First post, by Jed118
- Rank
- Oldbie
So I finally got the RAM upgrade for my old 386SX - It had 1 Mb RAM via 44256 chips (which went to my 386 VLB's video card, now at 2Mb) and now it has 4Mb via 36 41000 chips. It went almost flawlessly - I bent a pin on the very first chip, giving me a RAM count of 196Kb, lots of beeps, and a 0000:0002 Parity Error in CGA style fonts - after the bent pin was found and restored, I had 4096 K of RAM. It was very satisfying to put the chips in individually like that, and the anticipation of the RAM count (I had no idea if it would stop at 3712 K or do the full count) had me feeling like I was 10-11 again after having completed my first upgrade, also on a 386SX (20 though, and a Compaq system). My fingers hurt for a few hours from manipulating the chips, as at times, inserting them into the board required considerable but careful force.It was a good type of pain, analogous to "Nintendo thumb".
The video card upgrade went a lot smoother (only 8 chips to put in) and I got 512K working straight away. Finding drivers that worked with that card for Windows 3.0 and subsequently installing them was a bit of a trick. I got them from here actually, in the drivers section. The driver files would be identified in DOS's Windows Setup, but each time I selected them, it said there was a copy problem and the option for that driver disappeared from the menu. Upon further investigation, the driver file would show 0 bytes in DOS. Eventually I just stuck the drivers into the system subdirectory and pointed to them manually using SYSTEM.INI - It worked. I don't think I've ever had Windows 3.0 in 256 colors, and now it even runs in enhanced mode. Hurray!
I am waiting on 30 pin SIPPs to add another megabyte of RAM (according to the manual, it will run in Interleaved mode using this configuration) and an 85Mb hard disk which will either replace or compliment the 42Mb one in there, as I have about 8Mb free - This totally brings me back to space management as a kid hah.
Here's the pics (sorry about some blurriness, I had a few rums on the rocks along the way):
(The order is messed up because imgur never lets me down when it comes to randomizing and dropping files - Never understood why the die-hards over on Reddit praise this service so much - it sucks really.)
Anyone know where I can get an NPU of this type? It would help with Scorched Earth...
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