Building a 386 SX DOS Retro Gaming PC
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
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Everyone: the new Ryzen 5000 CPUs are amazing!!!
Phil: Um-hum, ok, but check out this sexy 386 platform :-))))
The 386 boots faster into DOS than the Ryzen into Windows 10.
Who cares about Ryzen?
@@Aranimda What Andy giveth, Bill taketh away.
Everyone: Ryzen 7000 CPU NerdGasm
Phil: Hello everyone check out this small 386 computer
@@InconsistentManneryou literally just did the same joke….
Phil know whats trending these days so he decide to feature AMD CPU :)
AMD just release the Ryzen 5900X and everyone does a video on it.
Phil responds with a video on an AMD 386 SX instead.
Touché.
quality content is better than following the mass :) ahah jk
So AMD rulz!
Yea but that processor was by AMD so he is not too far off
It’s basically an Intel 386DX manufactured by AMD, though. At this point, they weren’t really doing their own thing. Just a second source.
These low-cost boards all used these surface mount AMD chips. A few Intel SX chips show up from time to time. Very hard to find socketed boards now. No matter, these tiny little boards are adorable. :-)
@securitycountercheck ;)
Great Phil. Also your choice of a 386SX in this case. It must not be always the DX and high fancy stuff. I even love the SX16... Thanks for the video.Greetings from CPUGALAXY
This is like having a 80 year old car that still drives. Beautiful!
Infinity2z3r0
80 year old car runs fine, able to keep up in any traffic!
Why you cry that????
Beautiful, are you french?
So much nostalgia for 386SX machines. I used to scoop them up from the side of the road in the late 90s and rebuild them for fun.
GEEK!!!!!!
This system is built after 2005!
Why he does that now????
for CHINA only crap!
I really enjoyed my 386SX 16, It was DIP memory only and had an insane 2.5MB RAM installed. Also had an ET4000 and a 42mb MFM drive.
Can it at least show a jpeg of crysis?
Hehe, nice one :)
@Dr ROLFCOPTER! It's quite slow on a 386 though. Especially for a full-screen sized file with 16 bit or higher color.
@Dr ROLFCOPTER! Or ACDSEE :) used to use that back in the day.
You start retrieving your old viewers. Like you back in the begginings was uploading nice and interesting videos related to DOS and early Windows era. Troubleshooting, projects, various software and of course graphics and sound cards. I am really happy to see good old hardware instead of low end pc parts talk like clients pc's etc. I am happy you BACK
You cant get back old viewers with 1,2,3 videos .
@@JustForFun-dn1gi I would absolutely watch a video on Lotus 1-2-3
"I don't care-ware" Haha
There are some things you can do at home, but you shouldn't talk about them in a YT video. Pirating old software is one of them.. ;-)
@@WooShell nobody cares if we're completely honest. whatever happens in the US stays in the US, just don't try to sell pirated software or other as a legit thing
Ah Phil, just when I couldn't think of what to watch on UA-cam, you upload a video like this :)
☺️ yup me too
Before I knew of your channel, I thought I was a kind of weirdo having this hobby, now I know there are a lot of weirdos like me :D that enjoy assembling and disassembling old computers. Keep on it!!
Welcome to Club Weirdo. We are all mad here, or whatever. I had the same though myself when I got back into old systems around 10 years ago. That was until I found Vogons. And today, there are tons of great youtubers doing retro related content, but Phil is one of the OG retro dudes :D
I have Commodore 64's, TI-99/4a's, Atari's, Apple II's, etc. I even have a mint Mattel Aquarius in box. Oh, and various x86 machines. So yeah...we're weird and proud of it.
No need to feel like a stranger, cause we're all a little strange in here. - Lynda Carter
I am #weirdo, too😄
Welcome to the club. 😅
Your retro stuff is great!
0:48 that big 40pin chip on the right is the keyboard controller, the bios is the left most chip with the sticker and the middle chip is the clock chip.
Did a 386 motherboard with a 32-bit external bus exist? That would be a cracking video to use VLB cards if it did!
There were hybrid 386/486 boards I believe that allowed vlb, but I am not sure if they allowed it with a 386 chip, maybe with a ex version?
@@bionicgeekgrrl The 386DX has a 32-bit external bus, whilst the 386SX was 16-bit external bus. But I don't think I've seen a 386DX with VLB demoed.
