Thanks very much for this, especially the continued optimisation of Hercules. I now get a frantic 2.1fps on my 386sx/25 compared to around 1.7fps with one of the previous versions! Might finally upgrade this system to a DX/40 and see if I can hit 5fps.

Very helpful, thanks. I'm now thinking that the best investment might be a pair of ear-plugs. CF-IDE would be handy but not essential for data transfer (I can use serial for that) and my main reason for that upgrade was for noise reduction. I think I may leave this machine as it is, at least until …

Thanks, that's useful to know. I may try disconnecting the fans briefly first before deciding on further mods.

Quick question for those of you with T3200SX machines who have replaced/removed the hard drive: does it make a big difference to the noise? I'd like to make my T3200SX quieter with a CF-IDE mod, also for easy transfer of data, OS swaps, etc. But noise is a big reason. I can't tell how loud the …

Yes, that sounds right. I think I read somewhere that Microsoft stopped using changeline in Windows 9x onward - if true, this problem is likely to only be an issue in DOS, not for PCs running Windows on CF cards. It took me far too long to find the solution, hence this thread so others can find it …

Switch off "Turbo Switch Function" in the BIOS, if it exists. This cured a similar problem with Doom for me, in an Opti 495XLC board. There's a Microsoft support notice about it causing hangs with some versions of Windows 9x, which gave me the clue. You'll lose the use of the turbo switch, though.

Yes, that's right. I can get almost any CF card to work in these 486s, but most of them interfere with floppy changeline unless I add drivparm statements to config.sys. I tested a lot of floppy drives before working it out. I agree that the issue is the variability of CF cards. Something in some of …

That's not the problem, at least not on my two 486 test PCs. In both cases the IDE and floppy adapters are built into the same VL-Bus adapter. In one case they are built into the motherboard. And these PCs do not exhibit the problem when using their original IDE hard drives. If they did they'd never …

I've seen this come up a few times and experienced it myself. Sometimes using CompactFlash IDE adapters causes issues with floppy drive access. Swapping disks seems to cache the previous disk's FAT in memory, leading to corruption of the subsequent disk unless it's write-protected. I've seen people …

I just wanted to say thanks for this. I'd been trying to do something similar when I found your post. I've created a step-by-step guide in this thread on the VCFed site: http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?525 … nstead-of-EPROM