Uploaded December 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago

---

Did you know that Intel used to make computers in addition to their famous series of processors? Many of those system were for industry or niche usage, but they also had a small selection of workstation computers just like this. The name is right in the title "Intel Professional Workstation".

Well, this system is unusual for a lot of reasons because it's the first EISA based system. EISA was a competitor to IBM's Micro-channel Architecture and was created by the Gang of Nine as a response to IBM patenting the MCA. Intended as a replacement for the original ISA bus, EISA mostly existed as a stopgap until PCI would entirely replace it.

This system is unusual for the era with it's integrated SCSI and Ethernet adapters, and no onboard IDE. The condition on getting this system was to dump the hard drive which is of course stymied by the fact that this is (unsurprisingly) a SCSI HDD. My ultimate goal is to restore this system as much as possible, dump it's hard drive, explore what software I may find, and ultimately have a good time.

I'm still new to the topic of hardware restoration, and I'll fully admit I made some potentially serious mistakes, but at least at the moment, nothing has fried (yet), although I did make the PSU cry.

NCommander Links:
Twitter: twitter.com/FOSSfirefighter
Discord: discord.gg/V8esNah
Blog: https://casadevall.pro/

Music is from http://www.epidemicsound.com, with the following tracks used in order:
* Rumors (Instrumental Version) - Daxten
* A Travelers' Gloom - Dew O Light
* The Black Market - Hysics
* Where It Started - Spectacles, Wallet, and Watch
* A Healing Component - Spectacles, Wallet, and Watch
* Person of Interest - Dream Cave
* Cryptic Secrecy - Dream Cave
* City Phases - John Abbot
* Desert Silhouette - Trevor Kowiski

Although this video was released before I was aware of #DOSCember, I've retroactively added that hash tag since it does indeed fall under the subject! It's great that so many people are coming together to help celebrate the legacy of DOS, so here's my own part of that!

Intel referred to this system as the LP486E, and that name is used on several of the drivers and the label under the case. It's also the search term required to find any information on this video.