I have the same board and I love it! Have upgrade a cyrix fasmath because why not, but is there any game that really benefits from the fpu? 🤔
That's a good looking motherboard! Back in the day I had something very similar (the BIOS was exactly the same), but it had a 386 DX-40 CPU, and I went with the same for my current day 386 build. What's your opinion on the Trident TVGA 9000i for a video card?
I grabbed one computer from Computer Reset, a decommissioned Southwest Airlines computer, with a nice tiny 386 board like that one (AMD 386DX40). Fortunately the Varta did not leak that much and declawed it. It came with 16MB of RAM! Just needing a ISA IDE controller card and almost good to go.
Nice!
I would definitely recommend a board with 8 RAM slots and having 8 MB of RAM. This will make Windows 3.11 run way better and even Windows 95 will be usable and there are some games that will run a bit better. Dark Forces require 8 MB to run and it's really a must-have for every 386SX build - this is by far the best looking and running 3D game on 386 machine. It has much higher FPS than DOOM and engine is more advanced, for example rooms above rooms, sloped etc. Still a game that should be played on 486, but it's a great tech demo for 386SX.
As for sound any "SB Pro" compatible card will do. I have a SB clone with ESS 688 chipset and it has good SB Pro compatibility and it can play 16-bit 44 KHz audio in Windows. It also has a secondary IDE port, so I can hook CD drive and HDD on separate IDE cables.
Most if not all 386SX boards support only 504 MB HDDs, but with Ontrack driver you can use larger drivers. I've managed to get 8 GB of space from 16 GB SD card in SD2IDE. Partitioned as 2 GB partitions in MS-DOS 6.22.
Ontrack driver has additional benefit of using 256 heads instead of 64 (or some other parameter 64->256) that makes read/writes 4 times faster, since old revision of IDE interface is holding SD2IDE back.
Games to play on 386 SX:
- Lucas arts adventures like Monkey Island or Day of Tentacle,
- Super Frog - great port that runs smoothly and has Amiga tracker music,
- The Lost Vikings - great port from SNES, just lacks parallax scrolling,
- Epic Pinball, Silverball, Pinball Dreams and other DOS pinball games, they run and play great,
- The Incredible Machine 1 and 2,
- Jazz Jackrabbit,
- Raptor and Tyrian,
- Wing Commander 1 and Test Drive 3 - games that will run to fast on newer machines.
Pretty much all 16-bit (no DOS4GW extender) games should run fine on 386SX. Newer games that use that extender will run, but mostly will be unplayable.
386SX is also slow enough that games that have "division by zero" error on fast 486 PCs will still run just fine.
386 SX is definitely a good retro PC, but a Pentium or better with BIOS that allows disabling cache (that will effectively slow down to 386 speeds) will be capable of running more games.
Doom, Dark Forces, Windows 95 - pal what are you talking about? :) This is a 386SX and even if it's 33MHz it is too slow for all of that. Even for Jazz Jackrabbit this machine is not a good choice. I love that game and I played it on pretty much everything, believe me, you (kind of) can play that game on a 386sx, but it's not what it meant to be. Jazz Jackrabit is a fast pace platformer and you don't want it to stutter. There is almost no reason to upgrade such a machine to 8MB, except for win3.11 may be. Yes, you will be able to start Doom, DF etc., but it's not worth starting. So many people on the internet tell, that a 386sx is powerful to play Doom, unbelievable, even Wolfenstein 3D runs here with may be 15-20FPS if currently not much is happening and it falls under 10FPS if you have more, than 10 enemies nearby. To really enjoy Wolfenstein 3D you need at least a 386DX-33 and for Doom it starts to be ok'ish with 486DX2-66 and a good VLB graphics adapter.
You don't need 8 ram slots with that one because it supports 4MB sticks so you can install up to 16MB of ram :D
@@DxDeksor That's true as well :) Hi Deksor!
@@necro_ware hello :)
@@DxDeksor 4 MB 30pin SIMMs are harder to find and more expensive, while 8-slot 386SX motherboards have similar prices to those with 4-slots only. 16 MB in 386SX is useless unless you want to run Linux, but honestly Raspberry Pi Zero is way better Linux machine than any retro PC. 8 MB is best for any 386 machine.
Full MS-DOS images have been available for decades on the internet and Microsoft hasn't done anything about it.. They aren't going to suddenly decide to come after you, Phil. Your disclaimer was fun, though.
