Z486 Status Update

Probably the oldest PC on the planet still in use, and the first one I ever purchased way back in 1985, the Zenith 486 is now undergoing it’s umpteenth upgrade/rebuild.

It started as an Intel 286-based machine.  Being a 2nd generation PC with the new, highly touted 16-bit ISA bus and 20 megabytes of hard disk storage space, it was a top drawer machine at the time.  It went to a 386 and finally became a 486 sometime in the late 80’s, IIRC.  It has sentimental value and continues doing file storage duties, albeit obviously limited these days.

In expected fashion for ancient hardware, one of the drives developed an error condition precluding NT4 from booting a couple weeks ago.  To me this is just an opportunity to add a 2nd SCSI adapter, stuff some more drives in there and see how it goes running a similarly ancient version of Redhat Linux.  I just happen to have a pre-IPO copy of 5.2 waiting to be re-used on the next iteration of the venerable Z-486.

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