• Motherboard: MG 38606
  Cache: 128k
  CPU: Am386 DX-40 (choked to a DX-33 because of motherboard's restrictions)
  GPU: VFI VG-5000 512kt ISA (Tseng Labs ET4000AX)
  RAM: 8mb
  HDD: Western Digital Caviar 1.6Gb (with EZ-drive software)
  Floppies: 3.5" 1.44mb (Panasonic) and 5.25" 1.2mb (TEAC)
  Optical: DVD-R/RW (LG)
  Sound cards: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro 2 (CT1600), Roland LAPC-I
  OS: MS-DOS 6.22

Something new, something old. I received this motherboard from a trade deal and I just had to build up my "Dream Machine 1991" for games roughly from era 1989-1993 (Sierra, Lucasfilm, Origin...). I removed my 486 build from this great looking chassis so I could use it for a proper 386 build. Unfortunately for some reason the motherboard doesn't support full 40mhz of the CPU I bought so it's capped at 33mhz speed. Not a big deal actually (I don't mind as long as borderline MHz-snobby games like Wing Commander 1 work fine). The barrel battery was replaced by previous owner with a simple macgyvered CR2032 battery holder. It's ugly but it works. I'll just hide that inside the case. 🤣

The hard drive itself was actually a compromise between authenticity and user ergonomics. At first I wanted to use two 512mb Compact Flash cards as drives C and D (since I need at least 800mb for my games). But then I ran into trouble trying to get the D drive working. For some reason the motherboard just couldn't recognize any CF adapter as a secondary drive even with jumpers set as master and slave for both adapters respectfully. But there were no problems if a single CF card was configured as drive C. Eventually I just gave up and installed (a bit-too-modern) WD Caviar 1.6gb and used EZ-drive to free up the whole HDD capacity for DOS to use. Works like a charm.

That DVD burner is too modern to be periodically correct, I know. But I needed it for bigger data transfers through CD-RW discs since I still have not received my USB-2-IDE transfer adapter from eBay that would do majority of the data transfer work. With VGA and sound cards I think I hit the sweet spot: ET4000 is pretty much The Best ISA Card Ever IMHO (even with only 512kt memory) and LA-synth combined with OPL-3 FM-synth gives me everything I need for the games from mentioned era. I'm satisfied. Nay, I'm happy. 😁