First post, by megatron-uk
I had a 386SX-40 for a brief time in the early 90's, after moving on my mainstay of a 286-16, but very quickly upgraded to a 486DX2-50. As a result, my experience of the 386 era was pretty short lived, so I wanted to build a system that I would have ideally had instead of that cheap SX-40. Something that would have lasted a good few years, until the DX2-66 or DX4 had become mainstream.
So, I've acquired the following parts to build it:
- FIC 386SC Symphony Haydn m/board with (15ns) 256KB cache
- 16MB of (60ns) 4MB SIMMs
- Am386DXL-40 / Tx486DLC-40
- Cx87DLC-40 (the very late, tiny little qfp chip on a pga carrier)
- CL-GD5428 1MB
- SB16 CT2290
- 3Com 3C509-TP with XT-IDE ROM
- Midiman MM401
- Acer M5105 multi-IO
- Mini tower case
- Modern ATX PSU
In terms of IO, I'll be using a 64GB Sandisk Extreme CF (via a Startech bay adapter) and Zip 250 on the IDE bus, with a 3.5" 1.4MB and 5.25" 1.2MB drives (if I can find a spare of the latter type) .
I have all the parts already and am in the process of refurbing the case I just picked up:
The chassis section of the case had a few bits of corrosion, so I had to sort those out first:
I've also given it a coat of paint resembling a galvanised finish:
My collection database and technical wiki:
https://www.target-earth.net