I’m looking to obtain one of each model for my forthcoming vintage site dedicated to the AMBRA brand. Since my last post regarding the Ambra Sprinta 386, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and speaking to the founder/General Manager of Ambra, Alan Willsher who provided me with a wealth of history about Ambra, and it’s relationship to IBM. I will at some point provide a link to all the Ambra history as provided to me and publish online in my forthcoming Ambra site.

The AMBRA 486 was released in the latter part of 1992 – it had the same profile and casing as the 386 except for two notable alterations:

• “486” was printed in white-on-grey on the bottom left of the front facia of the chassis.
• The ICPI 4-plastic-squares which were on the top of the chassis to enable the Ambra monitor to be fixed on the 386 model was removed. Newer monitors would free-stand on the top of the casing (as was the way with practically every other brand).

The BIOS was still Phoenix – version A486 Version 1.03, and for all intents and purposes offered exactly the same screens as on the 386 model, but offered a more colourful boot-up screen.

Side note: Whilst F2 is the function key offered to access the BIOS when an actual error is detected on boot, if no error exists and you wish to enter into the BIOS then you must wait for the Memory Test to commence on bootup and press Ctrl+Alt+S.

As expected with machines of this age, there are a few challenges with some of the components. I’ve stripped it completely bare and restored it to near-perfect condition and have installed the AMBRA base install comprising of Windows 3.1 & IBM DOS 5.0 along with the AMBRA specific software.

The masterplan for this machine is to get an in-house network running on Windows for Workgroups v3.11 along with other AMBRA machines and test the network chess game. Additionally I am looking to revive a dBase III+ application I wrote on my original AMBRA Sprinta 386 in 1994 which I will blog about separately.

As always eBay has been my friend on this project. The following additions I’ve applied to the base-build:

• Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 Sound Card CT4170
• Creative Labs 24 speed CD-ROM (IDE) CD2423E
• 3COM EtherLink III Network Interface Card 3C509-COM30
• Upgraded the RAM to 8MB (8 x 1MB 30-PIN parity)

The Floppy Disk drive (a YE-DATA), was fairly broken, and the usual alcohol clean of the heads failed to work, so I’ve replaced it with another YE-DATA which I’ve modified to fit the AMBRA molded casing.