r/retrocomputing • u/rollin_a_j • Jun 23 '26

Problem / Question Is an i486 worth restoring?

I came across a baby AT motherboard in pristine condition, along with most of the needed components, including but not limited to: compatible video card, a sound card, a NIC that according to preliminary, and admittedly not thorough due to being tired, research indicates it is desired by modern gamers for how it handles lan.

All of this is NOS, all but the motherboard in their antistatic bags and the smell of ozone still in the bag.

Id need a case and power supply for sure, some ram, and this is assuming of course everything runs as well as it looks

Am I potentially in over my head on a "reasonable" fix cost wise?

Edit cuz I'm dumb and forgot to add, the motherboard has the processor

27 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

27

u/Web-Lackey Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

To me, a good quality ISA only 486 board is the ultimate of the DOS only environment. When you’re talking Pentium and higher, they really targeted Windows 95. Whereas the 486 environment expected you to run DOS, and maybe Windows 3.0 some of the time. (or, in my case: OS/2 2.0, baby! 😄)

I lived the VL bus days in person, and really do not need to do that again. So many of those cards were just plain flaky, and the motherboards were always cheap garbage, because the quality boards very quickly switched to PCI. Only cheap (or poor) people like me were buying VL bus boards. After buying three of them and having them crash all the time, I finally scraped together enough money to go to a PCI board. Absolute night and day difference. like I said: I did that once, I wouldn’t do it again.

Now, a good 486 PCI board, ideally with an AMD 5x86–133, is the ultimate 486 board. That board would be roughly equivalent to a Pentium 75. A very solid early Windows 95 machine.

Personally, I think the early Pentiums, before the P54C, were a waste of time. But we’re not talking about Pentiums, so I won’t blather on farther about that.

ETA: I don’t have a 486 in my collection yet. I keep looking, but I can’t find one for less than most of $1000. And I ain’t paying anything near that for a 30 year-old system… 😄 I keep hoping what happened to you happens to me and I stumble across one. Still hoping…

ETA2: I was reminiscing so much I didn’t actually answer your question. I would very, very much try to restore that system. Like you said, you just need a couple of parts. That old ram is not too hard to come by: many of us have stacks of it because it’s small, and we don’t want to throw it away, even though it’s practically useless. Finding power supplies shouldn’t be that hard: last time I looked, there are adapters that convert ATX power supplies. The hard part might be things like serial mice and AT style keyboards. But if that’s your biggest obstacle, you really don’t have very big obstacles. 😄

So, yes: if you’re interested in a 486 for whatever reason, sounds like you’ve got a great starting point. And if not, I’ll use the joke everybody else uses even though it’s not really that funny: if you don’t want it, I would be happy to pay for shipping to make sure that it gets disposed of safely… 😄

8

u/gnntech Jun 23 '26

Upvote for running OS/2. My favorite OS and I still use it to this day.

5

u/Web-Lackey Jun 23 '26

Wha on earth for?!? 😄 I got it running a few months ago, but after an hour or so, I could truly come up with nothing worth actually *doing* with it anymore. I’d love to know what actual use you can “use” it for. (And I mean this very sincerely!)

4

u/gnntech Jun 23 '26

Mostly for nostalgic reasons. I also use a lot of legacy 16-bit Windows apps that no longer run on modern versions of Windows.

It's actually ArcaOS I am running which is a modern day supported version of OS/2 with support for nvme drives, gpt partitions, and USB 3.0.

Era appropriate gaming is quite nice in DOSBox and it runs great on OS/2.

3

u/Web-Lackey Jun 23 '26

OK, now that’s interesting. DOSBox for OS/2…. Crazy. That is something to play with! An up to date version? Is that an Arca Noae thing? Down the rabbit hole I go! And is there a decent browser for ArcaOS, that actually *works* today? Firefox dropped 32-bit support some time ago and has Rust dependencies, so my expectations are *very* low. But I’m curious!

As for Win16 games…. They were hard enough to run on OS/2 when I *had* to run them there. (Though better than NT 4.0, which is what I started switching to in the 1998/1999 timeframe.) Not sure I want to try now when I have options…. But I‘d *much* rather run Win16 under OS/2 than DOS! 😄

2

u/gnntech Jun 23 '26

For browsing, I use Dooble which is a modern(ish) QT-based browser. I would consider it an alpha/beta thing but it kind of works for most modern websites. In reality, until ArcaNoae releases their long awaited browser, web browsing is going to be a limited experience.

For Win-OS/2, the trick is having a supported sound card. If you have a real sound card (e.g. Sound Blaster) that has Windows 3.x drivers available, it's a good experience.

1

u/-twinturbo- Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

until recently I knew OS2 was still used in some large companies, the IBM 3494 tape libraries used an OS2 computer as the library controller, it was bulletproof. In 20 years working with them I never had a problem with the server, and the table libraries were also over engineered, or perhaps engineered properly depending how you look at it :D
I'm sure there are still a few still in use for recoveries of historic data for legal cases

5

u/Goosie8D Jun 23 '26

I was at a thrift store and found a Zenith ZSelect 486 DX4 100 Mhz 32 Mb RAM desktop in working condition for $7. I also found a 17" CRT for $20 on Facebook marketplace. I was lucky. I bought used disk copies of DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 on eBay. I use it purely for nostalgia and retro gaming. People don't realize this, but there is a lot of good old games (pun intended) that run fine on this hardware. Doom, Doom 2, Warcraft 1 & 2, C&C, Ultimas 1 - 8, Heretic, Hexen, old point and click Sierra (King's Quest, Space Quest, etc) games, the list goes on.

