Retro 386DX40 Build

Partly inspired by another thread here but something I've been thinking about doing for years, build a top of the line 386 system.

This may seem like a very strange thing to do, my first experience with an IBM compatible was a 386SX33, 4meg ram, 512K trident video & 105meg hard disk (System cost $2,200 in 1993), it was later upgraded with a soundblaster Pro 2.0 ($199), a 210meg hard disk ($500) & SB16 & CD-ROM upgrade kit ($299).

I can remember many gaming experiences on that machine, trying to play games that were too demanding for the system, the reason I want to build a 386DX40(to be exact) is because I want to know how much faster a good DX was compared to my crappy SX ......... I dont expect anyone to get it, plus its much more of a challenge than to build a low spec pentium or mid range 486, 386 boards are few and far between.

First Item Soyo 019R1.



486 mainboard with a 386 CPU soldered on to the board I believe, the chipsets are an ALI 1429 AI & ALI M1431 A2 most commonly found on 486boards. From what I can gather towards the end they made hybrid 386/486 boards that could accept either cpu, on my board their are two jumpers to select a 386DX or 486DLC CPU, on the bottom right hand corner is the 386DX40 CPU, next one to the left is labled "386DX PGA" I'd assume it could also be where a 486 would go if it was available , further along is a "387DXPGA" for a math co-processor, I have'nt made up my mind about chasing one of these as I dont know the benefits.
I assume the 4 Black rectangles in the bottom left corner are cache chips worth 128K, these give the system a nice increase in performance again I got no idea how exactly they improve performance.
to the middle right is 4meg of ram(4X1meg modules), If I wanted more ram I would add another 4X1meg modules, with these boards you have to fill 4 or 8 slots of the same size memory, this board may accept 64meg being 486 based, probably no benefit unless you were trying to run windows 95(Windows was never suggested to run on such a machine).

I have'nt found an online manual or Jumper page on Total Hardware 99(Great Link!), I dont think its a big deal as I've had a look at a few pages for 486 Soyo boards and they have the same name for all the jumpers as my board, ie JP19=reset, etc, All the jumpers are labled anyway.

In my search for anything related to my board I came across this unenglish thread http://forum.cdaction.pl/blog/postal/index.php?showentry=20087 and it appears that his Soyo is running a 1.2gig Seagate drive, looks like I can run something a bit newer and faster than I first imagined.

I will update further as parts come to hand.

 

The 486DLC was still a cpu for 386 boards. It performed somewhat between a 386 and a real 486.

I believe it's pin compatible, so you could upgrade most 386 boards with this cheap. AFAIK the 486DLC is the fastest chip you can install into a 386 board.

40 MHz should be plenty of grunt!

 

Yea the 386DX PGA where there is just solder, would be for the slow dlc chips, or for real ceramic packed 386 chips. I had a few boards that took just socket 386's (mainly intels, amds seemed to be mainly as you have yours, surface mounted), and some of the cpus and co-pros too before the great cleaning a few months ago.

I didn't save any of my 386 stuff, so this will be a "memory lane" trip.

That's a nice amount of cache for a 386 as well, you'll have quite a fast machine for that vintage. The benefits of the 387 is being able to run autocad. I remember back in 1992-ish that I really wanted to be able to run it, but couldn't because my 386 sx33 had no co-pro. I used to look at the pretty screens of it on the schools computer and wish that my computer could use it.

 

There were lots of programs that wouldn't run without a maths co-pro, most of them are 486 era programs though. It would be pretty cool to find a 387 and chuck it in..

 

Not in this forum it's not. You're among friends here.

 

Dirkmirk what's on the agenda this weekend?

Do you have a AT case and AT power supply?

To test the mainboard you only need a ISA video card for starters. You will see if the board POSTs, passes the memory check an so on.

Next step is finding a ISA controller card. They usually have IDE and FDD ports and also serial (for the mouse) and parallel.

The keyboard has a larger plug, I can't remember if there is an adapter for the small PS/2 plugs though...

 

I never expected to find so many people interested in this vintage stuff!

This weekend im still moving stuff into my new house, if I get time I might go to the tip and see if I can find an old AT case, im going to my in-laws later he has a heap of old crappy computers but they might be pentium era or late 486, I will need something that has the old I/O cards/back panel connecters.

