Things to know for building 386 Retro PC

[@Stefaninho]

Even though I never owned a 386 myself (I was still using an Atari ST at the time), I always remember my fascination with a friend's PC. It was a black T-Bird desktop PC. This PC was widely advertised here in Germany at the time. It had a 386 SX25 processor if I remember correctly. The computer had a cool black desktop case, which was rather unusual at the time. I remember in the beginning we had a lot of trouble getting games to work because none of us had any idea how DOS worked and how to configure everything properly. But somehow we did it and there was something magical about playing Monkey Island 2 on the PC. Thank you very much, Phil! Your videos bring back these old memories.

[@philscomputerlab]

I just posted about PC on X. I saw it at a booth in a German computer show. They had Another World running with bose speakers. What a memory, that intro was so good. They also had Monkey Island 2 and Wing Commander 2 running. The black PC really stood out.

[@retropuffer2986]

My PC friends in the late 80s were building 386 VGA systems. The raw power was so impressive.

[@pavelfara9333]

Yes indeed! Just try to imagine you jumped from a 286/16 to 386/DX40!! Most likely the real life boost for your daily work was like 10 generations of Intel Core i7 today.

[@lucasrem]

What is the use ? what software ?

[@masterkamen371]

​​@@lucasrem386 was a big jump from 286. 32 bits, more than 640k of memory, etc. Also Windows had _3 8 6 E N H A N C E D_ with virtual memory, up to 16 MB of RAM (!!!) and DOS multitasking

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

It's easy! I just watch Phil's Computer Lab.

[@mesterak]

Happy Friday Phil and Happy New Year!

[@philscomputerlab]

Same to you!

[@nenadstevanovic6797]

Slow is good, it is a phrase I appreciate more and more, not just in retro computing, but in life in general.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes!

[@spassantechnik]

In the beginning I was also enthusiastic about 386s or 486s. In the meantime, however, I prefer newer retro hardware with a Pentium system. The mainboards are simply more up to date and you can also play more demanding DOS games.

[@mpettengill1981]

I agree - If you want 'one DOS PC to rule them all' a Pentium-class machine is a great way to way to go. Don't get me wrong, I love my 386...but if I hadn't grown up using one, I probably would have skipped seeking one out for my collection :)

[@LeinaDZiur]

Same, socket 7s are my passion

[@tnutz777]

what are the cons of going with a 233-400mhz pentium 2? what i mean is, where is the sweetspot between running late fps games like blood/duke/quake at 60fps and losing the ability to play other must play games. im trying to plot out my dos machine in my mind. im not worried about period correctness, only the sweetspot between compat and perf. is 233mhz pentium socket 7 where it is at?

[@LeinaDZiur]

@@tnutz777 personally, I think so. If you want to play some really old at stuff you can either activate turbo or underclock and disable cache. But you can also throw in a voodoo and play a silky smooth tomb raider.

Totally agreed! I wanted to buy a 486 DX2 66, but it was hard to find. The AT power supply and the whole clock/battery thing were huge turn offs for me. I eventually settled on a Pentium 2 with an ISA slot (with a SB16!). I put in a regular modern ATX power supply which is probably less of a fire hazard than the 25+ years old PSU that it came with. The presence of two USB ports in the back really makes it easy to transfer files. It's like the best of both worlds situation: modern enough to accept a new PSU and USB, but old enough to still run DOS 6.22 and Win98 natively.

[@mdrumt]

My mate had a 386 DX40 with optical drive and soundcard. I remember the first game I saw on it was a rail shooter called Cyberia, it blew my mind. Also played Dune 2, UFO Enemy Unknown, Warcarft 1, C&C, Space Hulk and many more! Good times.

