Retro Acerpower 450DP 486 DX2-66 - Introduction, installing a network card and benchmarking

[@jonchapman6821]

13:08 MANY optical drives from back then had problems with, or flat out could not read burned discs. You have to remember that CD-R’s were not commonplace until 1998/99 so the early drives were not equipped to handle them. The same thing happened with DVD’s, many of the early players couldn’t read recordable discs. Edit: I remember that a way to help them read recordable media was to burn the disc as slow as possible.

[@fwingebritson]

Nothing gave a person that sinking feeling of seeing "buffer underrun" on a cd-r that cost $2.50 or more. Which made any kind of success feel euphoric and try again.

[@jonchapman6821]

@@fwingebritson that was the stuff of nightmares 😫

[@fwingebritson]

@@jonchapman6821 Yes it was

[@zarkeh3013]

annnd, that's why my Father's 486 has a dvd drive. a slot-load one even, lol! makes the "Leading Edge" seem even more so! ... heh

[@jonchapman6821]

@@zarkeh3013 Era incorrect, but I bet it doesn’t have a problem reading discs 👍🏻

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

486 in all it’s desktop glory ❤

[@alancoales7057]

Thanks for this video. I picked up a similar AcerPower from dump - probably 20 years ago. Ran fine once RTC cell replaced. I had problems installing CD drive as second drive to the (single) motherboard IDE connector whatever combinations of master/slave jumpers I tried. Eventually succeeded by using a sound card with additional IDE channel. Thanks for link to PhilComputerLab for Dos networking.

[@KJohansson]

Where i worked circa 1992-1993 we sold these AcerPower workstations, they came as barebones and we chugged in whatever cpu, ram or hard drive the customer wanted. Excellent for office use and as novell netware 2.x servers with ne2000 (i think..) cards ,but with the feets moved so they where towers. I remember them as good value for the price. The tag should pop off if you press on one side and we put sx, dx or dp on depending on what cpu we had installed.

[@supermasterPIK]

There was a family Acer PAC 150 model?

[@one7ouch]

i'm looking for acerpower 486/33 but... it's very hard...

[@tegarz]

I had this one too, but with Cirrus Logic VGA card version. It had Windows 3.11 installed. One day my parents had ordered someone to install Windows 95 and it ran very slowly after that. What awseome with the casing was it can be configured into tower mode.

[@C4nn15]

I bought an AM486-DX266 from some computer shop around the end of 1993 beginning of 1994 or so. I had a massive 4megs of RAM as well :-(. Was expensive being into PCs at age 11/12.

[@JiiLehto]

My first PC was this :)

[@retropcdurham]

Great system setup!

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

Very nice

[@TimonSuricata]

i use to have one of these, upgraded it to dx4 100mhz overdrive, wish i could remember what i did with it, i loved it

[@ohsoretro5612]

Nice! Pity you dont have it anymore. We had these in the computer lab in high school. I didnt think much of them then, but with age I come to appreciate them more. This one also has a dx4100 cpu in it at the moment, but I will probably go back to the dx2 66 just for originality's sake..

[@weskirkland5850]

Back in the day my dad bought one of these used that was a year old. Then he bought me DOOM for it. I played on that thing for so many hours.

[@ComputersAndRetro]

😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

[@FelipeCarvalhoSinging]

Hi, I think I have the sound card that came with these computers, can you confirm if its a media vision Pro Audio Wavetable? If so, would you have it's drivers?

[@DxDeksor]

Hi ! Yes the onboard video chip uses the RAM nearby it. By the look of it, you must have 1 or 2MB populated AMD equivalent of intel's 486 aren't really faster on their own. A AMD DX2-66 will perform exactly the same as a intel DX2-66 and it should be just as compatible. They're exact clones. Now they've also made faster chips like the DX-40, the DX4-120 and the 5x86 133 and 150 which are indeed faster, but only because they have a higher clockspeed.

