This was my first computer! My dad bought it when I was 6 and it was our first IBM-compatible PC...and was our family computer for 5 years, much to my chagrin, haha. I learned to love it, and then I learned to hate it when 486s hit the market and my parents refused to upgrade while my friends were all playing Epic Pinball. :P But I did have a lot of good times on this old thing, and to this day I still have the BSR keyboard, which was one of the best keyboards I've ever had. So thanks for this nostalgia kick!
DAK was so much more then an office supply company. They were located in Canoga Park, Ca and they sold all sorts of really bizarre electronics. Anyone who ever saw one of their catalogs has to remember the enthusiasm that Drew had for the products that he sold. It was also a great company to work at! I did tech support on the PC's and the CD-Rom drive and also the Breadmaker!
Hey, this was actually sold by DAK Industries after they acquired the BSR logo. This was one of the first PC's sold in the US. Had a huge software package that came with it..
I remember that package quite well from mine, Quattro Pro, PcUSA, Sidekick, some word processor on like 7 5.25 Floppies, some keyboard typing program....and windows 3.0.
My first PC was the BSR 286 with single speed CD-ROM drive that used caddies. It had a 40MB hard drive and I MB RAM. I remember thinking how huge that was at the time. It was an awesome system and I used Windows 3.1 on it. Over time, I scrapped the original board and replaces it with a 386DX. Those were the good old days. I really wish I kept that as a stock system just for old time sake.
Interesting. I never knew of a 286 based PC that came with a CD drive stock though I knew they were being sold even later on as more budget oriented offerings alongside the 386 and 486 PC's. Awhile back I did a video on my 286 PC and it had a CD drive, I mean so many games were released and rereleased on CD that run just fine on a fast 286 adding a CD drive makes a lot of sense but some people in the comments gave me some flack over it because it wasn't really "correct".
Excellent video. Very interesting machine. Using a double speed CD-ROM drive on a sound blaster / sound card with a cd rom interface usually works better on those ancient systems than IDE cd-drives. Good call!
Sounds like a caddy style CD drive. Many of the early CD drives were like that where you had to place the CD in a case or "caddy" before inserting the caddy into the drive.
Major Stryker looks like it's running at the correct speed, but some of the sounds aren't working, particularly when you fire your missiles and shoot at enemies. I only hear the explosion sound when your ship gets destroyed, I wonder why that's happening.
I ended up testing the game on another 386 with a completely different Sound Blaster pro 2.0 and I have sort of the same issue. on this system the sound effects for the blaster and explosions play for the first few seconds of gameplay then just cut out and stop. Its puzzling. I also tried installing the game on two other systems that had larger HDD's (1gb and the other 2gb) and the games installer seems to freak out with large hard drives. It gave me a "not enough space error" and reported -1gb and -2gb of hard drive space available.
Here's the manual. I don't see anything about needing to change DIP switches when upgrading, but it goes into upgrading the RAM and supported types/amounts. files.support.epson.com/pdf/e3sx16/e3sx16u1.pdf
This is exactly what you have to do. I miiiiiggght still have the user/service manual for my BSR hanging around. I'll look around and see if I can find it. If I have it, then I have all the other stuff that came with it, including the BSR-specific Windows 3.1 disks. I know this video is a year old and you may have found all this stuff by now, but if I can get it all together, would you want my BSR stuff (documentation/disks)? Unless I tossed it recently, and I don't think I did, I should have pretty much everything that came with the computer, I just don't have the computer itself, anymore.
I did have a i386SX in 1991, it was my first PC ever, and I enjoyed it quite a lot until I upgraded it to a 486DX 33 MHz. The 386SX could do 32 bit operations internally (and then was faster than any 286), but had to comunicate to the rest of the board with 16 bit bus. Although first 386SX was slower than high end 286's, the 386SX got up to 33 MHz and no 286 could manage to get to this level of performance.
There's actually people going after the whole 'Master/Slave' thing because they think it offensive. Legacy equipment uses that terminology in code, so changing it would be counterproductive.
