Is there a network card present?

There is no network card present, but I have a bunch of unknown status, might be a isa among them. If i can install it in this shackled W95...

You'll probably want a CF adapter in there anyway, and if you get an external facing one then it can be used just like a USB stick. That's how I back up my 486, just pull the CF HDD out and copy it somewhere.

I was thinking:

ISA NIC + Packet Driver + NetTCP + Ghost or similar, booted from Floppy + CDRom.

Image the entire HDD as a disk image, with the NetTCP host as the target.

Never boot into win95 with the NIC present. Just DOS mode only from diskette.

That sounds like something quite above my current knowledge.

CF route might be a solution, but I'd like to not spend money for a while.

Can you make a second partition without loosing all data?

It's not that hard to do...

Well known isa nics, like NE2000 compatibles, or 3Com Etherlink III, etc, have very easy to find packet drivers.

You start with the 'emergency boot disk' disk image for win9x (the flavor you are using. In this case, win95?), clear off everything except msdos.sys, io.sys, command.com, himem.sys, emm386.exe, mscdex.exe and oakcdrom.sys.

Put the packet driver and nettcp on.

Burn Ghost onto a cdrom.

On the floppy, make a config.sys that looks like this.

[Config.sys]
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=A:\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=A:\EMM386.EXE RAM I=B000-B7FF
DEVICEHIGH=A:\OAKCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001

then make an autoexec.bat that looks like this:

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]
@echo off
LH A:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:MSCD001
LH A:\(packetdriver's .exe)
LH A:\netdrive connect [IP Address of netdrive host]:[port #] [Disk image to connect to] [Drive letter to use]

rem Assumes the CDRom will become D:
D:\ghost.exe

Make sure that you have correctly set up the nettcp netdrive serverlet, and put the correct stuff in the [] above, boot, then tell ghost to image the drive.

This is the way yes.

This is much easier to do than shrink the partition without destroying everything.

SB16 drivers are everywhere, the cirrus logic vga probably works with the w95 vga driver (check and dig it and its inf out and copy to stiffy if it is something rare), the motherboard and cdrom dont need special w95 drivers.

Edit: if you want to boot dos with cdrom support, the cdrom might be connected to the sound blaster. If that is the case, you need to load sbide.sys with the correct parameters too. The ide on sb’s is usually configured to use tertiary ide channel resources.

If I connect the cdrom to the sb16 (the cdrom is on the I/O board ide1 at the moment), would that free up ide1 for a second hard drive? I might have a slightly useful hdd in the stock so I can just give it a slave hdd. They might be a bit large for a 486 with a 1992 bios though.

Edit: after some digging, the smallest IDE drive I have is an untested 4.3gb. Will that size work with this BIOs/3.11/6.22? Or do I need to do tricks to make it work/pretend it is smaller. The current hdd is 1223mb.

1223MB is rather larger than the 528MB limit a 1992 BIOS might still have.

It probably has a 2.1GB limit then... (4095 cyl)

Maybe even 8192 cylinders. Your 4.3GB probably has just over 8192 cylinders.

If you input maximum cylinders the BIOS can use, see if the system ignores the rest and uses the maximum capacity it can address on the disk.

If the IO controller is the common garden variety multi IO with only 1 IDE connector (labeled 1, with no 0 present) the cdrom can be moved to the SB to free up a slot for a slave HD. It should work in win95, as it should detect the tertiary IDE controller on the SB and anything connected to it just fine. In dos/3.1 however, you have to load sbide.sys to make it see the IDE controller. This driver is part of the SB driver package and the installer configures it automatically.

The current 1223mb drive uses OnTrack.

My I/O board has an ide0 and an ide1 connector. Both have cables without intermediate connectors.

But in either case I could go for a second hdd with sbide for the cdrom.

I'll experiment with the bios settings for hdd. I feel most comfortable with the 2 hd solution.

Ps I only have pci network cards in stock, so no solution there.

The sb16 does not support atapi, soI'll have to go master/slave on ide0 and 1 for 2hd + cdrom (+ maybe something else in the future). I have suitable ide cables, I think.

Meanwhile I'm toying around a bit. Installed dos mouse driver, put bios at scorching settings. Duke3d with no music and minimal sound settings is quite unplayable at 640, and smoothish but not butter at 320. Is that to be expected for a dx50? 16mb ram, 256k L2. (It's fine if this is beyond this machine's capabilities; the Pentium 3 runs duke at a zillion fps. I just want to understand the 486).

Also, I can't get general midi to work in dos on the sb16. It doesn't find the mpu401 even with the correct port setting. What do I need to do?

Duke3d on a dx4-100 with ISA trident is smoothish at 320x200 and unplayable at 640.

Back in the 486 days, 320x200 was THE resolution.

I remember how mind blown I was when I saw smooth 640x480 fullscreen on local bus video on a P133 for the first time.

256k L2 is plenty. I am making do with 128k in mine and it is totally fine.

Too bad about the SB - there are very many variants of them. I have a CT2980 which supports an IDE cdrom. Luckily you have 2 IDE ports - I assume it’s some kind of VLB controller then? All the ISA ones I have ever seen have only a primary IDE port, that’s why the sound blasters had all kinds of cdrom interfaces because lots of them came as multimedia upgrade bundles together with a cdrom, speakers and some cd’s.

Sadly, I have never used MPU401, so cannot say anything about that. One day when I manage to scavenge a dreamblaster somewhere…

Yes it is a VLB I/O board.

Mpu401 is what duke says it can't find. Does my sb16 even have that?

Nicolas 2000 wrote on 2026-01-23, 18:36:

Duke3d with no music and minimal sound settings is quite unplayable at 640, and smoothish but not butter at 320. Is that to be expected for a dx50?

Duke Nukem 3D was released in 1996 which is well into the Pentium era. Whereas a 486 DX-50 is more of a 1993-1994 era computer.

Games like Doom, Doom II, Heretic, etc., would be more appropriate for this machine.

The ISA bus is *simply too slow* to do smooth vesa mode with duke3d.

A VLB card *might* be able to do it. *maybe*.

Ok, so I now know to keep those games for the P3.

Most important next steps: get a slave hdd running, and if possible general midi in dos if my sb16 is capable of such novel feat.

FM synth should play through the OPL3/CQM synth and general MIDI through the wavetable addon or external synth plugged into the gameport.

I played duke3d on my dx4-100 when it came out, because thats all I had back then, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Is yours a legendary DX50 and not a DX2-50? In that case I guess only the IDE controller is VLB and not the graphics too, since a 50MHz VLB usually only works with one card on the bus.

It is not a dx2. It is either a dx50 or an overclocked dx40, but in any case it is recognized as a dx and running at 50. Cooling stuff prevents me from reading the print on the cpu.

The IO board is vlb, as is the graphics card. The (untested) genlock card and sb16 are isa.