A Hidden 386 PC! Proxim RangeLAN2 Access Point

Another fascinating retro computer here, but this is one that you probably wouldn't realize is a PC unless you took it apart! This has no hard drive at all, it runs DR-DOS completely off a 3.5" floppy disk.

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● Music used in order of appearance:
Got The Groove, Suits & Neckties, Whisky On The Rocks

[LonSeidman]

Love that they used the floppy drive - definitely the cheapest way to do that back then. Easy firmware upgrades too, just swap the disk!

[yushatak]

Laughed my ass off at this one, especially liked the little fake quotes from the company. It's amazing how much crap they just excluded from that board and had it continue to operate, especially the whole video subsystem. Oh and that teal one reminds me of SGI gear..

[unclehogram]

Had one of these in an industrial settings years ago. Untrue that it will communicate with WiFi unless actually RangeLAN2 and the Intermec device is not. It is OpenAIR. Much as with CDMA vs. GSM, they may run at the same frequencies but the standards are completely different. OpenAIR/RangeLAN was a predecessor to WiFi and maxed out at 2.1 Mbps. PCMCIA cards were available that complied with the standard and this is how we did wireless networking before 802.11b. Items than ran off this were primarily wireless scanners in our case. Janus 2020 was the model if I remember correctly. Worked just fine for that purpose.

[hackmiester]

I would say 512k is about right. Even the high-end routers of the time, such as the Cisco 2500 series, shipped with 4MB of RAM in 1994. In the world of access points, 512k should be enough for anybody...

Also, I bet the CPU was a lot more taxed than you suspect. These early wireless standards could sometimes do up to 11 Mbit, but even the 10 Mbit Ethernet is difficult for a 386 to keep up with. All the packets would likely be bridged through the CPU in this device - no DMA between the cards. So during periods of high throughput from the wireless clients, I bet the CPU was working hard.

Thanks for sharing this one. I work with enterprise networking gear, so it's interesting to see how we got to where we are in that field today.

[jacobpierce]

Old tech is just so amazing and fascinating to see, especially since you can see how certain pieces of tech were way ahead of their time even with the limited technical of their time

[Drinkabeerandplayagameofficial]

man do i love the random, goofy computers that you find

[burretploof]

What a weird device! I always find it interesting when manufacturers decide to use off-the-shelf products (especially when they're parts for desktop PCs, basically) for embedded devices like these.

[Microang]

You should find a working example and put an ISA video card in it and get some games going for the proper LGR review treatment! :D

[suspedal]

Man, these sleeper PCs are getting intense.

[philscomputerlab]

That is so cool! Covered up floppy drive, I love it.

[thedungeondelver]

The tinkerer in me looked at that and thought "Okay, you could mount a CF card right on the IDE port with an adapter, no need for a cable, then get a basic soundblaster, maybe up the RAM to 4 or 8 megs, of course drop in a VGA card...or possibly track down the actual VGA chip and a 15-pin header, that'd leave the other ISA slot for something else...ooh, an I/O card to which you could connect a parallel port CD-ROM..." :)

[Dentenshi]

Going through a stressful move right now in my life ready to embark cross country. Only a cell phone with me in a empty room and LGRs videos are making my bad day better.

[VectrexLife]

Blocking the AT keyboard port AND the floppy drive?! I've never heard of such insanity!

[pizzaboxer]

man, I love it when you show such weird systems.

[williamhayden]

The local management port is an RS232 Console port. Plug in console cable [to computer running] appropriate terminal emulation software (PuTTY, SecureCRT, etc.) [most like with settings of 9600, 8, N, 1 and No HW Flow control] and viola. It will allow you to configure the AP via CLI or Menu Driven CLI.

[chadmasta]

It's a shame yours don't work. I wonder if, assuming you could fit them in there, an isa video card and ide controller could be used to make that into a full(ish) PC.

[msiller]

You know? The original Apple Airport Base Station, introduced alongside the original Tangerine & Blueberry iBooks in 1999, had a 486 embedded into the logic board; it was co-produced by Lucent and Apple, and was just $299 USD, was compatible with Macs and PCs, and was literally thousands of dollars less expensive than anything at the time.
I've actually never taken apart one, but it would be interesting to do so.
I love your videos, LGR! A big 'Hola' from México!

[chaomusicify]

Always looking forward to Monday/Friday for these vids. Got to see one 4 minutes after upload!

[TheRetroNobody]

Like you mentioned. I really love all the off the shelf parts they used to build these. Pretty ingenious.

[retrogamereplay]

Nice and unique find again! Love watching your videos!