Here you find my other systems:

VTECH LASER 8086 XT/3 TURBO 10MHZ SYSTEM: VTECH LASER 8086 XT/3 TURBO 10MHZ SYSTEM
MY IMPRESSIVE 286 12/16 SYSTEM: My impressive 286 system!
MY ROCKING AMD 386-40MHZ: Rocking AMD 386 DX 40Mhz system build
MY ROCKING AMD 486 - 133 MHZ SYSTEM: MY ROCKING AMD 486 - ??? MHZ SYSTEM VLB
MY OLDSKOOL PENTIUM 1 SYSTEM: MY OLDSKOOL PENTIUM 1 SYSTEM
MY INTEL PENTIUM III BASED WIN98SE SYSTEM MY INTEL PENTIUM III BASED WIN98SE SYSTEM
ATHLON 64 DUAL BOOT WIN98SE/WINXP SYSTEM: ATHLON 64 DUAL BOOT WIN98SE/WINXP SYSTEM
MY 32-BIT COMPATIBLE OLDER SYSTEM LATER ON

/EDITED 6-12-2014, fixed some pictures that where unavailable/
Have to find some other pictures too.. Also the story about the case change iam going to remove..

Because iam almost finished with this build iam going to post the story how it begins with..

Few months ago ( I dont know exactly when) I had a big plan to going build an 386 computer because i had seen some users that bought that contaq 386 motherboard from Ebay. And it wasnt very expensive at all so i liked it so much to build also a older computer.

Then i got more focused on the fact that you cant play all of those games on one particilar system.

My intention was to playing older games on it, and because of the historical thought..

Newer computers arent that compatible anymore, to fast. And i dont like to use DOSBOX for it..

I like those older IBM clones very much.. Because IBMs where very basic in that time and looking to ugly to me and where very hard to expand in these days /times.. the IBM cases where sold like there where made from gold.. But in my opinion i dont like those cases at all, because the PSU isnt easy to replace when its dead.. And most XT computer hadnt more then 5 expansion slots.. only newer ones could expand more. But then a few years later the 80286 arrives..

When i was going to build the 386 computer, i had allready one AT case here.. I had bought it from an advertorial site in the netherlands..

I wasnt very happy with that case, because the build quality is very cheap, and the expansion cards doesnt fitt right in one slide in the slot.. It looks like the case is a little bit out lined..

So then i tought i still keep looking for some other cases..

Then i find 2 cases from a company near by my old home who advertised those second hand. I also find it on the same advertorial site (where people can sell there 2nd hand stuff and is very populair here in the netherlands.)

When i was arrived by the company, he had some other older stuff standing there..
I had react on the advertisement for two AT system case, but when i got away, i bought 3 AT cases from that guy:
It seemed that this case was also an AT style one..But as desktop version.

He asked 7,50 euros for each case, i my mind it wasnt very expensive to me, because finding a good case is very hard these days. But i had very much of a big luck, that the company wasnt to far from my home.

So i drove with my scooter (moped bike) a few times to him and back to home to store those cases.
(translated with google)
I had no further use for what I was going to do with those cases.
(translated with google)

So then i had planned what to do with it..

The desktop case what i had bought have only 6 expansion slots.. Maybe a con, but i was 1 more slot then some other XT had.. and for my other builds i just needed the full 8 slots of an AT tower..

And this case has a very old look. So old that i dont want to use it for a 386 build.. So i decided to make an XT computer of it, because i didnt need that much expansion slots for a computer like that.. After all it was a very good choice to make a XT of it.

I have planned to make an XT, because it was our first family pc what my dad bought. That was a HEADSTART EXPLORER XT CLONE..

I found some pictures on a dutch second hand site.. We had this same computer, without de harddisk expension.. So you needed a 720KB floppy to boot the whole system.

Maybe it wasnt the best XT clone on the planet, but i have good memorys on that time when we had a matrix printer and making nice faces with a program calles funny faces.. And played some good games, when my dad ask them from its collegues.. and then after work he had some new games brought with him, we directly wanted to play.. 🤣

But remember you once, it wasnt that luxury. It hadnt no harddrive. Only 1 720, and one 8-bit ISA expansion slot.. And no color at all, only a mono color monochrom monitor..

When it started this build, i had to look for some parts.. Because those parts arent find anymore in my country, i had to look on ebay...almost all the time.. Yes its not the best place price wise, but i hadnt other choices to find my stuff..

but later did I have a very good system going on about held. And it wasnt that expensive after all, because mostly i looked for parts pricely (that there wherent to expensive..

When looking for the motherboard, it needed to be easly to set it up..

I decided to look for a ST JUKO motherboard.. And then i finded on the german ebay i new XT motherboard that only hadnt no memory on board.

