Amd386dx-40/4 mb memory booting windows 3.1

1 : Anonymous2021/07/16 11:56 ID: olfebv
Amd386dx-40/4 mb memory booting windows 3.1
2 : Anonymous2021/07/16 12:13 ID: h5e07lq

That's a pretty impressive boot time, even for contemporary standards

ID: h5f5ok3

Even faster if you upgraded from an ISA controller card to a VLB controller card. Granted the hard drive had to be able to take advantage of that controller.

ID: h5fmoi1

VLB controller card

Aaaaaah!!! Now it made click, 20 years later. I was always wondering what those cards were used for... I mean, sure Serial ports and all, but HDD, thanks mate!

ID: h5eikty

HDDs were pretty amazing back then compared to floppies. Back when I had my 286 going from floppies to HDD felt like a bigger step than going from HDDs to SSDs in the modern era.

ID: h5fmdsn

Agree, the OS was way slower, also when you increased cashes, it was really a boost you could feel. Only senstaion that was repeating this "odd feel" was when SSD was introduced. Flash was really an eye opener again.

(Sure we had RocketDrive and shit, but this was not really "normal")

ID: h5hevcy

And then also having enough RAM to avoid using page files on the HDD, when RAM was relatively expensive. That was a major performance difference as well.

ID: h5gphzo

Quite true. Also, the volume of things to load, services to start, in 3.1, was tiny compared to later generations of windows. The faster the hardware gets, the more things the OS (and other programs and bloatware) can get away with loading without the user getting impatient.

3 : Anonymous2021/07/16 13:03 ID: h5e5fmh

Those DX/40s were such amazing CPUs. I made do with an AMD 386SX/25 at the time (16 bit data bus, eww) but the difference between them was massive.

ID: h5ee0po

When I was a kid I had one SX/25 too. Years later, we got a 30-pin ram upgrade, and to my surprise, the ram sticks had pads instead of pins. (The mobo used SIPP ram). My father ended up ditching that 386 for a 486dx2. Yey! I could finally play simcity 2000.

ID: h5ew4he

When I bought a P1-255 machine, the dude at the computer store who built it for me scoffed at needing that much processing power; he thought it was a display of wretched excess in a home machine.

ID: h5eo0ct

A 386 SX-25 was in my very first PC. Except the system would keep locking up unless 'turbo' mode was on (which actually slows the CPU down, despite the name). I was so clueless back then I had no idea it was not supposed to do that, I figured you're just not supposed to tinker with the turbo button so I kept using it in turbo mode for months. Didn't have any idea how much slower I was making it lol. In my defense, I was 13 at the time and my only prior experience with computers was at school and at a friend's house who got a 286 like a year earlier.

Eventually I figured out it was in fact supposed to work without locking up, with or without turbo mode. So we took it back to the store and they replaced it with a 386 SX-33. Except that still didn't solve the locking up issues, so we took it back again and then they replaced it with a 386 DX-40. Not a bad upgrade for free. And it worked fine after that 🙂

ID: h5f0ppx

Nice! My 1st upgrade was a 16 MHz 286 (pretty sure it was an AMD) to a 33 MHz 386SX (definitely an AMD chip, I still have it somewhere). Doom was juuuuuust out of reach, but it was a really nice machine for the family for a long time. The real upgrade was jumping from that 386 to a 233 MHz K6 all at once. My middle school mind was convinced the future had arrived that day.

4 : Anonymous2021/07/16 17:26 ID: h5f4mzt

OS loads faster than gif in reddit

ID: h5f7jz1

Same- something weird

ID: h5h5z3u

Gif still loading for me after 10 minutes ☹️

5 : Anonymous2021/07/16 16:01 ID: h5eso15
sys c:

To make the hard drive bootable.

ID: h5hw15a

Then put C:Windows in your path.