[@Trick-Framed]

First Dos box was a 286 DX. I got it and a 386 SX at the same time from my then father in law. When I told him I was leaving Amiga for PC land he was so excited he dropped off ALL of his old hardware. Told me to figure it out and was so happy he hugged me. He never did that before. The 286 was an AMD chip and was faster than the 386sx in almost all ways so I stuck with that until I bought a 486 DX-100. At this time the Pentium MMX was just released so then I upgraded to a P-120. Then a P233 MMX. Then a PII 350, PIII 1Ghz and an Athlon 1Ghz (Thunderbird, OCed to 1.4 with a pencil). And that was pretty much my single core PC run. Prior to the 286 I had an Amiga, Commodore 64 and a Commodore Vic 20. I taught myself how to program BASIC when I was 9 from the Vic 20 manual. It included a BASIC programming manual. I also remember the Amiga games smoking it's PC ports and I could never figure out why considering the power of a VGA card. But this was before I studied any of it. I started my computer science class with an Amiga and was forced to use an 8088 emulator for homework. That's when I realized the custom chips in the Amiga gave it that power and without them it would have been much much cheesier as the processor would have to do the lifting. That was when it dawned on me why PC versions were cheesier. It wasn't until the 486DX that we would start to see the PC game space start to fire on almost all pistons. With it's built in math co and more than 40 mips on an ordinary, consumer chip, the PC was finally able to emulate all of those effects in software. As an example I highlight when John Carmack programmed a Mario Clone and left it for Romero to check out. That was when it started. That was 1994 or 1995. I forget which. It's in the ID video if anyone wants to watch it. But that was when the games started to smack Amiga games down. Games like Turrican II looked infinitely better on PC due to VGA. It had come to the Amiga years earlier but Commodore had gone bankrupt at this point and the new, AAA, games were gone. If you wanted better it was Mac or PC and the Mac never had a gaming rep. It was the PC for anyone that came from an Amiga at that point if you wanted to play "PC" games. And here we are.

[@philscomputerlab]

Great comment!

[@MetalJesusRocks]

Stunts is so good! Fantastic game

[@philscomputerlab]

Hey thanks for the comment, I'm honoured 😊

[@retroboby007]

My first pc, as a kid, was a 386 sx16 mhz, with 40 mb hdd, 1 mb ram. l played wolf3d, prehistorik 2, stunts, commander keen, doctor riptide, dyna blaster, lhx, body blows, sango fighter etc. Fun times and indeed a golden age. You are right about the CRT monitors. You just cant unseen it.

[@the_kombinator]

I had pretty much the same machine. A Compaq.

[@lucasrem]

CRT monitors are easy to emulate on HDR monitors. Best picture ? square pixels is enough !

[@kiba3x]

I missed the whole DOS era because of age but when I got my first PC it was K6-2 and the service guy had installed Quake 1, Duke Nukem 3D and Diablo 1. I actually went back in time and played games Doom 2 alongside with the "golden era" PC games from the late 90s. I wonder if there are young gamers that actually travel back to play games from the era before they have been born?

[@philscomputerlab]

I'm sure there are! But you're right, most of us go back to our early years. Though my first game experiences was in the arcade and seeing consoles in shops but I'm not super excited about those ...

[@maxmuster7003]

AMD K6-2 32 bit CPU have 64 bit MMX and 3dnow instructions.

[@zuldanfpv4634]

What perfect timing. I was going to start my 386 build today. Hello from Brissie!

[@philscomputerlab]

That's awesome, good luck!

[@RetroPcCupboard]

I never had a 386. My first PC was a 286 that my dad bought in an auction for only £2! It was nearly 10yrs old at the time, which is why nobody wanted it. But I loved it. I played Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D, Lemmings, Duke Nukem 1 + 2. I went straight from that to a Pentium 120Mhz (Non-MMX). You have inspired me to build some retro systems. I am currently building myself a retro PC cupboard. Inside is a pull out tray for keyboard/mouse and a trinitron CRT monitor. Theres three permanent "ultra" PCs with specs that are very overkill for DOS, Win98 and WinXP (based on some of your builds). Then, below the keyboard tray is a pull-out drawer that has a open bench inside so I can create any build I like in there for specific games. Then below that are two deep drawers for holding my collection of video cards and sound cards. On top of the cupboard is a shelf where my motherboard collection will go. I may possibly post a video of it once done

[@philscomputerlab]

That's awesome, thanks for sharing!

[@jeroenslaghout]

The DX-40! My very first processor I got in 1993. So nostalgic.

[@erazorCTF]

I also had a 368 DX 40 as my first PC CPU in 1993 when I was 11.

[@AndrasMihalyi]

Same processor, same year for me also ! 😊

[@lutello3012]

Same here, well first PC anyway. First computer was a Mac Plus.

[@the_kombinator]

Wow, you must have been rich. I got an SX-20 in 1995...

