Back around December of 1993, I had an IBM PS/2 model 30-286 (10 MHz 286) that I converted to a real 486 DX-2 66 MHz via a complete motherboard upgrade from a now long-defunct company called Reply Corporation, in San Jose, CA. I ordered 16 MB of 70 ns RAM (2x8 MB SIMMS), and a very quick (for the time) 340 MB Western Digital IDE hard drive. The system "planar" (IBM-speak for motherboard) also had 1 MB of very quick video on the VESA local bus (I think it was the Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428). All of this, stuffed into the little PS/2 "slimline" desktop formfactor case. The ultimate sleeper PS/2 (it gets even better). Then I got OS/2 2.1 in January of 1994 (CompUSA, as I recall) and what an eye-opener that was. It was my first, really big, massive 32-bit home computing experience. I felt like I had a full-blown IBM 3083 mainframe at my disposal. Then, when the AMD 5x86 133 MHz chip came out, I stuffed one of those in there, and with OS/2 2.1, I truly had mission-critical, industrial-grade, serious computing on my desktop. It *did* take some doing to get the video drivers so I could run in all video modes (including 24-bit "TruColor"), but I got them, and it was a terrific system. I had some of my geeky NASA and NSA pals come over, and even they were impressed by the hoops this little OS/2 sleeper pizza box could jump through. I loved ZocComm and JoeView, and I had a blast with REXX, too. Those were the days...
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Back around December of 1993, I had an IBM PS/2 model 30-286 (10 MHz 286) that I converted to a real 486 DX-2 66 MHz via a complete motherboard upgrade from a now long-defunct company called Reply Corporation, in San Jose, CA. I ordered 16 MB of 70 ns RAM (2x8 MB SIMMS), and a very quick (for the time) 340 MB Western Digital IDE hard drive. The system "planar" (IBM-speak for motherboard) also had 1 MB of very quick video on the VESA local bus (I think it was the Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428). All of this, stuffed into the little PS/2 "slimline" desktop formfactor case. The ultimate sleeper PS/2 (it gets even better). Then I got OS/2 2.1 in January of 1994 (CompUSA, as I recall) and what an eye-opener that was. It was my first, really big, massive 32-bit home computing experience. I felt like I had a full-blown IBM 3083 mainframe at my disposal. Then, when the AMD 5x86 133 MHz chip came out, I stuffed one of those in there, and with OS/2 2.1, I truly had mission-critical, industrial-grade, serious computing on my desktop. It *did* take some doing to get the video drivers so I could run in all video modes (including 24-bit "TruColor"), but I got them, and it was a terrific system. I had some of my geeky NASA and NSA pals come over, and even they were impressed by the hoops this little OS/2 sleeper pizza box could jump through. I loved ZocComm and JoeView, and I had a blast with REXX, too. Those were the days...