Did you run the Wolf 3D benchmark with the registered 1.4 version? If it was this benchmark thandor.net/article/10 it says you have to use that version, did you use shareware? Also, BioMenance is running in EGA, it just uses a SVGA compatibility mode as in, the EGA mode but adjusted for SVGA cards. This VGA is so old it might even not be SVGA, so maybe try turning it off in the settings and see if the scrolling improves. Some Apogee games have scrolling troubles on some videocards unrelated to CPU speed. To be honest, I think you are repeating "Oh, the CPU is SO SLOW" too much, most of the slowdown you get is probably caused by the VGA being a VERY early chip, those always had abysmal performance, try playing Continuum/Alpha Waves, it is an early 3D game that runs well even on a 10 Mhz 8088 and the polygonal objects in it flicker on any VGA that is not super slow so if it displays a nice non flickery image, you have an EXTREMELY slow VGA chip.
I used Phil's benchmarking utility which I think uses ver 1.4 though I would need to check. your right in that the VGA is super slow but the 386sx-16 is still a slow chip, especially as far as 386's go. It's the slowest 386 out there. Your likely very right about 286 chipsets being faster due to being more mature at the time but for a 386 being clock for clock just as fast as a 286 equivalent isn't a great selling point. and I think most people would expect a 386 to beat a 286. As said I could drop a et4000 or what not in there but a fast 386 is what I have my AMD 386dx-40 rig for. That unique video card is mostly the only reason I hold onto the BSR. I'll try looking for Continuum/Alpha Waves and give it a whirl on this machine.
I think the reason why Intel introduced the 386SX to replace the 286 were some bugs with switching in and out of the protected mode which made Bill Gates call the 286 a "brain damaged chip". Windows 3.1 should run much faster on this machine in 386 protected mode than a 286 in standard mode, uncle run Windows 3.1 on a 386SX/16 Mhz, of course it was not fast but it was probably much faster than a 286 stuck in standard protected mode. Also, in LGRs video if I remember correctly he actually quite praised the 386SX. From a 1988 point of view, this IS a speed demon, consider that most PC users still used XT class machines! Most PS/2 machines used a 8 Mhz or 10 Mhz 286, 12 Mhz at most, and those are absolutely slower than a 386SX/16. By the way, VGA adventure games like Space Quest VGA or Legend of Kyrandia (a beautiful VGA game that runs well even on a 8 Mhz XT for some reason, as long as it has VGA) should fly on this machine. Winter and Summer Games should also do well. I had a 40 Mhz 386DX, but to be honest, most games on it were very early 90s or late 80s stuff that your SX machine should run well too. Considering Dune 2 is playable, through slow on a 12 Mhz 286 with 1 MB of RAM, your machine should handle it well too. I guess I have a weakness for "good enough" systems but really, your system would be among the high end ones in 1988. In the country where I am from (Slovakia) some people bought 286/12 as late as 1993 and most game magazines in 1991 still reviewed mostly ZX Spectrum games, so judging it to be slow on Wolfenstein 3D or fast scrolling games (which it handles quite well to be honest from the video) is not really fair. Anyways you can try the file from that website. It has no glitches in DosBox at least.
0blivi0n100 I think even through there is no CGA port on that card it is still a rather valuable card as most 80s VGAs are very rare. It might be slow, but it is definitely a piece of videocard history.
