The Blog

Osborne Australia 486DX2-66 Overview

Nix McRetro // 13th October 2012 // IBM PC, YouTube

This is what it was all about. With the Creative CD-ROM finally working, we now have a functional 486 in the household. The Amstrad Mega PC doesn’t count. That is more of a 386SX on steroids or, in my highly scientific terminology, a crippled 486. Take your pick! So very…... Continue reading

Creative Labs CD-200 2x CD-ROM Driver Success

Nix McRetro // 12th October 2012 // IBM PC, Repairs, YouTube

Mission accomplished. If anyone from the future arrives here trying to get a Creative Labs CD-200 working under DOS, the breakthrough was finding a Creative driver that worked with this drive. CCD.SYS worked in my setup. Once the hardware driver is loaded, MSCDEX provides the DOS drive letter. The settings... Continue reading

Creative Labs CD-200 2x CD-ROM Driver Hunt

Nix McRetro // 8th October 2012 // IBM PC, Repairs

So little information seems to exist about this particular Creative Labs CD-200 that I figured I’d better document the struggle. At this point I had a desktop absolutely covered in driver files and still hadn’t found the magic combination. The first video shows where the investigation had reached. And the... Continue reading

IBM PS/2 Model 30 8086 720K Floppy Drive Failure

Nix McRetro // 8th October 2012 // IBM PC, Repairs, YouTube

Good to see that the IBM at least attempted to use the replacement drive, which suggests the interface and drive type were compatible enough to be recognised. Since the replacement itself was faulty, though, I could not fully confirm normal read and write operation. Unfortunate that the $50 shipping did... Continue reading

Sharp PC-4521 Internal View

Nix McRetro // 8th October 2012 // IBM PC, Repairs, YouTube

Here’s something a little different: a Sharp PC-4521 from the PC-4500 portable-computer family. This one isn’t mine. I just managed to have a poke around inside it while the owner was absent. The PC-4521 was the hard-drive-equipped version of the series. It uses an 80188-compatible NEC V40 running at 7.16... Continue reading