I grew up with PCs. My first one was a 486DX-33Mhz with 4Mb of RAM (I still have the order sheet somewhere) which was an ok machine at that time (1994). I had a lot of fun with that machine, it served me well for almost 2 years, when it got replaced by a much more powerful Pentium 100MHz with 16Mb of RAM, which was later paired with a Sound Blaster AWE 32 with 2Mb or RAM!
Here is a shot of my first PC Tower (extra points if you guess the game on the screen):
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| My very first 486 PC on display - circa 1994 |
In the past few years, I was lucky enough to find a vintage PC that came in a nice and classic mini AT Tower (I love the "Vader" vent design in the front). Inside the case, a working 486DX-33 motherboard, with 4Mb of RAM (as my 1st PC!):
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| The 486DX-33 board after some dusting |
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The CMOS battery (from Varta) has started to leak - a bit of corrosion is evident on the keyboard connector shield
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| Old CMOS Battery removed |
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| Motherboard without the CMOS battery |
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| Removing the battery corrosion residue with Vinegar |
I lated added a battery holder together with a diode to replace the original rechargeable CMOS battery by a non-rechargeable 2032 coin battery.
Before using a vintage computer, it is always a good idea to replace the capacitors of the the old AT power supply. I inspected my newly acquired PSU and bingo! I saw evidence that the caps have leaked.
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| PSU under going a recap |
A few months later, I came across someone selling a Pentium 100Mhz motherboard, which it was my 2nd PC, that I kept for 3-4 years.
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| My Pentium 100Mhz motherboard! |
My vintage case did not come however, with the very cool 7-segment clock speed indicator. You got have that! I then went to AliExpress and bought 3 small 7-segment green leds and built my own on a breadboard.
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| Figuring it out the led combination to display "100"MHz (blazing fast!) |
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| Installing the clock display into the AT Case with the help of 3D printed part and hot glue! |
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| Adding an independent fan controller to further reduce the noise of my new CPU fan (the original CPU fan bearing was very noisy!) |
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| My vintage AT case with its new clock speed led display showing "100"MHz! |
Testing the Floppy Drive after being cleaned and lubricated:
After installing a Sound Blaster 16 into my new old rig, I noticed the left channel was very low, hinting to a potential cap problem. Time to investigate and recap the SB16:
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| SB16 Value in its glory (with a muted channel)
 | | SB16 during the recap process |
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| Problem found! Cap measuring nothing
 | | All caps with a black dot were replaced - no more muted channel issue! |
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