[@lucasrem]

jeroenslaghout The 386 DX 40 was a weird later released CPU, we already run it on Pentium back then. cheap nations only CPU, AMD dresden German solutions, for Asian African need, needed that Co Prossessor ? muhahahahahaha

[@wymotome]

If only someone would have told us to hang onto these machines back in the day. Most folks, like me, typically sold them off for the next best thing. Fortunately about the late Pentium era I stopped selling my parts. But finding good 386 (and even 486) parts today is not easy anymore. Great job on the videos too. Always look forward to a new one from you.

[@GeorgesChannel]

Great video! My first PC was a 386DX40 (Hercules branded small tower) in 1993. The 486 was the machine to have back then. Dos 5.0 and Win 3.1 :) Great memories

[@retroftw]

Olivetti 386 was my first PC. Had a volume slider for the PC speaker 😂 Never got a sound card or CD rom for it. But got Windows 95 installed....it was REALLY slow 😜 Later got an IBM Aptiva K6-2 350 mhz. Upgraded that with a Voodoo 2 and later with an nVidia Riva TNT2 PCI (No AGP slots). The performance jumps in those days where insane 😮

[@ahabwolf7580]

Wow, that must've been a lot of work. Thanks Phil!

[@gammitinofficial]

Nice video Phil, my first PC was a 386 too. I was fortunate enough to be able to rebuild it a few months ago, it was like stepping in a time machine. I love using it regularly and playing those early 90's games.

[@rodhester2166]

This was a great video.. thanks for all the time and work you put in to the channel. cheers.

[@Omarkoman]

I just managed to get a fully functioning 386 dx-40 setup , cant wait to play with it!

[@johanandersson8689]

Thanks for an excellent video as always Phil! Back in the day I had an IBM PS/2 55sx, and since that computer has the dreaded MCA bus I was pretty much out of luck with regards to sound cards and CD players. With exception of SimCity classic and Sierra games using the PC speaker, DOS gaming had to wait until I got a Pentium computer a couple of years later. In recent years, I bought an identical PS/2 and fixed it to what it should have been by adding a MCA SCSI card, a SCSI2SD (very similar to the one you reviewed a couple of years ago), an external CD player (connected via SCSI), a MCA ethernet card, and a modern reproduction of the extremely rare Sound Blaster MCA card. To top it of, I had to disassemble and hack the BIOS to make the computer boot from SCSI2SD.

[@leetymcleet6490]

Phil, you're website is amazing! 🥰

[@philscomputerlab]

Wow, thank you!

[@leetymcleet6490]

No, thank YOU! I grab stuff from there all the time.

[@RetroAnachronist]

My first PC was a Turbo XT clone and I owned it the longest of all my PCs as the family upgraded. That’s why I have a NuXT as my retro machine.

[@50shadesofbeige88]

First Philday of 2024 🎉

[@pavelfara9333]

Thank you for an amazing video! Very good as a basic source of information and a place to start. I just want to add for the real beginners. 1) do not start with the 386SX, these are more like 286 on steroids and if you are not a real collector and enthusiast you won ´t enjoy that too much! It runs 386 code but clock for clock it is still more a 286ish feeling. 2) If you are not lucky as Phill and can ´t get such a fancy motherboard, don ´t be sad! Any board with the plastic QFP AMD 386DX/40 will do the job as well. Remember - it is a 32bit system so you always need 4 same SIMM modules to run it! 3) If you wanna have it cool, get a 486DLC (or SXL CPU) 😉 - what you get is a pin compatible CPU with some 486 instructions and 1kb (8kb with SXL) of L1 cache. There are also rare clock doubled cpus, but this is another story...And that makes a lot of a difference! If you go this way ensure your bord suports that - later chipset with proper cache handling logic are the way to go. 4) One fun fact - there is one chipset from Macronix, that has no onboard cache but it has 8kb of fast cache right in the chipset!! Bloody advanced solution for that time. 😉 Simply said with a 386 plattform you could have a lot of fun. Enjoy! This beast deserves your antention!

[@philscomputerlab]

I have a cache less 386SX board and performs quite well. It looks like a late era design maybe industrial. Very minimalistic.