From what I know, a 386SX is not really slower than a 286 at the same speed, BUT most 16 Mhz 286 would be mature, stable, well performing boards with relatively good video cards, while most 16 Mhz 386SX would be from the early 386 era OR budget systems and have worse boards and slow video cards. So it isn't about the chip being really slower, but the typical 386SX/16 system being slower. If you put a Tseng ET4000 ISA video card into this it would really fly considering the clock speed and all the games you tested would run without any choppiness, but that would hurt the uniqueness and the special VGA chip this system has. It is probably best to play on it the way it is. There is also the thing that many 286 systems on UA-cam are souped up with Ronald MT32, 8 MB RAM, Tseng videocards... and of course that would beat a 386SX clone that is "the way people actually used it back in the day". Most 286 machines were probably a lot slower than this 386SX, but yes, a tuned late 286 will beat the pants off this system. There were also 25 Mhz 286 chips from Harris that could outdo 386DX in 16-bit apps, but that one has a big clockspeed advantage on this guy. My uncle run a 386SX/16 with a black and white VGA monitor for years using it for productivity software like word processing and accounting until 2001 or so. May be slow, but reliable, and definitely enough for stuff like accounting, the funny thing is, he runs a toy shop and has a modern machine with a 1080p LCD in place of that 386 now, but he still runs that same DOS accounting software on it in a window in Windows 7 (32-bit so yes, it has VDM for DOS)! If he did not use the PC for other stuff, I would call that the biggest waste of computing power ever.
I'm guilty of the souped up 286 myself. my video on the 286 has a 20mhz Harris rig with a fast ATI VGA wonder card. I have an OEM VTI Turbo 55 12mhz 286 machine I want to keep a bit more period correct and do a video on but the PSU is missing and it seems to take a slightly none standard sized PSU.
I have one of these BSR 386SX/16 computers I got with a bunch of junk. Mine is missing a hard drive, is pretty dirty, and has some rust, but I’m going to try to restore it. If you’re interested, I found there’s a technical manual available on Amazon right now: www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000KDD694/ref=dp_olp_used_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=used Also, cool to find your blog article on this machine. Like you said, there’s almost nothing on the web about this particular computer… except your blog article and your UA-cam video!
awesome, thanks for that link. maybe the switch settings are in there. Anyways please let us know how the restoration goes and your thoughts on the machine once you get it up and running.
Ok, so the manual showed up. unfortunately it doesn't refer to this particular computer. oddly there are no pictures or illustrations in the manual of any computers or motherboards but the information of the range of computers it talks about is very similar but kind of off. for instance it talks about a CD-ROM drive as standard which I'm fairly certain this model did not have. also the video card is completely different as the manual talks about a ATI card being the built in video. It did however say the max RAM on the computer was only 8MB and since I figured the PC this manual was talking about was pretty similar to the SX/16 I have I started focusing on 1mb RAM stick and finally got the machine to recognize 8MB total. This did not require messing with the switches.
Hmm... The manual I got (purchased from the same link) does not mention a CD-ROM drive (that I could find), but does say the built-in video is ATI28800. There must have been several different configurations released. I looked on the copyright page of the manual I received, and it says "First Edition, Aug. 1990" I'll have to dig into my BSR 386SX/16 soon not only to see if I can get it working, but also to compare with yours and see if there are any differences.
yep, that's the same video chip mine references. Yours has the Eagle II video chipset like mine does right? It mentions a CD-ROM drive in my manual at the front under standard features.
I haven't taken my computer apart enough to look and see what the video chipset is... I'll have to try to get to that soon. Yeah, under standard features, my manual makes no mention of a CD-ROM. It does say 5.25" OR 3.5" floppy, which is interesting, since mine has both, as well as the 8MB limit on RAM.
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
This was my first computer! My dad bought it when I was 6 and it was our first IBM-compatible PC...and was our family computer for 5 years, much to my chagrin, haha. I learned to love it, and then I learned to hate it when 486s hit the market and my parents refused to upgrade while my friends were all playing Epic Pinball. :P But I did have a lot of good times on this old thing, and to this day I still have the BSR keyboard, which was one of the best keyboards I've ever had. So thanks for this nostalgia kick!
"We already have a computer, we don't need another one."
i love seeing a pizza box with a compliment of floppies. takes me back to my childhood
The soundtracks for 'Major Stryker' and 'Cannon Fodder' are awesome!
My first desktop! My grandfather bought it from an office supply company called Dak in the late 80's
DAK was so much more then an office supply company. They were located in Canoga Park, Ca and they sold all sorts of really bizarre electronics. Anyone who ever saw one of their catalogs has to remember the enthusiasm that Drew had for the products that he sold. It was also a great company to work at! I did tech support on the PC's and the CD-Rom drive and also the Breadmaker!