6 : Anonymous2021/07/16 15:32 ID: h5eoive

I think this is an HDR video? On my iPhone 12 it looks great but on my desktop PC where my monitor does not support HDR it looks overexposed:

7 : Anonymous2021/07/16 12:16 ID: h5e0giq

It wasn't booted. You booted DOS, then launched Win 3.1 since it is only an OS Shell. You can just add it to autoexec.bat which will result in launch on startup, but that is just me being a nitpicky old fart.

ID: h5elrum

The fastest thing I can type is still “edit autoexec.bat”

ID: h5ey3js

Edit config.sys even

ID: h5enwq5

hah brings me back, I used to have some fun with that on my school computers.

Write a quick basic script that would mimic the Format C: wording, put it in autoexec.bat and walk away.....

8 : Anonymous2021/07/16 17:25 ID: h5f4j0h

Kids these days have no idea how easy they have it.

No editing config.sys or autoexec.bat to free up memory to play games.

No custom batch menus to load certain programs.

Fuck, that was a fun time.

ID: h5fy2xd

new install, edit config.sys to load qemm386.sys... edit autoexec to start norton cache... Started on a 8088. Shit was kinda fun back then.

9 : Anonymous2021/07/16 13:44 ID: h5ea48z

A friend of mine bought the first one from all the gang. We tried to install F-16 Falcon, 32x3.5" disks... It took about an hour and then 2.5 more to unpack...

10 : Anonymous2021/07/16 15:02 ID: h5ekc8p

Booted faster than my pc at work.

11 : Anonymous2021/07/16 19:43 ID: h5fnq4z

I do not miss those days, at all...

12 : Anonymous2021/07/16 17:41 ID: h5f6vct

video never loads for me

13 : Anonymous2021/07/16 19:11 ID: h5fjdja

Flashbang out

14 : Anonymous2021/07/16 19:44 ID: h5fnzsd

I ran windows 95 on a 16mhz 386dx. Basically the slowest chip win95 supports. Performance was pretty crap!

15 : Anonymous2021/07/16 12:15 ID: h5e0f3k

just out of interest, are you the owner of this machine and is it still operational? meaning this is a recent video of it...!?

ID: h5e0l32

Yes, and the video was taken around a week ago

16 : Anonymous2021/07/16 15:20 ID: h5emtgg

Technically, my first computer experience was with an Apple ][+, color, with 32Kb of ram. Apple DOS was learned, lots of games were played.

The first PC experience was on an AMD386DX-40Mhz (on MS-DOS 5.0), with 1MB of RAM. Eventually we added a math co-processor, and got that bad boy up to 4MB of RAM. That RAM upgrade was a huge benefit, there was no doubt about it.

This post brings back a lot of memories.

17 : Anonymous2021/07/16 15:22 ID: h5en410

I have a few AMD 486 chips floating around, most are 66mhz, but I had that exact monitor on my VGA machine for years.

18 : Anonymous2021/07/16 15:26 ID: h5enna4

Dialed my friend to play Doom!

ID: h5g84jt

I dialed a friend for duke nukem 3D. Me on an over clocked 486 dx2/33 (clocked to 66 via jumper) and him on a dx4/100.

Spent many hours either 1v1ing or goofing off in co-op

19 : Anonymous2021/07/16 16:15 ID: h5eujut

This is were I started with an actual interest in computers when I was about 8 or 9. Before that, my family had a 286 and an Apple II.

20 : Anonymous2021/07/16 16:25 ID: h5evxjx

Nice to see a vintage AMD system!

21 : Anonymous2021/07/16 17:53 ID: h5f8jqw

Can you please do a benchmark video of playing Call Of Duty Modern Warfare or Cold War, if possible? I’m curious how it will run on this amazing system

22 : Anonymous2021/07/16 18:59 ID: h5fhso8

This thing boots faster then my pc xd.

23 : Anonymous2021/07/16 20:20 ID: h5ft2j0

This is the content I signed up for.

Man I love /

/, on the weekends.

