I love it when I run across a new-old computer-y thing
that is much more than meets the eye initially.
Like this right here: The Proxim RangeLAN 2
wireless access point.
And yeah, I know it looks like a bland piece of networking equipment
at first glance, and... I mean, it is!
But if that's all it was I wouldn't be talking about it here.
And the reason I'm showing it off is because it hides
a full 386 DOS PC inside!
How cool is that? It's like a little secret computer!
Which is pretty much what it said on the Retro Battlestations subreddit post
that I first saw this on.
And after I was exposed to it there I just thought it was the coolest thing
and decided to track one down and turns out it wasn't too hard to do so!
It doesn't look like much in the front,
but hidden away behind this panel here
is a 3½″ floppy disk drive that it boots from.
It doesn't have a hard drive; it gets everything it needs to
as far as data from this floppy disk
that's never supposed to be removed, so they just covered it up.
Around back you also have an AT keyboard connector,
9 pin RS-232 serial,
and there's two ISA cards with wireless functionality.
Now this one I've been showing is the CruiseLAN variant, sold by Zenith.
Although, since I found it really cheap,
I ended up grabbing the 0100 Access Point version
sold by Intermec.
And there are other ones out there as well!
In fact, there's probably 4 or 5 different editions of this
that I've seen floating around online.
All of them, however, were manufactured by Proxim Wireless.
And while it has more capable hardware inside
that could theoretically make it do a lot more,
the way this is built is only as an access point.
It's not a router, or a switch, or anything like that,
and actual required users to setup a “master station client PC”
to work alongside it.
Now you might be thinking, “Hmm, a 386 with Wi-Fi? That's bizarre!”
Well, no! It's actually not using Wi-Fi.
This was introduced in 1994,
predating the 802.11 Wi-Fi standards,
and it actually uses it's own set of protocols by Proxim.
This was their RangeLAN 2, the 2.4 GHz successor
to the original RangeLAN from 1991,
which used a 900 MHz radio signal.
A company called Proxim announced a wireless LAN adapter called “RangeLAN”.
The product is an interface card with a small antenna
that transmits via spread spectrum radio frequencies.
Proxim says the network can transmit through multiple walls
at distances up to 100 ft. (≈30 m)
This sold for around $2000 for the access point in the mid ’90s,
$595 for the ISA card alone,
and $695 for a PCMCIA interface that could communicate between these.
Again, though, this is not Wi-Fi, but
it still can communicate with Wi-Fi,
at least the 802.11b variant
since it's on the same basic frequency of radio.
Let's get inside this thing for a closer look,
because it's fascinating!
First up is the AMD 386SX 40 MHz CPU,
which is actually one of the faster 386 procesors.
I'm skeptical if it even needed that much speed!
Considering what it's doing and also because it is severely bottlenecked
by 512K of RAM.
That's not the only setback! There's no video output whatsoever.
It has unpopulated connections
for what seems to be a Cirrus Logic chipset on the motherboard.
Now, what kind of motherboard is this, you ask? Well...
I had a bit of a time figuring it out because there's no distinct markings on it
but it appears to be a 4com FT386BL, from what I've read online.
And yeah, that matches up with it pretty closely.
It's unusual, in that it places the RAM in the bottom-right.
A lot of these 386 boards had the RAM at the top,
kind of behind the keyboard connector.
And there's also just a single ISA slot, meant to be used with a riser.
And it integrates the floppy and IDE controller on here as well!
Which is quite convenient, specially considering
most motherboards at the time relied on a controller card to be installed.
Like I mentioned earlier, though, it does not have any hard drive,
but you could theoretically put a hard drive in here, if you wanted to,
although there is no way to mount it with what it comes with.
It doesn't even include the parallel port!
The only thing it comes with is one serial port,
and they listed it as the local management port.
So I'm assuming that they just did this
instead of bothering to plug in any kind of video cards or anything else
whenever they needed to maintain it.
Also amusing is that some versions of this machine,
like the Intermec one I have here,
blocks off the keyboard port entirely! They just put a metal bar in front of it.
They were really sticking to their guns, being like...
And it's that whole “getting things done with what we have” design philosophy
that really amuses me with this.
I love how it feels all hacked together!
I mean, for instance, the Turbo LED
is used for the wireless signal indicator on the front of the case.
In some of these connections they just tapped into existing circuitry and...
plopped some stuff to plug it in and “There ya go, it's good.”
There is a rather unfortunate aspect to this machines, though,
and it's common across a lot of 386s.
It uses these awful nickel-cadmium barrel batteries
and every single example of these RangeLAN 2 machines that I have seen
has leaked and corroded.
Neither one of them work, no matter what I've tried.
But the floppy disk still does!
So I can boot it up from another machine
and see what it would do.
It's interesting that it actually boots to DR-DOS.
That's Digital Research's answer to IBM PC-DOS and MS-DOS.
And then you get a long string of commands, and it doesn't know what to do
because it doesn't have all the stuff it needs.
But yeah, that's pretty much it. I imagine it would just boot up
and do the access point stuff and you'd manage it from the client PC.
So there's not a whole lot to do here; you just kinda plug it in.
And yeah, that's it! It's not a very useful machine,
in fact... it's probably the least useful 386 computer that I have.
But it's neat to poke around inside and see what they came up with
to get this access point idea working in 1993 and 94
and, presumably, to keep down costs,
both in design and manufacturing
by using a lot of cheaper, older off-the-shelf components.
Maybe there was a bit of a time crunch, too! I don't know exactly what went into
the design of this thing, but whatever happened,
I appreciate it and I like talking about this kind of stuff
and I hope that you enjoyed listening.
And if you did like this video, then perhaps you'd like some of my others!
There's new videos coming out every Monday and Friday here on LGR!
And as always, thank you very much for watching!