I'm cheering for you to move the one floppy, as I always like the 3.5" floppy in the vertical position. Not sure why.

At first read of the title, I thought you stuck a car air freshener inside the case, or something (would be a plus). :p

That case is really nice.

Nice system - that case looks really solid and doesn't seem to have yellowed at all.

gdjacobs wrote:

I'm cheering for you to move the one floppy, as I always like the 3.5" floppy in the vertical position. Not sure why.

Normally I agree. I don't like it when there's an available 3.5" bay, and the builder uses a 5.25 to 3.5" adapter for the floppy drive....why????

That said, I really want to keep this as original as possible (except of course for the CD-ROM, sound card, and HDD).

SW-SSG wrote:

At first read of the title, I thought you stuck a car air freshener inside the case, or something (would be a plus). :p

That case is really nice.

Will fresh garden mint leaves do?

Andy1979 wrote:

Nice system - that case looks really solid and doesn't seem to have yellowed at all.

It really is! I'll try and get some better lighting pics later (with a camera that doesn't suck). The 3.5" drive and adapter are yellowed, but the 5.25" drive and case are bright white 😀

Vertical floppies suck, because it's too easy to insert the disk upside down.

probnot wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

I'm cheering for you to move the one floppy, as I always like the 3.5" floppy in the vertical position. Not sure why.

Normally I agree. I don't like it when there's an available 3.5" bay, and the builder uses a 5.25 to 3.5" adapter for the floppy drive....why????

I agree with both statements, not sure which annoys me more, (Only case where this was a problem was scrapped many years ago) its a hard life we live

Had some time to tinker. Decided to install Win3.1...I'm not really sure how much VRAM this card has, but obviously not much...most it could do was 800x600x16 or 640x480x16.... no 256 colour 🙁

One the plus side, it makes my new wallpaper look extra cool!

Also, decided to make a boot menu (got the idea from Philscomputerlab). I made mine a little simpler for the options though.

Oooh, pick option 5!

This system puts a big grin on my face. I started late with IBM compatibles, being an Apple II guy, so when I finally retired the ][e, my first PC was a 386SX-20. A lot of my "firsts" were on this PC, so lots of great memories. Like playing Wing Commander I and II and Ultima VII: The Black Gate (that was painful).

Looks great, congrats, man!

clueless1 wrote:

Oooh, pick option 5!
<snip>

Option 5 is actually the default, with a 10sec countdown 🤣 ..but it just loads first option (Default)

I was considering putting a prompt that looks like the format command...

clueless1 wrote:

<snip>
This system puts a big grin on my face. I started late with IBM compatibles, being an Apple II guy, so when I finally retired the ][e, my first PC was a 386SX-20. A lot of my "firsts" were on this PC, so lots of great memories. Like playing Wing Commander I and II and Ultima VII: The Black Gate (that was painful).

Looks great, congrats, man!

Thanks!

My household growing up was strictly PC compatible (dad worked in IT). No consoles, no Apple! Other than playing around with some old 8088 and 286 systems my dad had kicking around (early 90s), the first PC that was mine was a 386DX-40 I put together from random parts (1997ish). It had 8MB RAM, the nastiest grimy 8x Creative CD-ROM, 80MB Seagate HDD (that didn't support master/slave so I had to swap it out when using the CD-ROM and boot off floppy), Herc Monochrome gfx with an Amdek 310A screen (I pulled off the anti-glare screen mesh and the whole thing had board doctor stickers on it...)

Like your first car, you always remember your first PC, no matter how bad it was!

Nice. Was CD-ROM canon on 386SX machine? Seems like a 486 thing to me, but I was an Amiga guy until 95.

r.cade wrote:

Nice. Was CD-ROM canon on 386SX machine? Seems like a 486 thing to me, but I was an Amiga guy until 95.

Not that I remember. My 386 was used in the days of Pentium MMX and even P2 machines...

Our family PC first got a CD-ROM when it was a 486 (Mistumi DOUBLE SPEED), and that's around the time I remember my friends getting one as well...

probnot wrote:

Had some time to tinker. Decided to install Win3.1...I'm not really sure how much VRAM this card has,
but obviously not much...most it could do was 800x600x16 or 640x480x16.... no 256 colour 🙁

No one needs more than 16 colours. Nah, just kidding! 🤣
In case you haven't tried yet, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 also includes an SVGA driver.
It can be used on Windows 3.1, too. In fact, Microsoft released a driver update several years ago.
Someone else, Japheth, I believe, also modified that SVGA driver to use VESA VBE.
So it should work with any VBE compatible card w/ 512KiB (you may need UniVBE or a TSR from Cirrus).
The only downside is the lack of any accelleration. Anyway, it's better than the stock VGA driver, I suppose. 😉

Generic SVGA Drivers from Win3.11
http://www.gaby.de/ftp/pub/win3x/drivers/svga.zip
Site: http://win31.de/edrivers.htm

Windows 3.1 256 Color Display Driver (Complete)
sierrahelp.com/Files/Patches/Misc/Win31 ... (SVGA).ZIP
Site: http://sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/Patches … SVGAUpdate.html

Japheth's SVGApatch program
https://web.archive.org/web/20140904184650fw_ … 16/svgaptch.zip
Site: https://web.archive.org/web/20140830145525/ht … www.japheth.de/

SVGA driver patch for Windows 3.1 in VMware (Ken Kato ?)
https://sites.google.com/site/chitchatvmback/ … ?attredirects=0
Site: https://sites.google.com/site/chitchatvmback/misc
Site2: http://www.scampers.org/steve/vmware/

probnot wrote:

Had some time to tinker. Decided to install Win3.1...I'm not really sure how much VRAM this card has, but obviously not much...m […]
Show full quote

Had some time to tinker. Decided to install Win3.1...I'm not really sure how much VRAM this card has, but obviously not much...most it could do was 800x600x16 or 640x480x16.... no 256 colour 🙁

One the plus side, it makes my new wallpaper look extra cool!

Also, decided to make a boot menu (got the idea from Philscomputerlab). I made mine a little simpler for the options though.

I Want that wallpaper!! Please!

why minty? Do you plan running LInux Mint on it? (just a joke i know it can't run)
ps. you can get a 40 mhz 386 for best performance. What's the maximum amount of ram?

AllPlatformsGamer wrote:

why minty? Do you plan running LInux Mint on it? (just a joke i know it can't run)
ps. you can get a 40 mhz 386 for best performance. What's the maximum amount of ram?

Minty just cause it's in really good condition. CPU is soldered to the board, so an upgrade is not an option (which is unfortunate cause I have a DX40 chip kicking around)

So far max ram seems to be 6MB (not 😎. Something is weird with it, but I haven't spent much more time trying different simm configuration...

Cyberdyne wrote:

probnot wrote:

Had some time to tinker. Decided to install Win3.1...I'm not really sure how much VRAM this card has, but obviously not much...m […]
Show full quote

Had some time to tinker. Decided to install Win3.1...I'm not really sure how much VRAM this card has, but obviously not much...most it could do was 800x600x16 or 640x480x16.... no 256 colour 🙁

One the plus side, it makes my new wallpaper look extra cool!

Also, decided to make a boot menu (got the idea from Philscomputerlab). I made mine a little simpler for the options though.

I Want that wallpaper!! Please!

Here ya go.

640x480x16: http://i.imgur.com/o0afT4b.png
800x600x16: http://i.imgur.com/ccuszg1.png
800x600x256: http://i.imgur.com/VsTLD6L.png