Seems I've had a small victory (maybe). I was rummaging through my stuff and came across an ESS AudioDrive Card (1868 model, says FX-16 on the front). It HAS an IDE CD-ROM header on it! In fact, this was the original equipment in the computer before I swapped it out for a sound blaster. This means …

Ok. Let's hold on a minute here. 1. The CT2740 in your possession will not work with an IDE CD-ROM drive. Even attempting it can damage something because the pinouts do not match. Same cable, different interface. 2. You have a few options, most of which have been mentioned above. A. Use a newer …

This tends to be my philosophy with most things: If there's any doubt, try it. Thank you all for the research. The page I was able to find with the technical data led me to believe I needed a Panasonic proprietary drive but who knows. Maybe the chips inside my drive (Panasonic stuff is all made by …

Since I ask for help so often I thought I'd offer some for a change. My 386 is pretty packed. As such it's a PITA to set everything up because of resource conflicts. I have: 1 x SCSI controller card 1 x ATI Wonder video card 1 x CT 2740 SB16 card 1 x 56k modem 1 x Microsoft NIC (a really good one... …

I see. Well in the past this cd drive was running off a regular 16 bit ide controller (which kinda burnt out) so now I just have the scsi, which works wonderfully for the hard drive and floppies but... now I'm stuck with only 1 8bit slot left and I'm pretty sure the cd-rom uses the generic ide …

So what you're saying is that even though my cd-rom is panasonic manufactured, it won't work because it needs to be sort of a "sound card cd-rom" to work?

I just found this: http://pbclub.pwcsite.com/PBInfo/Jumpers/Sound%20Card%20Jumpers/Creative%20Labs/CREATIVE-LABS-INC-Sound-card-SOUNDBLASTER-16-CT274.html It shows there are jumpers but none of them are related to the cd-rom. It also mentions that the cd-rom interface is for Panasonic devices. I …

This interface probably only works with certain (Panasonic) cdrom drives. they should have an option to enable the IDE port. Also, there may be a jumper on the sound card to enable the IDE port. I didn't see any physical jumpers but I am hopeful the software enables it. Do you know which …

My CD-ROM drive identifies as Matsushita (which I've come to understand = Panasonic) so it may work, if only I knew how to test the theory. After installing the base drivers, nothing remarkable happened that would expose that socket to the rest of the system... just a couple of lines added to the …

Bit of preamble: I am trying to rebuild/upgrade my 386. Got my CPU/FPU upgrades and since my ide controller kinda burnt out I got myself a brand new SCSI controller and Quantum HDD to go with it. Unfortunately this had a downside that I did not anticipate. While the Adaptec card easily accommodates …

Is a mach64 really comparable in performance to a TSENG? I have one of those laying around. I assumed the VGA wonder was faster than that already but of course I have not benched it yet. I will check the chipset to see if it has the speed written on it. I have a feeling the warning may be related to …

Thanks for the response! I was hoping, as you said, that this board was sort of swappable between cpu speeds so I may attempt the 80 MHz crystal. I've read about the Cyrix, especially the TI flavour which has more cache but I've been having trouble finding one to buy. Also I've heard there are some …

I know several people have tried to get a 386 fast enough to play games like Doom but the general consensus is that the hardware simply can't play something that demanding at speeds that most are willing to tolerate. That's fine. Nevertheless there may be other applications and games which are a bit …

Either that or I'll have to dig it out of the PCB 😉 Oh well, if it was easy there'd be no satisfaction in it, would there?

Thank you. Hmm.. perhaps I should stick with the 33 mhz combo for a while and maybe 1 day I can mess with the crystal. BTW, were AMD and Intel chips clocked at the same speed identical in performance or was 1 superior to the other?

But if it was the 486 era that allowed it and the socket on my mobo clearly allows chip replacement, what would be the point? To swap an SX with a DX? So if I get the 80 MHz, should it work in theory? Also I have a 40MHz 387 floating point unit on the way in the mail. Does this mean it won't work …

Hello all. I have an old 386DX-33 system with all original equipment in it but I wanted to upgrade to 40 MHz so I bought an AM386DX/DXL-40 chip and swapped it. The swap went fine, computer turned on no problem but at the POST screen it identified the cpu is a 80386 with no suffixes (just like before …