[@warrax111]

Hi, can you advice me, if 5x86 133 can be downclocked to 2x multiplier somehow, to simulate DX2-66 mhz ? I mean 33 FSB x 2. Or lowest I can get is to use 25 Mhz FSB and 3x multi, so 75 Mhz?

[@DxDeksor]

@@warrax111 no it can't. It's either 3x or 4x.

[@warrax111]

@@DxDeksor Thank you. I was hoping for some mod, or "hidden " configuration. So to have full cover of DX2-66 DX4-100 and 133, I need to have 2 processors? DX2-66 and x-133, or DX4-100 (can be set to 66) and x-133.

[@DxDeksor]

@@warrax111 yep

[@chekchow]

i still remember it come with encarta cds, 3.25" floppy disk drive

[@joseb.7168]

This pc was my 486 in 1995. 407 MB HDD.

[@JE-wd4lu]

I'm not that familiar with this particular PC, but the lower performance can be attributable to your graphics card (as evident from the Landmark graphics test). The onboard graphics, nonetheless, does appear to be 32-bit (VESA Local Bus), as I've never seen a 16-bit VGA graphics card achieving numbers higher than around 3800 chr/ms. If there is some type of CMOS setup, then you can try to lower the wait states to see if you can increase your graphics card performance. In some cases, there were also jumpers on the motherboard, but for that you will probably need to obtain the motherboard schematics (jumper settings). Have a look at the back to see what is the actual factory model number printed as this might sometimes differ to the brand model number printed in the front. Also have a look at this website: arvutimuuseum.ee/th99/#1. From what can I see, there appears to be one 32-bit VESA Local Bus slot as well as some PCI slots, which does offer you some upgrade, but you will then probably have to disable the onboard graphics (either via a jumper or within the CMOS setup). Another utility that you can try out is Navrátil Software System Information (NSSI) - www.navsoft.cz/products.htm

[@AsurmenHandOfAsur]

Try some anti-corrosion oil spray on the ide pins and plug an ide cable in and out to polish the contacts. It may or may not work worth a try! I use INOX with Lanolin but anything should be better than nothing.

[@mikebeutler84]

The primary factors affecting your performance are memory and cache timings. Typically the brand name computers do not expose those options to keep everything reliable, but that leaves significant performance on the table. You have a VLB slot so you could upgrade the graphics and disable onboard for a noticeable boost. A DX4 overdrive would make most games smooth as butter, but you'll always be crippled by the safe cache and ram timing. I have a Packard Bell and Compaq in the same boat. They're fun computers but have no performance options and suffer badly in benchmarks.

[@stuartkinnear2478]

Nice hat.

[@angieandretti]

What I'd like to see - if you have one - install a Voodoo1 or 2 and try GLQuake. Of course you'd have to also install Win95 to run it, but I'd really like to see what this particular CPU can do in GLQuake with a 3Dfx card backing it up. I wanted to try it myself, but my 486DX2-66 machine has nothing but ISA expansion slots.

[@ohsoretro5612]

That would be an interesting experiment for sure, thanks for the suggestion! I also have a 486 133mhz cpu which might stand a better chance of getting playable FPS in Quake, but I wouldnt hold out much hope for Quake on a 486 of any kind.. I remember trying to run it when it came out on my 486 dx4 100 and it was miserable.. but the voodoo might help..

[@jamesjan]

450DP probably meant it originally shipped with a 486DX2 50 chip and has PCI. I have an AcerMate 433 that looks exactly like this but comes with a 486DX 33. Upgraded it to a dx2-66, 128KB of L2 cache and extra 512k vram getting it up to 1MB. Pity I never got the DP model. Having PCI makes adding upgrades like a NIC or faster graphics so much easier.

[@mixcool]

This is the computer of my childhood but the information in internet it's almost doesn't exist about this model, my first computer my mom get it from her job they when the company change to a new win 98 pc

[@one7ouch]

I'm looking for this model - but it's hard

[@naifaltamimi2885]

I would move those 3.5" disks away from the speakers.

[@one7ouch]

I'd like to buy this PC... if anyone sells it you can write to me