AST Bravo MS-5100 Desktop
This one was a recent roadside pickup, an AST Bravo MS5100 from the mid- late 90s, a Pentium 1 @100 MHz with 24 MegaBytes of RAM and a COAST module on board ( L2 cache was a separate optional module in those days hence Cache On A STick).
The original IDE hard drive was failing but appeared to have been running Windows 95. My Original Win95 is on CD but this PC never had that luxury item fitted as you can see the original covers which match the detail on the front panel are still present.
So I decided to go the full retro and install MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 as I still have a set of original AST branded floppy disk installers from back in the day.
The smallest working hard drive I had spare was 80 GigaByte so I created a full sized 2GB system partition leaving the remaining 97.5% of drive space unallocated.
I could always add some more partitions for data but 2GB was a lot of space at the time. It has PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports and SB compatible sound on board but no game port. The network port is 10Mbit/second.
Here it is running some quality examples of Windows and DOS programs from the era. I had to copy the Activision CD to a floppy to install it.
Made | 1996 approx. |
CPU | Intel Pentium @100 MHz |
RAM | 24 MByte |
HDD | 2GByte (partition of 80 GB IDE drive)* |
CD/DVD | None (original covers still fitted) |
FDD | 1.44 Mbyte 3.5inch |
USB | None |
Ports | 1x Parallel, 2x Serial |
Network | 10Mbps PCI Ethernet |
Modem | None |
O/S | MS Dos 6.22 |
+MS Windows 3.11 | |
Display | SVGA, ATI, 1 MByte |
Sound | Sound Blaster compatible |
Monitor | Diamond View LCD* |
Keyboard | PS/2 |
Mouse | Microsoft PS2 Optical mouse* |
Speakers | internal monitor speakers or powered external speakers* |
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Contact: jbtech at telstra dot com