MAD Computer

From: Jeff Kaneko <jeff.kaneko_at_ifrsys.com>
Date: Wed Jul 15 11:20:51 1998

I once had one of these nasty little beasties. In fact, it was
a rare version that was badged for TELEX/Memorex. It used an
80186 CPU-- It was fast, at least to me, anyway (although
I don't recall the clock speed).

The Powersupply and floppy drives were in one unit, and the CPU
was in another. It had a CGA compatible display adaptor. It also
had what appeared to be an ISA bus, but most stock PeeCee cards
would cause problems.

I hacked this one by adding an 8-bit Hard disk controller, and
disabling the HDC bios ROM. There was support for the HDC in
the MAD-186 ROM, but the harddisk was not a standard option
(AFAIK).

I think this is the only computer I ever destroyed on purpose, and
out of spite, no less. When we bought our 1st '286, my wife urged
me to give the MAD to her brother. I really should have resisted,
because the thing became a support nightmare. "Can I put a joystick
on this?" "Uhh, whats an 'ERROR TRAP'?" "Uhh, RatRacer keeps locking
up, can you fix this?"

The computer got passed around the family, and I finally ended up
with it about three years ago, when it was summarily smashed into
little pieces-- retribution for countless sleepless nights when I had
to play 'Tech Support'. I had been driven to the edge of MADness.

Needless to say I wasn't into CLASSICS yet. I DID save the part with the
PS and flopy disk drives, though . . .

Jeff


At 11:29 PM 7/14/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Does anyone have a MAD Computer? It was just another boring peecee
>but I liked the name of the computer. I believe it was the fastest
>computer you could buy for some small amount of time- an early 80386
>PC running at a whopping 16 mhz.
>
>Just curious... I just like the concept...
>Perhaps they should have used the slogan...
>
>"Everyone should have a MAD computer in their home!"
>
>Or perhaps not...
>
>Thomas
>
Received on Wed Jul 15 1998 - 11:20:51 BST