Subj : Re: Back from the dead
To   : hyjinx
From : kirkspragg
Date : Tue May 20 2025 08:52 pm

 hy> Heya everyone,
 hy> 
 hy> It is I, Al, hyjinx the 3rd of the New Zealand kind.
 hy> 
 hy> I wanted to drop by and say hello. It has been too long my dear friends. 

Hello from Christchurch NZ! How is late Autumn/Winter treating you?

 hy> However, today, I write this from my IBM 5160/XT, now with upgraded
 hy> Intel InBoard/386 goodness. Yes, my XT (which originally had a sucky
 hy> 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU and an 8-bit bus), is now running in 32 bits with a
 hy> 386-16MHz CPU. This is all courtesy of a rare beast of a card from
 hy> Intel, which I spent faaaar too much money on on Ebay. I will be
 hy> uploading the video to my Patreon supporters very soon. YouTubes
 hy> sometime later.

I'm more than slightly jealous! Working Inboard/386s are very hard to find.... good on you for finding one. I look forward to hearing how it performs, I imaging that being stuck with an 8-bit ISA bus will limit things a bit though it will still be miles faster than a 4.77 8088.

Have and IBM XT myself, though eventually got sick of the 4.77Mhz performance and memory limitations & upgraded to a 20Mhz 286 followed by a 386 dx40 by swapping out the motherboard - its much more usable and 386 memory management even in plain DOS is much less of a pain with a 386 than 8088/80286.

 hy> Naturally, I am chuffed about the performance this gives, but it opens up
 hy> doors to multi-tasking in a way that the 8088 or 80286 could not. So
 hy> now, I can launch the microweb web browser in a separate DesqView

I believe a 286 with one of a very small number of special chipsets/memory expansion board can multitask in deskqview... but finding these working & fore sale (and then locating working EMS drivers) is soooo hard!

 hy> drivers that pull from the main packet driver and they just have
 hy> different driver interrupts (i.e. 0x60 for the main driver, 0x65 for
 hy> mux1 and, say 0x70 for mux2). Works like a charm!

Makes sense packet driver can only be used by one program at a time. I imagine you would need to do something similar to use a DOS telnet client in Win 3.1, though I haven't tried.

 hy> Some other weirdo out there will find this fascinating.... or is it just
 hy> me?! I have Ltning on my Discord channel to thank for this (he runs a BBS
 hy> somewhere), and I also have Michael Brutman for pointing me in the right
 hy> direction. 

Yes I find this interesting! Others will too, I'm sure.

 hy> Now, will I say "I'm back, baby".. .Back to the BBS scene? Not totally. I
 hy> have quite a bit of busyness that won't go away any time soon. What I
 hy> will be doing, is coming along more.
 hy> 
 hy> Anyways I've prattled on long enough now. 
 hy> 
 hy> Yours in cyberspace,
 hy> Mr "Back to the BBS".

We look forward to updates when/if you have time! please keep us informed over here :)

.... I've met some interesting personalities myself. Kirk

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