[@ndaniel80]

I love the Stunts game you show at the begining. I spent literally months with it, building whole new tracks, then sharing them with friends on 3.5 inch floppy and then competing who got the best time on it. The great advantage of that game was it ran smothly and stable on anything from 386 to Pentium so most of my friends in my class were able to participate in competition without having any unfair advantage due to having better machine at home :)

Same here, mate! I used to have tournaments with friends from school and cousins. We would trade tracks and replays on floppies almost every week. It was one of my most played games back in the day for sure!

[@ndaniel80]

@ - indeed we had our own multiplayer mode, but using the real life human network connection :)

[@owenrichards1418]

My first Intel PC was an old 396 Compaq Deskpro with the unheard of 11MB of RAM. It was an old server machine and it was beautiful. I actually installed a co-pro and it could play Quake at 0.5 frames per second! I played a lot of Doom and Heretic on it and got some Heretic mapping done on it! It was built out of sheet steel and was constructed like a Russian WWII Tank.

[@andystandys]

Awesome, Phil - great to hear your memories of your first computer. The 386 was my second computer, growing up. (After my original Tandy 1000 SX.)

[@sirdrinksalottrenchhugger4041]

11:37: An additional convenient option: LGR and Tech Tangents made videos about an ISA USB card you can use. Tech Tangents found the appropriate driver, so you can use your high capacity USB sticks with retro computers. I have those ISA USB cards both in my 386 and 486 machine and they work great for transferring over games/files.

[@the_kombinator]

There's an even quicker driver for it now. I just installed it on my NCR 386 and routed an extension cable to the front of the machine. It is VASTLY superior to the CF solution, as some CF cards don't work with some hard drives (I have a CF card in the rear of my retro PCs, I almost never use them now).

[@sirdrinksalottrenchhugger4041]

@@the_kombinator Hey, thanks for the info! I just found it - you're thinking of FreddyV's driver, right? I'll give it a try today.

[@the_kombinator]

@@sirdrinksalottrenchhugger4041 That's the one. I just used the xxx286.sys (default switches) version and I was able to copy F-PROT (14 Mb) from USB to the hard disk in reasonable speeds - I didn't time it, direct CF is faster of course, but this is very respectable.

[@armchaircommenter6805]

Great overview/summary of the 386 platform, thanks Phil! ❤

[@casualretrocollector]

Great video Phil! You inspired me to once again bring some stuff down from the Dachboden and drive the wife insane 😂 ended up rigging up a 386 system with a power supply with the switch missing. So I took the power switch off an old tschibo coffee machine and well alles geklappt 😅

[@philscomputerlab]

Genial!

[@markindzeris369]

Another great video Phil. I had a Packard Bell 386SX-16 with 1 meg of ram (640k extended) and a whopping 120mb hdd. I learned a lot by trying to get Wing Commander to work by making a boot disk. Then came the Sound Blaster upgrade, which was literally a game changer. Then 4 sticks of 256K ram to get two megs and later 4mb to play Doom (Shareware) in the tiny window of course. I remember getting creeped out by the lower levels of Eye of The Beholder late at night. XCOM, Master of Orion, Ultima VI, all great titles. 386enhanced really meant something back in the day.

[@philscomputerlab]

This is the way many of us experienced PC Gaming!

[@lucasrem]

@@philscomputerlab but why write it here ?

[@shaneeslick]

🎉🥳Happy New Year Phil

[@mpettengill1981]

Just a couple thoughts from my own experience buying a 386. 1. Getting a machine that's already in a case with all or most of the component's your looking for will save a lot of time and (probably) expense. 2. Look for machines from name-brand builders (AST, Compaq, HP, IBM, etc.). In my observation most of these will have ps/2 mouse and/or keyboard ports - and their build quality is generally better than the generic PCs.

[@the_kombinator]

Yeah those seem to sell quicker, but the nostalgia factor for a popular specific case sometimes hits the mark - but almost never what's inside. It's a gamble.

[@kevinhansford3929]

Very interesting motherboard you have there

[@igmnk]

My PC way of life started on a 386, but I wouldn't want to go back to the slow hardware. Using Phils advice I built a "234 in 1" amd k6-3 system, which perfectly plays 386 era games and much newer games too. Thanks Phil :)

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice!