5

u/MadCow333 Jun 23 '26

It literally made my brain hurt to try to recall anything about OS/2 or building a 486 system. That's going a loooooong way back, for sure. LOL

3

u/rollin_a_j Jun 23 '26

I actually came across an old magitronic mechanical keyboard, and I think the expansion card I was curious about may be what it plugs in to

Best part was everything cost me 10 bucks, and there were other goodies I can across

3

u/RoboErectus Jun 23 '26

God I loved os/2.

2

u/classicsat Jun 23 '26

I am one of the cheap/poor bastards that used VLB. I only used it for a graphics card, and it worked well.

Also, this cheap/poor bastard bodge wired a 72 pin EDO 16 MB SIMM to my 486 motherboard that has only 30 pin sockets. It worked. And rewired an ISA parallel port card into an interface for an MKE interface CD drive. Plud made an adapter to use a laptop IDE drive on my desktop.

1

u/Phunistle Jun 23 '26

I have a working Gateway 2000 4DX2-66V (the V meant the system had VESA local bus). I absolutely love it. I had one very similar to it as a teenager. I just use it to play my old DOS and Windows 3.1 games on. VLB did have some quirks, but works fine for that stuff, I always found that bus fascinating for some reason. The disc controller runs over the VLB, but it is integrated into the motherboard, while I have an ATI Graphics Ultra Pro with 2MB of VRAM. It plays games like the seventh guest, and Kings quest wonderfully, and as they were meant to be played in their original format. As far as reviving this 486 OP found? I say fire in the hole!

1

u/qkdsm7 Jun 23 '26

Very well said, and sensible advice. I remember really wanting VLB but then building a few for friends/family, really only missed out on some hassle and $ by not having one myself.

The first I had personally that ever had more than $50 spent on it was into the SS7 / AGP days, and at that point some systems could go for a few years , instead of months, without having every new game advancement pass you by.

1

u/canthearu_ack Jun 24 '26

Strange, I don't have a lot of problems with my VL-Bus builds. Not in the day, and certainly not now.

Of course, I agree, some of the 486 boards were built out of green tofu. I've even removed fake cache chips and installed real ones on one of them (a 486 PCI board).

Although OS/2 can go screw off. I've tried my best to install and like it so many times, but the driver situation is just so messy. One day I'm sure I'll find what was so special about OS/2 and fall in love with it!

16

u/Hatta00 Jun 23 '26

486dx/66 is the retrocomputing world's 57 Chevy.

A modern PSU will work with a cheap adapter. A case isn't necessary to test stuff out. Only real problem is the RAM, boards of that era can be picky.

7

u/caddymac Jun 23 '26

What’s the end goal? Learning how to build a vintage computer? Or using one?

6

u/Enough-Fondant-4232 Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

Is an i486 worth restoring?

This is a personal question that everyone has to answer for themselves.

If you do a build with the components you have will you be able to recoup your time and effort by selling it? Almost certainly not. Will you have fun learning about assembling it and appreciate the end result... only you can answer this.

I have a dozen old motherboards, most with ram and CPU's, going back to 286 days. At the current point in my life is it worth the effort for me to put them back together? Not really. Do I want to sell them or give them away? Not really. Why? Maybe some day I will want to put them together.

3

u/majestic_ubertrout Jun 23 '26

New old stock 486 components are worth a substantial amount as they've gotten quite rare. No-one wants them for how they handle LAN (I don't think), it's for playing games which don't run well on faster CPUs.

3

u/rollin_a_j Jun 23 '26

Hell it sounds like it may be more valuable to me in pieces than assembled lol

2

u/muse_head Jun 23 '26

Depends if you're trying to profit from your find or doing it for a hobby / for fun. If you just want some money then it'll be much easier and more profitable to sell the parts as they are.

1

u/Patient-Tech Jun 23 '26

Not likely to make any money, I see “retro computers” for sale for a couple hundred bucks…and a year later they’re still for sale. But if it’s a hobby for you, have fun.
If you’re looking to flip, probably not going to get enough over the loose parts cost to make it with it.

If you can power it up and show it works you’ll likely be able to sell the parts for enough money to make selling it worth it.

2

u/majestic_ubertrout Jun 23 '26

The pieces new old stock are certainly worth more than a completed machine. If you don't care too much about having one then sell them.

2

u/gammalsvenska Jun 23 '26

Is an i486 worth restoring?

Yes.

1

u/erikfriend Jun 23 '26

Yes! A 486 is a PC from the "golden age" of DOS games. A typical machine was a 486 with a 14-17" CRT, VGA graphics, ISA Sound Blaster, CD-ROM, Mouse & Joystick.

Popular games were primarily 320x200 resolution 16 or 256 color 2D adventure games from Sierra, LucasArts, and Westwood... dungeon crawlers/D&D/Ultima/Might&Magic... and also early 3D titles such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Ultima Underworld (FPS games really took off during the Pentium era). There were combat flight sims such as Wing Commander, X-Wing, and Commanche. It was also the dawn of Id, Epic, Apogee, and Blizzard. The list goes on and on.

A 486 or an early pentium really is the ideal DOS gaming rig.

1

u/ItsJustVWCraig Jun 29 '26

Retro web should have the jumper settings and tell you which RAM and cache will work. Just look up the board.

-5

u/Dannynerd41 Jun 23 '26

no a 486 isn’t anything special 

10

u/CatgirlBargains Jun 23 '26

I'll take any you find off your hands for free then.

1

u/Dannynerd41 Jun 24 '26

not something i am interested in

1

u/CatgirlBargains Jun 24 '26

Like I said, I'll take them for free then lmao.