My BSR 386DX/33 is alive & well!!
Hey, this was actually sold by DAK Industries after they acquired the BSR logo. This was one of the first PC's sold in the US. Had a huge software package that came with it..
I remember that package quite well from mine, Quattro Pro, PcUSA, Sidekick, some word processor on like 7 5.25 Floppies, some keyboard typing program....and windows 3.0.
My first PC was the BSR 286 with single speed CD-ROM drive that used caddies. It had a 40MB hard drive and I MB RAM. I remember thinking how huge that was at the time. It was an awesome system and I used Windows 3.1 on it. Over time, I scrapped the original board and replaces it with a 386DX. Those were the good old days. I really wish I kept that as a stock system just for old time sake.
did you add the CD drive or did you buy it new that with one?
It was new with the CD drive. Also came with a bunch of disks. Library of the future, Magazine rack, Bible program, and more.
Interesting. I never knew of a 286 based PC that came with a CD drive stock though I knew they were being sold even later on as more budget oriented offerings alongside the 386 and 486 PC's. Awhile back I did a video on my 286 PC and it had a CD drive, I mean so many games were released and rereleased on CD that run just fine on a fast 286 adding a CD drive makes a lot of sense but some people in the comments gave me some flack over it because it wasn't really "correct".
i wonder if one of the dips disables the onboard
The only 286 system that I know came with a CD-ROM drive was the
Tandy/Memorex VIS, an early (and unsuccessful) PC-based game console.
I so wish I had my VIS with me to do a video. Alas, it's in storage on the other side of the country.
Excellent work man.
thank you
Excellent video. Very interesting machine. Using a double speed CD-ROM drive on a sound blaster / sound card with a cd rom interface usually works better on those ancient systems than IDE cd-drives. Good call!
The possible reason foor the ram problem is that some 386 and early 486 boards required the ram layout to be selected by jumpers or dip switches.
good point. The key may be figuring out the settings for the switch box on the board which I currently can find zero information on.
My first computer! It had a CD drive upgrade that was weird. You put the CD in a floppy-like case with a sliding gate before inserting it.
Sounds like a caddy style CD drive. Many of the early CD drives were like that where you had to place the CD in a case or "caddy" before inserting the caddy into the drive.
I wish I still had mine.
Major Stryker looks like it's running at the correct speed, but some of the sounds aren't working, particularly when you fire your missiles and shoot at enemies. I only hear the explosion sound when your ship gets destroyed, I wonder why that's happening.
Lachlant1984 thanks for the input, I'll try playing it on a diffrent rig and see if I get those sounds
I ended up testing the game on another 386 with a completely different Sound Blaster pro 2.0 and I have sort of the same issue. on this system the sound effects for the blaster and explosions play for the first few seconds of gameplay then just cut out and stop. Its puzzling. I also tried installing the game on two other systems that had larger HDD's (1gb and the other 2gb) and the games installer seems to freak out with large hard drives. It gave me a "not enough space error" and reported -1gb and -2gb of hard drive space available.
I have a Samsung SD700 386SX-16 and it also has a keyboard port on the front...but it's AT, not PS/2.
Someone has invested in a coprocessor in the i387... you may even have a facility to put something faster in that socket like a 486 overdrive.
Maybe you have to change that DIP switch to support more RAM
I was thinking that myself, just need to figure out what switch does what.
Here's the manual. I don't see anything about needing to change DIP switches when upgrading, but it goes into upgrading the RAM and supported types/amounts.
files.support.epson.com/pdf/e3sx16/e3sx16u1.pdf
that machine appears to use a different motherboard then mine.
This is exactly what you have to do. I miiiiiggght still have the user/service manual for my BSR hanging around. I'll look around and see if I can find it. If I have it, then I have all the other stuff that came with it, including the BSR-specific Windows 3.1 disks. I know this video is a year old and you may have found all this stuff by now, but if I can get it all together, would you want my BSR stuff (documentation/disks)? Unless I tossed it recently, and I don't think I did, I should have pretty much everything that came with the computer, I just don't have the computer itself, anymore.
