Vintage Working 1990's AT&T Model 2296 Computer Tower W/ Keyboard

[vintageestatefinds]

I have an early 1990's AT&T model 2296, class 3372 computer tower and AT&T keyboard I'd like to sell. I can't find any information on this particular computer so I'd like to see if anyone's interested in it. AT&T stopped designing computers on December 15,1995. I don't have a mouse for it but was able to navigate through the computer using the keyboard. Upon startup the screen says "American Megatrends AMIBIOS (c) 1994 Release 05/06/1996 ... 16,000 KB OK ... Wait ... CMOS system options not set. The screen has the word energy and a star in the corner.

It's made in California and has an AM486DX4-SE processor. The front of the tower has a red Intel Inside logo on it. It has a floppy drive and CD drive, as well as a headphone jack with a volume control. The floppy drive button says 1.44. On the system config screen it says "1985-1994 ... Ambios Date 10/10/1994 ... Base memory size 640 KB ... Serial Ports 3FB, 2F8 ... Parallel Ports 378". There are two buttons I haven't tested on the tower as I don't know what they do. They are Lock and Turbo.

When the computer is up there are various icons to select. The color sets icon pulls up the options: LCD, Army, Pastel, and Sky. There is an icon where you can set a new password. One icon is to switch antivirus on and off. On the master and slave disks there are 46 types of hard disks to choose from, plus USER, ESDI, and SCSI.

I read that to get rid of the CMOS system options error message it likely needs a new BIOS battery.

Lastly, I have a Litton Monroe Compucorp 392 cassette player to plug into the computer for sale as well. I don't have a cassette to test it with.

I am located in Simpsonville, SC and am willing to ship to the US (Excluding Alaska & Hawaii).

 

[vintageestatefinds]

Monitor is not for sale.

 

[GottaLottaStuff]

Your best bet would be to take the cover off and take several clear pictures of the motherboard. We know that it needs a battery, but value may depend on what type of battery it needs. Dallas modules are hard to repair/replace, coin batteries are easy. What version of Windows does it have? Hard drive size? VESA slots? It's what's on the inside that counts.

 

[SomeGuy]

That looks like a nice generic AT-style case. Is the front panel yellowed? Can't tell with that lighting in the photographs.

It looks like it has a sound card. What kind of sound card is that?

 

[vintageestatefinds]

I opened it up and took some pictures. There aren't many pictures of the boards since I don't know if I'd remember where to put the wires I'd have to unhook to take more. I found it has a lithium coin battery installed, a KTS CR2032, and I didn't see any leakage. I happen to have a Maxwell CR2032 H 3V lithium coin battery which I assume is safe to replace it with but figured I should confirm before installing it.

When I got the computer it came with a welcome to Windows 95 cd and Windows 95 demo discs. The AMD-X5-133ADW heat sink had designed for Windows 95 on it. There is a MDU-200 switching power supply (March, 1994) , Sony CD ROM drive model CDU33A-01, Samsung WW321620A 2.16 GB hard drive, Cooler Master ball bearing fan, UMC UM8886BF, and Trident ver X5.5 TGu19680-1 video card. It has 4 ISA slots and and 3 PCI slots. The cooler master fan is hooked up but moves around. Should it be like this, or if not what do I secure it to?

Lastly, there are some cartridge slots open so there's room to be upgraded.

 

[vintageestatefinds]

More photos

 

[vintageestatefinds]

No it's not yellowed, I just took those pictures at night so it looks that way. I'll go try to find the sound card.

 

[vintageestatefinds]

Looking up the FCC ID KRN3261 pulled up the ISA, KTL E132315-UL sound card. It was assembled in China.

 

[GottaLottaStuff]

Cool, that long slot on the end is VESA. The loose fan should be clipped onto the 486 chip, it's going to overheat without it. The coin battery is a good thing.

 

[Stone]

Cool, that long slot on the end is VESA.

Actually, it's VESA Local Bus.

 

[vintageestatefinds]

I found why the fan is loose; one of the clips has broken off at some point.

 

[SomeGuy]

The AMD 5x86s I have seen hardly even got warm while running, even without a heat sink. Never did figure out how to mount the heat sinks on those right. The one I had used a cheap square plastic clip that hugged the edge of the CPU and hardly held the thing on.

Anyway, that looks like a very nice late model 486/5x86 motherboard. If you slip in a new (or even used but still halfway good) 2032 coin cell battery, you should be able to get it to boot. The sound and video cards are rather run of the mill budget clone parts, but the jumpers on the sound card at least suggest it might work with DOS games.

 

[vintageestatefinds]

Thanks for the extra info. I think it probably will run DOS games since one of the CDs I got with the computer was Arcade Mania which has multiple DOS games on it. I'll put it back together, test it, and we'll see what happens.

 

[vintageestatefinds]

So I tested it and it no longer gives that error but a new one. It recognizes the primary master HDD FN101 as the Samsung hard drive. Then there is a primary slave hard drive error. When I press F1 it says there's no operating system. I tried selecting slave hard drive not available in the BIOS and the No Operating System error still came up. Also tried primary hard drive type on options 1 and 2 and neither worked. I read that if a hard drive shows up, which it does, but gives this error that it's probably a software problem. It said something about doing an image backup. I have 3 IDE hard drives that are hopefully compatible if it'd be easier to replace it, but they're from the early 2000's. Two are 40GB and one 30GB.

The BIOS ID string is 41-p400-001437-00101111-101094-486avip-h. Apparently the motherboard manufacturer is one of the following: Amptron DX-9700, Fugutech M919, Elpina 486/586 V.I.P., SOLAR COMPUTER Model: M921, Hsin Tech (Pcchips) M921, or Amptron DX-9500.

 

[dassark]

How much are you looking to get for the computer?

 

[SomeGuy]

The "No Operating System" suggest the drive was not used as a boot drive (may have had another drive as a boot drive previously), or was reformatted at some point. You can boot from a DOS (I'd use Win95 OSR2 or Win98 MS-DOS 7.1) disk and see if there are any files on it. But you are probably better off just wiping the drive and letting a buyer install what they want on it.

 

[Stone]

No Operating System could mean lots of things including a hosed drive or incorrect drive geometry, just to enumerate two possibilities. Selling a machine in that state is just asking for trouble. Would you buy a machine like that? Maybe for $10 or $20!