Hacker News Reader

Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

Ha, I had a similar situation. I grew up with a trash-80 well after it was cool in the early 1990s! Though I did get to use an Apple IIe around that time too which was awesome (did not realize how old these computers were, just was so excited to write command line BASIC).

My first computer was a Laser 286 and I marveled at the power it had. Even the turbo button from 8->12 Mhz of course :)

Oh, and the video card that took 4 AA batteries to run...

View on HN

I had a Laser computer with the same specs. Even slowed down to 8Mhz, some games that were meant for an XT weren't playable. I popped the cpu out of the socket and I've had it on my key chain since 1995.

https://i.imgur.com/qgjDzbm.png

What is the grey material it's encased in? Really cool idea.

It's the resin of the CPU's top surface, just incredibly worn down from being on somebodies keychain for years.

Ha! Never met anyone who had the same model. It was a beautiful machine.

I grew up with a 386SX , newer than yours but again very outdated when I got it.

I remember going to downtown in bus with my brother to a game store, watching amazing games in catalogs and then going back to home with 40 floppy disks just to figure out that number 38 was broken and after lot of trips to the game store, that the game didn't work on my hardware.

I learned programming much later in a newer hardware, but I learned about files, directories, etc in this machine.

What were the AA batteries for? Do you know why the card wasn't powered with the rest of the system?

I actually don't, and I can't find a damn thing about it on Google. Weird.

>What were the AA batteries for?

Some motherboards from the 286 era used 4 AAs as the CMOS backup battery.

To be more precise, it was common with motherboards that used the MC146818 RTC chip used in the original PC/AT. The four AAs provided a total of 6V of power.

Ahh I'd completely forgotten about turbo buttons! Thanks for the blast from the past there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com