Anonymous Coward wrote:

feipoa wrote:

SXL2-W95c_installation.jpg

That's a pretty sweet dark grey CD-ROM drive. What's up with the 5.25" FDD though? Why not move it up a panel?

This is just how the computer came when it was given to me in 2001. Surprisingly, I never thought anything of it, but now that you mention it, I always place the 5.25" right under the CD-ROM, so I'll have to fix that. ... Wait <thinking hard now> I think the floppy cable wouldn't reach if I move the 5.25" up.

I can't bring myself to care about where the blank plate in the drive bays goes, that's just a bridge too far

feipoa wrote:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

feipoa wrote:

The attachment SXL2-W95c_installation.jpg is no longer available

That's a pretty sweet dark grey CD-ROM drive. What's up with the 5.25" FDD though? Why not move it up a panel?

This is just how the computer came when it was given to me in 2001. Surprisingly, I never thought anything of it, but now that you mention it, I always place the 5.25" right under the CD-ROM, so I'll have to fix that. ... Wait <thinking hard now> I think the floppy cable wouldn't reach if I move the 5.25" up.

Yes, the issue was floppy cable length. In the attached photo, the top cable is being used in the SXL2 system. I have one with greater floppy drive port separation (the bottom photo), which will fit, but if I recall correctly, the A drive must be on the end of the cable, and B in the middle. The longer cable only has a 5.25" drive on the end cable, so I would be left with the A drive as the 5.25" and B drive as the 3.5". I don't really care for that type of configuration. The way around this is usually with a BIOS option called "swap floppy drives", but the BIOS on this board doesn't contain this feature.

It is possible that I have a floppy cable with a longer separation length the 5.25" in the middle position, but I'd have to pull out all my systems to check.

Does your bios have the option to swap floppy drives?

feipoa wrote:

GigAHerZ wrote:

Windows 95C works quite well on both 386DX-40 and 486DLC-40. (I did install it for the Cpu-Z improvement contribution)

You were able to run CPU-Z on Win95c and a 386DX? I got a blue screen with SXL2/Win95c and CPU-Z. Re: Need help to improve the support of 486/586/686 class CPUs in CPU-Z

I was, many versions ago. Haven't tested with the latest version.

Anonymous Coward wrote:

Does your bios have the option to swap floppy drives?

Nope. Noted previously. See below.

feipoa wrote:

The way around this is usually with a BIOS option called "swap floppy drives", but the BIOS on this board doesn't contain this feature.

For anyone trying this, I wanted to warn you that my system would no longer boot after installing service pack 6a. I'm not sure which is the last service pack which will run on an SXL. I'm going to try NT 3.51 instead.

EDIT: NT 3.51 SP5 and post SP5 fixes work fine on the SXL.

I'm a bit late to this, but just wanted to share my own findings.
It is possible to run NT 5.0 (2000 Beta) on a 486DLC.
I've successfully installed Beta 2 Build 1906 on physical hardware. Here's the setup I used:
-FX-3000 motherboard
-TX486DLC/E-40GA
-Cyrix Fasmath CX-83D87-40-GP
-32mb ram
-128kb L2 cache
-Cirrus Logic GD5434 2mb, ISA video card
-Sound Blaster 16 CT4180
-64gb SD card in IDE adapter

Startup takes about 6 minutes, and it's very sluggish as expected though not totally unusable. I was also able to get sound working, and launch a few Windows games (eg. Freddi Fish series)

I also installed Beta 3 Build 2031 on PCem, but haven't tested on hardware yet. The startup time is 10 mins+.

Windows 2000 Final will not run. It bluescreens after setup finishes with "KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED". I've tried on both physical hardware and PCem.

For anybody else who wants to install NT5 on physical hardware, it will probably take more patience than you have. Be advised that if CHKDSK runs at any point, you will be stuck at a blank loading screen, and you'll have to start over. This means you have one shot at completing the last GUI portion of setup, and you cannot have more than 1 partition (having multiple triggered CHKDSK for me). Also, you should make a backup image of your hard drive/SD card as soon as the install finishes.

Finally, sound will not work on NT5 without a FPU (the same goes for 486SX's)

Your level of determination is quite impressive! Did you happen to try NT4 and also find that installing service packs would render the system unbootable?