From The Screwdriver List: Re: The Screwdriver List

[Brian]

Famous last words chief!   No, seriously, I recently acquired an ICL DRS3000 486 based PC which I was told was working but on switching it on it was apparent that the battery had died and the BIOS had reset to defaults making it impossible to boot the machine.   The Motherboard is ICL A99300343E PR1 with two serial ports and a parallel printer port. The HDD is a Fujitsu W2623FA connected to an ADAPTEC AHA-1740/42A SCSI interface. There are two other boards apart from the VGA board. ICL KID01 which has four crystals, two ROMs and some LSI chips AM85C30, INMOS 9309-G, WDC PVGA1A-JK and another which is covered in alphanumerics! I think the board is a communications board but have no information about it, it has a 15 way male 'D' and 15 way female 'HDB' connectors.   SI/X10 is I believe a serial I/O board but again I have no information about it. It has a single 37 way 'D' connector.   There is also a tape drive and a FDD with the legend 2.88 on the front.   The PSU is a self contained unit, with a faulty on/off switch (currently locked 'on') and connects to the motherboard via a single multiway plug & socket. I have not found the battery as yet so I suspect it may be within the PSU case.   The monitor was working when I acquired the PC but promptly died within 48 hours. I have no idea what is wrong as the unit seems completely dead, despite all the fuses being intact!   So for those of you who have the time, I would like to know as much as possible about this PC and the boards within it and more information on the HDD and FDD would be of help. Also I would like to try and get it working if possible so any help there would be greatly appreciated. I am in no hurry at this point, having just converted my second bedroom into a computer room and still in the throes of organising the shelves et cetera and moving in all my equipment.   I have a Pentium III PC, very extended, and a Pentium I PC also extended so you may wonder why I would want to dabble with a 486. Well I want to set up a network, each PC has one slot left for a PCI network card, and I intend to buy another PC soon but I may be more inclined to build my next PC using some of the parts from the DRS3000 if I can or indeed use the DRS3000 as the base of a new PC. At this point I still have an open mind but have not yet ruled out buying up several cheap PCs to make a server!   Brian ----- Original Message ----- From: The Chief To: Multiple recipients of The_Screwdriver_List Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 2:28 AM Subject: From The Screwdriver List: Re: The Screwdriver List Grab your Phillips, it's... The Latest from The Screwdriver List! We're definitely here, Fred -- but evidently everyone's satisfied with their hardware and software for a time! This happens on a fairly regular basis... then again, I like lists where I'm not bombarded with useless stuff.  Around here, I consider the List a resource that you use when you need it.  (If it also functions as a discussion  forum for social communication, that's fine too... as we say in New Orleans, it's "lagniappe", which means "something extra.") The Chief