[@exidy-yt]

Aaah the AMD 386DX-40! My first PC was based on this incredible deal of a CPU when I jumped from the Amiga to the PC in late 1991 and built my first ever PC clone. I still remember all the specs: CPU as noted, 4mb RAM with 32k of high speed cache, 105mb Toshiba IDE HDD (what an upgrade from my clunker 20mb Amiga HDD, the drive itself was so old it used a stepper band and not a voice coil to drive the heads, it chattered like a typewriter and you could hear it accessing 2 rooms away and SLOW even with SCSI interface) and of course a Trident SVGA card with 1mb onboard. It supported VESA 1.2 in hardware but I would load a VESA 2.0 framebuffer into himem to get another 10-20% increase in framerate with games that supported VESA 2.0. Monitor was a basic Daytek (Daewoo) 14" with .28 dot pitch. Okay enough of me geeking out about my first PC, time to watch your retro build and see how it compares! ;-)

[@ForOdinAndAsgard]

Yeah I remember it was that good that I threw it away and kept my Amiga's. I still have my Amiga's in working condition. No they are not for sale.

[@alisharifian535]

I remember back in mid 1990's (my earlies memories of computers) when 486 and 386 was common (and pentium was a premium choise😁) no one had computer in our family,but i knew some people that had one in bigger cities. When i see a 486 or 386 computer somewhere,it reminds me two things: Banks and offices in 1990s,and the overpriced toy of the rich kids. I still love them.

[@abx42]

I don't mind the test bench. I've used them for years ever since. I first started repairing computers. But maybe once a year, something's special. Something that would catch everyone's eye, but that's just me

[@neochris54]

Hey my first PC was an AMD 386DX40 ! a very good machine bought for around 1300 USD in 1993, which stayed with me for a long time ! it's not making me any younger ^^

[@Ale.K7]

Happy New Year, Phil! Very useful information.

[@philscomputerlab]

Happy new year!

[@Ale.K7]

@@philscomputerlab Thank you! :-)

[@WouterVerbruggen]

Some great info in here! Got a Compaq Deskpro/i from an ewaste some months ago. The original 386 was taken out before getting dumped, so I popped in a 486 DX2. Except for that it was still complete and booted right into it's windows 3.1 installation.

[@carltonleboss]

Very good video, Phil. Happy New Year!

[@philscomputerlab]

Happy new year!

[@xBruceLee88x]

Another great video Phil!

[@Autumn_Able]

My first 386 was in 97 or so. Was an IBM Personal System 2 we got from a flea market that had Windows 3.1 installed and a few games. It had no CD-Rom drive or sound card, but it was still fun to tinker with and learn how to work MS-DOS commands. In Christmas of 98 we got an HP prebuilt machine with an AMD K6-2 and a pretty decent Crystal FM sound chip which really let me enjoy the buffet of DOS games that was available then.

[@logipilot]

My first PC was an Turbo XT - we held onto it until the 486 sx20 and even played wingcommander (slide show) on it.

[@TrueThanny]

10:35 Never knew LG made I/O cards. I've only ever seen the GoldStar brand on things like VCR's and televisions.

[@Douglasvj]

I wonder if the reason why the IDE to SATA adapters don't typically work is due to missing support for LBA in the 386 BIOS. If so I imagine you could get it to work with an option ROM like from XT-IDE

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes maybe that's the reason. At least the SD cards work, so I'm happy. CF cards also work.

[@dougbell4003]

I agree. That's almost certainly the reason.

[@MIJ-Tech]

My beginning was in the 486 era. I'd like to get myself a 386 to tinker with at some point.

[@Wobble2007]

That's a loverly Philips rebrand CRT PCM, nothing beats a CRT PCM when it comes to super silky smooth gameplay and IQ.

[@CYON4D]

Great content as always. My first PC was a 286 with a horizontal case and I really miss that system a lot. Then I got a 386 and a 486 in the following years. I currently have a PIII 1000mhz Windows 98 PC with a Voodoo 3 3000 accelerator and it is a really good choice for me because I do not have a ton of space at my desk at home. And thanks a lot for sharing the MS-DOS Starter Pack! I still remember how frustrating it is to setup boot configs for certain games, so I am sure that will help a lot of folks :)

[@GYTCommnts]

Love your content, man. You rock, Phil! 💪

[@sofaltiv]

My first PC was a Socket A Machine with an AMD Athlon 1,33 GHz - 512 MB RAM and an ATI Radeon 7000 Graphics Card vom ca. 2001. Quiet a bit later than the 386 ;)

[@filipetmarcal]

Happy new year

[@appwraith]

I love the 386 as a platform! I also started out in the PC world with an AMD 386-DX40 with 4MB memory (quite an upgrade after the Commodore 64). I actually still have that very 386 board in storage, but sadly it doesn't power on anymore...

