, 19:02

Compgeke wrote: ↑Has a standard Baby AT board inside and whatnot, even the PSU is standard AT with the exception that it's smaller than usual.

Yep. standard Baby-AT in mine too, located right behind the screen. No riser-card for the card slots.
The PSU is almost AT/ATX-sized but shorter (10.5 cm) and with the airflow sideways. Maybe it is a regular AT design inside where only the fan has been relocated and with different mounting holes.

Have you been able to disassemble yours so you could get to the screen? I don't know how to safely remove the plastic caps over the ends of he carrying handle so that I could get to the screws there - which also holds the metal chassis to the plastic case.
I would like to give it a throrough cleaning. Something has leaked inside and made a mess and dried - maybe a capacitor in the PSU or a battery.

Mal-2 wrote: ↑If you want to swap out the power supply for a standard (though smaller) ATX unit, one of the keywords I've found useful in locating them is "eMachine", a brand that used such power supplies extensively.

A SFX form factor power supply should fit in its place with room to spare but the case was not designed for the outlet to be next to the power switch and plug so the PSU would have to be modified if it is going to be mounted in the same spot.

scottc · 05 Mar 2015, 19:04

I remember that Tinnie was doing a similar mod to his Dolch computer. It was some specific motherboard form factor (commonly used for embedded systems) that's apparently quite expensive. I don't remember specifics about it, unfortunately.

Compgeke · 06 Mar 2015, 00:32

Findecanor wrote: ↑[Have you been able to disassemble yours so you could get to the screen? I don't know how to safely remove the plastic caps over the ends of he carrying handle so that I could get to the screws there - which also holds the metal chassis to the plastic case.

I haven't, sorry. Never had any reason to being as mine's complete and original.

Findecanor · 10 Mar 2015, 10:30

The seller came over yesterday with some more Dolch stuff he found in his garage:
The carrying bag, and some original diskettes.

: dolchbag.jpg (64.39 KiB) Viewed 5133 times

Findecanor · 11 Apr 2015, 20:51

I just wanted to show what a leaky Li-ion battery can do to an aluminium chassis:

: dolchchassi.jpg (111.15 KiB) Viewed 5010 times

The scratch marks are mine. I sanded it flush and dremelled out most of the residue with a wire-brush. I am filling this with some epoxy, reinforced with microfibres.

Mal-2 · 12 Apr 2015, 00:47

Findecanor wrote: ↑I just wanted to show what a leaky Li-ion battery can do to an aluminium chassis:

It could have been worse. Li-Ion failures are frequently... catastrophic. At least the machine is still there. So is your house.

ramnes · 12 Apr 2015, 13:34

Impressive, still. That could be Mac Gyver trick to open metal doors!

Compgeke · 13 Apr 2015, 15:00

Are you sure it's not a NiCd battery? Almost every old PC system with a leaky battery was the rechargable NiCd barrel battery.

robo · 15 Apr 2015, 18:52

Compgeke wrote: ↑Are you sure it's not a NiCd battery? Almost every old PC system with a leaky battery was the rechargable NiCd barrel battery.

It's actually probably a lead-acid battery, which explains the corrosive leak. Definitely not lithium-ion (those came into use in the 2000's), and even NiCd may be too new. The Macintosh Portable from '89 or so definitely had a lead-acid battery.

bhtooefr · 15 Apr 2015, 18:55

Lithium primary or NiCd are the common batteries for CMOS settings backup applications, and both can leak and do damage.

Findecanor · 15 Apr 2015, 21:37

I have thrown it away for recycling already so I can't check again that it wasn't Li-Ion, but I think that it was and that the manufacturer was Israeli.
Li-Ion was introduced on the market in the 1990s but they didn't have particularly good capacity until the early 2000s. Well, this battery wasn't particularly small: about the size of two small smartphones stacked together, with a cable and a 2-pin connector.

jakkul · 20 Apr 2015, 10:14

This machine would be the sweetest thing to play old dos games. 486 for DOS4GW titles was blazing fast. All the lucasarts titles, first UFO, flashback, warcraft 1...

You might want to try putting a LAN card in that, trying some TCP/IP on DOS, than telnet onto some local linux box and use a text browser to visit deskthority.net on that thing.