Interestingly, the 386 CPU Caution label is Mar16 1994 and on the side of an isa slot labeled Apr 1995, this must have been one of the last 386 mainboards.

Second Item - Roland MPU-401 IPC-T




This will be the oldest component used, I would guess it was built somewhere around 1985-1988(dates printed in manual), this device allows you to connect to an external sound module for MIDI functions, essential if you want the best quality music in your games, see Mau1wurf1977s 386 time machine thread for every module you could ever want.

The "T" version allows you to set different IRQ's and base address for the MIDI Device, this could be handy if you had a soundcard with a wavetable daughtercard and wanted to switch between the two MIDI devices, I dont see the point if you have a good MIDI module.

In an ideal world I would buy a Roland MT-32 for earlier games and have a Roland SC-55 for General MIDI, I think that standard appeared around 1991 or 1992, the first module to purchase will be a SC-55 as it can emulate the MT-32 although not perfectly.

EDIT: Both the Roland and 386 Boards are UNTESTED!

 

Awesome stuff

Regarding AT case. Some Coolermaster cases still have the holes for AT boards. Otherwise old AT cases aren't hard to find.

I am getting a ATX to AT PSU adapter and will report back if it worked or not.

Will start with a 486 board first though, simply as there are more available and a bit more flexible regarding speed (from 25 to 133 MHz) with 2x and 3x multis.

It definitly is a very nice 386 board.

For the video card if you want something fast get a Tseng ET4000 card. Quickest card for DOS games.

IDE / FDD controlle no idea if it matters. As long as it works it should be ok I guess

 

I have'nt decided on the Video Card yet, Im tossing up between the Tseng ET4000 or the Cirrus Logic 5428, maybe even a Trident Card, something with 1 or 2meg.

I dont know about IDE/FDD controllers either, the newer the better??

Anyways, this afternoon went very well at my Wifes Uncles house, his garage was stacked to the sh!thouse with old computer gear and this is what I walked away with.

3rd Item -Generic Din Windows 95 Keyboard, Its big, solid & weighty, not entirely faithful to a 386 machine given the 95 Start key & multimedia buttons but it will do just fine, the buttons are quite noisy to press which is typical of that era

4th Item - Microsoft 2 button serial mouse, not much to say about this one, its a good size, well built, buttons work fine, ball mouse, very nice

5th item - AT Case, I actually took home 3 towers but this is the one, It lays horizontal just like my old 386SX, the monitor can sit on top, its has a turbo button & that old school keylock, its not that pretty but its definately the style of a 386 system, the other cool feature is the way the lid lifts up without needing to remove any screws, this will be very handy when im tinkering away.
I will need to replace the missing 5.25" plastic panel on the front, the guts of the computer is a socket 7, its powers on but does'nt display a picture, I might salvage some parts, for another system



Not related to the project but I took these two other 2 towers in case they have parts I need.

Socket 7 - Working Pentium 200MMX, 32meg ram, this is a nice looking tower and it boots up, needs a fresh install, I will keep this one intact and might use it one day for another project as a windows 95/high end dos machine.


Socket 5 - Not working, boots up no display, this one actually has a ISA Printer/serial card which could be of use in the 386 depending on how I source the other required pieces, Note the Creative "Quad Speed" CD-ROM drive, I will use this drive to keep in theme as a 36X drive might be bottle necked by the isa bus anyway, its slowly coming together.


I just about have all the required parts to start building the system, unfortunately none of the towers contained an isa video card, I will have to wait, other things I need are a controller card for the hard disk, then I'll be ready to rock and roll, I might start stripping the tower tomorrow and give those grubby panels a good clean.

 

Great project!, and that desktop case is near perfect. It's probably circa ~1990 I reckon, similar to the one I'm using for mine (386 that is) The fact it has a dedicated 1.44 slot, and a baby-At style PSU suggests it probably was 386 era. The 286 cases that just preceded had full AT style PSU's (Hard to find replacements)

Don't worry about IDe controllers, they're all much of a muchness in the ISA era, single IC chipset, similar features, They just got smaller over time.

 

Very nice indeed

Remember there is a lot you can do with the floppy drive. Plenty of games fir on a floppy, like Prince of Persia and will run with Soundblaster sound just like that.

You can also run memtest and cpu tests and benchmarks of the floppy.

