Lovely machine...

I had a 386DX-33, and one day I looked inside, and there was an AMD 386DX-40. Back then I had no idea of course, but who knows if the oscillator could have just been replaced.

It also went into warranty repair once, an issue with the graphics card, and it came back with an OAK card as well, all games ran slower. I then got a ET4000 and that gave the 386 a nice boost across all games 😀

I also got a Sound Blaster 1.5, earned the money during the holidays. I think that was one of my best moments, hearing all these games with the Sound Blaster. Had a PC speaker only for a long time. That summer was magic, Wing Commander II, Monkey Island II, Fate of Atlantis...

As someone perhaps has spotted the battery is leaking.

The corrosion damage is really bad.

The board does work even with all the corrosion damage. Here is a quick Speedsys with the board outside the case.

Cachechk. It seems the OCTEK Jaguar V 386 motherboard has 8KB cache memory.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Lovely machine...

I had a 386DX-33, and one day I looked inside, and there was an AMD 386DX-40. Back then I had no idea of course, but who knows if the oscillator could have just been replaced.

It also went into warranty repair once, an issue with the graphics card, and it came back with an OAK card as well, all games ran slower. I then got a ET4000 and that gave the 386 a nice boost across all games 😀

At least the DX40 should run nice and cool at 33MHz! 😀

Im wondering if I should keep the OCTEK Jaguar V motherboard or use my Asus ISA-386C as the Asus has more cache memory.

If that's the board the machine with, I would definitely keep it!

Oh and another funny bit, I later bought some old computer magazines from Europe. One had the ad of my computer in it, I scanned it and got an A3 poster of it at work 🤣

Is everything about that machine original? Was it from the original owner? 80 MB drive?

Such a lovely machine. Something like this might make we want to have a complete system one day 😊

philscomputerlab wrote:

If that's the board the machine with, I would definitely keep it!

Oh and another funny bit, I later bought some old computer magazines from Europe. One had the ad of my computer in it, I scanned it and got an A3 poster of it at work 🤣

Is everything about that machine original? Was it from the original owner? Such a lovely machine. Something like this might make we want to have a complete system one day 😊

Yes everything is original and I think the seller was the first and only previous owner, there isnt a single scratch on the case.

Nice. The 5.25 FDD got replaced by the CD-ROM, was that you, or the owner?

I do remember my fascination with these computers. In a computer magazine, they had a roundup of 386SX machines, and the Highscreen 386SX-16 won the roundup. I just love the look of the case, it was different than other machines back in the day. They also had their own range of screens and all sorts of accessories such as printers, scanners, sound cards...

Remove and replace the battery, the corrosion only affected the lacquer coating of the mobtherboard as far as I can see. Use vinegar or lemon juice to neutralize the battery acid and the mobo will be OK.
Nice machine btw 😀

philscomputerlab wrote:

Nice. The 5.25 FDD got replaced by the CD-ROM, was that you, or the owner?

I do remember my fascination with these computers. In a computer magazine, they had a roundup of 386SX machines, and the Highscreen 386SX-16 won the roundup. I just love the look of the case, it was different than other machines back in the day. They also had their own range of screens and all sorts of accessories such as printers, scanners, sound cards...

Well that was perhaps done later but not by me. The CD-ROM has its own controller card.

The motherboard, I/O controller card and video card are original, or at least it seemed like they never had been removed before.

keropi wrote:

Remove and replace the battery, the corrosion only affected the lacquer coating of the mobtherboard as far as I can see. Use vinegar or lemon juice to neutralize the battery acid and the mobo will be OK.
Nice machine btw 😀

I have already removed the battery and cleaned the board. I used vinegar to neutralize the acid and after I cleaned the board with tap water, to dry the board I used the owen at 75C. 😀

excellent then 😁

I have now replaced the battery so I can put the system back together again.

The now clean motherboard with the new battery and my soldering station.

The new battery close up.

The solder joints.

Beautiful, great job!

Only 8kb of cache ? well it's better than nothing, by the way nice FPU and case.

Lovely system. I like the Highscreen Kompakt series. I have the 386-SX based one: Re: Insane prices..

vmunix wrote:

Only 8kb of cache ? well it's better than nothing, by the way nice FPU and case.

It could be that the highly integrated chipset cache could compensate its small size by having a lower lantency than regular DIP SRAM.

I put the system back together today 😀

The only hardware change is that I removed the CD-ROM controller card and added a Sound Blaster AWE32 CT2760. The CD_ROM drive is an Aztech 2x CDA 268-031SE and it should work with the Mitsumi interface on the CT2760.

[edit] It looks like the "SE" in CDA 268-031SE makes it an IDE drive. The tray would not even open with the drive connected to the Mitsumi interface on the CT2760 so the CD-ROM interface card is back. The system now has 0 free 16bit ISA-slots. [/edit]

Now it was time to see what kind of HDD the system had so I could set the parameters. A lock! How evil!

Luckily its not an issue!

Surprise! It seems the HDD was replaced with a larger one when the CD-ROM drive was added late 1995 or early 1996.

I just got one of these the other day from Germany - I have had 2-3 more in the past, they all seem to come with that drive caddy.

The lock can be easily defeated by removing the enclosure from the bay, then just bending the plastic on the pin side and sliding the caddy out. I replaced mine with a CDROM.

I swear every one of these I have had was in fact not an SX machine - almost always DX-40.

Either way, thanks for the pictures, I removed my BIOS battery and several days later went to put a new one in and there are no polarity markings.

Ah, the memories. My parents (and their sons) used the exact same setup from '93 to '97. Not a Highscreen (possibly taken from one), but the same Oktek Jaguar V and the original OTIVGA 2D-Decelerator® - equipped with a whopping 256 kb.
Was fine in MoO and UFO, but switched to slideshow mode regularly in TftD and Tie-Fighter.
Best Desktop case ever, though.
Still got the pieces stashed away somewhere. And the Jaguar V mobo and bios manuals, if someone needs a scan.

Jed118 wrote on 2020-03-04, 17:45:

The lock can be easily defeated by removing the enclosure from the bay, then just bending the plastic on the pin side and sliding the caddy out. I replaced mine with a CDROM.

Thanks for the tip, let's hope that works on my colani desktop as well.