Packard Bell Pack-Mate III Review.

Twiggy

It's time, I think for me to write a review.

When I first came into sole possession of the Packard Bell Pack-Mate III 2/3 months ago, it did not have a sound card, only 1mb of ram, and had no hard disk drive as the previous owner used it for booter games., and thus never had a need for a hard drive.

Overtime I have done some upgrades to it, the first was buying a 121MB hard drive, and installing it - which worked. Second, I install my Sound Blaster 16 - which worked, and just recently buying 4mb of ram from Russia, installing it, and after some searching - properly configuring it.

It is now able to run Windows 3.0 well, and Wolfenstein 3D runs perfectly.

All in all, this is the best vintage system I have, and it survived all the operations I did on it.

I don't understand the Packard Bell hate, for what it is, this machine seems to stand up pretty damn good.

10/10 rating! 8)

whistler2250

Twiggy wrote:

It's time, I think for me to write a review.

When I first came into sole possession of the Packard Bell Pack-Mate III 2/3 months ago, it did not have a sound card, only 1mb of ram, and had no hard disk drive as the previous owner used it for booter games., and thus never had a need for a hard drive.

Overtime I have done some upgrades to it, the first was buying a 121MB hard drive, and installing it - which worked. Second, I install my Sound Blaster 16 - which worked, and just recently buying 4mb of ram from Russia, installing it, and after some searching - properly configuring it.

It is now able to run Windows 3.0 well, and Wolfenstein 3D runs perfectly.

All in all, this is the best vintage system I have, and it survived all the operations I did on it.

I don't understand the Packard Bell hate, for what it is, this machine seems to stand up pretty damn good.

10/10 rating! 8)

Their early machines were quite good, but as time went on, the quality degraded until their machines were nothing more than garbage. Hence all the Packard Bell Hate.

[Deleted User]

You should also try the Windows 3.0 TestDrive as well (for the PC World Tutorial program). Install it in a separate directory (e.g. C:\WinTD instead of C:\WINDOWS). If the PackMate has VGA, you can (and should) use the custom build of the Windows 3.0 TestDrive with VGA drivers I made and distributed here a while back. Search the forums; you'll find it. I'm on a mobile device, so no link now, sorry.

whistler2250

Twiggy wrote:

It's time, I think for me to write a review.

When I first came into sole possession of the Packard Bell Pack-Mate III 2/3 months ago, it did not have a sound card, only 1mb of ram, and had no hard disk drive as the previous owner used it for booter games., and thus never had a need for a hard drive.

Overtime I have done some upgrades to it, the first was buying a 121MB hard drive, and installing it - which worked. Second, I install my Sound Blaster 16 - which worked, and just recently buying 4mb of ram from Russia, installing it, and after some searching - properly configuring it.

It is now able to run Windows 3.0 well, and Wolfenstein 3D runs perfectly.

All in all, this is the best vintage system I have, and it survived all the operations I did on it.

I don't understand the Packard Bell hate, for what it is, this machine seems to stand up pretty damn good.

10/10 rating! 8)

Try installing Windows 3.0 MME, it will better take advantage of that SoundBlaster card.

Twiggy

whistler2250 wrote:

Twiggy wrote:

It's time, I think for me to write a review.

When I first came into sole possession of the Packard Bell Pack-Mate III 2/3 months ago, it did not have a sound card, only 1mb of ram, and had no hard disk drive as the previous owner used it for booter games., and thus never had a need for a hard drive.

Overtime I have done some upgrades to it, the first was buying a 121MB hard drive, and installing it - which worked. Second, I install my Sound Blaster 16 - which worked, and just recently buying 4mb of ram from Russia, installing it, and after some searching - properly configuring it.

It is now able to run Windows 3.0 well, and Wolfenstein 3D runs perfectly.

All in all, this is the best vintage system I have, and it survived all the operations I did on it.

I don't understand the Packard Bell hate, for what it is, this machine seems to stand up pretty damn good.

10/10 rating! 8)

Try installing Windows 3.0 MME, it will better take advantage of that SoundBlaster card.

I would, but this just has a 12MHZ 286, so multimedia is right at the edge of what it could handle properly.

DOS programs like Wolf3d and Dual Module player, use it just fine, though.

whistler2250

Twiggy wrote:

whistler2250 wrote:

Twiggy wrote:

It's time, I think for me to write a review.

When I first came into sole possession of the Packard Bell Pack-Mate III 2/3 months ago, it did not have a sound card, only 1mb of ram, and had no hard disk drive as the previous owner used it for booter games., and thus never had a need for a hard drive.

Overtime I have done some upgrades to it, the first was buying a 121MB hard drive, and installing it - which worked. Second, I install my Sound Blaster 16 - which worked, and just recently buying 4mb of ram from Russia, installing it, and after some searching - properly configuring it.

It is now able to run Windows 3.0 well, and Wolfenstein 3D runs perfectly.

All in all, this is the best vintage system I have, and it survived all the operations I did on it.

I don't understand the Packard Bell hate, for what it is, this machine seems to stand up pretty damn good.

10/10 rating! 8)

Try installing Windows 3.0 MME, it will better take advantage of that SoundBlaster card.

I would, but this just has a 12MHZ 286, so multimedia is right at the edge of what it could handle properly.

DOS programs like Wolf3d and Dual Module player, use it just fine, though.

Why don't you try an inboard 386, you'll get a 386 processor and much better performance.

Twiggy

whistler2250 wrote:

Twiggy wrote:

whistler2250 wrote:

Twiggy wrote:

It's time, I think for me to write a review.

When I first came into sole possession of the Packard Bell Pack-Mate III 2/3 months ago, it did not have a sound card, only 1mb of ram, and had no hard disk drive as the previous owner used it for booter games., and thus never had a need for a hard drive.

Overtime I have done some upgrades to it, the first was buying a 121MB hard drive, and installing it - which worked. Second, I install my Sound Blaster 16 - which worked, and just recently buying 4mb of ram from Russia, installing it, and after some searching - properly configuring it.

It is now able to run Windows 3.0 well, and Wolfenstein 3D runs perfectly.

All in all, this is the best vintage system I have, and it survived all the operations I did on it.

I don't understand the Packard Bell hate, for what it is, this machine seems to stand up pretty damn good.

10/10 rating! 8)

Try installing Windows 3.0 MME, it will better take advantage of that SoundBlaster card.

I would, but this just has a 12MHZ 286, so multimedia is right at the edge of what it could handle properly.

DOS programs like Wolf3d and Dual Module player, use it just fine, though.

Why don't you try an inboard 386, you'll get a 386 processor and much better performance.

I looked at accelerator cards, but they cost more than the entire listing did.

SomeGuy

Folks, please prune your quotes. They are starting to get stupidly long. Usually only a relevant sentence or two need to be quoted. And most of the time you don't need a quote at all when you are replying to the very last post.