I did have a i386SX in 1991, it was my first PC ever, and I enjoyed it quite a lot until I upgraded it to a 486DX 33 MHz.
The 386SX could do 32 bit operations internally (and then was faster than any 286), but had to comunicate to the rest of the board with 16 bit bus. Although first 386SX was slower than high end 286's, the 386SX got up to 33 MHz and no 286 could manage to get to this level of performance.
There's actually people going after the whole 'Master/Slave' thing because they think it offensive. Legacy equipment uses that terminology in code, so changing it would be counterproductive.
oh shit I think my brother had this computer!
Did you run the Wolf 3D benchmark with the registered 1.4 version? If it was this benchmark thandor.net/article/10 it says you have to use that version, did you use shareware?
Also, BioMenance is running in EGA, it just uses a SVGA compatibility mode as in, the EGA mode but adjusted for SVGA cards. This VGA is so old it might even not be SVGA, so maybe try turning it off in the settings and see if the scrolling improves. Some Apogee games have scrolling troubles on some videocards unrelated to CPU speed. To be honest, I think you are repeating "Oh, the CPU is SO SLOW" too much, most of the slowdown you get is probably caused by the VGA being a VERY early chip, those always had abysmal performance, try playing Continuum/Alpha Waves, it is an early 3D game that runs well even on a 10 Mhz 8088 and the polygonal objects in it flicker on any VGA that is not super slow so if it displays a nice non flickery image, you have an EXTREMELY slow VGA chip.
I used Phil's benchmarking utility which I think uses ver 1.4 though I would need to check. your right in that the VGA is super slow but the 386sx-16 is still a slow chip, especially as far as 386's go. It's the slowest 386 out there. Your likely very right about 286 chipsets being faster due to being more mature at the time but for a 386 being clock for clock just as fast as a 286 equivalent isn't a great selling point. and I think most people would expect a 386 to beat a 286. As said I could drop a et4000 or what not in there but a fast 386 is what I have my AMD 386dx-40 rig for. That unique video card is mostly the only reason I hold onto the BSR. I'll try looking for Continuum/Alpha Waves and give it a whirl on this machine.
I think the reason why Intel introduced the 386SX to replace the 286 were some bugs with switching in and out of the protected mode which made Bill Gates call the 286 a "brain damaged chip". Windows 3.1 should run much faster on this machine in 386 protected mode than a 286 in standard mode, uncle run Windows 3.1 on a 386SX/16 Mhz, of course it was not fast but it was probably much faster than a 286 stuck in standard protected mode. Also, in LGRs video if I remember correctly he actually quite praised the 386SX. From a 1988 point of view, this IS a speed demon, consider that most PC users still used XT class machines! Most PS/2 machines used a 8 Mhz or 10 Mhz 286, 12 Mhz at most, and those are absolutely slower than a 386SX/16. By the way, VGA adventure games like Space Quest VGA or Legend of Kyrandia (a beautiful VGA game that runs well even on a 8 Mhz XT for some reason, as long as it has VGA) should fly on this machine. Winter and Summer Games should also do well. I had a 40 Mhz 386DX, but to be honest, most games on it were very early 90s or late 80s stuff that your SX machine should run well too. Considering Dune 2 is playable, through slow on a 12 Mhz 286 with 1 MB of RAM, your machine should handle it well too. I guess I have a weakness for "good enough" systems but really, your system would be among the high end ones in 1988. In the country where I am from (Slovakia) some people bought 286/12 as late as 1993 and most game magazines in 1991 still reviewed mostly ZX Spectrum games, so judging it to be slow on Wolfenstein 3D or fast scrolling games (which it handles quite well to be honest from the video) is not really fair.
Anyways you can try the file from that website. It has no glitches in DosBox at least.
0blivi0n100 I think even through there is no CGA port on that card it is still a rather valuable card as most 80s VGAs are very rare. It might be slow, but it is definitely a piece of videocard history.
