The 387SX

Sockets for adding video memory. If anyone knows what type of memory chips I need or where to find them, that info would be appreciated!

The battery is completely dead in this thing so I could use some pointers on repairing/replacing it:

BIOS setting for extended and expanded memory! This is a new one to me. Even after working on many similar class systems in the 90's, I don't recall ever seeing this option before.

After setting the hard drive parameters, it boots and I end up stuck here (I've tried a few common user/password combos with no luck):

Since taking the pictures, I've moved the hard drive to another system to see if I could read its contents. I booted my other system into Ubuntu 10 to try to read the drive. In Ubuntu, it's showing me two partitions on the drive. One is a plain DOS 6 installation with nothing else. The other is a 50MB "unknown" partition. Obviously this is the UNIX partition, but it surprised me that Linux could not read it. Does anyone know of a way I could read this partition's contents? Thanks!

Very nice looking PC, always liked the "Pizza box" sized desktops
You can either replace the Dallas battery for a new one on ebay or do the below.
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2009 … attery-chip.htm

Shadow memory is good
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/78528

You had much of a play round with it yet?

What release of SysV is installed? SysVR4 for instance uses UFS/FFS just like modern FreeBSD.

To date, I haven't done much as far as working on the system. Work takes up most of my time, but at least that gives me money to buy more parts! So far, I've bought: a Sound Blaster 16 CT2940 with the IDE channel, a Creative Labs CD-ROM drive (crossing my fingers that it works with the Sound Blaster IDE), a "new" AT&T PS/2 keyboard, the memory chips for the "Optional 256k memory," and a CR2032 battery holder to mod the Dallas RTC.

I gave up trying to access the SysV partition. Someone on another forum suggested using Fedora Linux to try to mount the partition. Long story short, it didn't work and I fdisked and formatted the drive to FAT16 for DOS. No bad sectors!

One last thing I need to buy for the computer is a CF to IDE adapter and a 512MB card to use as the primary boot drive. Combined with the 512MB Western Digital, I think 1.0GB of total disk space will be more that sufficient and I don't want to mess around with drive overlay software.

On the cosmetic side of things, I plan to eventually have the case powder coated back to its original glory and retro-brite the plastic pieces. With any luck, it should all be done towards the end of this year!

Like this build a lot!
I went the other way on my 486. Dos is on the HDD and games on the CF card. Did this for 2 reasons.
I was surprised how "wrong" the computer sounded at boot without the HDD noise. Where as once you start up a game you don't notice.
Also it means If I ever fill the CF card full of games, I can swap it out for another and kinda have "cartridges" of games.

Finally did a little work with the system today!

Video memory before:

Video memory after:

Modified the Dallas RTC. Works perfectly!

I also tried the SB16 and CDROM only to discover that the SB16 is dead (has bent/shorted pins). Ordered another sound card. Also ordered a SIIG EIDE controller with its own BIOS, just in case. I have a SIIG controller in my DX40 and it has never let me down 😀