It was a CLONE motherboard of the STJUKO. It stored several years in a warehouse.. and then i found this board on the german ebay..
I doubted whether I would buy it or not. I needed to be quick to buy this board.. But hadnt no cheaper choices.. So i choose that motherboard right away.. other STJUKo board where offered for to much..
Because it was new, so i liked to experiment with it if i could let this motherboard get to work. I like this board very much of its simple lay-out.
So i bought it. Few days later it arrives at my home.

And this case for my XT build:

And then the build got started..

Before i could build i had to start testing the stuff before i could start with building.. So i bought some DIP RAMS.. It was much easier for me to get the whole 1024KB of memory then to hassle to get 640KB of memory to work.. So i decide to put the full 1024 KB in.. Then i bought a simple VGA adapter western digital paradise 8 bit.. it was almost the easiest graphics card to find.. I dont wanted to hassle with 16-bit graphic cards too. Because some work on 8bit slots, some dont.. I tried 2 16-bit VGA cards, but them didnt gave me a working screen.. only a blank one..

When the VGA card arrives, i tested it, and then it gave me a image on the screen, me was very happy then..

Then i had a other problem.. All of the keyboards that i having didnt working on the XT computer.. So then again i give it a look on the advertorial site for 2nd hand parts.. And there i found an XT- AT compatible keyboard.. When it arrived here, then i was testing it also.. And it seemed to beeing working fine..

The system got working, but it wasnt finished.. I had to look for an 8 bit floppy controller card.. My plan was to find a card so i could use 1.44MB and 1.2MB floppy drives.. Because its very hard in using the system if it only could read / write 720KB floppys.. and its more flexible when i could use 1.44MB to. I dont wanted to use an 360KB drive, because its very small in size and because of the incompatible issues with 1.2MB drives.
I choose for the 1.2MB one because most of the software / programs would use a 1.2MB drive instead of one 360KB one..

So then i got to search on ebay for and floppy controller card, it needed to have a bios onboard..

Then i found a Kouwell one.. I was a little bit expensive, but i would give it a try..

The card seems to working perfect, only the bios not.. So i had really nothing on this one.. bummer.. It could read / write 720Kb, but no more then that.. Later i thought, maybe the IC chip could be the wrong one..
I tried a different kind, but that didnt work also.. But now i keep this card and hoping, and waiting i will find a working bios for it.. maybe in the future i will succeed.

Then i givent the hope up, still keep search for a working one..
Then i found a other one. Brand is an Longshine LCS-6610F. But not the one i hoped to get..

I have tested this one also.. The bios is working fine. But it only sees 2x 1.2MB drives and i dont think its possible to get it work with 1.44 MB floppy drives.. But i just have to test it further, but i cant for now because something is dead on the card.. It doesnt read / boot from the drives anymore.. I think the ZILOG controller could be dead.. Only the bios rom is still working..
But lucky that this ZILOG FDC controller IC is socketed, so its easy to replace.. when i have more money i buy some new ZILOG ICs.

I knowing that the same seller had a second one for sell.. And the bios looked fine on the picture, no black tape on the rom..
Bought that one for a lower price..

The brand is unknown, but it reads FA-100 on the rom chip..
This card works flawless, i only needed to set the right drive setting with those jumper caps on the card, and everything seems to be working fine..
I have backuped all of those ROMS, so if something fails i could replace the rom with an other ROM IC, and all i have to do is write a new one with my programmer and then ist finished..

Before i could test the system i had to installing the memory, because the motherboard came without memory.

First i got some NEW memory chips from ebay:

I had already installed one DIP, so there are seven left on the picture..

Here is the one that we where missing..

The DIPS where installed on a little foam block for protecting the pins would bent.. but when taking it off could be a very hard task..

But iam not stupid and had a very good plan.. Look:

I took a little fork (for pie or cake) and put it under the DIP to lift it off the foam

And after few minutes later the rams where installed on the board:

Full of 1024KB installed, because it can. And was more easier then installing 640KB..

Then i got further with the computer casing.. It has some old hardware in it what i removed earlier that week.

The case was a little bit dirty from smell and dust. So i had need to wash it with soap and water. For the metal part i used i little bit wet cloth..

Removed the PSU first:

Deassemble the motherboard it came with (an Gigabyte 386 one with 40mhz processor soldered on the motherboard.. It has 4MB of 30 pins simms installed and only 128KB of cache memory. The board is in working state.. I have tested it before i removed it:

Then i got to clean the whole case:

And when it was clean and dry i could installing the XT motherboard.. Its fitts really fine in this case, but i only could use 7 of the 8 slots in this case.
So 6 Auxillery, and one inside the case near the PSU, but cant screw it to the case.. But i dont see any problems that iam only could use 6 slots, because an XT machine doesnt need that much slots at all, but it would got almost full..

