When it successfully detects the serial port, does it say what IRQ and I/O port? This is just speculation but I wonder if part of the configuration that normally goes in the BIOS is actually on the HD, or alternatively, if whatever is on the old HD is filling in some info in RAM that DOS uses to …

This sounds like a bad cable to me. I have seen many monitors where the cable has got damaged where it enters the monitor, if you wiggle the cable can you get proper colors back ? Moving the cable around seemed to be correlated with the flickering at first, but it doesn't do anything now. I wonder …

Hello! I did something similar a few years ago although I'm not personally too intense into gaming - https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=45835 For sound some are super into whether it uses a hardware OPL3 chip for MIDI or emulates it as the later Sound Blasters and compatibles did. The ESS …

I have a NEC Accusync 700 CRT monitor that I bought new in box a few years ago (a bit expensive, but hey). Everything displayed on it has a greenish tint now. It started out flickering between normal and greenish, and now it's always greenish. The on-screen display to adjust brightness/contrast/etc. …

Thanks for all the replies. After searching I do see some info online about replacing the belt with a plumbing o-ring so if that works I'll be able to revive this drive and perhaps some others I have. It seems like drives used to be more reliable, but I suspect it's a combination of two things: (1) …

First post in a long time. Anyone found any solutions to old CD-ROM drives that seem like they lose the strength to open on their own? That is, you push the eject button and it feebly tries (and fails) to open. There is no disc inside so it's not a jam. You can use a paper clip to get it opened but …

Possibly a Unicomp would do a good job since they presumably still use the original circuitry carried over from Lexmark/IBM and not a cheapened design?

Hey Deksor, I can't tell your DOS experience just from reading these posts, so you may already be familiar with this, but in regard to free memory, you know about HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE, loading DOS high, UMBs/LH, etc. and have already tried that stuff to make more room? If you don't already have …

I guess you've thought of this, but since you've said you are installing into AT cases, not ATX, you could just buy an AT power supply as they are still made? https://www.startech.com/Computer-Parts/PSUs/ … ply~PS2POWER230

Here are the details about RAM limits for Windows 9x: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030814-00/ Perhaps the SYSTEM.INI settings mentioned in the comments could help, too?

Try EZ-Drive or OnTrack Disk Manager. They intercept the disk calls into the BIOS to get around size limits. Normally for the 504MB limit, but I think they might work here, too? Edit: Are you saying it won't even boot if you just pick the largest size available? So long as it boots these programs …

There has been past discussion of the ESA 486 motherboards currently manufactured and available new [http://www.esapcsolutions.com/industrial-baby-motherboard-128mb-sdram-p-189.html], as a way to build a retro-style system without worrying about parts availability. I built such a system. My opinion …

As far as I know it's impossible to create FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. I've played around with 3rd party software to allow larger partitions and it always ends up corrupting the data. I'd recommend sticking to 32gb partitions for fat32. If you really want 200Gb partitions, install Paragon …

Tetrium, nice find! One model (ESA-TF486, MB103) has: PS/2, 512 KB cache, 128 MB EDO RAM, 128 GB IDE harddrive support, Cyrix/AMD 5x86 support, IrDA, ALi chipset, AWARD BIOS, but only 1 PCI slot While some (ESA-486AVR-128) take PC100 SDRAM, have onboard graphics, and a USB header. These can also …

I once had a bunch of old systems (ranging from a PS/2 model 30-286, Compaq Deskpro 386/20e and 386/25, plus various 486 systems) but unfortunately got rid of them about 10 years ago... One of the items I kept was a Sound Blaster card, and I recently pulled out some old games with distinctive MIDI …

Relating to Windows 95 and a 386 I thought you all might enjoy reading this description of some of the hacky assembly workarounds that went into Windows 95 to get it to work: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2 … 2/10114521.aspx