Retro Net – 3Com Etherlink XL PCI 3C900B

A 3Com 10 Mbit PCI network card from 1998. On the back, someone already left their mark in 1999. Views Facts Manual Source: Archive.org Drivers Source for drivers preserved here: Operating System DOS Windows Other Pack/CD Drivers X X X X Drivers for different operating systems DOS Windows Other Package Source: RetroWEB Other Network Types https://www.fambach.net/?p=12059 Conclusion Question …

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Retro Net – Artisoft LANtastic

I acquired this card in a bundle from eBay. When I first saw it, I thought, „what on earth are these two SUB-D 9 connectors, that's not exactly standard.“ Then, when I randomly pulled it out of a box for the description, I thought the same thing again. It did ring a bell for Lantastic, though...

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Retro Motherboard – GA-586ATE Rev 4.D

A Socket 7 motherboard for the Pentium I, with only one voltage, so up to 166MHz without MMX. The board has an Intel 8243xFX chipset. It only supports 72-pin FPM and EDO RAM, but has six slots for it, and up to 128MB. My 2x 32MB modules were also recognised. As the benchmark shows, this motherboard, with…

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Retro Motherboard – FIC 486-HC-HD

The board started after a bit of a jump-start with contact spray. The Award BIOS is rubbish, but we'll surely find a better solution. The cache expansion is quite nice, unfortunately my 4MB SIMMs don't work with the board yet. Let's see what happens. Views Facts Manual BIOS TMS27C512 BIOS Chip The AMI BIOS found on RetroWeb works…

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Retro Net – 3Com Etherlink II/16

Predecessor to the Etherlink III card, unfortunately without an RJ45 connector. If you know how to do it, the card is quickly configured and easy to handle, even though it's still not clear to me how the IRQ is set. Please leave a comment if you know more.

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Retro – XT-IDE (BIOS)

Should an IDE hard drive be connected to an old XT computer, or is a larger hard drive needed for the 386? Can a BIOS be „easily“ rewritten or should the computer be replaced with a newer one? Since neither is usually an option, fortunately there is the XT-IDE project. Now the XT computer can be fitted with new hard drives...

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Retro Motherboard – VIA-4386-VC-HD

A 386DX40 motherboard with space for a co-processor, which in this case is also fitted. 8 SIMM slots allow up to 32MB of memory to be addressed. 128KB of cache is very generous for a 386 board. The board looks very tidy, all ISA slots are 16-bit. Let's see how the performance looks. ...

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