Interesting project. I've been playing with PCs on my test bench rather than building anything permanent in cases (Other than my "Ultimate" 98 and XP builds, which aren't really period correct).

Only now, after 4 years of mucking around on my test bench, am I in the process of trying to build some permanent period correct machines. haha. It will be nice I think to just have some PCs where I can just sit down and play a game.

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2025-01-14, 10:08:

Interesting project. I've been playing with PCs on my test bench rather than building anything permanent in cases (Other than my "Ultimate" 98 and XP builds, which aren't really period correct).

Only now, after 4 years of mucking around on my test bench, am I in the process of trying to build some permanent period correct machines. haha. It will be nice I think to just have some PCs where I can just sit down and play a game.

Keep us updated on how it goes 😀) I think projects like this are quite interesting, considering the variety of retro chipsets and motherboards and all the issues associated with them.

That AlphaDOS looks like an MS-DOS 3.3 clone. How compatible was it? I think I saw some PEVM systems when visiting Minsk in 2001 - but given they were being used by the KGB at the airport I didn't exactly get to take a closer look 😉

Well considering the material you have available, for me you should get an AMD 5x86 133 P75 or something like that, and its PCI Socket 3 motherboard, if you find a motherboard that has PCI and even a VLB even better, the disk would be small if you use Windows, but if you limit yourself to DOS it's fine.
For the case, if you are not particularly interested in the exact period, you could find a more modern ATX with its ATX power supply, and use an ATX-AT adapter, you should only change the start button with a switch, or use a circuit with relay to be connected to the green and black 🧵 wires, to start or turn off the PC.

PC@LIVE wrote on 2025-01-14, 14:42:

Well considering the material you have available, for me you should get an AMD 5x86 133 P75 or something like that, and its PCI Socket 3 motherboard, if you find a motherboard that has PCI and even a VLB even better, the disk would be small if you use Windows, but if you limit yourself to DOS it's fine.
For the case, if you are not particularly interested in the exact period, you could find a more modern ATX with its ATX power supply, and use an ATX-AT adapter, you should only change the start button with a switch, or use a circuit with relay to be connected to the green and black 🧵 wires, to start or turn off the PC.

Or just use one of the power switches with their connectors I scavenged off cases that were beyond repair 😀) I could go the ATX PSU route, and instead of using an adapter I could just solder off ATX cabling and add AT cabling with an additional header for ATX20 pin 14 (PS_ON) to ground Dupont connector and wire a switch to it - don't worry, I've been modding PSUs for quite some time now and am quite comfortable with high voltage circuits.

But if I'm to go with older parts, I would eventually have to come up with a PCB to give me the right voltages for an AT power supply.

So for now I'll try to get a real AT PSU, even if a non-working one - most of them can be repaired to working order, as long as the transformer and the MOSFETs are doing fine.

As for the case, I'm sick of ATX cases at this point, I already have too many of them and I want some beautiful beige baby-AT boxes in my collection.

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-14, 09:56:

I think by now I'm ready for my MSDOS gaming PC build. […]
Show full quote

I think by now I'm ready for my MSDOS gaming PC build.

My experience with personal computers was quite a bit different from people from the West. First off, we were at least 10 years behind in the PC market and having a PC/XT or PC/AT class machine in the early 90s was quite the luxury.

When the USSR collapsed many people were able to bring computers back from their workplaces. As long as the USSR was concerned, there were two major computer manufacturers worth cloning - IBM and DEC, so while there was the Iskra, an Apple II clone, most PCs that made to homes were either DEC PDP-11 or IBM PC compatibles. And as far as I know, only IBM PC clones were restored to working order and used more or less extensively. And among these, ES PEVM, an IBM PC clone with K1810VM86 soviet 8086 clone at 5MHz.

That's the computer a childhood friend of mine got at home, with two desktop units stacked on top of each other - the compute unit and the storage unit, with a full height 20mb HDD and two 5.25 inch floppy disk drives. And that's the computer I had my first PC experience with. The OS was AlphaDOS, I grabbed a screenshot off the internet:

The attachment b0c9f7b89ce870d3d07df5faff1cd_single.jpg is no longer available

And there was, of course, Norton Commander.

At this point in time, I don't really want to recreate that era of computing, but rather something closer to the first computer I ever owned - a Compaq Contura 430C laptop with 486DX4 and 8Mb RAM - minus the drawbacks of a passive LCD screen, the lack of expansion on a laptop, and lack of sound besides the PC speaker.

I knew I was eventually going to build a 386 or 486 based PC, but running inventory of the parts I have, I think I have some that can be used for such a build.

