Part of me really wants one of these. I like running on real hardware
for the experience, even though a '486 will be slow compared to a
virtual machine today.
What's holding me back is I bought a Pocket386 ('386-SX40) laptop that
I bought earlier in 2024, and that works really well for running
FreeDOS on real hardware. The built-in display is small and the tiny
keyboard is cramped -- so when I want to use it I connect a PS/2
keyboard and plug in the VGA to my monitor. Effectively, it gives me
the same experience as this mini-box. But slower. :-)
Danilo Pecher wrote:
>
> The trouble is, unless you still have a vintage machine, it's
> ridiculously hard to find a good one these days, at least if you want
> one where the mainboard hasn't been half-eaten by a leaking battery.
> And even then, at 20 years of age they are often prone to hardware
> conking out.
Bret Johnson wrote:
> >
> > The mini-boxes are kind of expensive for what you're getting, but
> > might be worth it for some people. They are physically pretty small,
> > which is nice, but don't have built-in peripherals like floppy drives,
> > serial/parallel ports, CD-ROMs, or slots to plug things in. The I/O
> > they do have is probably suitable for most people, particularly if
> > the main interest is games.
> >
> > I still have an old tower computer (350 MHz AMD K6-2 CPU) which is
> > roughly the same vintage/speed as the mini-boxes, but it does take up
> > a LOT more space than a mini-box would. But mine has floppies (both
> > 5-1/4 and 3-1/2), serial and parallel ports, two CD's (one read-only
> > and one read-write), USB ports, and also some empty ISA and PCI slots
> > for additional expansion (though both ISA and PCI cards are hard to
> > find these days). I don't turn it on very often (it doesn't even have
> > its own monitor), but last time I tried it still worked.
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