So... I'm new to this whole thing of 386 and retro gaming and computing. It cost me a lot of time and took a lot of effort but man I'm satisfied with the results. The Hard Drive was the most challenging because I had to manually dig out data sheets regarding compact flash parameters as well as read up on LZone and WPComp. I think about 2 Flash cards were sacrificed to the Low Level format Gods (I learned that those are gods that do not need to be sacrified to). Now she's up and running. Love that <10sec boot time on DOS 6.22. Also reasonably quiet, with the fan making a nice nostalgic hum.
Specs
CPU: Intel 80386 @33MHz
Motherboard: OPTi 386WB
Video Controller: Western Digital WD90C30-LR 512kb version
RAM: Generic 16MB off eBay
Hard Drive: 512MB Transcend Compact Flash Solution with bracket adapter
Hard Drive Controller: Generic FanCard controller
Sound: Planned- OPTi-82C930 Current- PC speaker
Networking: Linksys Ether16 LAN
External Storage: One Mitsubishi 1.2MB 5.25" floppy, one Mitsumi 1.44MB 3.5" floppy, One Samsung CF-140 40X CD drive
My Rebuild StandardPC 286 with 386 MoBo. It's Keyboard is the beige Emerson resting atop it. I bought this at GoodWill for $10. Note that the CD ROM was added later
I use a modern Dell Monitor for this system as it has three inputs(DisplayPort, CVI, and VGA) that I can switch between, especially important since I have another retro rig (PIII) and a modern PC (i5-2450S) as well as space constraints. I've since placed the monitor in 4:3 mode for VGA and all is well.
One of the updates I placed in it was a rather curious Western Digital WD90C30-LR video controller. It was only putting out black and white for awhile until I removed that top jumper. Suddenly color.
When I was cleaning out the old PC of its guts, I found that in there along with a Roland MIDI interface card and an unbranded mystery card with cut cables. I think this one as an old audio rig.
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception
All in all I'm very happy with her. She doesn't have a sound card yet but I've recently ordered one (the one that showed up was both A. Not what was ordered and B. Dead on Arrival.
Hopefully with that last built it should be complete then I can see what I was catching the tail end of in my childhood.
