I would disassemble it completely first. Next thing to do is to remove that old battery, and check if there is any damage on the board because of that. Then a good cleaning is all it needs. I usually remove all the plastic parts, and wash them using water and soap.

Nice looking AT case, i love the dummy floppy front plate, i have a box with one of those too.
I second what markk said, you need to take it apart and remove that battery first thing.
Just wanted to add a couple questions: You have a multimeter and a soldering iron right ? Cause you are going to need those. Do not forget to ground yourself when you are handling electronic parts 😉

Edit : you might want to note the positions of all the case headers plugged in the motherboard before you take it out, for less hassle while rebuilding.

Thanks! The case was WAY overkill for me back then, and to be honest, probably is now, but it was bought back then with intent to upgrade. I am good with a meter, so so with a soldering iron.

I was going to take several pictures of everything as I go along, and label the cards as they are removed. It does power up and function. Hard drive showed a few bad sectors in a run of scandisk. I do still have all the Sound Blaster software on this thing, and amused myself with the parrot and Dr Sbaitso.

As for my plans with it. I don't know.

Math co-processor... because I can, and I remember that SimCity (anything else?) could use one.
fill all the ram slots (8mb is max?)
biggest harddrive from my stack of drives that'll fit in there.
decent video card
Maybe an actual Roland sound card, if I can find one (Back then it was Sound Blaster, Adlib and Roland's no?)

Basically max out this thing as much as it would have been possible in 91-96.. But with a bigger harddrive, and a CF/SD card reader of some sort for ease of file swapping. I wish a reader was made that fit into a 5.25" bay, that looks nice. Does one exist?

If it can run Wing Commander II and Ultima VII easily, I'll be happy. My tastes are that era and before... Starflight 1 ran pretty good at 12mHz. 33 was too fast, and the ship wouldn't fly correctly.

I would get some isopropyl alcohol to clean up the places where the battery has leaked as well.

You should check to see if your motherboard has an external battery header. Then you can buy a AA battery pack to replace the leaky barrel type thing on there.

I highly recommend the CF for this system. Though you will need to be careful which card you get. Just make sure it can work in "Fixed disk mode" and you should be good to go. I have currently added CF capability to all of my retro systems, and it makes file swapping a breeze. They actually make 3.5" CF adapters, but from what I have seen they are expensive. Just go with the ones that use the ISA backplate. They cost about a buck on ebay.

Good ISA graphics cards are getting harder and harder to find. Just about anything other than your Trident should be an improvement. For DOS, Cirrus Logic and ET4000 cards seem to be the way to go. If you want to run windows apps, pretty much any late generation ISA card with 2mb should do the trick. Cirrus Logic 5434, ATi Mach64, S3 864/868, ET4000W32i based cards are all good choices.

I would forget about Roland sound unless you want to spend some big bucks. The MT32 ISA card usually goes for a few hundred bucks. A cheaper alternative would be a dedicated MPU-401 card with intelligent UART mode and an external MT-32 unit. Tough my understanding is that only CM32 and CM64 support roland sound effects. I still haven't joined the Roland club. I have the Roland MPU-401AT ISA board, but I haven't come across a cheap enough midi module yet. I'd stick with the SB Pro. It's probably good for your needs.

Psquare75 wrote:

I couldn't find an intro section so... […]
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I couldn't find an intro section so...

Hi. Name is Paul. 31 years old. reside in MA. Into older cars, and retro gaming. As I was setting up a game room in my house, I thought I'd dig out my first computer (after a Tandy 1000, which I no longer own. 😒)

I was 11 at the time my parents bought it. My grandfather actually got it for us at a computer show.. Specs that I vaguely remember, and dug out here.
I think this is an AT case? It has a turbo button. 12/33 mhz.

Motherboard - Not sure?
CPU - 386DX-33
4mb of ram dunno what brand
5 1/4" and 3.5" drives
Trident 512K VGA card
Soundblaster Pro (I added that years ago)
A Creative CD-Rom (ditto) Running off the SoundBlaster
A Microsoft "In Port" Mouse.. I recall adding a special card for this with a dedicated mouse port.
Seagate 128MB hard drive

Has MS-Dos 6.22 and Win 3.1 on it. Starfleet 1 and Ultima IV are on it as well. That's it. I fired it up last night after digging it out.Looks like the directories are all dated around '96, which is when I got my P90, so that makes sense. Then this was 'parked'. I recall lots of SimCity 1, Starflight 1 and 2, Ultimas (VII ran 'alright'), and lots of crappy BASIC games from my Tandy days

The CMOS battery is dead. After googling I found this forum, and took some pics. Seems like a place I will frequent, and a good group of people. Where do I go from here?
-snip-
I have air in the garage.. Should I just blow this out at reduced air pressure?

Welcome to Vogons!

Feel free to read (and reply! 😉 ) the other threads here 😉

I like your case, it's nice to see such a system not ending up at the dumpster.
It could use a clean though, and definitely snip off/desolder? the battery and clean up the blue/green corrosive stuff before it kills your board.

The first computer I ever used, a 286 system of some sort back in 1990, had that same case. I like it quite a bit.