Man so few views for a good channel.
Thank you.
386SX 16MHz will run Windows 3.1 well enough to get away with it. I got ripped
off many years ago twice, once on a 386SX 16 and once on a 386SX 25.
I played Ultima-games on this
From what I know, a 386SX is not really slower than a 286 at the same speed, BUT most 16 Mhz 286 would be mature, stable, well performing boards with relatively good video cards, while most 16 Mhz 386SX would be from the early 386 era OR budget systems and have worse boards and slow video cards. So it isn't about the chip being really slower, but the typical 386SX/16 system being slower. If you put a Tseng ET4000 ISA video card into this it would really fly considering the clock speed and all the games you tested would run without any choppiness, but that would hurt the uniqueness and the special VGA chip this system has. It is probably best to play on it the way it is. There is also the thing that many 286 systems on UA-cam are souped up with Ronald MT32, 8 MB RAM, Tseng videocards... and of course that would beat a 386SX clone that is "the way people actually used it back in the day". Most 286 machines were probably a lot slower than this 386SX, but yes, a tuned late 286 will beat the pants off this system. There were also 25 Mhz 286 chips from Harris that could outdo 386DX in 16-bit apps, but that one has a big clockspeed advantage on this guy.
My uncle run a 386SX/16 with a black and white VGA monitor for years using it for productivity software like word processing and accounting until 2001 or so. May be slow, but reliable, and definitely enough for stuff like accounting, the funny thing is, he runs a toy shop and has a modern machine with a 1080p LCD in place of that 386 now, but he still runs that same DOS accounting software on it in a window in Windows 7 (32-bit so yes, it has VDM for DOS)! If he did not use the PC for other stuff, I would call that the biggest waste of computing power ever.
I'm guilty of the souped up 286 myself. my video on the 286 has a 20mhz Harris rig with a fast ATI VGA wonder card. I have an OEM VTI Turbo 55 12mhz 286 machine I want to keep a bit more period correct and do a video on but the PSU is missing and it seems to take a slightly none standard sized PSU.
I have one of these BSR 386SX/16 computers I got with a bunch of junk. Mine is missing a hard drive, is pretty dirty, and has some rust, but I’m going to try to restore it.
If you’re interested, I found there’s a technical manual available on Amazon right now:
www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000KDD694/ref=dp_olp_used_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=used
Also, cool to find your blog article on this machine. Like you said, there’s almost nothing on the web about this particular computer… except your blog article and your UA-cam video!
awesome, thanks for that link. maybe the switch settings are in there. Anyways please let us know how the restoration goes and your thoughts on the machine once you get it up and running.
Ok, so the manual showed up. unfortunately it doesn't refer to this particular computer. oddly there are no pictures or illustrations in the manual of any computers or motherboards but the information of the range of computers it talks about is very similar but kind of off. for instance it talks about a CD-ROM drive as standard which I'm fairly certain this model did not have. also the video card is completely different as the manual talks about a ATI card being the built in video. It did however say the max RAM on the computer was only 8MB and since I figured the PC this manual was talking about was pretty similar to the SX/16 I have I started focusing on 1mb RAM stick and finally got the machine to recognize 8MB total. This did not require messing with the switches.
Hmm... The manual I got (purchased from the same link) does not mention a CD-ROM drive (that I could find), but does say the built-in video is ATI28800. There must have been several different configurations released. I looked on the copyright page of the manual I received, and it says "First Edition, Aug. 1990"
I'll have to dig into my BSR 386SX/16 soon not only to see if I can get it working, but also to compare with yours and see if there are any differences.
yep, that's the same video chip mine references. Yours has the Eagle II video chipset like mine does right? It mentions a CD-ROM drive in my manual at the front under standard features.
I haven't taken my computer apart enough to look and see what the video chipset is... I'll have to try to get to that soon.
Yeah, under standard features, my manual makes no mention of a CD-ROM. It does say 5.25" OR 3.5" floppy, which is interesting, since mine has both, as well as the 8MB limit on RAM.
such a random system