First post, by RetroStorm00
- Rank
- Newbie
Hello ALL! This is my first post here so I thought I would show you what I am currently working on, plus I may need some help with configuring this computer as I have no experience in building these classic machines, just new ones 🤣. So first a lil about me, I received my first computer sometime in 1991, it was a Packard Bell 486 but the rest of the details are long forgotten since I was only 7 or 😀 I vaguely remember my parents buying an IBM computer first then returning it the next day and picking up the Packard Bell from a different store since it was cheaper, of course at the time my parents were oblivious to the downfalls of Packard Bells but oh well. I remember they bought a sound blaster 16 and the CH Flightstick pro. I also recieved two games..Math Blaster(I dont even think I ever opened it despite the fact repeatedly assuring my mother that the computer would be used for studying for school...ya that never happened) 😈 Finally the game I purchased was Jetfighter 2 and it was amazing. It took my poor father 3 to 4 hours to figure out how to install it from the floppy 😁 But I must have sunk hundreds of hours into that game, so it will always hold a special place in my heart, but I digress. ON WITH THE BUILD!
Here is the case, some sort of desktop form factor, the colors were kind of mismatched so over the past few days I have been stripping and applying a different color of paint.
I will have pics of the finished paint at the end of this build.
First up is the motherboard, I picked up an ASUS VLI-486SV2G Rev 1.4. I believe it has 256k of Cache. I also threw in 32MB of RAM. The processor is an Intel i486DX2 sx955 with write back cache. I found the CPU cheap on ebay but the packaging was less than ideal because about 5 or 6 pins were horribly bent 🙁 I straightened them back out and got it installed though.
Next the video card is of course VLB as I have read they seem to be a little better than standard ISA video cards. I picked up this S3 Vision868 2mb card as the Tseng ET4000 is just to rare and expensive for me, hopefully this card will preform well enough.
Next up I added a Quickshot Smart Game card with dual joystick ports as I also have both the thrustmaster mark 2 throttle and joystick so I needed two ports, also it says it speed adjusts up to 80mhz so yay for that I guess..
For audio I picked up two cards. First the sound blaster 16 CT 2290. I believe this card has a true OPL chip and listening to some samples I really like the sound. This card needs jumpers set on the board itself and I set the port to 220H, IDE:Teritary, IDE IRQ 11, MPU-401 to 300 and disabled to onboard joystick port as I don't think I will need it.
Next to combat the intelligent mode MPU-401 bugs I purchased this midiman midi card. For that I set the port to 330H and the IRQ to 2. Hopefully this will fix any audio issues I have with my Roland MT-32(Not pictured yet)
That's about as far as I've made it into the build process. Also Ive added a 120gb Hard Drive with a SATA to IDE connector. This should work for me as I will be installing MSDOS 7.1 which thanks to PhilsComputerLabs awesome videos I have learned will work with HDD's up to a max of 120gb. Finally I also put in an IDE controller card but the brand and model number escapes me at the moment, no matter as Im sure Ill have to pull it out in order to hook the cables all up. Here is a pic of where I am at currently.
Up next while painting the case and drives will be to configure up the front panel connectors, this is where I have kind of run into a problem. The computer case included a LED Mhz readout, but I have absolutely no idea how to program it. 😵 The circuit board doesn't list a model number that I can see in order to try and find a pinout for these jumpers. Here are some pics of the board, if anyone has any ideas Id sure appreciate it....
Thanks so much guys for reading through this and if you have any comments, tips or concerns please share them as I am still a noob at vintage computers 😁. Until next time, Have a great day!
