First post, by johndutch1987
So I decided to get into DOS gaming a while back, found a old 486 DX2 desktop at a estate sale and figured I could probably get it going, and optimized to play a majority of games from late 80's through the early 90's. I am not very familiar at all with older computers, so I was hoping to find some knowledge and direction here.
When I first got it home I took it apart and found that the barrel style CMOS battery had begun to leak, so I snipped it off and cleaned the board. So I need to replace that, I have seen some external CMOS batteries that hold a regular lithium battery, is this an acceptable replacement?
Also, the pc speaker, reset, and turbo were all unhooked from the motherboard for some reason. I have attempted to connect them, but can not figure out which headers to plug them into. I have tried to find a manual/diagram for the board, but have not been able to find one. The model# is DIGIS-486GL. Does anyone know where I can find some info on this board? I would like to get the buttons and speaker working, figure out what all the jumpers do, and if they are set up correctly.
I have managed to get it to run, and it has windows 95 on installed, which I plan to wipe and just install DOS 6.22, but first I need to get all the hard ware issues sorted out.
I hooked up a CD ROM and it works, was able to play doom, the 3.5 and 5.24 floppy's it came with will power on, but I can't get windows to recognize any disks (not sure if its my disks or what). I will try and get some other disks to see if I can get them working.
Then the graphics card is a Trident TVGA9000B, it works, Doom kind of looked like bad though. Does anyone know if this card is decent? if not what is recommended for a good 486 machine?
There is no sound card, I would like to see what is generally recommended for sound cards. I have read a lot about 486 gaming builds and it seems most people use two, a sound blaster of some variety and a MIDI card, which I'm am not really familiar with.
And right now, I guess those are all the questions I know to ask. I am sure there will be more as this project progresses. Sorry if my post is kind of all over the place, just wanted to present a overview of the issues I am running into.
Any help would be much appreciated.