Since we’re on the subject… back when I used to collect vintage hardware I was always on the lookout for the unobtainium Cardinal PC10 386 all-in-one. Cute little thing, but extremely rare (don’t think they sold well).

liqmat wrote on Yesterday, 23:53:

Since we’re on the subject… back when I used to collect vintage hardware I was always on the lookout for the unobtainium Cardinal PC10 386 all-in-one. Cute little thing, but extremely rare (don’t think they sold well).

That looks awesome, never heard of that thing before and these may not have been sold in europe to begin with.

Presario 425 has the exact same design. It is also small and extremely cute, but this is probably somewhat smaller still as the CRT is only 12" vs Presario's 14".

I made an assembly from a case from a thin VIA Epia client (M-ITX board) and put a 486 SBC board in it. Yes, this does not correspond to the name of the topic, but perhaps it will give new ideas, because there are similar sbcs for 386 processors. Well, 5.25 + 3.5 and with a really small case does not go together in any way. Here is a choice: either one or the other. I attached a photo of my homemade inside and outside the case (psp to understand the size). P.S. 486dx2-66 is more versatile, perfectly slows down by standard methods to the level of 386 (I attached the test results). Sorry for my bad English(machine translated), i`m from Russia.

Building your own case around an SBC or tiny backplane will definitely get you the smallest 'complete' system, rather than trying to use an off the shelf case (LPX or otherwise).

In the last couple of years I built a socket 3 system around a 486 ISA SBC, a tiny 3 slot ISA backplane a sound card and a network card, plus a 3.5" floppy and CF card.

Card stack:

Final system built into a custom case:

If I could have sourced a SBC with onboard NIC it would have been even smaller. Also the usefulness of a floppy when you have easily transferable media like a CF drive is debatable, but it was already small enough for my needs.

megatron-uk wrote on Today, 07:01:

Building your own case around an SBC or tiny backplane will definitely get you the smallest 'complete' system, rather than trying to use an off the shelf case (LPX or otherwise).

In the last couple of years I built a socket 3 system around a 486 ISA SBC, a tiny 3 slot ISA backplane a sound card and a network card, plus a 3.5" floppy and CF card.

Oh. Wow. That's cute. Love the wooden enclosure too. Well done on that build!

megatron-uk wrote on Today, 07:01:

Also the usefulness of a floppy when you have easily transferable media like a CF drive is debatable, but it was already small enough for my needs.

Yeah, I get that. But I have quite a few games and software on 3.5" and 5.25" floppies. Also I just love the sounds and nostalgia that go with floppy drives. CF cards connected to IDE also cannot be removed whilst the machine is on, so its not convenient for transferring small amounts of data. I have been intending to do software development for my NuXT system (not built yet). The NuXT itself is a little slow to do the dev on (though obviously people did so back in the day), so I was thinking a 386 may be a good compromise. Slow enough for getting a feel for things that need optimising, but significantly faster than the NuXT. To transfer between the two I could use floppy drives. Or Dave's DDLINK over parallel cable (I have that cable already).

I do have a couple of Gotek floppy emulators but, TBH, I just don't feel like using them most of the time. I only put one in my Overkill Win98 build, and obviously it's never used there)

Redeemer wrote on Today, 05:24:

Well, 5.25 + 3.5 and with a really small case does not go together in any way. Here is a choice: either one or the other. I attached a photo of my homemade inside and outside the case (psp to understand the size). P.S. 486dx2-66 is more versatile, perfectly slows down by standard methods to the level of 386 (I attached the test results). Sorry for my bad English(machine translated), i`m from Russia.

Looks a nice size! Looks to me that it should be possible to fit a 5.25" and 3.5" floppy in that volume, especially if using CF card instead of HDD. Obviously your case layout doesn't support more external bays though.

As for 486 being more versatile, I am sure you are correct. However I have a fast Pentium MMX system (300Mhz) that can be slowed to cover 486 speeds. I also have a slow Pentium MMX system (100Mhz) that can slow down to 386 level.

But what I want also is 286 coverage. Some 386 boards can slow down to those speeds. I have one that can slow to 8Mhz through a software toggle. That HP 386 board came from a system with only one floppy drive, and the BIOS seems to only support one drive. Though, interestingly, it lets you change the type between 3.5" and 5.25", even though the original case didn't have a space for 5.25" drive.

liqmat wrote on Yesterday, 23:53:

Since we’re on the subject… back when I used to collect vintage hardware I was always on the lookout for the unobtainium Cardinal PC10 386 all-in-one. Cute little thing, but extremely rare (don’t think they sold well).

I haven't seen that before. Very cute!