rodimus80 wrote:

or the controller that the HDD and FDD is connected to?

This.

Jumper the CD-ROM to slave, the HDD to master (likely already on master). But test with just the CD-ROM + Floppy first.

I think I got it working. Installed and booted up X-Wing CD and it's playing fine. The music is sending a chill down my spine.

Nice 😀

Any suggestions for adding a larger HDD? I have a few floating around from some Win9x Desktops. I saw someting called OnTrack Disk Manager. Is this what I need?

rodimus80 wrote:

Any suggestions for adding a larger HDD? I have a few floating around from some Win9x Desktops. I saw someting called OnTrack Disk Manager. Is this what I need?

You can try to FDISK a drive that's greater than 500MB but smaller than 2GB. If you end up with a 500MB partition then you know the BIOS has the 500MB limit.

If not then you are lucky and can use up to 2GB drives.

If you want more than that, or you do have a 500MB partition, then there are plenty of options. Upgrade the BIOS, getting an IDE controller with its own BIOS, HDD BIOS project using a network card (forgot the name, something with XTIDE), using DDO software.

But to be honest, just stick with a smaller than 500MB drive for the moment 😀

Was going to but I can't even install TIE Fighter the HDD is so small.

I can tell you that the Cirrus Logic VL-Bus video card isn't anything special. There's probably 4 or 5 of them for sale on ebay at any one time. They are almost as common as Trident VL Bus cards.

My HDD wasn't configured properly in the BIOS. Was only configured for 80MB when it's 500MB.

Damn. Looks like Tie Fighter CD is unplayable at High. Ah well. Win some and you lose some. The hunt continues!

I have been unable to identify my sound card. Does it ring any bells for anyone?

]

My guess is that this is a 'Gallant' brand sound card, with an early Compumedia/C-Media Chipset and a fake OPL3 named 6564L. Maybe type 'SC-4000' (8-bit). Gallant is an obscure and long gone brand, the Gallant SC-6000 is their most common soundcard.

Thanks for the info. I went ahead and bought a SB16 ISA. This weekend I'll hit up my local flea market and try and get some gear.

*moved it to Marvin*

What a fantastic score. Great that you got there before the battery did serious damage. And that case is gorgeous.

Somone said "neutralize an acid with an acid". These batteries are actually alkaline batteries, so the electrolyte is basic(alkaline). For the most part, only car batteries have battery "acid".

And your question about upgrading the storage. The best solution is an XT-IDE BIOS plugged into an option rom slot, like you'd find on a network card. You should really get a network card anyway, to make file transfer (with mTCP) convenient. Failing that, a DDO like OnTrack is a decent option, but it does cause a slight performance hit. If you want a new hard disk, a CF card on an IDE adaptor makes an excellent choice.

The Cirrus Logic video card you have is not the fastest card, but it's highly compatible. Video cards didn't matter as much in the DOS days, before hardware acceleration was a thing. It's probably not worth upgrading.

If that motherboard is indeed EISA, it is using the crappy HiNT Mini-EISA chipset. It doesn't properly support EISA bus mastering among other things.

I may just stick with my Pentium II machine. This 486 is a real pain in the ass. I'm probably going to take tonight and tomorrow to audit all my old Computer Equipment. Get it documented and then post the specs. See if any of you guys may have some better opinions on what should be where etc...

The case is beautiful and the rest of the stuff looks worth keeping. Maybe you should just get another 486 motherboard, if you don't like this one?

Whats wrong with the system? Best way is find an controller card with own bios on it.. Mostly support till 8.4GB harddisks.. I guess that 4GB would be almost enough on a 486 system.. Most 486 systems in the days where had only 200MB drives (mostly) The more high-ended systems had most of the time 400 - 500MB drives in the system..

I know 486 systems are the hardest to get them set correct and want to have options on bigger drive sizes. An pentium II system is mostly just to fast for the bigest group of games. They would run better on an first class pentium 75 system.. Pentium systems are far more easier to build.. (almost the same as the Pentium IIs)

I really dont like drive overlay software.. Because it needs to be installed on the same drive.. If someone does remove the software, then you would lost the last part of the drive..

Too be honest I'm still trying to learn how this all goes together. I have no documentation for the various dip switches and such. I have been working on the assumption that the fact the system is still so solidly built and in such good condition that everything hardware wise is where it should be. So from that approach the first problem I encountered was being able to recognize the HDD which is connected to a IDE Contoller Card? along with the two floppies. After hours of google I came to the conclusion that since the battery was so old the BIOS had no saved settings. So I put in the HDD manually and got the HDD up and running. Now the next obstacle I faced was the CD-ROM. After another few hours of google I was able to find my CD-ROM drivers. I then used Mau1wurf1977 's DOS 6.22 method and got that working. I then installed Windows 3.11. That worked. But right now, it's sound and video in Windows, I think. That's where I'm at now. No drivers seem to be working for the sound card. And this batch of CD-R's doesn't seem to want to work with the CD-ROM now. I burnt at min which is 8x. Perhaps that's too fast? I purchased a CF IDE unit which should be here Saturday. I'm hoping that will solve my file transfer issue.

I can not find a free SC-4000 sound card driver either, just disk 5 of 5. This place has it, but costs money:
http://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php? … riverid=1868810