bravoman wrote:

[...]

1.) Being a small form factor, it only has a single ISA riser card with 2 slots. No PCI slots.
- As I plan to do retro gaming on this machine, any suggestions on the slots? Or just the standard ISA Sound card and VGA card? Right now there's an ISA Network card which I'll probably just get rid of.

Given the limited expansion options, what is already onboard? Probably some kind of VGA. Is a separate VGA card worth the difference? And what do you have?

2.) As shown by the attached pic, there is no bay to get a CD-ROM drive in there. Does anyone know if a USB to Serial/Parallel adapter would work to hook up a USB CD-ROM drive?
- I'm thinking of just biting the bullet and running an extended IDE/power supply cable setup and just hook up a regular CD-ROM drive that way.
- Another option I'm thinking is just go the CF-card route and load stuff onto the drive that way.

If you don't mind breaking with period stugg, CF is by far the easiest way to go. If you want to stay period, consider SCSI - both for CD and for HDD

3.) It's been a while since I've worked with a 486 machine so I can't recall. The CPU didn't have a heatsink which should be fine as I recall but it's painful to the touch so not sure if I need to attach a heatsink.

Painful to the touch, but not yet blistering is probably <60C, which is safe enough. 486-33 doesn't need a heat sink.

dionb wrote:

Given the limited expansion options, what is already onboard? Probably some kind of VGA. Is a separate VGA card worth the difference? And what do you have?

On the riser, it's just a network card taking up 1 of the 2 slots. I may get rid of it as I have no network compatible with it anyway. If you mean my VGA, I didn't take a deeper look but its onboard VGA.

dionb wrote:

If you don't mind breaking with period stugg, CF is by far the easiest way to go. If you want to stay period, consider SCSI - both for CD and for HDD

I don't mind breaking period if it gets my machine up and running but I had completely forgot external SCSI existed. Thanks. I'll look into those.

dionb wrote:

Painful to the touch, but not yet blistering is probably <60C, which is safe enough. 486-33 doesn't need a heat sink.

Yeah, it was just painful, not blistering. I've always seen heat as the enemy so I wanted to be sure. Thanks 😀

bravoman wrote:

[[...]
On the riser, it's just a network card taking up 1 of the 2 slots. I may get rid of it as I have no network compatible with it anyway. If you mean my VGA, I didn't take a deeper look but its onboard VGA.

Compare it with your ISA VGA - good chance it's no worse, in fact it might be onboard VLB VGA, which would probably perform better than an ISA VGA card.

Not Ethernet? What is it then? Sort of curious...

dionb wrote:

Not Ethernet? What is it then? Sort of curious...

Looks like a BNC connector and RJ45 connector. What I meant was that I only have wi-fi in my house. No way to get wiring to where I have this machine set up.

bravoman wrote:

... I didn't take a deeper look but its onboard VGA.

Time to take the deeper look... perhaps also post a photo of the motherboard so that we can identify things for you.

486SX-33 chips could certainly get by bare (I used to have a Dell with one that did just that, stock) but it wouldn't hurt to attach a heatsink or HSF anyway, if you have one spare...

Unless the Video card is truly terrible keep the onboard and use the slot for network card, that combined with a CF card makes transferring files easier than CD's and floppies anyway.
I've got a Mach 64 onboard in mine, and others have said it IS on the VLB, even still its not the best dos gaming card but does the job just fine.
You can set up a wireless bridge using an old router, plug a network cable from the PC to the bridge and as far as the PC is concerned its a wired connection still.

Just make sure you set up a "recovery partition" this is where I have os install files and drivers at least to get it on the network.
My DX2 hasn't had a working CD drive in years and I don't miss it at all now