Yes this is a nice one. Though I haven't had this particularly board on the photo running recently. The older boards seem to be quite unbreakable though (as long as the BIOS ROM is still ok).
But it's not for sale.

I have selected the mentioned mainboard (AMI Baby Screamer Mark V) as the board I would like to use.

Maybe it's just me, but I think you're going at it backwards. IMO, the wiser move would really be to pick the best out of what you can find now, then swap out parts if you come across something more suitable later on. Maybe eventually you'll find exactly the board you're looking for, but given the ever-increasing scarcity of the components here, I really wouldn't hold off building the system while waiting for some specific piece of hardware.

Yes this is a nice one. Though I haven't had this particularly board on the photo running recently. The older boards seem to be quite unbreakable though (as long as the BIOS ROM is still ok). But it's not for sale.

From what I read this board has got it all. It's a pretty late piece of 386 hardware, being produced in 1993, so it must be very compatible. I understand you have one of these boards (although not running) but it's not for sale? Can you tell me if they are really hard to find?

IMO, the wiser move would really be to pick the best out of what you can find now, then swap out parts if you come across something more suitable later on.

Well, I'm not entirely convinced. I could pick up a random board but when I would swap them I have just more parts laying around doing nothing. I would rather just get this one and get it done right the first time. I save both money and space. Of course when the baby screamer is really impossible to find I will settle for something else. But since I have no real hurry I'd like to try and find my number one choice first.

Since 386 is way before my time I have yet another question that you guys may have the answer to. I intend to use an intel 386DX-33 with matching FPU. Do these chips need any cooling or are they OK without a heatsink. I hear different stories regarding this matter.

omega_supreme wrote:

Yes this is a nice one. Though I haven't had this particularly board on the photo running recently. The older boards seem to be quite unbreakable though (as long as the BIOS ROM is still ok). But it's not for sale.

From what I read this board has got it all. It's a pretty late piece of 386 hardware, being produced in 1993, so it must be very compatible. I understand you have one of these boards (although not running) but it's not for sale? Can you tell me if they are really hard to find?

I can't tell you if it was/is rare. I just can tell you that it is the only Babyscreamer Board I had in my hands so far. Though today most of the 386 stuff is rare.

Since 386 is way before my time I have yet another question that you guys may have the answer to. I intend to use an intel 386DX-33 with matching FPU. Do these chips need any cooling or are they OK without a heatsink. I hear different stories regarding this matter.

First of all the FPU does not need to be matching. The FPU clocks always at its own rate.
A heatsink is usually not required. A passive heatsink is recommended if you go for a 486DX-33 or faster.

Thanks for the aditional information. I did not know that both processors had their own frequency. Still I bought a 33MHz 387 to match the speed of the 386DX-33. I suspect that games making heavy use of floating point will like a faster co-processor.

Anyway, I have been looking for 386 boards and found a Deico Electronics mainboard that suits just fine for the moment. And while looking up information about this particular board I found out about the Deico Electronics Predator II. That one seems to even surpass the baby screamer. The features are endless, 64MB RAM, 512KB cache, 16RAM slots, onboard I/O etc etc.

Anyone have a Predator II laying around, or even a picture of the actual board? That thing seems amazing (at least on paper)

Games for 386 usually don't utilize a FPU. FPU was not default at this time. Maybe Microsoft FS or Strike Commander but this might crawl on a 386 aswell.

Old Thrashbarg wrote:

I have selected the mentioned mainboard (AMI Baby Screamer Mark V) as the board I would like to use.

Maybe it's just me, but I think you're going at it backwards. IMO, the wiser move would really be to pick the best out of what you can find now, then swap out parts if you come across something more suitable later on. Maybe eventually you'll find exactly the board you're looking for, but given the ever-increasing scarcity of the components here, I really wouldn't hold off building the system while waiting for some specific piece of hardware.

+1

You'll never have a DOS box built at all if it takes you forever to find the exact parts you want. Most of those motherboards that you are looking for were probably picked apart in some 3rd world village turned into a recycling yard long ago. If you are looking to build a computer from brand new parts you can pick and choose exactly what you want but with out of production parts you have to take what you can get and upgrade when it's feasible. There's plenty of people here and on other obsolete computer sites that can take the excess parts off your hands when you upgrade, I am sure, so unless you grossly overpay you shouldn't lose anything in the process.

There is no mention in the strike commander manual of it using a fpu

I'd definitely go for an AMI 386 board if you can get your hands on one. In my experience the build quality on the majority of 386 boards is very bad, most of which cannot even properly do DMA. The two best 386 boards I have ever seen were made by AMI. One is a 386SX-25 board that I own (has cache, memory interleaving, lithium ion battery, and very good board quality), and the other was owned by a friend which was one of the baby screamers. I recently tried out this Soyo 386:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/SO … 6A-SY-019B.html

It turned out it wasn't so great, as it did not properly support DMA or work with any of my 386 upgrade dinguses. Even if you could find that Deico Electronics board you want, I doubt you'd ever be able to find the somewhat proprietary SRAMs used to upgrade to 512kb cache. If you really want to run 64mb, you're probably better off with one of the last generation compact 386 boards that supports 16mb 30 pin SIMMs.

