For the ram capacity it may be a matter of adding further memory support in a later bios revision. Since your motherboard is a later revision you have that going for you, as often compatibility and stability are increased with later revisions of any motherboard. As for Windows 2000 I would imagine that it would be an absolute nightmare to use with a 386 cpu, DOS or 3.11 is the ideal OS for a 386. Heck 95 is even a stretch for a fast 386 from what I have seen/heard. My Pentium 233 laptop with 256mb of ram is about as lowend as I would ever want to run Win2k and even that is not an ideal system for that OS. Kind of like running XP on a fast 486, possible but not enjoyable.

Picture would be great - we all like pictures of hardware 😉

1. I'm sure it supports 32MB (8x4MB simms)
2. you can't flash the BIOS like with the newer boards. You have to reprogram eeprom. But maybe just a newer AMI chip would work.
3. not sure, but I think it can't. This are the minimum requirements:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/304297

1: 32mb is a very common limit for a desktop 386. having 8x 4mb 30-pin simms is the way to go.

2: yes. However finding that person might prove difficult. That said, there is little to NO REASON to update the bios on a 386.

3: Don't even bother. Windows 3.11 is going to be your friend here. Anything else is an exercise in futility.

Also, pictures? I did a google image search for what you listed as the board, and it looks like the engineer had a stroke and decided it was a good idea to put a simm socket between every isa slot...

- If your board is this one: http://museum.ttrk.ee/th99/m/A-B/31040.htm then yes, it supports 4MB SIMMs, and consequently 32MB total RAM.

- BIOS flashing is a concept first introduced around 1995, so your BIOS chip/mobo will definitely not allow that and will require an EPROM programmer to update, even if you can find an update (which is probably unlikely for such an old mobo)

- An 386 CPU and Windows 2000 OS (or any OS from the 21st century for that matter) are not compatible; if not in theory, definitely in practice. Windows 2000 has not much to do with a FPU, so it will not help either. Please remember that 386DX-40 is a CPU introduced in 1992. And by the year 2000, during which the Windows 2000 released, Pentium III CPUs were already main stream. This means there is a four generation gap of both CPUs and MS operating systems between the two. I'm not sure if it will flat out refuse to install on a 386 system, but even if it installs, it will not be considered as "working" in any practical means.

Bioses on 386`s were not replaced much in the past.(so there are not "much" newer versions to find).As said above my comment..In 1995 when the first pentium socket 5 / 7 motherboards came common, they started to making it easier to update the motherboards bios with a flash program. If you would find something, that could be dumped from an other motherboard.

Windows 2000 Setup won't even load on a 386. Nor will NT4. i486 instruction checks for InterlockedCompareExchange & InterlockedExchangeAdd were added at that milestone.

NT 3.51 SP5 is the end-of-the line for 80386 PC's. As for Win9x, you can actually force-install up to Windows Me. Although I imagine that would be quite painful (Windows 95 really isn't that bad on a 386DX with sufficient RAM, imo).

Thank you for your replies! I finally managed to get it stable enough to boot something, and EZ-Drive plus a slightly modified Windows 98 boot disk has it up and running with an 80GB IDE hard drive (fully partitioned) and a 16X DVD/RW. A bit overkill, but I plugged them in and it recognized them right off, so I figured what the heck and will be installing Windows 95 OSR2.5 when I get off work tomorrow as it still only has 8MB RAM.

kixs wrote:

Picture would be great - we all like pictures of hardware 😉

Nerd pr0n will follow, probably this weekend when I stop pulling 12+ hour days; I'll edit OP with pictures of the motherboard, a 24-year-old NiCD rechargeable CMOS battery that amazingly still holds juice (but that is juuuuuuuuust starting to corrode... I have a AA x 3 case coming in the mail that will replace it), my Sound Blaster Pro 2, a 10-meg ISA Ethernet card, and a few add-on cards I'm still trying to ID.

I tell you what, 80GB may not seem like much in a modern PC, but on an 80386 it feels positively cavernous. Especially while Windows 98's installer is running a pre-installation surface scan. Yes, I'm letting that run overnight; I have a tendency to commit some pretty severe eighth-amendment violations to just about all my hardware before it settles into its final job.

EDIT: Haha, no it's not, I forgot Win98 checks for a 486. That was a 90 minute disk check for no reason. Time to dig out the Win95....

I like to use disks (or CompactFlash cards) around 256-512MB in size for 286/386 systems and around 1GB for 486.

VoraciousGorak wrote:

....I tell you what, 80GB may not seem like much in a modern PC, but on an 80386 it feels positively cavernous....

Yeah, right!..🤣

My first PC was a 386, and it had a 40MB HDD when I purchased it in 1992. When I upgraded it into a 486-33 in 1994, it had a 240MB HDD.

Compare it to a 80.000MB one (yours) and see how much of an understatement your definition of "cavernous" is. 🤣

VoraciousGorak wrote:

Thank you for your replies! I finally managed to get it stable enough to boot something, and EZ-Drive plus a slightly modified W […]
Show full quote

Thank you for your replies! I finally managed to get it stable enough to boot something, and EZ-Drive plus a slightly modified Windows 98 boot disk has it up and running with an 80GB IDE hard drive (fully partitioned) and a 16X DVD/RW. A bit overkill, but I plugged them in and it recognized them right off, so I figured what the heck and will be installing Windows 95 OSR2.5 when I get off work tomorrow as it still only has 8MB RAM.

kixs wrote:

Picture would be great - we all like pictures of hardware 😉

Nerd pr0n will follow, probably this weekend when I stop pulling 12+ hour days; I'll edit OP with pictures of the motherboard, a 24-year-old NiCD rechargeable CMOS battery that amazingly still holds juice (but that is juuuuuuuuust starting to corrode... I have a AA x 3 case coming in the mail that will replace it), my Sound Blaster Pro 2, a 10-meg ISA Ethernet card, and a few add-on cards I'm still trying to ID.

I tell you what, 80GB may not seem like much in a modern PC, but on an 80386 it feels positively cavernous. Especially while Windows 98's installer is running a pre-installation surface scan. Yes, I'm letting that run overnight; I have a tendency to commit some pretty severe eighth-amendment violations to just about all my hardware before it settles into its final job.

EDIT: Haha, no it's not, I forgot Win98 checks for a 486. That was a 90 minute disk check for no reason. Time to dig out the Win95....

If you REALLY want to try 98 on a 386, run setup with the /nm switch.

I can't even get '95 to install. Tons of GPFs during the setup process. I think one of my RAM sticks or one of the traces on the board might be bad. Already disabled the cache and really loosened memory timings (only way I could get it to load Setup at ALL) so I'm gonna try re-seating everything once I find a decent IC remover (or my thin flathead screwdriver).

luckybob wrote:

3: Don't even bother. Windows 3.11 is going to be your friend here. Anything else is an exercise in futility.

If you're getting GPFs trying to install 95, then something is screwed up. Probably Win 3.x won't be a whole lot better. If you have 32MB, try going down to 8mb or 16mb. Many older 386 boards don't properly support more than 16mb of RAM, apparently.

BTW, where are our pictures!?