I think that PCI VGA upgrade can help a lot. Up to the fist Virge, you will have awesome DOS compatibility. A little less with Virge DX and above.

Your sound card expansion plan is also "certified by Vogons" 😀

In my experience, many DVD readers work fine in late gen. PCI 486 motherboards with good EIDE controllers.

There are some Win 3.11 exclusive games and some that are enhanced with special features like higher res. FMV as opposed to the DOS version. (You might need a Realmagic card for some of these.)

If you can set up TCP/IP networking in Win 3.11 for WG, file transfer will be more comfortable.

Yeah, the graphic expansion is a must!
I have to check the DVD expansion too.
Drivers will be need I recon.
The good thing is that the guy is selling it to me already got TCP/IP networking enabled in Win 3.11 + file transfer.

Ok update! Just got a S3 Trio64V+ for 10$.
+ I have found a crt monitor 15' in the garbage this morning!
Walking out of house, I see a bunch of crt monitors next to the garbage! 1st reaction. Take all of them home....but, I was with my wife, so I took the one in best shape and works perfectly fine!
Here is a picture of it!

Something is saying "Build me! Build me! 🤣
getting closer and closer....

Wow! I'm happy for you, dude 😀

btw, I've got the same CD drive (or very similar). Be careful when placing stuff on top of it, mine is very sensitive to it 😀

RacoonRider wrote:

Wow! I'm happy for you, dude 😀

btw, I've got the same CD drive (or very similar). Be careful when placing stuff on top of it, mine is very sensitive to it 😀

Thanx for the advice RacoonRider! I'll keep it in mind!

Any ideas for the empty rack? What can I put over there? I guess a coolbox like this one is out of the question due to compatibility:

you would need a usb header for that memory card reader.

zstandig wrote:

you would need a usb header for that memory card reader.

thanx zstandig. I will have to look for something else to put in that empty rack then.

Since you have a NIC, check out mTCP. You can run an ftp server on your 486, and just ftp in to transfer files. I launch mine with a 3 line batch script.

Also, if you want a bigger hard disk, and you will, you can burn an xtide bios to an eeprom, put it in the socket in the NIC, and it will manage larger disks for you. Combine this with a CF card and CF-IDE adaptor and you have a nice fast quiet system.

Post some speedsys results for us to ogle. 😁

Hatta wrote:

Also, if you want a bigger hard disk, and you will, you can burn an xtide bios to an eeprom, put it in the socket in the NIC, and it will manage larger disks for you. Combine this with a CF card and CF-IDE adaptor and you have a nice fast quiet system.

Post some speedsys results for us to ogle. 😁

Thanx Hatta, what is the Max size HDD I can add after getting the xtide bios working?

I think dos sports up to 4gb...I might be wrong.

Hatta wrote:

Also, if you want a bigger hard disk, and you will, you can burn an xtide bios to an eeprom, put it in the socket in the NIC, and it will manage larger disks for you. Combine this with a CF card and CF-IDE adaptor and you have a nice fast quiet system.

Post some speedsys results for us to ogle. 😁

Hatta, what's the type of EEPROM I would have to program so I can put it in the NIC socket?

It depends on your version of DOS.

Original DOS versions (5 and 6) support the original FAT16, which limits each partition to 2GB. That includes the extended partition, so basically you can have a drive letter for your primary partition and another drive letter for a logical drive in the extended partition.

There might be later versions of DOS that handle later versions of FAT. (There is the supposed "DOS" that people strip out of Windows 98 and Windows ME. You can also check PC DOS 7 and PC DOS 2000.)

XT-IDE is a wonderful project. The formal XT-IDE is an 8 bit card. However, there is a "universal" BIOS that works with 16 bit interfaces that is ideal for machines with existing IDE interfaces but limited BIOSes. Otherwise, there is always drive overlay software.

Hatta wrote:

Since you have a NIC, check out mTCP. You can run an ftp server on your 486, and just ftp in to transfer files. I launch mine with a 3 line batch script.

And remember, it is not just FTP server ...

- FTP client
- Telnet client
- IRC client
- SNTP (Simple Network Time Protocol) client
- DHCP client
- Netcat

And on this class of machine all of those will work at blazing speed.

(Disclaimer: I'm biased. I'm the author.)

mbbrutman wrote:

It depends on your version of DOS. […]
Show full quote

It depends on your version of DOS.

Original DOS versions (5 and 6) support the original FAT16, which limits each partition to 2GB. That includes the extended partition, so basically you can have a drive letter for your primary partition and another drive letter for a logical drive in the extended partition.

There might be later versions of DOS that handle later versions of FAT. (There is the supposed "DOS" that people strip out of Windows 98 and Windows ME. You can also check PC DOS 7 and PC DOS 2000.)

XT-IDE is a wonderful project. The formal XT-IDE is an 8 bit card. However, there is a "universal" BIOS that works with 16 bit interfaces that is ideal for machines with existing IDE interfaces but limited BIOSes. Otherwise, there is always drive overlay software.

So what do you guys recommend? Staying on DOS 6.x would mean I would have to make many partitions, like 10-20? As only 2Gb is possible. Going for the DOS 7.x would allow having FAT32 enabled. Is there compatibily problems with DOS 7.x for games pre-1991 or other? For what I see, most of the people here use DOs 6.x

You hardly need 20GB on DOS.
Games were 20-30 megs then 😁

Ok guys, hopefully I will get my "new" 486 this week. Meanwhile a little update of new hardware I got for it:

XR385 Daughterboard attached to a Yamaha A151-A00 ISA Sound Card (YMF719E-S Chipset)

S3 Trio64+ VGA card

Errr, isn't the card to short to fit in the isa slot with the XR385 ?

sunaiac wrote:

Errr, isn't the card to short to fit in the isa slot with the XR385 ?

Yes I think it will be, I'll have to build a cable so I can connect both.