Don't give up searching for seemingly obscure things though. If you are patient you will eventually find them. Sometimes it takes me 5-10 years to get what I want, but it's better late than never. I think a baby screamer will eventually come you way (I wouldn't mind one of these either). As far as I can tell it was produced in large quantity.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I'd definitely go for an AMI 386 board if you can get your hands on one. In my experience the build quality on the majority of 3 […]
Show full quote

I'd definitely go for an AMI 386 board if you can get your hands on one. In my experience the build quality on the majority of 386 boards is very bad, most of which cannot even properly do DMA. The two best 386 boards I have ever seen were made by AMI. One is a 386SX-25 board that I own (has cache, memory interleaving, lithium ion battery, and very good board quality), and the other was owned by a friend which was one of the baby screamers. I recently tried out this Soyo 386:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/SO … 6A-SY-019B.html

It turned out it wasn't so great, as it did not properly support DMA or work with any of my 386 upgrade dinguses. Even if you could find that Deico Electronics board you want, I doubt you'd ever be able to find the somewhat proprietary SRAMs used to upgrade to 512kb cache. If you really want to run 64mb, you're probably better off with one of the last generation compact 386 boards that supports 16mb 30 pin SIMMs.

Don't give up searching for seemingly obscure things though. If you are patient you will eventually find them. Sometimes it takes me 5-10 years to get what I want, but it's better late than never. I think a baby screamer will eventually come you way (I wouldn't mind one of these either). As far as I can tell it was produced in large quantity.

i thought you'd stopped buying old motherboards? 😉

I've given up building new systems, but I'd be more than willing to upgrade one of them if a better part came around. I'm still lacking a really nice 386 motherboard. My current one is based on OPTi 495SX, which is a good chipset, however this board doesn't seem to properly support the DLC (even though it supposedly does), and the CPU socket is located in such a way that I can't fit my DLC3 upgrade into it.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I've given up building new systems, but I'd be more than willing to upgrade one of them if a better part came around. I'm still lacking a really nice 386 motherboard. My current one is based on OPTi 495SX, which is a good chipset, however this board doesn't seem to properly support the DLC (even though it supposedly does), and the CPU socket is located in such a way that I can't fit my DLC3 upgrade into it.

I see...that's wise

Did you try and SCSI based stuff when you found out DMA wasn't working?

I'm quite pleased with my ETEQ chipset mobo but I haven't tested if DMA really works on it

Yeah, I've had terrible luck with 386 motherboards using Adaptec 1542C cards. So far the Opti 495SX and AMI VLSI boards are the only 386 boards I've owned that SCSI worked properly with. My other failed boards used ETEQ similar to the one you have, ALi and "SARC". I've used a couple of different 386 boards based on OPTi, and they've been the best I've used so far.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Yeah, I've had terrible luck with 386 motherboards using Adaptec 1542C cards. So far the Opti 495SX and AMI VLSI boards are the only 386 boards I've owned that SCSI worked properly with. My other failed boards used ETEQ similar to the one you have, ALi and "SARC". I've used a couple of different 386 boards based on OPTi, and they've been the best I've used so far.

How did you see DMA failing? high CPU usage during hdd I/O operation?

Just generally instability and resets with the 1542C installed.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Just generally instability and resets with the 1542C installed.

ok, maybe my chipset revision is bugfree since my Adaptec 1542 card works flawlessly in my (no name) Eteq chipset board

That's possible. It might also depend on board design. I think the board I was using had a BIOS from 1991. I would guess the board was built/designed in the same time period.

You're in luck if you're still looking for the Mark V Baby Screamer 386-33DX motherboard. I worked at AMI from 1989 to 2000...anyway, my wife has been urging me to clear out the garage. I have a Baby Screamer desktop system that I was going to recycle after I pulled the HDD. Email me ASAP if you're still interested. ~~Stephen

For anyone still watching this topic, I'd recommend watching the local metal recycle yards. I see old PC's in the bone yard all the time. At our's, they sell them to me at $5 a case no matter the age, or I can pick a few parts for less.

Also, I would recommend the later 486 mom's. They had PCI slots and took 72 pin SIMMs so decent video and 64MB (and up) are easy to find. They seemed very capable and reliable for me. The AMD 486-40 and later -80 were the best of their era and didn't need a special socket. Overclocking was easy and the small heat sinks of the era worked fine.

Finally, SCSI is a great idea with these older systems. The above PCI mom's take SCSI 2 or even 3 cards with very fast data transfer that doesn't need any drivers. The mom BIOS will be IDE drive size restricted, but the SCSI BIOS should get around that (make sure the BIOS chip is on it and check any jumpers). Adaptec still has legacy DOS/Win drivers at their site. The 1-2 GB hard drives still popup fairly often and be "seen" under DOS. Larger (Up to 32GB) SCSI drives can be used but I'd recommend the revised FDISK to fine tune these for smaller partitions and then DOS will use them OK.