I recently acquired an SLT 386 in decent shape. I had to tear it apart and do the Dallas mod, fix the sticky bumper issue in the hard disk, and take a peek at what it had. It's a fairly basic model, having a 60 MB hard disk and no modem, but it does have 6 megabytes of RAM.
So far it's working great, the hard drive had some issues when I first ran SCANDISK and the Compaq diagnostics, getting locked up on sector 132, head 1 for a bit, making a steady clicking noise like it was switching between two tracks right next to each other, then resetting to park and trying to access the sector repeatedly, the drive making a low boop sort of tone, spinning down and then back up, and then it would usually just go right past it. I was able to patch the disk so it would ignore those sectors with SCANDISK, because I don't want that to become more of an issue than it already is.
It seems to have been used by an executive or higher up of some kind, with many documents or memos to others being signed by an administrator title, and it looks to have potentially changed hands at least once in its service time, and again after it was likely replaced by newer equipment, with some files having a 1999 modified date, and the entirety of Wolf3D.
It came to me with DOS 4.01, which looks to be original. I understand this was a standard option along with DOS 3.31. They made good use of the DOS shell, and it had Windows 3.1 installed as well, plus some business applications such as Quicken and Lotus 1-2-3. I have since changed it to Windows 3.0, not for any practical reason, just that DOS 4 is not what I was expecting, so I figured I'd make it a bit more oddball. (I could've also went with Windows/386, but that's another monster.) Windows didn't seem to be used often anyways and nothing important was contained in the Windows directory.
A lot of date codes on the board dated to early-to-mid (15th-30th week) 1990, with a "J/L-P" or "J-L/P" (don't remember which) sticker next to the "REV" silkscreening on the board. The floppy drive was likely replaced at some point, with a January 1993 stamp on the top metal shield of the drive.
I really like this machine, it's very straightforward and surprisingly light for how heavy it looks. Of course, it's not light by today's standards. Also, the keyboard feels nice and I like the legit power switch on the side.
It's always nice to be able to dig into these machines and see the history behind them. Wish they included a PS/2 mouse port in addition to the keyboard port.
I do wish the memory modules and internal peripherals weren't basically unobtanium as I would like to max out the memory and install the modem. Has anybody made reproduction SLT 386 memory modules?
Attached are a couple pictures of the machine operating, I do also plan on taking more around the case and some wider shots.
So far it's working great, the hard drive had some issues when I first ran SCANDISK and the Compaq diagnostics, getting locked up on sector 132, head 1 for a bit, making a steady clicking noise like it was switching between two tracks right next to each other, then resetting to park and trying to access the sector repeatedly, the drive making a low boop sort of tone, spinning down and then back up, and then it would usually just go right past it. I was able to patch the disk so it would ignore those sectors with SCANDISK, because I don't want that to become more of an issue than it already is.
It seems to have been used by an executive or higher up of some kind, with many documents or memos to others being signed by an administrator title, and it looks to have potentially changed hands at least once in its service time, and again after it was likely replaced by newer equipment, with some files having a 1999 modified date, and the entirety of Wolf3D.
It came to me with DOS 4.01, which looks to be original. I understand this was a standard option along with DOS 3.31. They made good use of the DOS shell, and it had Windows 3.1 installed as well, plus some business applications such as Quicken and Lotus 1-2-3. I have since changed it to Windows 3.0, not for any practical reason, just that DOS 4 is not what I was expecting, so I figured I'd make it a bit more oddball. (I could've also went with Windows/386, but that's another monster.) Windows didn't seem to be used often anyways and nothing important was contained in the Windows directory.
A lot of date codes on the board dated to early-to-mid (15th-30th week) 1990, with a "J/L-P" or "J-L/P" (don't remember which) sticker next to the "REV" silkscreening on the board. The floppy drive was likely replaced at some point, with a January 1993 stamp on the top metal shield of the drive.
I really like this machine, it's very straightforward and surprisingly light for how heavy it looks. Of course, it's not light by today's standards. Also, the keyboard feels nice and I like the legit power switch on the side.
It's always nice to be able to dig into these machines and see the history behind them. Wish they included a PS/2 mouse port in addition to the keyboard port.
I do wish the memory modules and internal peripherals weren't basically unobtanium as I would like to max out the memory and install the modem. Has anybody made reproduction SLT 386 memory modules?
Attached are a couple pictures of the machine operating, I do also plan on taking more around the case and some wider shots.