Then i had to buy an graphics card for this system. It was very hard to find a 8-bit one.. I dont wanted to try several 16-bit cards because some work and some dont.. So the easiest way was to find an 8-bit one..

Its an WDC PVGA PARADISE. Nice card only very slow i think.

Because i dont have an TTL, RGB, EGA color monitor, so it was the easiest choice to go for the VGA option.. I red on this forum, that some games had problems with EGA and CGA, MDA on a VGA one.. My next plan was to go to a second hand market with hopes to find an EGA color monitor..

But after yesterday the whole 9-pins monitor idea could be dropped. I found a ATI VGA WONDER + for this system. So iam happy that i still can use an VGA monitor instead.

As you can see it was complete boxed version with BUS mouse and software.. I had just bought 2 cards. Today i bought 5 pieces..
Only i need to recover the data on those floppys.. I tried it with the build in floppy drive. First time i could set the card in 8-bit mode.. Then after that the floppe drive crashed and i removed the floppy direcly so it couldnt damage. Now i hoping i can get those software off those floppys..

So my search for an 9-pins monitor is stopped, and i try to hope a nice VGA one that matches my computer case..

If i can restore the data on those floppys, then i copy them to 1.44MB ones because they can resist more, and its not nice if you corrupted the data on those 5 1/4 ones.. I will also upload those software to this forum and the vintage computer forum..

I also had serveral problems with the harddisk.. A bought an 50-pins IBM WDS-L80 one first.. It was very hard to get him working. Because i thought i needed a terminator on the end of the drives interface cable.. After bought a active and a passive terminator and tried does, nothing worked.. Then i had a idea to try it without any terminator on the bus.. And the driver goes to work.. I checked the drive with a diagnostic program called ` CHECKIT` Then i did the harddisk test.. And the results where that this drive gived me some errors on butterfly read and random read.. Because i wanted also a bigger drive i though i could be better going to look for an other drive.. Then i found a conner 1080SE. But this harddisk have an SCA80 SCSI interface, so i needed to buy a convertor for it to use it as an 50pins drive.. But that gave me problems under COMPAQ Dos 3.31. In the FASTART setup tool it couldnt acces the drive and couldnt format it.. It only could partition it with FDISK. I only tried MS-DOS 6.22 and could formated it.. So i thought the problem could be the big size off the drive of 1080MB.. So i find a other one for cheap.. Same conner drive with 540MB of space.. And that drive gave me the same result.. COMPAQ dos couldnt access the drive as well.. I think it could be the convertor that gives the problem, or COMPAQ DOS couldnt handle with SCA80 drives..

So now i have to look for a other drive.. But those other drives i could use them for my next builds.. And i have to find a good 1.2MB floppy drive. This one iam using is really dead, thats for sure..
So now iam waiting on a full legal copy of COMPAQ DOS 3.31 SEALED.
And i have to look for a new harddisk.. After then i could furter with installing the software an hoping that my soundblaster CT-1350B would work..

And i have dumped the NEC T128 SCSI adapter. It couldnt reconize drives ad 80MB ones if i needed it to fdisk and format it.. First i had to switch to a green Future domain TMC-850M 8bit scsi card. Then i needed to fdisk the drive and format it. Then i could replace the green FD TMC-850m with the NEC T128 and could use the drive as its supposted to..
But i finded it not a good choice, because when this harddisk could get corrupted or goes that, and i needed to format a new drive again then i would have the same problem..
So i had also a brown / yellow future domain scsi card bought in the netherland for only 5 euros!.

It didnt come with a bios, but that problem was quickly resolved.. I boughted two intel eproms, and wrote the future domain V8.2 (that one that is whole the time online) and it seemed the bios working perfectly with this scsi controller.. So now it could regonize 512 Sectors, and this scsi host adapter is more faster then that NEC T128 one..🤣 and this card has an harddrive LED jumper.. So i could use the harddisk let of the computer case.. Newer ones doesnt have it anymore..

This is how the computer looks now..
I remove the IRWIN tape drive. Is only could store about 20 - 40MB.. So i cant use it. And i had replace it with a new TEAC 1.2MB floppy drive.

But now this drive died, now i have to look for an other brand.. Because this one didnt have a cover over the drive, so the heads could easly been damaged..

And this where the results, when iam configure the floppy drive controller card and testing it with microsoft diagnostics>

As you can see drive is a working 1.44MB floppy drive in this XT computer.
And drive B is a 1.2MB drive..
Also mentioned the included installed harddrive of 80 - 84 MB.

With TURBO on i could play the faster games, with the TURBO OFF i also can play the slower XT games..

I have also placed the Parity memory in those sockets:

But i dont know why they arent working. I had to set the motherboard switch to off, but cant see if they are working or not..