I'm still looking for a 386DX computer and they're getting harder to find without corruption around the barrel battery. So sad to see so many of them ruined like that.
Yes, agreed!
Keep looking! i had to look for over a year, but I finally found one in a complete system for $40 on ebay.
lol, right now I'm playing with the same mb, listening tracker music via awe32
Just went to have a look at a guys garage as he was giving away some old PC's, OMG, the shed was full of at least 250- 300 old 286's 386's and 486's and the occasional Pentium, I had a field day, wife is not to impressed lol
Love this project! I loved all those LucasArts adventure games you shouted out as a kid, but my first ever PC was a i486SX-33
In my childhood father bought from 8 bit apple pc and 286 at pc. I never thought to open it. Had no ideas how it looked like. Then jumped up to pentium skipping 386 and 486. No ideas either. Pentium1-3 also was a brand PC. Just opened for SB .
I like those hybrid 386/486 boards especially when they got vlb slots. These tiny late 386 boards are interesting as well.
I like using an older IDE hard drive on these computers just because I actually like the gentle hum and clicking from them.
Not a period-accurate one like those god awful quantum fireballs that sound like a jet engine, but a nice maxtor or IBM drive that doesn't go too loud completes the experience for me.
Then I use one of those dumb Promise EIDE cards with XT-IDE universal bios and put a CF or SD card reader and the CD drive on that. This gives me full access to the drive's entire space (perfect for a 2GB industrial CF card) and works great.
i have a 200gb ide, and it sounds like a freaking foundry when doing random seeks due to echoing in a metal case, its awesome
You got to love Samsung drives then, they were quite quiet and pretty reliable back in the day
Personally I like the 40-pin Disk-on-Module SSD's that you can plug directly into the motherboard.
LOL I have a quantum fireball in a USB enclosure that I run dosbox games from, that loud hum really makes it feel more authentic.
Hi, i think i have had almost every brand of hdd in the day, at the moment i still have 2 x maxtor 400meg in the cupboard that i replaced with a 512meg compact flash card on my Pentium 100 , and a 4G compact flash on my P2-200
The old start up sound is nostalgic, but be have all been through the scratchy start up sounds, the retry / read error sound and the can of marbles
The compact flash is invisible to the system board because the electronics are pin identical and work on the IDE standard - but best there is almost no wear and the format speed is amazing, the 4G runs 2 x 2G win 98 partitions and it was formated very fast, even the 512 meg card was formated in under 2 mins as opposed to the 10-15 mins for each of the connor drives.
I feel sorry for those with RLL of MMF drives - my first PC- XT clone Commodore PC-5 had 2 x 360 floppy, after almost 6 to 12 months i bought a used 10meg MMF hard drive - it fit everything i had, that lasted until i bought my 286 with a built in 20meg hdd.
Next pc was the 386sx33 that was a compete board update and later i waited for the price of those new 40 meg IDE to drop to $400 !!!, same as the ram memory it had 1meg sip memory ( 4 x 256 ) and memory was about $150 a meg, by the time i saved up for another meg the sip was obsolete, so i sold the 386 complete system for 1/2 price or a new system, but the new system had 4meg 30pin simm modules
People complain today about updating and the price, but mid 80's to late 90's performance was doubling almost every year, i paid $800 for a soundblaster card and 2 speed cd rom, hard drives lasted 3 to 4 years before they rattled ( 6 months if you put the pc in your car and drive to lan party )
Regards
George
nice, i had a 286 back in high school. For games u guys can chk GOG, abandonware, archive,org and thrift stores and ebay if u want the original retail box & floppy & cd, Wing Commander is on GOG
My first pc was a 386 SX running at 25 mhz. I was just about able to play Doom on it.. well.. If I reduced the screensize and resolution that is. But it ran it, that was enough for me.
I had a 386 DX 33. It was cool but wished I knew you back then because DOS and Sound card configuration settings was so tricky.