Parts on hand right now:

3x8MB 70ns 72-pin FPM SIMMs with parity, IBM branded
TEAC FD-235HF 3.5″ 1.44Mb floppy drive
Samsung 52x 5.25″ CD-ROM drive (I wish I had something older, but this will have to do for now, and it's fully functional and looks really nice)
ESS ES1869 AudioDrive ISA sound card
CONNER CFS270 270Mb 3500rpm IDE HDD
Genius Serial Mouse, a bit banged up, but functional

What I'm missing:
A baby-AT case and a 386/486 baby-AT motherboard, and a PSU
A 386DX/486DX class CPU
The necessary I/O cards to make it all work
A graphics card - I'm unlikely to go the EISA route, so either a good ISA card or a VLB card.

I would love to take a prebuilt COMPAQ of the era, being a huge COMPAQ fan, and use it as a starting point, but so far I've been unable to track one in the local market, and delivery costs from other countries would be too high. So I'll see what I can source locally, at least as far as the case and the PSU go.

So let's see how this thing goes. I have a feeling this build will live for a while on my test bench until I can track a nice case.

Hey, songoffall. A nice project. Good luck finding the missing parts locally. Being in the same location for a while, it appeared to me that the market of vintage hardware is non-existent here 😀
However I had good experience with local post. Got a parcel shipped directly from Japan in two weeks for a very reasonable price. Let alone the intermediary shipping companies are also working reliably and the prices are not too bad.

Bondi wrote on 2025-01-14, 19:23:

songoffall wrote on 2025-01-14, 09:56:

I think by now I'm ready for my MSDOS gaming PC build. […]
Show full quote

I think by now I'm ready for my MSDOS gaming PC build.

My experience with personal computers was quite a bit different from people from the West. First off, we were at least 10 years behind in the PC market and having a PC/XT or PC/AT class machine in the early 90s was quite the luxury.

When the USSR collapsed many people were able to bring computers back from their workplaces. As long as the USSR was concerned, there were two major computer manufacturers worth cloning - IBM and DEC, so while there was the Iskra, an Apple II clone, most PCs that made to homes were either DEC PDP-11 or IBM PC compatibles. And as far as I know, only IBM PC clones were restored to working order and used more or less extensively. And among these, ES PEVM, an IBM PC clone with K1810VM86 soviet 8086 clone at 5MHz.

That's the computer a childhood friend of mine got at home, with two desktop units stacked on top of each other - the compute unit and the storage unit, with a full height 20mb HDD and two 5.25 inch floppy disk drives. And that's the computer I had my first PC experience with. The OS was AlphaDOS, I grabbed a screenshot off the internet:

The attachment b0c9f7b89ce870d3d07df5faff1cd_single.jpg is no longer available

And there was, of course, Norton Commander.

At this point in time, I don't really want to recreate that era of computing, but rather something closer to the first computer I ever owned - a Compaq Contura 430C laptop with 486DX4 and 8Mb RAM - minus the drawbacks of a passive LCD screen, the lack of expansion on a laptop, and lack of sound besides the PC speaker.

I knew I was eventually going to build a 386 or 486 based PC, but running inventory of the parts I have, I think I have some that can be used for such a build.

Parts on hand right now:

3x8MB 70ns 72-pin FPM SIMMs with parity, IBM branded
TEAC FD-235HF 3.5″ 1.44Mb floppy drive
Samsung 52x 5.25″ CD-ROM drive (I wish I had something older, but this will have to do for now, and it's fully functional and looks really nice)
ESS ES1869 AudioDrive ISA sound card
CONNER CFS270 270Mb 3500rpm IDE HDD
Genius Serial Mouse, a bit banged up, but functional

What I'm missing:
A baby-AT case and a 386/486 baby-AT motherboard, and a PSU
A 386DX/486DX class CPU
The necessary I/O cards to make it all work
A graphics card - I'm unlikely to go the EISA route, so either a good ISA card or a VLB card.

I would love to take a prebuilt COMPAQ of the era, being a huge COMPAQ fan, and use it as a starting point, but so far I've been unable to track one in the local market, and delivery costs from other countries would be too high. So I'll see what I can source locally, at least as far as the case and the PSU go.

So let's see how this thing goes. I have a feeling this build will live for a while on my test bench until I can track a nice case.

Hey, songoffall. A nice project. Good luck finding the missing parts locally. Being in the same location for a while, it appeared to me that the market of vintage hardware is non-existent here 😀
However I had good experience with local post. Got a parcel shipped directly from Japan in two weeks for a very reasonable price. Let alone the intermediary shipping companies are also working reliably and the prices are not too bad.

Hey friend 😀) Sorry I disappeared, things got messed up and fast. You still in the area?

As for the missing parts, I should show you how I source parts locally, pretty sure you'll be impressed. The secret is to get into the right warehouse with the right people.