I like using LS-120 drives instead of a conventional 3.5" floppy drive. They work better and they make transferring files a lot easier. But I have no idea if there's any issues with setting them up on a 486 motherboard. They use an IDE channel, not the floppy connector. If the board requires CHS settings then I don't know what values would work (if any).

I'd still get a network card as it really makes life much easier.
but if not I wouldn't worry about the CF write cycle thing. if its just dos games then actual writes will be limited to copying the games onto the card and then save games. that's it.
Even DOS itself writes very little to the hard drive in normal use, this is before things like page files existed.

Just remember that old hardware and driver/configuration questions in Marvin.

Moved.