But Phil! When will you use FlashFloppy for your Gotek already? ;-)
I actually joined their FB group and it doesn't support the external GOTEK and the stock firmware does exactly what I need for my projects :)
@PhilsComputerLab As you were trying to get FlashFloppy onto your USB Gotek, I believe there is a little misunderstanding here. The stock (shugart bus) Gotek firmare requires use of proprietary software or even hardware like your USB Gotek just to prepare the USB flash drive with your images. In contrast, the FlashFloppy firmware reads and writes (!) directly to standard image files on a standard FAT flash drive that can be prepared on any PC requiring no additional software or hardware. It is superior in every aspect. So instead of recommending to buy an additional USB Gotek along with a (shugart bus) Gotek, you could recommend a cheaper and better alternative to those of your viewers that are willing to update their Gotek with the FlashFloppy firmare. Introducing FlashFloppy would also certainly make nice content for your channel;-)
@@Shmbler I don't use the software. No need for what I do. Anyway, no misunderstanding, it's just not for me.
My first PC was 486, and cost a flipping fortune, especially as I then added the classic kit of SB16 (with ASP, but don't know why I bothered, not sure what used it) and a CR563.
In Windows, I liked the Jamie O'Connell synth driver, but later bought a cheap midi DB - kept that card over a couple more PC's until ISA faded away and I had to go with a PCI128 instead.
Also remember working on a right mishmash at work, we had 386, sx, 286, even some 8086, and later some 486.
Some highlights (as I covered tech as well as some programming) - the PC I used most was a 386sx20, but on looking at the board and chip, it was actually a SX25, hmm, need a 50MHz osc module to replace the 40MHz - at a radio rally, found a cheap 48MHz - hey presto "my" PC was now a 386sx24.
During an upgrade cycle where everything was getting converted to a minimum of 486DX2 (486 got a DX2, others got a new board), there were a few other tweaks - Cyrix DX2-80 were what was bought, so on anything which had the 40MHz clock option I set that (could have standardized on 66, but given the CPUs bought were 80, take the boost where you can).
Another trader at a radio rally had a stock of cheap WD90C31 cards - now all our systems lacked anything more advanced than "hardware cursor" and many not even that (old Paradise 8 bit being about the worst).
So I pitched those to the boss of the team, if there's anything left in the budget.
"ok, so what will these do for us?"
Now I could have gone on about performance, benchmark scores, but there is one thing the average Windows user will notice with a card that doesn't have Bitblt - RIPPLE SCROLLING, where every time you scroll in a word processor, the progress paints down the screen.
The cards were bought!
And I was 100% correct
So. They already lift AMD's 386 SX embargo?
I had an Amiga 500 during the height of the 386 era. With HD and FastRAM it was a cheaper alternative to a PC at that time. I do have an Acer 386 SX 20 today though, and it's a nice system for those older games that just runs too damn fast on my 486 :)
Ahh so many nostalgic feelings of playing Wing Commander 1 on my old 386. Unfortunately that particular machine is long gone, but it's nice seeing WC1 playing in old hardware again. Lots of other familiar games there too, but Wing Commander was a big part of my life for a while :) Anyway loved the video! Cheers!
Nice.... Yet another vintage PC build. Forget i7, this is right up my alley.
I have the same hardware, but instead of a cirrus got a trident tvga9000
Phil, with Flashfloppy, you won't NEED the external drive anymore. It works directly with image files. You'll just build images on your windows 10 PC and copy the image files to a USB stick.
I upgraded my gotek about 6 months ago, and it's FAR superior, just in time saved during setup for my hundreds of floppy images for everything.
I don't want to work with images, I want a real A: drive to the Operating System.
Hi Phil, thanks for this project, I really enjoy all the retro content you put out.
For those that don't know at the time, new 386 systems had a cost of about $5,000 dollars. 386 systems had an upgraded instruction set over the older 286 and a new 386 protected memory mode which allowed access to memory from 1meg to 32meg of memory and a 32 bit data bus. 286 systems at the time had a cost of about $2,000 dollars (I am speaking of US dollars here), and had a 16 bit data bus and could only access 16meg of memory. Along came 386sx. When creating 386 processors a lot of processors were rejected because they would not pass the 32 bit data bus test. Intel wanted to find out how they could still use these chips in systems, reducing waste. This is where the 386sx was born. The upper 16bit address lines were disabled (because this area was defective) and the SX was offered at a lower price. These processors have the advanced 386 instruction set but can only access the RAM from its slower 16bit data bus. The 386sx max memory was only 16MB similar to the 286.. Basically this processor had all the features of a 386 but with a crippled data bus. The really unique thing about this is these systems is price. The SX systems came in at about $2,100 us dollars. Right around the price point of a 286. So this processor was a great bridge between a full 286 system and a full 386 system. Typically if you compare performance between a 386sx and a 386 system, which I hope Phil will do at some point, you will see that the 386 performs much better than the 386sx. My recommendation would be to search for and find a 386 system vs a 386sx system. I think the cost will be about the same but you will get better performance from the 386 system. Then again if a 386sx system is all you can find, this is a great value in retro gaming.
