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Unisys 386-dx system (16 mhz)

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First post, by drosse1meyer

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Hi Everyone

Some while ago I acquired a large beige Unisys machine and I've finally found the time to dig into it a little bit. I am not really sure if its worth playing around with all too much and would like input before I move onto other projects!

The case outside simply states Unisys but inside label says 'Unisys 800 16/2'... It is built like a tank and probably weighs 40-50 lbs. The front has a power and HD LED and a reset button, rear has serial and parallel connects. There are keylocks on both ends but I was able to figure out how to crack it open. Luckily the case was not locked and i removed them as I had no key.

There is a large motherboard with only 2 mb of soldered RAM and no sockets or slots. It seems unremarkable with dip switches for configuring things such as wait states and memory size. The slots are all ISA with one nonstandard looking connection (perhaps for a memory expansion board?) and onboard serial and parallel headers. PSU is standard AT pinout but L - shaped and way oversized. It gets pretty hot and the fan was annoying so I swapped it out for a smaller psu with adapter.

Two ISA cards, a Headland VGA 512kb and a Sumo SCSI controller. The hard drive is 40 MB SCSI and still works nicely after a little refurbishment. I was able to install DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 after figuring out some SCSI issues.

The BIOS is wretched and literally just a text menu with hardly any options. Perhaps there was some other method (diskette program)?

Anyway, it runs OK (tested with wolf3d and win3.1)... I looked a bit and can't find much documentation about or for the machine.

Overall a little underwhelming, and I was considering re-using the case for a 486 build and keeping the guts.... Having a working SCSI drive and other cards is a welcome addition, though.

Opinions? Has anyone played with one of these before?

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Last edited by drosse1meyer on 2022-08-24, 00:42. Edited 1 time in total.

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

Reply 1 of 12, by rasz_pl

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As they say one mans trash another mans treasure. Sell it and buy a nice 486 case?
Personally im not a fan of those primitive homegrown non standard designs, 1990 date codes but still doesnt use simms, almost hundred discrete logic chips and at least 15 PALs instead of modern all in one chipset.

Open Source AT&T Globalyst/NCR/FIC 486-GAC-2 proprietary Cache Module reproduction

Reply 3 of 12, by appiah4

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We used to have the exact same case in our school in the senior computer lab, but our UNISYS computers were 286s I believe. That case is very nostalgic to me. I would buy it from you if we were closeby, but that is not even remotely the case.

Also, our junior computer lab had Zenith XTs, those ugly mofos with the monitors attached to the case.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 4 of 12, by drosse1meyer

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rasz_pl wrote on 2022-08-23, 08:24:

As they say one mans trash another mans treasure. Sell it and buy a nice 486 case?
Personally im not a fan of those primitive homegrown non standard designs, 1990 date codes but still doesnt use simms, almost hundred discrete logic chips and at least 15 PALs instead of modern all in one chipset.

Yeah it's kind of weird, it has CPU and FPU sockets, and the UART etc. are also socketed. Onboard serial and parallel indicates some level of integration but I'm guessing that the whole RAM thing was a way to get people to buy expensive proprietary cards to upgrade, which are now impossible to find.

It's kind of hard to find turbo AT cases for a decent price, so I may just modify this one for now, and maybe use the hole where the front lock was for some kind of turbo button / display.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-08-23, 11:10:

We used to have the exact same case in our school in the senior computer lab, but our UNISYS computers were 286s I believe. That case is very nostalgic to me. I would buy it from you if we were closeby, but that is not even remotely the case.

Also, our junior computer lab had Zenith XTs, those ugly mofos with the monitors attached to the case.

That's cool, I knew someone on here would share some experience! Yes I would consider selling it, but I'm in the US Northeast...

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

Reply 5 of 12, by BinaryDemon

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Curious would anyone call a 386dx-16 rare? I don’t recall seeing a lot but my interest in computers was just getting started. 386sx-16 seemed much more popular.

Check out DOSBox Distro:

https://sites.google.com/site/dosboxdistro/ [*]

a lightweight Linux distro (tinycore) which boots off a usb flash drive and goes straight to DOSBox.

Make your dos retrogaming experience portable!

Reply 6 of 12, by MarkP

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BinaryDemon wrote on 2022-08-23, 14:01:

Curious would anyone call a 386dx-16 rare? I don’t recall seeing a lot but my interest in computers was just getting started. 386sx-16 seemed much more popular.

It started the 32 bit x86 boom but waaay too expensive for mere mortals.

