NCR System 3300

Thanks to Louis Ohland for this system...
NCR 3300 - One of the few and proud MCA-based clones

A very few "clone" variety computer systems featured the MCA Bus. Among them were some ALR servers (now Gateway), Siemens computers, and even Radio Shack had an MCA machine--the Tandy 5000MC. It is believed that there were other MCA machines. There was also at least one model from NCR--the System 3300.

None of these machines are common, for a variety of reasons including price and the fact that the MCA bus cost more to license than did the ISA bus. Finding an MCA-based clone is a pretty rare occurence and the machine will be a prized addition to any collection.

I'm glad to have found this machine, but it still needs a lot of work. It has been tested to at least power on. To date I have yet to figure out how to work with the NCR reference disk (it would appear that due to licensing issues that NCR didn't include a bootable system on theirs as IBM did with PS/2 reference diskettes). I also need to find some RAM for this system as well as a hard disk. After all of that it will be almost 100% complete and plans are to run Windows NT 4.0 workstation on it.

I've managed to clean the system up and fill in the formerly empty 5.25" drive bay with a CD-ROM. I've also installed a Pentium OverDrive 83MHz CPU...this System 3300 is one that will support that kind of CPU. Most of them seemingly do not have the socket required.

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