Soldato
Today I can upgrade my pure DOS PC. Currently I have this 386SX 40MHz, 4MB RAM, 1MB VGA graphics, which has been described as "cute"... I can take that.
But today, from the Motherland, my Socket 7 motherboard arrived. In mother Russia, stamps post you! etc etc
It's a Lucky Star 5I-VX2B.
AMD 75MHz CPU - Check, I hope.
On-board IDE and Floppy - check
CR2032 - Check
32MB RAM - Check
Heatsink and Fan - Check
ATX power - Nope (ah well).
It was described as having a connector for a PS/2 port. It came with this:
Looks like a CD Audio Cable hmm....
OK I need to work out where that goes! Especially as I won't use my controller card (currently in my 386) so I won't have any serial ports, so can't use my serial mouse.
Anyway, what are my plans:
Upgrade it with either a Cyrix 6x86-PR120+ CPU at 100MHz or Pentium 100MHz. Mmmm there's just something about a cold, hard ceramic CPU that gets me excited. Motherboard supports up to 233MHz so hopefully these early CPUs should work.
(SY007)
Plop in my otherwise unused STB Lightspeed 128 from 1996. Quite excited to use this. The super-nerds at Vogons say it is quite rare, if not the fastest card PCI card from this era.
Try out The Mystery Soundcard (Crystal + Opti with a real OPL3 chip).
And a backup Vibra CT4170 (Which Wiki seems to think is a SB16 WavEffects, slightly better than a normal Vibra for some reason)
I'll use a 8GB CF Card and do a 2GB Partition. If that doesn't work I have a 1GB HDD, but I'm not keen on using it because of its age. I'm planning on putting DOS 6.22 on it (because that's the version I have). I'm also tempted to try out Windows 3.1. I've never used it.
Finally, whilst it has a cooler, I might use my nice "copper" Socket 370 cooler, without the fan. They look compatible in terms of the clips, but I suppose I need to check how much force it would put on the CPU. Do you reckon it would work? I could power the fan using a molex to fan adapter.
This has made me realise I have quite a lot ofjunk old spare old hardware sat around not doing much, even from this era which is outside my comfort zone really.
Anyway I'll update this when it inevitably all goes wrong.
But today, from the Motherland, my Socket 7 motherboard arrived. In mother Russia, stamps post you! etc etc
It's a Lucky Star 5I-VX2B.
AMD 75MHz CPU - Check, I hope.
On-board IDE and Floppy - check
CR2032 - Check
32MB RAM - Check
Heatsink and Fan - Check
ATX power - Nope (ah well).
It was described as having a connector for a PS/2 port. It came with this:
Looks like a CD Audio Cable hmm....
OK I need to work out where that goes! Especially as I won't use my controller card (currently in my 386) so I won't have any serial ports, so can't use my serial mouse.
Anyway, what are my plans:
Upgrade it with either a Cyrix 6x86-PR120+ CPU at 100MHz or Pentium 100MHz. Mmmm there's just something about a cold, hard ceramic CPU that gets me excited. Motherboard supports up to 233MHz so hopefully these early CPUs should work.
(SY007)
Plop in my otherwise unused STB Lightspeed 128 from 1996. Quite excited to use this. The super-nerds at Vogons say it is quite rare, if not the fastest card PCI card from this era.
Try out The Mystery Soundcard (Crystal + Opti with a real OPL3 chip).
And a backup Vibra CT4170 (Which Wiki seems to think is a SB16 WavEffects, slightly better than a normal Vibra for some reason)
I'll use a 8GB CF Card and do a 2GB Partition. If that doesn't work I have a 1GB HDD, but I'm not keen on using it because of its age. I'm planning on putting DOS 6.22 on it (because that's the version I have). I'm also tempted to try out Windows 3.1. I've never used it.
Finally, whilst it has a cooler, I might use my nice "copper" Socket 370 cooler, without the fan. They look compatible in terms of the clips, but I suppose I need to check how much force it would put on the CPU. Do you reckon it would work? I could power the fan using a molex to fan adapter.
This has made me realise I have quite a lot of
Anyway I'll update this when it inevitably all goes wrong.
) Apparently the AMD chip was a very early one.