[@AndrasMihalyi]

Same for me, but with only 2MBs of ram. When Mortal Kombat came out, I had to upgrade to 4MB 😁

[@maxmuster7003]

C64 = 38 KB free memory 😂 vs DOS PC 700 kb free memory

[@AndrasMihalyi]

@@maxmuster7003 on the C64 programs written in machine code could use all the 64K, the 38911 bytes were only limits for basic programs. 64K ram was a lot in 1982 for a ~600$ computer, that was reduced to 250$ by late 1983... IBM PC in 1981 had just 16K ram for 1600$...

[@lucasrem]

appwraith AT PSU is easy to find new for cheap. keep the system, buy the PSU now, $30 ??? make a video now please !

[@lucasrem]

@@AndrasMihalyi Basic was able to relocate High Mem too, expanded memory too. large ISO cards, cheap DRAM on it, 512 Mb cards etc, or way more. Soundbanks, what ever the need was, large files are data bases.

[@envoycdx]

Looks like a nice 386/486 board :)

[@the_kombinator]

Hah, I JUST finished building my pre-teen NCR 20 MHz 386, spent several hours on it today. I actually had to declock a 25 MHz board (CPU and crystal swap), build an inverter gate to use the common ground dual LED. I also carefully added a reset and turbo switch. I even changed the 5.25 inch drive LED from green to red (as mine was 30 years ago). I actually went with an 8900D TVGA (NVRAM) over a Tseng ET4000AX as it was 25% faster in benchmarks, and you can SEE the difference in Wolf3D. I'm going to install it in my retro corner tomorrow, it's 1AM now. Having said that I have a wonderful 386 SX 16 with a CRT for sale now :D

[@dragosmoldovan990]

This video would have been extremely useful for me 11-12 years ago when i first dipped my toe in the retro computer scene. I'm born in 1994 so I was not around for the 386. Whn I was about 18, I came acrouss a 386 motherboard with the cpu soldered. For the life of me I could not find any info about it. I did not know what memory it needed, how much memory or if I could power it. I figured it out mind you, some years later. It still runs great in one of my retro PCs. It's a 386-DX 33MHz. Fun times

[@davidcole3927]

386DX33 was the first PC in our house in the early 90s. It replaced a Commodore128. Cd-rom games from Sierra were an incredible step up. Unisound! It is simple and can be configured for complicated multiple sound card setups when required.

[@lucasrem]

davidcole3927 these systems became so cheap in the early 1980 years. But why you need commodore in the late 1986 years ??? I guess you bought the 386 in 1989 !!!! You forgot it !!!!! Most people did Pentium already, 486 systems...You need that cheap 386 too late !

[@davidcole3927]

Perhaps you are getting years mixed up?? PCs for home use were very expensive until the early 90s. My family had a Commodore 64 in 1985. The 64 was very popular in Canada in the 1980's. Logical progression lead to a Commodore128 in 1988. My primary school had a computer lab with a bunch of 286s in 1989. 1990 was the year we got the 386DX33, at the time the best value. 386DX40 were more $$ for not much gain. 486 were just starting to be available but cost 50% more for small increases.

[@AlphaMensae1]

My first MSDOS computer was a Leading Tech prebuilt 386 (25 Mhz I think). The first upgrade I did later was to turn it into an AMD 386DX/40. There was a local New&Used Buy-Sell-Trade computer shop that I frequented quite a lot, and that original PC got upgraded over and over again. I still have the keyboard (the clicky type) and 5.25 and 3.5" drives from that original 386, and they are now with my 486DX/120 in the baby AT desktop case. Don't have the 386/40 anymore, it got traded in for the 486/120, but I now wish I had kept it, LOL

[@suvetar]

Don't forget if it's' a 386 "SX" then it should have 0kb cache. But yes, avoid that too if you can! My first PC had an AMD 386DX40 and I got it from an old University friend who had Chicago on it (Windows 95 BETA) and with 8Mb of RAM, it ran it *really* well!