24 : Anonymous2021/07/16 21:01 ID: h5fygsj

I'm sure many of you remember having 1M on a PC, then being able to use the "high/upper memory" above 640K for utilities, RAM disks, etc. I recall something about putting the OS "up there" and being able to soft reboot quickly, which was great for debugging.

25 : Anonymous2021/07/16 21:34 ID: h5g2t8u

First PC was an 8088 4mhz/10mhz(turbo button) with a monochrome display that my father built in the 80s for his college thesis project. He had pieced together a 486 DX2 33/66Mhz system running Win 3.1 from spare parts that we were running for a couple of years in 94'. In the Christmas of 97' I was given the option of getting a Sega Saturn that I had *REALLY* wanted for the past 2 years or he would build us a new PC from parts acquired from a local upcoming Computer Show. I had thought about this decision for a day and I floored my parents with my answer. "I think you should build us a new PC because that's something the whole family can use versus the Sega Saturn". New PC he built was an Cyrix PR150+(133mhz) running Windows 95 with a 200MB hard drive. To this day, I've yet to own a Sega Saturn 😀

26 : Anonymous2021/07/17 02:36 ID: h5h2jz8

I started with a 286 notebook my parents gave me when i was 11, learned Qbasic, switched to a 386, 486 and eventually bought my own Cyrix PR200+ or so to figure out it could do anything except for run quake. Haha. Due to lack of proper FPU compared to an Intel or AMD.

But since the K6 era it has bin and always was AMD. The switch from Nvidia to ATI back in the days occured when i had a 5600 card or so. I swapped out the thermal paste to figure out the card was dead afterwards. They where so frigging sensitive to ESD. ATI Cards never had these issues; and since then pretty much it's bin AMD all my life.

Not saying i'm a fanboy, but my gut tells me AMD has always bin the better value, no matter how you look at it. As for Windows 3.1 > it was a era where a 40MB harddrive was usually sufficient to run such things. The system specs for these days is just huge.

27 : Anonymous2021/07/17 02:54 ID: h5h4gy6

can it run linux?

28 : Anonymous2021/07/16 14:24 ID: h5ef5mm

Windows 3.1 didn’t even have built in networking

Edit: Meant to read it as "wow, look how far we've gone from those days". My first PC was an IBM PC XT with 640KB of RAM, DOS 3.1, Intel 8088 CPU at 4.77MHz with dual 5.25" floppies and a monochrome monitor. Didn't even have a hard drive.

ID: h5ewbpa

Look at you with your fancy-pants 640k!

This post brought to you by C=64 Gang

ID: h5eo579

Sure, but this is back when operating systems weren't all-encompassing, do-everything software. They were quite simply an interface between programs/applications and the computer itself. Windows itself was just a GUI on top of DOS. It wasn't until XP, which was based on NT designs that the basic consume

versions of Windows weren't just DOS Shells. If you wanted a function on your system, you installed a program that was written to work in your operating system. It wasn't very difficult to get a windows 3.1 system online. My first use of the internet was on a 3.1 system with Netscape Navigator. Downloaded my first video on it (Low res, few seconds long, took hours on the 14.4 modem). These days people expect the operating system to do virtually everything, but that's not how it was in the beginning. Heck, despite people's undying hate for Internet Explorer, that was an effort on Microsoft's part to make windows 95 an internet ready Operating system. And it was wildly successful because most people didn't even know how to get an alternate browser like Netscape onto a computer, or even what an alternate browser was. Most people use the default browser on their phones as well, instead of downloading alternatives. 3.1 was developed before the internet became known to the vast majority of Americans, even though it existed during its development. That would be like complaining that the Commodore 64 didn't have a built in CD Rom Drive.

ID: h5epurh

It wasn't meant in a derogative way at all, you misinterpreted the tone of my comment. I've been using PCs since the IBM PC XT days lol.

It's more of a "look how far we've gone".

ID: h5ejuuq

Kind of. It had a built in command prompt for Hayes modem commands if you have a modem installed.

引用元:https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/olfebv/amd386dx404_mb_memory_booting_windows_31/

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