iFXBR wrote:

RAM 128MB Total - 4 x Samsung KMM5368103CK-6 32MB 60ns Parity FPM SIMM

😲 That is a huge amount of ram for a 486. Is there anything that would run on it to take advantage of that much, or is just because it's awesome?

Otherwise that looks like a sweet build!

You're ready to tear the head off of a horse. DOS can't use 128mb, I think it can only do 64, but I'm not sure there's probably a way with older versions of DOS and FreeDOS or whatever.

I suggest OS/2. It's the all round best 486 OS. It has good DOS support, good Win16 support, and of course, OS/2 support

Well I paid like $5.00 on each piece, so... why not?

Ampera wrote:

I suggest OS/2. It's the all round best 486 OS. It has good DOS support, good Win16 support, and of course, OS/2 support

Well remembered! I'll spare another CF for OS/2 Warp 4.

iFXBR wrote:

Ampera wrote:

I suggest OS/2. It's the all round best 486 OS. It has good DOS support, good Win16 support, and of course, OS/2 support

Well remembered! I'll spare another CF for OS/2 Warp 4.

AHHH, KILL IT, KILL THE COMPACT FLASH CARD, IT'S EVIL.

Primary flash storage and old computers have no right to be together. You might as well use DOSBox

Ampera wrote:

Primary flash storage and old computers have no right to be together. You might as well use DOSBox

Haha please tell me where to buy a reliable Quantum 540MB hard disk this days...

I'd advise against using CF for operating systems which use virtual memory. The most straightforward approach these days is to use a Seagate or Samsung SATA drive with a converter and size limit it.

gdjacobs wrote:

I'd advise against using CF for operating systems which use virtual memory. The most straightforward approach these days is to use a Seagate or Samsung SATA drive with a converter and size limit it.

Even for modern CF cards?

Presumably new ones do have wear leveling, but modern spindle drives are such a step up in performance that i don't see much advantage in using CF.

I use 2GB WD Caviars in my 486 machine. Any drive 500mb - 8GB is fine, or you can size limit a larger drive. PATA or SCSI Only. SATA has 0 place.

Ah, you're a purist!

I've used flash strictly for the noise factor. As nostalgic as I am for the old systems, I do *not* miss that bearing whine of the old drives 😒

That said, I have a stack of old 20gb-200gb IDE drives that are useless on modern machines, but are quiet enough on a Win98 machine to appease my ears 😀

probnot wrote:

That said, I have a stack of old 20gb-200gb IDE drives that are useless on modern machines, but are quiet enough on a Win98 machine to appease my ears 😀

If you're here in Brazil I would ask you to sell (or donate) some for me...

iFXBR wrote:

probnot wrote:

That said, I have a stack of old 20gb-200gb IDE drives that are useless on modern machines, but are quiet enough on a Win98 machine to appease my ears 😀

If you're here in Brazil I would ask you to sell (or donate) some for me...

Sorry, I'm under a few feet of snow in the Canadian prairies...

iFXBR wrote:

Joystick QuickShot 6-Button Commandpad QS-217 - Brand New/Sealed

So, the Commandpad has just arrived:

As the seller told me: brand new and sealed! An 1994 item in this conditions goes perfect to my project.

You really don't want more than 16 MB on a 486. That's what games of the era were designed to support. Dune II won't run properly if you have more than 16 MB and Destruction Derby 2 won't install at all on a computer with 128 MB.

eta: I'm talking about DOS here. Windows may be different.

Well, to overcome the RAM problem, you can use eatxms do reduce the RAM size in MS-DOS, I use free dos and love it. For HD you can use a Seagate disk and use the dynamic Drive Overlay tool in order to recognize all space. My 386DX40 has an 80GB hard drive all recognized.

On the topic of CF storage - there exist industrial CF cards that use SLC flash. These can stand quite the beating, and for the 2-8GB size range, can be found for decent prices. Also, unless you're swapping a lot, VM isn't all that likely to eat up your CF card. I would be careful if it's a machine that's going to run under high load a lot, and where uptime is a concern, but if it's not, just plug the CF card into a modern box and back it up once in a while. WinImage should work the necessary magic. If you use MacOS X, Linux or BSD, try cat or dd.

Or, I suppose, you could back up over the LAN, if you're booted into Win9x, WinNT or OS/2. (Or BSD, for that matter, since it'll run on a 486).

I can understand the purist perspective, but for me, the reduction in latency from using CF or SD storage is absolutely worth it. If I want bearing noise, I know where to find it 😜

With CF cards, you also have to be careful of the removable bit. Not an issue with DOS or Linux, but it can be an issue with Windows.
Change old low HDD to a CF card?
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/CompactFlash_boot_drive