My experience page!
Here i will tell you about my experience with old
retro stuff. I hopy you like the read!
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Friday 13th of March
Hello there! So i've been interested in retro
computing scene since forever. I am 18, but for some
reason old cars, software and hardware been one of my
primary interests. I remember watching LGR, 8-Bit Guy,
Dmitriy Bachilo, and i was so facinated with those beige
boxes and square shaped OSes. But i never really had a
chance to have my own retro PC. There were multiple
reasons why, but mainly because i had no space, it was
expensive(for teen) or my parents didn't really
understand my hobby.
Some time ago i found Pocket386, and i loved this
little guy ever since. It has everything i need. A slow
hardware, enough ports and even ISA slots if you want!
Perfect early 90s PC! And i bought one! Look at it!!!
Oh i am so happy i did! I've been playing with this
little guy for a week now and i am ready to point on pros
and cons of it.
Pros:
- Small. Oh it is small! I mean it's probably like
Toshiba Libretto! Just slower. I like the form
factor of it, this is one of the reasons i even
bought it!
- Portable. Somewhat. I mean yeah it is small but
also chunky a bit, so you certantly won't be
carrying it in your pocket, also it is a little
bit on the heavy side. Also battery powered so i
can play Taipei or Wolf3d whenever i can!
- Not bad screen. I mean, this is not really a pros
or a cons. A good screen is mandatory for
comfortable usability of device, this one is not
bad. You'll be seeing me talk about screen again,
don't ya worry mate.
- Keyboard! Suprising? I know. It is small as heck,
and suprisingly comfortable to type! I was afraid
a little considering that a lot of people said
that it is small, but for my fingers it is okay
and i can type pretty fast!
- USB as a removable drive. This is huge. I made a
128mb section in my 8gb flash drive, formatted it
in fat16 and now i can move thing in and out of
it fast. In real 386 it would be pain in the ass
transporting everything via CDs or even worse -
floppys. But here i put everything i need on USB
and boom i have it on Pocket 386.
- Connectability. Amazing. Never though i can put
an 8-bit ISA card into it. Yeah, i know, it
requires separate board and *dongle* but it is
still amazing that such a small machine is
comparable to Tower PCs!
Cons:
Well here it gets interesting!
- Battery. It has a big downside. It's controller
is outer fking garbage. I mean after i charged it
fully on bootup it says that it will shutdown due
to battery being low. Pressing Fn+F5 and all i
see is reading being all over the place jumping
from 70 to 60 to 80. And also the dude who made
this little guy didn't bother with cell battery
for BIOS. So the time is always out of whack and
sometimes the BIOS just forgets everything. I
mean it is not a big deal, i can live with that.
But giving it a cell battery and better
controller would be better
- Screen. Yeah, same here. I still can't understand
how to make it work. The brightness doesn't make
the screen brighter, it makes it whiter. Funny
eh? And contrast makes something simillar but not
as white. So while i use Windows 95 i set
brightness at 30 and contrast at 20, but in MSDOS
games i change it to more bright setting. Overall
not a big issue but i think it should be pointed
out
- Price. Oh yeah, it is pricy. This is the main
reason why people in VOGONS hate it so much. I
mean yeah 200bucks or 160 euros is a lot of a
legacy machine that doesn't even play startup
chime. But here is a catch, in the place were i
live those old PCs were largely thrown out, so
not a lot has left... Which made them valuable!
Yeah, the 486sx tower costs around 100 euros. I
mean what the hell. And funniest thing is that i
don't even know the condition of it, if it boots
up doesn't mean it will work forever. And
shipping here is awful so it will be damaged
anyway. So for me price was huge, but i got a
small, portable, retro thingy thingy that still
can be upgraded as standard tower PC.
- Dongles. So chinese dude in his infinite wisdom
for some reason made parallel, com, ps/2 and VGA
ports via dongles. They have their own connectors
they plug into and boom you have what ever you
need. In some what i can justify it. The device
is small and ISA8bit connector takes a lot of
space, so maybe it was made to save some space
and still have a lot of connectability. Or maybe
dude just likes to see us suffer, i dunno. Same
here, i don't really have that much problem with
that as people on VOGONS do, i don't care, i can
just toss those cables behind my table where i
can't see them and here - problemo solved!
- Mouse. Chinese dude made a mouse emulator inside
a keyboard. It is usable, and better then
nothing. But here is the thing, i haven't managed
to find a keyboard like this(maybe i searched
badly lol) so it is save to assume that he makes
them, and if he makes them, then why not put a
pointer knob like in thinkpads? It is convenient!
And also takes a fraction of space. I guess there
is a reason why he didn't do it, or no, anyway.
To sum it up, i love it. It has flaws, yes, but who
doesn't? It is still small, has a lot of connectivity and
usable as it is. A lot of people on Youtube or VOGONS or
other forums, that i didn't bother to remeber, don't like
it. They have a lot of reasons why but most of them are
price related or "Why not 486 and
soundblaster?" I mean, yeah, i can understand them,
it would be cool to have 486 here and SB but i am happy
with what i have, and i think that for some time it will
be enough. Of course Pocket386 is not the only device i
will be having, the road is long and full of other retro
stuff on the way!
Thank you for reading!
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