Adding the NE2000 to my Compaq 486

[@ChefEarthenware]

What you did in this video, I used to do for a living over 30 years ago. I also did training courses and a qualification in Novell Netware. The expectation at the time was that Novell was going to rule the PC networking market with its IPX protocol. This didn't come to pass as MicroSoft took over with its own networking software. My favourite product of the time was "LAN In A Can", which was a small bucket with network card, coaxial network cable and a disk with drivers. It was a wild time :)

[@gaxiola1701]

I was in college in the early 1990s and my school installed ethernet drops in all the dorm rooms over one summer. I forget if it was 1992 or 1993 but the timing was great for the installation as NE2000 clone cards were dropping in price. I got one for under $100 which had software configured IRQ and address settings. After relatively painless setup of Trumpet Winsock, I had access to email, news and remote terminals from my room. NE2000 becoming a de facto standard was a real game changer.

[@JapanPop]

I came back to uni after my first summer, and they had wired the entire campus for Ethernet. I had a work-study installing campus NE2000 adapters in student PCs when I came back. I can still remember the IRQ, DMA, and port settings for all the ISA stack. I still remember the DNS settings. The brain is so amazing what it chooses not to forget 😂

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

Hey everyone! Happy to be back! We're here once again taking comments, suggestions, praise and criticism. Hope to hear from you! We definitely think the NAS will be able to handle the blistering speeds of the 486. I am currently working on asking the boss to ask our development team to implement the SMB options from the last video into the UI in a secure way for those that may want to use their NAS in a retro environment. Wish me luck!

[@HPad2]

Love your NAS products! I don't use mine with retro hardware as much as I like. But going on 2 years so far with mine. Starting to outgrow the 4 bays though 😂

[@nickwallette6201]

BNC Ethernet connector when? haha ;-D

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@@HPad2 Thank you so much for your support! We do offer expansion options too and in the future, the old NAS can be used to keep the retro computers happy while it remains synced to the new NAS as an extra backup.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@@nickwallette6201 Hehe I wish! But the problem is, the SoCs we use don't even have an LPC bus if I recall correctly and this might mean that @therasteri might not be able to hack an ISA slot into the NAS. :(

[@nickwallette6201]

@@ASUSTOR_YT Haha .. oh I know. That was tongue-in-cheek. :-) No worries - there are Ethernet bridges for the coax fans. Keep up the good work over there.

[@jaco1982za]

Watching you flip through that manual I could actually smell it 😊

[@g4z-kb7ct]

21:12 On my 486 I use a 14500 Li-ion battery. Not many people know about these. It's 3.7V and is the exact same size as a single AA. These can also be used to replace 2xAA batteries in a TV remote with one single 14500. Just add a wire to route the 2nd battery bay to the end of the 14500. Since it's a Li-ion it's rechargeable so no more having to buy batteries and these last many years. When fully charged the voltage is around 4.1-4.2V. I have one in my gas cooktop which is used to make the spark that lights the gas. With a single AA it would take 20-30 seconds then eventually make a spark. With the 14500 it fires immediately in 1 second. It's been in there for 2 years and still measures 3.6V

[@UpLateGeek]

You'd think the fact that I'm a network engineer who's very much into retro computers, I would be keen to try all this networking out, but honestly watching you do it makes me very much glad I don't have to deal with this stuff anymore!

[@TheInternetHelpdeskPlays]

I loved working with NE2000s, they just always worked in any box I put them in, easy to configure and reliable.

[@screamengine]

Hint: On some of those old compaqs the VGA jack is proprietary in that a pin hole is blocked. Get a tiny drill bit and drill out the blank to accommodate the pin. DON'T DRILL TO DEEP! Just enough to clear the pin.

[@jirkazima1126]

Is this inherited from the original IBM VGA?

[@mbwoods2001]

Or better yet, break the pin of the plug from the monitor since it does nothing so that it fits all pc's including the ones with a blanked out hole in the socket. I did this to mine! Double check to see which pin to remove.

[@Kaio7]

It would be amazing if you could show Steve Gibson's Spinrite refreshing/fixing all the hard drives in your videos, as well as the scandisk utility. Spinrite gives them new life, after ~40 years in service 😅

[@kevinwetsch5209]

I miss my old 486. Good times...

[@illegalsmirf]

'good' times LOL!

[@nickwallette6201]

@@illegalsmirf Why are you hate-watching a retro PC channel?

[@fnjesusfreak]

Yeah, sometimes I wish I still had my old 486DX5/133 tower (a woodgrain 486 before LGR's!).

[@i80386sx]

I had the worst luck with those 240ish MB Quantum ProDrives that came with these Compaqs. As for the CMOS battery replacement, you pretty much have it spot on. Compaq's official replacement is a 4.5V alkaline.

[@retinaquester]

Quatum and the later Quatum bigfoot were the drives to avoid. We used Wester digital caviar (210 and 420md IDE drives) they went pretty gooed. Big sticker on the box "This PC contains an IDE harddrive that may not be low-level formatted like from the BIOS, if so waranty is void!"