@Phil, the old IDE systems only came as a 40 pin IDE cable. the 80 pin IDE cable was for the newer faster IDE modes. One of the features of the 80 pin IDE cables is "Cable Select" or CS on most IDE devices. If you are using the newer IDE interfaces which use the 80 pin IDE cable, you can set all your devices to CS or Cable select, then you place the device on the cable where you want it. The first port on the cable moving from the system board up the cable, is automatically Primary and the port on the end is automatically secondary. Cable Select was only available on the newer faster IDE ports as well as newer devices. If you are using an older interface, its really a good idea to use the older 40 pin cable, it ensures best compatibility and data signaling between the IDE interface and the IDE device. This is why the 80 pin cable has the key in it to tell the difference between the old IDE interface and the new one. Though drilling that pin out works, I believe there is no signal on that pin which is where compatibility issues might arise.
You can also replace the battery with a 2032 button cell, which will prevent leaking and should work the same to save the BIOS settings. Should be battery become depleted again, its simply an easy replacement of the coin cell vs the Varta battery. In edition, the coin cell does not leak (as far as I know).
What about free dos? have tried to see if free dos is compatible with old DOS games?
Brilliant work Phil, I love to see these systems run again, and its fun to watch you build these old retro systems. It takes me back to when I was younger.
Yes I've reviewed FreeDOS and it's not something I can recommend. Many games do work, but once you dig deeper, there are issues with some titles.
My first machine when I was 11 was a 386 SX 25 from my step dad. The GFX card was an ET4000 and it had 4Meg of RAM. Luckily about a year later I scored a 486 DX2 66 which actually allowed me to play Doom. Oh and a Sound Blaster Pro 2 was the sound card, that was a nice card, but by 1993 I wanted an SB16.
It's very nice to see this put together. My first PC was a 386sx25, with 2MB RAM, 40MB HDD, and small and large floppies. I had an I/O card of course and some kind of SVGA video card. DOS 5 and Windows 3.1. From that era I particularly remember Wolf3D, Cosmo, Jill, crystal caves, Apogee in general, gorilla.bas and Scorched Earth. Also DoubleSpace, PKZIP, lza?, TSRs. I learned to program in compiled languages rather than basic at that point as well - Turbo Pascal, Microsoft C, and a little Borland C.
Been watching since around 25k sub will continue forever got my party hat ready for 1mill 🥳
7th Guest was a great game. Thanks for the video.
❤️❤️❤️ Ahhhh, My first PC was an AMD 386 SX at 25Mhz. 5 Mb RAM! (1Mb in motherboard+4x1Mb SIMM). Graphics card Trident VGA 8900C 1Mb, SoundBlaster PRO, HDD Seagate 40Mb (yes, 40Mb not Gb), ISA Multi I/O controller and FDD 3,5" 1.44Mb... Great memories! Nice video, thank you again Phil!!!
Thank you for 1. Building my childhood pc and 2. Giving us something non election to watch.
Thanks for watching :)
In the late 80s my friend built a 386 VGA adlib system. It was obvious by then that the large amount of parts suppliers were going to make PC win the computer wars.
Had a 386sx-20 back in the day, with 4Mb of ram. Ran DesqView/386 on top of MS-DOS 5.0. Didn't play a whole lot of games; Silpheed & Their Finest Hour come to mind, along with the original MS Arcade pack. I can't tell you how much time I spent playing Asteroids. Enjoyed Battlezone & Tempest, but always returned to blowing up rocks.
Later upgraded to a 486dx2-66 and acquired Quake, but that's another story.
Hey Phil! this is a great Motherboard. I have the 386sx40 version. The BIOS is very powerful! after tweaking the memory timings I managed to get FPS rate of 12.9 in 3D Bench!!
Brings back memories for sure :)
I had a Brother desktop machine (BCM3386sx i think) It had a AMD 386SX 20MHz CPU, 2 megabyte of ram, and a fairly quick Quantum 52mb harddrive. Learned a lot with this machine :) later upgraded it to 6 mb of ram and a Cyrix 387 FPU. Sound Blaster 16 and a Western Digital Caviar 1280mb hard drive. Those were the days 😅👍
I had a 386SX back then and I still have a soft spot for them (even if they're not THAT useful). Now my only 386SX is a PT-319 board with a 386SX-40. I guess the performance is quite similar.
