Power 80486 on Siemens Nixdorf PCD-4ND (text and video to choose from)

    A short story about the Siemens Nixdorf PCD-4ND laptop and the processor power of 80486DX2 / 50 MHz. If you do not like video, under the cut is almost complete content in the form of text and dark and dark photos in 1080p made by a video camera. The laptop was presented by one of the viewers of the program - Alex.


    The laptop has survived quite well, although the condition of the matte cover shows that the life of the laptop was eventful.



    Near the center, we have a built-in microphone hiding in the front, which is quite unusual for the old laptops I have seen.



    On the right, there is a typical 3 and a half inch drive, still working, and on the front left is a pretty weighty, but alas, already dead battery. A striking difference from modern laptops, where the battery is most often located at the back.





    The floppik, having applied some fairly significant force, can also be pulled out and replaced with an additional battery. A curious move.



    By the way, according to the documentation, initially this model comes with 4 MB of RAM, but judging by the inscriptions on the bottom cover, later revisions were uploaded in full.



    To the right of the laptop is a connector for connecting the power supply, and under the cover are separate PS / 2 ports for connecting an external mouse and keyboard. Separate, this is important: on old laptops sometimes these ports were combined into one.





    On the left are the PCMCIA connector for expansion cards such as network, USB, and so on. Nearby are standard connectors for connecting external speakers, and, according to the documentation, a linear audio output.



    Strange as it may seem, the microphone port is located behind.



    Unusual solution. Also located behind are, from right to left:



    COM port for connecting mice or other slow equipment;
    VGA port for connecting an external monitor;
    LPT, it’s parallel, it’s also a printer port that allows you to use faster hardware;
    and of course, a proprietary expansion port that allows you to connect to the dock with additional equipment. Such docks were a typical feature of laptops of those years, today they almost everywhere have sunk into oblivion.



    A 10-inch monitor awaits us under the lid, but, unfortunately, the hinges have loosened so well over the years, and it is not fixed in any of the positions. I deliberately did not even try to repair it in any way to show you how it happens in life. Personally, I see this for the first time.



    Under the display, in addition to a pair of LED indicators, a panel also hides, when turned on, it shows some technical information. Funny thing, I even regret a little that it has ceased to be fashionable.



    On the right side is the speaker in a single copy, as well as the power button, there is nothing unusual here.



    But for what purposes, except for aesthetic, this thing is needed - I do not have a single idea. To record reminders, what key, what does it mean? In general, if you have thoughts on this subject - write in the comments.





    Under the keyboard is a trackball with two buttons. Quite a curious thing, the buttons are pressed well, but I personally do not have enough sensitivity, even after cleaning the ball.



    And finally, the keyboard.



    As you can see, initially there were no Russian designations on it, they were pasted later, moreover, they were glued qualitatively, over the years they did not practically wipe off. Alas, due to the rather large keys, the delete, home, and end buttons are very unusual.



    The location of the Fn key also infuriates me - on the normal keyboard, there is alt in this place, and if you try to press Alt + F4 without looking at the keyboard in Windows, and you get to Fn + F4, the laptop goes into hibernation, and this is very bad.



    After switching on, the laptop happily reports that it has 50 MHz of power, and that to go to the BIOS settings you need to hold down the not-so-typical Fnc + ESCAPE key combination. These settings look pretty usual and include almost the same as today, say, the order of loading, changing the date, password protection, and so on.







    There is also a switching of the monitor mode, where you can choose whether to stretch the image in low resolution with preserving the proportions or without those, this did not affect the performance. The picture on the external monitor in duplication mode will be displayed in the same mode.



    The video card here is from the company Western Digital, which made, as we see, not only hard drives.





    Now about performance. Here it’s much more visual to watch the video, so in the form of text I will describe everything briefly.

    Doom 2 - sometimes it slows down a bit, but overall - playable. And if you reduce the screen size - then the brakes evaporate.



    Decscent II slows down significantly more in 320x200, and in 640x480 we completely switch to slide show mode.



    But Quake slows down as if in itself. More or less normal, you can only play in 320x200 and twisting the screen size to a minimum. The game still slows down, but everything else also becomes VERY hard to figure out what the hell is going on! The situation, however, is quite predictable: the minimum system requirements specify 486DX4 / 100 MHz.



    But in 2D, the situation is somewhat improving. Say the same Rayman most of the time it works without brakes, which is really surprising, because the minimum system requirements indicate the first 90 MHz Pentium.



    The situation is no less good with the game Warcraft 2, or, more precisely, “Military Craft 2” in the opinion of a cool team of localizers of the SEC. In some places, the problems of capturing video make themselves felt, strangely painting places covered in the fog of war, as well as cropping the picture to the left, but at first glance this is the only problem, and the speed of work here is complete. The game still occasionally slows down, but only at the moment the camera moves and the units move simultaneously. That is, until you move the camera, the speed is perfect. On the other hand, I didn’t notice this right away;





    And finally, a few words about multimedia capabilities. The microphone writes in general not bad, but because the computer itself is noisy - the sound is noisy. As for the music - under Windows, neither MP3 nor WAV could be played without brakes, it is very slow.



    But under DOS, the situation is somewhat changing. Yes, MP3s still stutter a lot, but with WAV, i.e. audio files without compression everything went much better. Want to see and hear - enjoy watching the video!



    PS Pictures of the games are cropped to the left not by malicious intent - just that is how the capture card decided to understand the video signal from the laptop.

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