[@tux9656]

Good stuff! Brings back memories of my teenage years tinkering with computers. I had a Compaq with a Pentium I and a Intel 8/16 LAN adapter connected to a eMachines with a K6-2 and a NE200 compatible. I'd love to see you set up a server with a old BSD, Linux distro, Windows NT, or Netware and get a NCP server running over IPX/SPX with that Compaq 486 as a client machine.

[@RobReynolds]

There was a thing back in the day where some network card and network switch combinations didn't work properly. So might not be the DHCP that's failing, but the card might not be able to auto negotiate the network speed with the switch in time for DHCP to work. Always a black art troubleshooting networking

[@Fastbikkel]

Even though i appreciate the history and my personal experience with 90's PC's, i still don't miss them much. Many things have improved over time when it comes to personal use, especially with support for certain hard/software. On the business side things have certainly gotten more complex, in terms of handling data.

[@RETROMachines]

Best Network Card ever. Easy to install a go...

[@owenmorgan857]

Brings back so many memories, love these reto videos

[@KayakTN]

I have a similar Compaq. I didn't think to look for an external battery connection. The old coin cell battery is soldered to the motherboard.

[@i80386sx]

There's 3 variants of the 486 board for this system. The label on the inside of the machine will tell you where it goes provided your board is provisioned for an external battery.

[@FrederickMarcoux]

OMFG Those Belkin routers 😂😂😂😂😂 brings me back!

[@PaulinesPastimes]

That was so interesting although trying to keep up with your knowledge is a bit of an effort 😄 It's a really nice little desktop 486 too. I always find your videos interesting and informative.

[@molivil]

@RetroSpector78: Did you move the system while it was copying files? The errors seem oddly localized to one area.

[@stonent]

My first card was a Novel Eagle 2100 (NE2100) that came in a kit for Novel Personal Netware that let you create a peer to peer network between computers. Unfortunately the NE2100 didn't have as good support as the NE2000 card.

[@edsiefker1301]

It would be great if you did a memory management tutorial.

[@MotownBatman]

Wahoo! I've recently acquired a NAS from a buddy whos office upgraded. I need to get 4x 4TB drives for it still

[@TzOk]

VGA uses one of the pins in the monitor plug to detect if you have a color or mono monitor. It seems you have a broken VGA plug/cable.

[@xsc1000]

The cable would be probably OK. Only the VGA changed. Old VGA card is looking for ID0 pin connected to ground, but this pin is now not connected and other ID pins are used by I2C to communicate between videocard and monitor.

[@DataDashy]

Why not COAX RG58 bro

[@NexXxus86]

That ProLinear doesn't have an option for L2 cache or does it? I don't see a connector on the board.

[@offrails]

Back in the 1990s, computer networks had one and only one purpose - Doom Deathmatches.

[@idahofur]

Before plug it in and play around with it until it works. I always set those to base 300 or 320 with irq 5. :p Can't remember dma 1 or 3

[@gabrielholmossimoes8550]

👏🏻

[@fra4455]

Great video✌

[@airfixer9461]

Great job 👍

[@systemchris]

Even though this is on ms dos.... Ms maintained the same layout all the way through to windows 10 on the network stack menus

[@miked4377]

nice job

[@formatter]

Meine Respektierung🙏

[@Shankaporomous]

Do you guys don’t actually use this systems for daily use? I hope not,

[@Aeduo]

That's the most complicated, populated Ethernet card without coax or aui that I've seen.

[@jayhollowayii2]

Amazing video man love retro technology young wipper snappers have it so easy these days with their 4090 tis lol 😆

[@BenState]

and punctuation.

[@jayhollowayii2]

@@BenState it’s the internet you don’t need that lol 😝

[@illegalsmirf]

LOL how many hours did you spend hitting that r key? I absolutely hated tech of this era - manual IRQ, jumpers, unhelpful failure messages, slow networks, unreliable and buggy DOS itself - total and utter garbage. Thank G-d tech took off and improved when it did.

[@JustinFrost302]

I need that pc to run windows 95

[@aaaalex1994]

That's why I simply refuse to use old hard drives on my retro machines; I don't want something that I know is going to fail sooner or later... Also, all my IDE hard drives except for one (my 20 GB one) are dead, so...

[@nickwallette6201]

Bah. If you're using a retro computer at all, _the entire thing_ is on borrowed time.

[@kaleyaron1019]

Damm ne2000 clone i owned have i bnc conector too and i still ha i old ro 10/100 router with one bnc connector somewhere😊😊😊😊😊

[@andreyawsarkisoff8844]

Отлично! А я всё тоже самое проделывал на 286 машине. Секс был незабываемый 😂😅

[@nneeerrrd]

Ruski get out of Ukraine

[@evilborg]

Compaq was a junky computer from the get go... I owned 1 for a month and trashed it since I couldn't get my money back.