What's really bad is the survival rate of 386SX boards, unfortunately. If you specifically want one, it's very hard to get without battery damage. Strangely 386DX systems had a far better chance to survive into these days, there were boards with less leaky batteries, perhaps the budget SX got the bottom of the barrel (batteries)...? All in all, my experience is that they outnumber 386SX boards by at least 10:1 (probably more). If you can get one with CPU clock jumpers (or a socketed oscillator) you can get quite similar performance at 20MHz or so - in case you need this particular performance point, that is.
And some 386SX boards have a strange way to change performance. They may be quite a bit slower with 2 memory sticks (Phil you should try too whether it's the case with this particular board) - or get faster with 4, it depends on you point of view :D Some chipsets may do some memory interleave trickery, I guess.
Cirrus Logic 542x cards are indeed good performers and pretty compatible, much better than Tseng ET4000 in this respect. It was this channel that gave me the heads up on them, btw (thanks!), now they're my favourite ISA video cards. Trident 8900D cards are good performers too and I've always seen them with decent VESA BIOS support (some Cirrus Logic and ET4000 cards seem to lack it) but they tend to display "jail bars" on modern monitors :(
PCChips, ugh... Wolfenstein will run fine on that, tho as you note, Doom is painful. That board is so small because it's low-end (not quite the bottom, those were in point-of-sale systems and about half as big). There were some very good boards in that era, but that ain't one of 'em. You can get 'em with up to a 386DX40 CPU (quite a lot faster than that 33SX; the DX40 will run DOOM in fullscreen mode), but still need a separate math coprocessor to max 'em out. Hit the turbo switch and instant 286 for really old games.
A fair rule of thumb for the era is that yellow PCB means corner cutting, while green PCB means better quality.
When did sound cards stop requiring - 5V line?? I have a very old SB (dated 1992 -- full length with a Panasonic port for the CDROM) in my DOOM box, works fine, and that box is a P4 and all ATX.
TOPower still makes a high quality AT power supply (with big capacitors and heatsink), and you can get it in up to 400W for about $65. They also repair 'em. Also the only AT PSU of my experience that you can run maxed out for years on end without any issues.
Never used a 386 for everyday (tho had a few in my stash) as I went straight from 286 to 486. Only 386 I have left now is a Zenith laptop SX25. Still works perfectly running DOS6 and Win3.1, and has a surprisingly good screen for the era. And a proprietary external floppy drive.
Be aware that those ISA controller cards like to die after about 3 years in service; this is common enough that when I was servicing such machines I kept a stash of spare cards for my clients who still used 'em. That's a very old or very cheap model, given it only has one IDE port and no jumper docs on the board itself (most after about 1992 had silkscreened docs and two IDE ports).
I install Win95 (PE edition, w/o IE) on machine like this, with ISA realtek 10mbit network card I even had internet (used old opera, win95 supports up to Opera 8.5) had Trident videocard with memory upgraded to 512kb, but with 4mb of ram it uses a lot of swap, so with old HDD (it was Conner 80mb or 120 I don't remember, I had 2x40, 80 and 120 from same company, it was like 1mb/s so yeah...) it's not what You call fast...
Great video... I still miss my 386DX/25. Amazing machine. Nowadays I’m using my MiSTer as my DOS machine because of convenience. Would love for you to make a video with the last Core and connect it to an SC-55 or similar. (Would even be amazing to see it connected to a Pi-MIDI, but that’s probably worth his own video). Cheers
I don't know why, but a 386sx seems like an odd choice. I just remember mine (ETA: mine was a 20mhz. So that would make it a lot slower than this 33) feeling like it was in some weird limbo between my Tandy 1000SL/2 (8086, I believe) and 386DXs-- it was too fast for older stuff, but too slow for newer. It struggled mightily with Tie Fighter even after I put one of those Cyrix 486NOW! piggyback processors on it. It's the only computer that I don't really have any fond memories of outside of playing Civ I on it with friends. I went from that to a Pentium 60, though, and that was a crazy jump.
However, that was the point where I really started to try to learn about hardware and why my 386 seemed so much slower than others. As always-- great video!
