JIM HOLSONBACK wrote in a message to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE:

 JH> That's one good thing about having a small multi-meter - can check 
 JH> voltage on the pins at bottom of the mainboard, and make sure that 
 JH> the juice is getting through.

 JH> 
 WC> I've got the money for a hard drive now but will wait a month and 
 WC> purchase a 56K hardware external modem as well.

I've seen some mighty inexpensive meters out there,  including the one I
have in the drawer here,  a little bitty digital autoranging LCD display
unit that radio shack had on sale for around $20.  Only problem with it is
that the wire came out of one of the probes,  maybe I oughta fix that... 
:-)

 JH> 

 WC> A project scheduled for way down the road is to attempt to remove 
 WC> the fast UART from the crapped out 486 and replace the 8250 UART 
 WC> in it but that is stretching my current abilities, something a few 
 WC> years ago I'd have tackled in a heartbeat.

 JH> You say your 486 had a fast UART and the Pentium only has an 8250? 
 JH> I'm surprised.  I think before I tried doing a UART chip-swap (if 
 JH> I could even _find_ a separate UART chip), I'd consider looking 
 JH> for a serial card with 16550 UART(s), and disabling the mainboard 
 JH> Serial ports.  In any event, if what the Pentium board has is only 
 JH> 8250 or compatible/emulated, I think no need to hurry to buy an 
 JH> external 56K serial modem, as TBOMK the 8250 won't support that 
 JH> speed. Corrections welcomed, if I'm wrong.

This didn't hit me the first time around.  I'd be *real* surprised,  if we
were talking about onboard stuff that's built into bigger chips,  if that
Pentium in fact had 8250-type uarts.  There oughta be some easy software
that could be run to determine that,  doncha think?

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