okay I still have not found the proper name for that mouse card and the video card, guess i am just going to look for generic drivers and go from there.

Looks like you have some good parts for your 386 build. Sorry no clue about the mouse controller card, there were a lot of those back in the day. I know that MS and Logitech both had proprietary mousebus cards. The video card is as you said in your description of it a Tseng et4000ax. That is a great DOS card from what I hear around here and it looks like yours is the 1mb version which is really nice. The modem at this point in time is trash unless you use dial-up still or need a fax machine 😜

That is the hopes, in my storage boxes I have a few older computer motherboards (286,386,486,Cyrix 686, Amd K6, etc), even found about 5 old soundblaster cards in the boxes. Once i get a working setup for the older hardware going I plan to test out all the cards and see what type of classic gaming rigs I can get going. Right now I have a few old Windows XP rigs for stuff now, and an old Mac Quadra 650, Mac G4 450mhz. Even got stuff like TI99/a4, AppleIIc, TRS-80 CoCo. But I am trying to focus on the 386 for now since it atleast boots up 😀

Sounds like enough hardware to keep you busy for a good long while. Have fun and post progress pics/finished systems or any questions!

will do!

One thing I was wondering about is what process should I use for building a test bench for classic hardware. If it was newer standard ATX stuff i could just buy a ready test bench case. but considering I may run into AT etc would it be best to just grab a few of the brass standoffs mark a piece of plywood with the mount points and then drill and mount the standoffs and then build off that, or would there be a better way. Reason why is right now the 386 has a case, where as the other system boards do not and I want to test everything before either BuildPC/Trading/Selling/Garbage or anything with it.

That is a good question. If you had a spare AT case you could just use that, but a custom built test bench might be the best option. I am lazy and use a lovely mixture of cardboard and anti-static bags on whatever random surface is available as a test bench.

I may get lucky one of the motherboards I found still was attached to the metal tray rack but was put into a anti-static bag. And it has a nice 486dx2 66mhz installed. Will have to straighten out some pins on the board for sure.