My first computer i bought was a Packed Bell 386dx40.
Lot of problems with that one.
Half a year later i bought parts and build a 486dx40.
Dude that's cool building an old P.C - But i would call this build a VINTAGE P.C!
I will be building a RETRO P.C soon, which will be based on a Pentium 4 single core, and will be built to play all the FPS Shooters i used to love playing between 2000~2006
Test drive sounds horrible, I love it :D
I love my 386DX/486DLC machine. Going to soak the Packard Bell board in 91% isopropyl alcohol and see if that fixes it before the other one arrives.
I've had problems using 80 pin cables in older controllers. not always of course.
Also, a word about XT-IDE r598 lba48 thing that allows aligned partitions on flash media using a win10 machine.
That's not the bios chip! 0:48
The bios chip is with the sticker.
Oh, and with FlashFloppy, you can throw away your USB Gotek! Plug the flashdrive directly to your pc!
Had a 386SX-25 back in the day with 5MB RAM and I think 40MB HDD.
After that it was a Cyrix 5x86-100 with 20MB RAM and 850MB HDD.
Never had a 386-SX but I did have a 386 33MHz with a 387 math co-processor and a 2MB expansion card (did a fair bit of AutoCAD work at the time).
Funny, looking for overclocking in the BIOS - back in the day, if you wanted to overclock, this was done using jumpers on the board as this is where you set the FSB etc etc. That mobo is very simple, very, very simple.
I built my old school gaming 386 back in 1999 for games that wouldn't run on latest hardware. Cost about $25 all up. Ended up binning it around 2006, you bet I'm regretting that now.
Thank you very much! Love your videos!
The LG CD drive can be somthing anachronistic. If you mount 4 MB RAM, the unit's DOS driver will leave out the PC-CLON memory, not to these units do not have a cache then you have a heavy fan until loads the ISO's file structure 1 minute later.
I received both a 286 and a 386 SX in a two week period. Sometime later I upgraded to a 486 DX4 120. The first time I played Wing Commander on that 286 I was floored. It was amazing compared to what I was used to, which was the Amiga ports of alot of these games. The Amiga ceased to exist by the time I bought that 486. I will say the 386 SX 16 I had was a hair faster than the same speed 286 I had so I don't remember being so impressed. I remember any code I compiled took about the same amount of time. I do remember that 486 kickin butt and taking names tho in all of the older titles I played at the time and compiling my code so fast I was impressed. Good times.
Oh-uhh, nice and clean PC components 👍👾 I have still 486 DX CPU, still running well for some networking. ☺
time to find you a 387.
This bings back good memories of when I was a kid at 5 years old getting a pc from my dad's work for free! My first was an old 286 then after that my dad handing me down his old 386 when he got a win 98 pc and then upgrading that 386 to a 486. So many good times playing games like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Flight Simulator, Stellar 7, D&D and so many more thanks Phil you might have just pushed me to get into some retro pc building as I already build gaming PCs for fun on the side :)
I had issues with game port conflicting, back in 1995. It was a VLB controller that froze when gameports conflicted.
Huh, i did not know that 7th Guest has vga mode with low-res fmvs!
Neither did I LOL But when I ran setup on the 386, it recommended it which makes sense.
8:07 Maybe try FreeDOS. It comes as a default image in Rufus that you can flash without any downloads. Great video by the way!
That CMS implementation in Test Drive III is pretty bad. To me, it mostly sounds like multiple PC speakers playing at once.
Oh, I remember I played all these games. My good old computer. It was a great time. Thanks for your video... 🤣🤣
Fantastic video, really enjoyed seeing you work through this 386. Reminds me of my Olivetti 386 rig which is probably my favourite DOS system if I'm honest. Wolfenstein works really well on these machines but as you say Doom etc is a bit much. Great for the classic Lucas Arts adventures for which mine is mostly used.
Can you plz do OS/2 for dos? It was marketed as better then dos , if you guys wannna run dos/win3.1 os/2 still has it.
33mhz... thats a beast. Mine was only 16Mhz!
Back in 1996 I was on summer vacation in Saudi Arabia ( my Dad worked there at the time ) and I remember going into a computer shop and salavating over this exact same motherboard when it was brand new.
