bretwashere wrote on 2022-02-06, 00:01:

Hello, […]
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Hello,

I recently purchased a very rare piece of vintage computer history, which I believe predates the Dolch series of packet analyzers. Here are a few pictures of the computer:
https://imgur.com/a/KBbLelb
https://imgur.com/IhvMg9M
https://imgur.com/J2ghj3O
https://imgur.com/kIjhf3f

EDIT: I guess I can't embed photos 🙁

I am pending shipment of the computer, and have a few items that I want to address when I receive it:

1) According to the screenshots, there is no fixed disk, meaning it was either removed or dead. I know this is 386 20 or 25mhz machine. What is the best CF card capacity for a machine of this vintage? I was figuring putting a 1GB CF cart in it and partitioning it out, but I have smaller CF cards just in case the AMI BIOS doesn't play nice

2) Does anyone know anything about this machine, and/or can guide me to where I can find the original drivers or hard drive image. All research I can find is articles from the early 90's advertising the machine. The seller considered this machine a Dolch 429 / Cascade386, but I see no markings that consider this machine a Dolch

3) The 3.5 and 5.25 inch drives on this computer are beige, with the 3.5 inch drive having no bay bracket for the 5.25 inch bay. Can anyone steer me in the right direction to find a grey 5.25 inch to 3.5 inch drive bay in grey? A cherry on top would be to change the face plates of both floppy drives to grey

4) This one would be a great nice to have: Has anyone ever converted one of these machines LCD displays from monochrome to color? I know there would be some work here, but later models did have color screens.

I love this community and would appriciate any help you can provide. Thank you.

Not much help sadly, but Master Computer Inc seem to have been your typical small reseller / VAR at that time, and all their systems seem to have carried the 'Cascade' branding. In that respect I guess it's possible that there is some Dolch (or similar) luggable DNA in there somewhere. There's no archived web presence until well beyond the 386 era (https://web.archive.org/web/19981206121941/ht … //masterpc.com/), so again not much help thru that route. Guess the Dolch / luggable community is probably your best bet in that case.

Their biggest claim to fame seems to have been getting caught in a Microsoft piracy sweep which ended up in court!