Packard Bell 442a

[J A L]

Hello,

The system I am working on is very old. Packard Bell 486 33 Mghtz. I'm not sure if it's a DX or SX. System is not in front of me at this time. I installed 32 megs of 72 pin ram which is max for it (the good news is it can handle 72 pin ram at 70NS and I got tons of that old stuff). It says on a original sticker on the box that it's a Pack-Mate 1918C. It originally had a 200 meg hard drive and windows 3.11 loaded. I loaded Windows 95 OSR2 on it, on a wd 850 meg drive and it went pretty smooth / no problems. The video has to go to make this internet capable as it can do 800x600 at only 256 colors. Otherwise I have to drop down to 640X480 resolution to get more colors. Both senarios are bad for displaying current internet content. For now I am going to go with 800X600 resolution and 256 colors.

The bios has a limitation of 540 meg hard drive. I used a 850 meg old WD I had laying around and the ezdrive overlay program to work around the bios limitation. Couldn't find a bios flash for it.

Most of the information on this machine is no longer available from just about any sources on the internet. Any help anybody can give such as links to information, I would surely appreciate it.

This system is probably not worth the effort but I cannot scrap it for parts (the parts simply arn't worth anything) and I hate to throw it away and create more landfill. It still has very limmited life in it. I think people who are poor or of not very much money can still use it. Since the internet is free up here I would really like a family with children be able to use it for school work and such.

So if you can link me to some info on this system I would appreciate it. Thanks

[A31Chris]

OK, for the video drivers I really do recommend Scitech Display Dr. It's a great universal video driver for older systems and its freakin free!!

http://www.scitechsoft.com/products/...ee_titles.html

You might find some luck with Priority One support who took over support for NEC's systems and some PB's a few years ago.

Prioirity One

The tech support sucks and is nowhere near as good as here in GENERAL, but they may have the specifics you are looking for.

Oh yeah, and you say you have 70ns Simms in spades? I'm interested. However, only interested in EXACT matching pairs of 16mbs or more. What I mean is I can't have one Simm a toshiba XXXX and the other an NEC xxxx. I need them both exactly the same. Is this doable? I'm willing to do business....

[A31Chris]

Hello,

The system I am working on is very old. Packard Bell 486 33 Mghtz. I'm not sure if it's a DX or SX. System is not in front of me at this time. I installed 32 megs of 72 pin ram which is max for it (the good news is it can handle 72 pin ram at 70NS and I got tons of that old stuff). It says on a original sticker on the box that it's a Pack-Mate 1918C. It originally had a 200 meg hard drive and windows 3.11 loaded. I loaded Windows 95 OSR2 on it, on a wd 850 meg drive and it went pretty smooth / no problems. The video has to go to make this internet capable as it can do 800x600 at only 256 colors. Otherwise I have to drop down to 640X480 resolution to get more colors. Both senarios are bad for displaying current internet content. For now I am going to go with 800X600 resolution and 256 colors.

The bios has a limitation of 540 meg hard drive. I used a 850 meg old WD I had laying around and the ezdrive overlay program to work around the bios limitation. Couldn't find a bios flash for it.

Most of the information on this machine is no longer available from just about any sources on the internet. Any help anybody can give such as links to information, I would surely appreciate it.

This system is probably not worth the effort but I cannot scrap it for parts (the parts simply arn't worth anything) and I hate to throw it away and create more landfill. It still has very limmited life in it. I think people who are poor or of not very much money can still use it. Since the internet is free up here I would really like a family with children be able to use it for school work and such.

So if you can link me to some info on this system I would appreciate it. Thanks

Hey, I want to applaud you for your effors to those who may be less fortunate. I can tell you jumped through some hoops for this. I hope you find a needy family and their faces light up at the gift you give them!!!

[J A L]

Hey chris,

PM me with your address and I'll send ya some ram!

I am however having trouble getting an IDE controller driver or the IDE controller on this board is simply not working properly. I see a chip called cirrus logic on board and another chip called acc micro. None of the generic ide drivers in windows 95 osr2 work with the controller. I know it's the hard drive as the hard drive does not show up at all in device manager and the ide controller has a yellow exclaimation point next to it. The drive is just crawling hella slow. Grr. Of course now that I think about it the whole system is hella slow!

Other than that I seem to have everything beat into submission. Even the 2400 baud modem is working LOL. I will be replacing it with a USR Sportster V.90 Hardware based modem. I was going to see how slow this Zoom 2400 Baud Rockwell Chip based modem really is though before I disable it and put in the sportster modem. It has been a really long time since I have seen a 2400 Baud modem in action. I think my dad had one in his 386 machine years ago and they used to eat dinner and then come back and see the pictures that displayed while they were eating. Now thats slow!

I really need to find more info on this machine! I cannot see all the motherboard and therefore are stuggling to Identify some of the chips on the board. I hate to have to pull the board just to look at it though.

PS. It has a nova 16 bit audio card with a IDE controller built into the sound card that is hooked up to the CD Rom and it seems to be working just fine in all respects.

The processor in this computer is a 486 33 mghtz SX .... no math coprocessor. I wish I had one of those pentium 83 mghtz overdrive chips for this thing. This 486 SX chip is so lame it doesn't have a heatsink or even need one for that matter.

This certainly brings back memories. For some reason I really love old stuff like this. Challenging and not just going through the motions installing the same old operating systems. Gotta love it!!

[A31Chris]

Have you tried reading the board with BelArc advisor? I dunno what to tell you about your IDE interface. I've never downloaded or had to find drivers for those before. Outta my area of experience.