But yea you will definitly need to find a ISA video card

Retro question: Are there ISA or VLB or PCI cards that give you a PS/2 mouse port?

 

Here ya go..
PCI

The only ISA bus cards with PS/2 I know of are PC-In-Slot cards. (that doesn't help, i know)


Lots of good info on PS/2

 

Awesome! Found it on ebay and ordered it. Hopefully it "just works"

 

You could have just done this too:

http://computers.shop.ebay.com.au/C...l?_nkw=ps%2F2+to+serial&_arr=1&_npmv=3&_rdc=1



That flip top case is nice. I hope to find a similar one myself for my own little project. Still waiting on some electronic components to solder together. Oh yes indeedy.

As for those towers, salvage all you can. Cache chips, video ram, (I've got a large collection of DIP cache and video ram), bios, system ram, everything you can pry apart.

Oh yea, give that mouse a good clean too. Pull it apart (screws should be underneath under the sticker if they arn't visible), clean the rollers, external cable, everything. It's a keeper.

 

lol, does anything "just work" on pre XP machines? thouh I think you'll be right with that one

 

6th Item - Creative Vibra 16, this is a 1994 model card with a yamaha OPL chip, it has a IDE CD-ROM Interface which I'll use to connect the CD-ROM drive, im notm sure if its a plug and play model, if it is I'll need to load an additional programme in dos which uses up valuable 640k base memory, I used one of these cards before with a Yamaha DB50XG and it suffered from hanging notes in Tie Fighter (MIDI music), thats where the MPU-401 comes into its own when I'll connect an external module, some of the earlier sound blaster cards had Wavetable connections that worked 100%, most of the later ones were faulty.

7th Item - Controller Card, This one has an IDE HDD Connection, Floppy Disk connection and - 4 com ports on two 10 pin connectors and im not sure what the vertical 18 pin connector is, probably another I/O port, its the card I talked about earlier with the printer & serial port, I did'nt realise at the time it had all those IDE/floppy ports, all I need is a video card....

 

Where do you find all this stuff? I am flat out finding much around where I live, lots of businesses have just thrown out all their old gear which sux the big one. I have to drive to Brisbane to have half a chance at finding anything really.

 

Done! 2 options, better than 1!

Well so far pretty much much everything "just worked"

However I do look for the "good stuff". Now we can afford to get the premium products from back in the day and I also like to stick with the market leaders like original Creative Labs cards. Lots of products are known to be flakey, so I just do the research and avoid them.

I usually stick with good brands like Asus, Gigabyte, Aopen and so on. Documentation is very important so if I can't find a manual or drivers I usually don't get the item. The named brands still have all the info on their support websites. Pretty amazing really that you can go to Aopen or Asus and get the BIOS, drivers and manuals for your old Socket 7 or Slot 1 board

Same issue for me. Thinking of playing with 486 hardware, but there is a big lack of VLB video and controller cards. Ebay has items but it's all from overseas with shipping costs to match. I use Ebay and if you are patient you can still make bargains. I like to buy in bulk (e.g. a CPU collection for 30 bucks, which sounds a lot, but you get a lot of CPUs and when its all said and done I am ok with a dollar per CPU). The real rare goodies however, I am happy to pay the price. They are still peanuts compared to what they cost in the day. And I don't like putting a price on retro fun. It's important to me, so if I really want something I am happy to pay a fair price.

What I hate are these commercial ebay sellers who don't even bother to explain what it is they are selling. They just upload it, put a steep price on the net and fish for desperate people.

 

It'll be a game port. It should have "GAME" printed near it. Have a look in those cases you got for a socket with a ribbon on it that looks like the bottom socket on that vibra. It'll either be blue or black in colour and female.

 

Geez, I only just threw out all my old 486 era stuff in the last 12 months (Toowoomba also). I used to get a lot of stuff at the Toowoomba Base Hospital auctions, but that was a few years ago. I'd be asking around at private schools if you know anyone there, as some of them have masses of old gear lying around.

Whenever we go and throw out photocopiers at the tip, there are a heap of old PC's (probably early P3 era by the looks) sitting there with the CRT Televisions. I doubt anyone would notice if you picked a few up

Also, Toowoomba Regional Council often hold Ewaste recycling days. I'm not sure if you can take any of it when people dump it though.