johndutch1987 wrote:

[...]

So I guess the first questions I have besides what anyone knows about this machine, would be:
1. Can/should I upgrade the cpu to a dx over the sx?

Do you intend to run Quake? Or Falcon 3.0? Or do CAD/CAM or heavy spreadsheet work? If so, you want the FPU in the DX, if not, it won't change performance one bit, as DOS games hardly ever use FPU.

2. Is that SB16 OK? What will compatability be like?

It's a first-gen SB16, so pretty noisy, but no PnP tomfoolery and if you're lucky even no MIDI hanging note bug (you need to check your DSP version for that). If you have the right one (4.04 or 4.05), no hanging note, which means this is about as good as it gets in terms of SB16 compatibility. You have full SB16 compatibility (duh), full SB2.0 & AdLib compatibility (real OPL3), but you could get stereo/mono trouble in SBPro2.0 games. Also no WSS (as usual). If you hit problems with SBPro2 (or lack of WSS), you could add a second SBPro2 clone with full WSS support, but probably won't be necessary.

3. I know the Tseng Et4000 card is supposed to be pretty good, but what about the on board version?

The onboard version has the exact same chips on the motherboard. Assuming it's linked via local bus (most likely) it should perform identically to a discrete VLB version of the same. Pretty well in other words 😀