That MS DOS starter pack is pretty cool I recently fixed a pentium 133mmx computer and so far i havent run into anything that wont run in windows dos mode but i have never tried opening the can of worms that is getting pure dos mode working mostly because im not nostalgic for dos so i dont really want pure dos mode unless its necessary but the starter pack looks like it might make it simple
Love this channel, i just do not understand why you always have to use these cheap motherboards. A good motherboard is actually more important then the cpu itself sometimes. Getting bios options is underrated. You can just as well use cheap oem pcs if options and overclocks are not your thing.
I am missing a case with RGB bling and a Corsair AIO
Fantastic build, this is the perfect place for that sound blaster too. It fits perfectly in the narrow 386 use case. Any other frills is a recipe for disappointment. Also the game port adapter from an Audigy should have the same pinout as that IO controller card.
I had a victor 386sx 16mhz as my 1st pc! Was very slow but wing commander was great on it
Cool loved the video. I had a Intel 386 SX 33 and a 386 DX 25 mhz when I was a kid. Love seeing the games dude!
With the prices of retro gear going up, you might end up paying the same for a 386 as you would for a Ryzen soon!
Now that's the epitome of colour design right there! Lime Green and Hot Fuchsia!
Nice and warm video, but to be honest my pc traveling started from Pentium 1
I did not imagine that there would be any kind of PC related retro nostalgia for anything below 486
Oh man even at the time those boards were terrible even seeing that PCCHIPS logo makes me shudder.
🤔 hmm maybe i should chk the thrift stores & craigslist, im getting an itch for vintage
Every time Phil puts a sound card on IRQ 7 a kitten dies. Think of the kittens! ;.;
For me anyone who uses interrupt 5,
Someone throws a box of puppies down a river while world famine intensifies.
Definitely steer away from the Reaktek RTG3105 chipset or any other VGA card with a Reaktek chip. Those were definitely a graphics decelerator too! The only value they really have is if the memory is socketed and you want to upgrade another better card.
I've always been sour on 386SX systems because we had a 386DX when I was a kid, but it looks like you can play a fair few good games on this system, so maybe I judged them unfairly. It's becoming hard to find a full sized AT 386 board of any kind, so maybe these baby AT boards with soldered on SX chips aren't so bad after all. But I must admit, they are awfully cute compared to some of the bigger AT boards.
However I was lucky enough to pick up a 386 and a 286 board the other week, so hopefully I'll get more time to play with them this weekend. I was having difficulty getting the 286 to boot off a CF card last weekend, and the 386 refused to initialise any graphic card I tried. It definitely has corrosion, so maybe a good vinegar bath is needed. I know it works though, because I can hear the memory test through the PC speaker, and it beeps twice when done to indicate it's lost its BIOS settings.
Anyway, good to see vintage hardware still getting some love!
Yea these smaller, more highly integrated boards, are well worth going for! There are boards with 40 MHz SX CPUs of you want a bit of extra speed.
I love this guy!!! its NOV 2020 and he still does vintage PC setups ! and he still explains important things like alignment of the ribbon cable , etc..
I really like how Phil can make an interesting video even with this pretty basic MB/CPU. I remember how we recycled 386SX in the late 90s, because they became completely useless in Win98 era. Still have a keychain from exactly this processor somewhere.
Yea the got obsolete fast. 486, then Pentium, then Pentium 2. Back then performance just exploded unlike thee days...
Hi Phil. Love the channel and love the website resources. I had several of these motherboards when I was young. The one I ran the most was an AMD SX-40 on a green PCB. Pretty cool seeing it again! I've recently gotten in to vintage computing and I find your channel useful and entertaining. Thanks! :-)
You had several? That's amazing, I wish I had bought more than just one to be honest... At 40 MHz it should outperform a DX 33 I believe. I don't think 33 vs 40 makes much of a difference to be honest, so I wouldn't be very picky seeing how hard it is to find such boards in the first place :)
So many memories
The chipset isn't really made by PCChips, it's the entire board that's made by them. They're known to fake their chipsets. To this day it's hard to tell which chipset they used in that board.
Also the chip you pointed as the bios chip is the keyboard controller, the bios is the chip underneath with a sticker :)
I have the same board as you, and also we have a documentation about it here www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/3066
Also mine has a 486SLC which makes doom playable ! Are you interested by benchmarks of it ?
Thanks for the directions ☺️
Dos isn't hard to use, they still sell it with new computers here as an OS.
Ah another Grand Phil-day, Brings me a smile.