1991 AST Premium II 386 SX/20

1991 AST Premiunm 386 SX/20
Intel 80386 SX/20 CPU
10MB of RAM
2X IDE Hard Disks (124MB and 420MB?)

Bought at Value Village, 2008, for $4.99

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Vintage
• AST
• Premium
• II
• computer
• diy
• electronics
• gadget
• video
• game
• MS-DOS
• Windows
• 3.1
• 1991
• Classic

[gerjaison]

$4.99 for a 386SX??? I think you they should paid you to get rid of unwanted items from their shed!!! :P

[creepingnet]

You should see what this stuff goes for on E-bay. You'll choke.

[Lachlant1984]

Am I right in saying that motherboard has onboard video? These days I know that most if not all new motherboards have onboard video and sound, but how commonplace was that back then?

[creepingnet]

It was just coming around at that time, mostly on consumer machines and very basic low-power workstations intended for use by basic office users. Also, on-board video was only ever found on name-brand PC's back in those days (IBM, Compaq, Dell, Packard Bell, AST, Acer, and the like). If you built your own, chances were high you were going ot be using the old IBM AT style setup with a separate video card and 6-8 ISA slots to work with.

[Lachlant1984]

This is an AT style PC, right? As for putting a CD-ROM drive into this machine, couldn't you install an extra IDE interface card into one of the ISA slots?

[creepingnet]

Very likely, but you would need something like the Future Domain Dual IDE card, and disable any on-board IDE controllers to use it. I also wanted dual hard disks, so if I used the original 2 drive controller, I'd be stuck with either one HDD and a CD, or 2 HDD's and no CD.

[kbhasikevin]

i thought ast only made laptops?

[kinmanyuen]

awesome, clean specimen

[gerjaison]

@OBSysteme - Yeah! I still have a pentium PC in DOS to control motors and test jig for testing etc in my workshop. In fact, some big manufacturer also have 20 years old computer doing the same thing over and over again everyday of the week.

Even after all these long enduring years, the power supply, Motherboard CPU and RAM still works really well without hardware failure or replacement. I suppose the capacitor wasn't made in Taiwan or China. :P

[jr540123]

@creepingnet i've seen about 200$ for something like that .

[BOMBOVA]

i plunked down 7,000 dollars and 500 tax and duty, for one. "used" in seattle, got the best deal, i thought at the time,  silly me, nice video, down memory lane in a few ways, thanks

[kargaroc386]

Are you sure that computer supports ATAPI drives (such as IDE CD roms)?

[scavenger4life]

Old pc's are so retro looking now.

[gerjaison]

@OBSysteme - yeah - the boring parts about modern computer is that you can't troubleshoot the board by asking (sometimes begging) for the schematics from the manufacturer and fix it by turning on the soldering Iron. Those days were long long gone!!

[2wayfreq]

Nice AST! Hopefully it went to a good home :). I am into the Compaq Portables at the moment. I have a set of 2 Compaq 386-20 portables on the way from e-bay $35.00 for both. I found a Portable 286 (Luggable) on Crag's. Floppy, tape drive and a 10MB HDD. Needs some memory chips replaced though.

[SeltsamerAttraktor]

@leerees My 386 has 32Mb Ram, the 486 even 64Mb :P