Reply 7 of 12, by drosse1meyer

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BinaryDemon wrote on 2022-08-23, 14:01:

Curious would anyone call a 386dx-16 rare? I don’t recall seeing a lot but my interest in computers was just getting started. 386sx-16 seemed much more popular.

Not sure about production numbers or usage, but according to eBay pricing, doesnt seem particularly rare. $20-30 USD?

Annoying that this only has 2 MB and no RAM slots, as the DX was capable of addressing significantly more RAM than an SX, at least in theory.

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

Reply 8 of 12, by appiah4

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drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-08-23, 12:11:
appiah4 wrote on 2022-08-23, 11:10:

We used to have the exact same case in our school in the senior computer lab, but our UNISYS computers were 286s I believe. That case is very nostalgic to me. I would buy it from you if we were closeby, but that is not even remotely the case.

Also, our junior computer lab had Zenith XTs, those ugly mofos with the monitors attached to the case.

That's cool, I knew someone on here would share some experience! Yes I would consider selling it, but I'm in the US Northeast...

Not even the same continent 😀

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 9 of 12, by MarkP

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drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-08-23, 16:48:
BinaryDemon wrote on 2022-08-23, 14:01:

Curious would anyone call a 386dx-16 rare? I don’t recall seeing a lot but my interest in computers was just getting started. 386sx-16 seemed much more popular.

Not sure about production numbers or usage, but according to eBay pricing, doesnt seem particularly rare. $20-30 USD?

Annoying that this only has 2 MB and no RAM slots, as the DX was capable of addressing significantly more RAM than an SX, at least in theory.

Ram was waaaay more expensive back then.. In the very early '90s I payed $400NZ for 4 1meg 30 pin SIPPs which I later converted to 30pin SIMMs when I updated the 286 mobo to a second hand 486 one. Increasing the 486 ram to 8megs total.

Reply 10 of 12, by drosse1meyer

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MarkP wrote on 2022-08-23, 19:51:
drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-08-23, 16:48:
BinaryDemon wrote on 2022-08-23, 14:01:

Curious would anyone call a 386dx-16 rare? I don’t recall seeing a lot but my interest in computers was just getting started. 386sx-16 seemed much more popular.

Not sure about production numbers or usage, but according to eBay pricing, doesnt seem particularly rare. $20-30 USD?

Annoying that this only has 2 MB and no RAM slots, as the DX was capable of addressing significantly more RAM than an SX, at least in theory.

Ram was waaaay more expensive back then.. In the very early '90s I payed $400NZ for 4 1meg 30 pin SIPPs which I later converted to 30pin SIMMs when I updated the 286 mobo to a second hand 486 one. Increasing the 486 ram to 8megs total.

True. Everything was super expensive in general. I have a pile of old PC Worlds, every now and then I'll browse through one. It's amazing what everything cost in 1980s/90s dollars... But the Ads. 90s advertising for computer stuff is the best.

P1: Packard Bell - 233 MMX, Voodoo1, 64 MB, ALS100+
P2-V2: Dell Dimension - 400 Mhz, Voodoo2, 256 MB
P!!! Custom: 1 Ghz, GeForce2 Pro/64MB, 384 MB

Reply 11 of 12, by Horun

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I have an old (pre 1989) ZEOS 386-16 board that also only has 2MB of dips, came out of some workstation. I think they expected you to use an Intel Above Board or similar for EMS for your workstation apps if you needed more ram back when they first came out....also seems that ZEOS is somewhat designed after mid 286 boards much like the Unisys is similar to early 286 big boards.....just a thought..

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 12 of 12, by MarkP

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drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-08-23, 20:02:
MarkP wrote on 2022-08-23, 19:51:
drosse1meyer wrote on 2022-08-23, 16:48:

Not sure about production numbers or usage, but according to eBay pricing, doesnt seem particularly rare. $20-30 USD?

Annoying that this only has 2 MB and no RAM slots, as the DX was capable of addressing significantly more RAM than an SX, at least in theory.

Ram was waaaay more expensive back then.. In the very early '90s I payed $400NZ for 4 1meg 30 pin SIPPs which I later converted to 30pin SIMMs when I updated the 286 mobo to a second hand 486 one. Increasing the 486 ram to 8megs total.

True. Everything was super expensive in general. I have a pile of old PC Worlds, every now and then I'll browse through one. It's amazing what everything cost in 1980s/90s dollars... But the Ads. 90s advertising for computer stuff is the best.

If you lived through that time, like yours truelly and a lot of other Vogons have, it was the most exciting period in respect to personal computing in general. A lot was going on hardware and software wise. 2000 onwards meh...

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