[@p_mouse8676]

It's funny how frame of reference works. 386 computers were the ones I learned everything from when I was a kid. So I am (was lol) very familiar with everything and many things became just more simple after that. Especially the old IDE and Floppy cables that could be mounted two ways on the board as well as the drive because they didn't all have a notch yet, could really surprise you from time to time!! Compatibility was sometimes also a bot hit or miss with different cards. I think these days it's really something for people who want the experience. I would also get just a faster Pentium system and just clock it down.

[@Alcochaser]

I will preface my comments. My experiences are from someone who built and used these things back in the day. I realize things have changed since then out of need. First off, manual configuration. Hardware. To start off. I used to keep a little pocket notebook next to the PC. In this I had listed all the cards in the computer, what resources the card used. (IRQ, DMA, I/O addresses, etc.) because you were setting up everything manually, and a lot of games would ask you for that information. On a lot of cards this required jumper settings. But there were some cards that had to be set up with software, that were not PNP. They came with a utility that let you set the resources used by the card via software. The Digital DE205 comes to mind, but there were a few sound cards that did this too. If you end up with an EISA or Microchannel machine.. the whole machine was set up in software but NOT PNP. (EISA and MCA not recommended for newbies) Also setting up your hardware the best way. We considered slaving the IDE CD-ROM to a Hard Drive a rookie mistake, and in the shop I worked at, that would get you some ribbing from the other techs unless there was no other way. But the IDE CD-ROM was thing that came out with the 486. 386 CD-ROM was ether SCSI (something expensive), or some oddball interface. I remember having a 20 pin LMSI drive with its own card. But putting a CDROM and a Hard Drive on the same IDE channel killed its performance. Then there was the fun of the CD audio cable, But back when if you wanted to play a Audio CD. Or there were a couple games/multimedia packs.. that would use hybrid Data CD/Audio CDs. While the game or app was running it would play game music or whatever. The cable went from the drive to your sound card. Only there were a bajillion different ends. In the end we just gave up and stocked "monster cables" that had all the popular ends on them LOL. Manual configuration. Bios and config.sys autoexec.bat Once you got all the hardware in the PC you had to load all the drivers. This was as interesting to me as putting the PC together. Manually editing config.sys and autoexec.bat to load all the drivers. Get them configured.. and then for bonus points. Using devicehigh or LH to free up as much DOS conventional ram. Then you get to tinker in the BIOS, a lot of motherboards had advanced config options that were worth a lot of speed if you got them right, or.. if you got them wrong, you got to find the CMOS reset jumper. Something to think about. For the authentic retro experience. Consider not loading the machine full of RAM. Because the stuff was expensive (Everything cost a FORTUNE back then). Around about 1993 or 1994 a plant in Taiwan exploded that made most of the worlds resin for ram chips. Ram doubled over night, IF you could find it. You were lucky to have 1 or 2 megabytes. Challenge yourself to not high end the PC. Old AT cases.. get ready to BLEED unless its a good one.. my knuckles still look horrific from all those cuts from aluminum PC cases, like little paper cuts.. you would cut yourself and not know it until you saw the red. If you want some fun headaches, try DOS networking.. or not. Maybe just load up Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and its TCP/IP stack. I would think this would be a good alternative to load software on the PC. Back in the day we set up a 10 Base-2 network between all the shop PCs just to play some DOOM against each other. Speaking of the authentic retro experience. Listening to the Floppy drive and Hard drive run in the PC. I rather miss it. But then I remember how unreliable hard drives were back then, I can't imagine any work that well. I remember only as the drives got past 500mb did the reliability come up some. But then anything over 500mb needs that obnoxious drive overlay software to work. ughh Drive Manager (We called it drive mangler) Heck, to this day.. I still in my mind can hear the boot up floppy drive seek from an old PC when I hit the power button.

[@MrKujo770]

I also added a single speed Mitsumi CD to my 386 when they first came out. Came with its own interface card. The whole drive slid out and then opened the top like a CD32. Can’t remember the first game cd I had, but certainly remember X-Wing and Seventh Guest on that machine. Last video card I had in that machine was an ATI Graphics Ultra+ which had Mach32 and excellent image quality on my NEC Multisync. Great video Phil and good advice as always!

[@philscomputerlab]

I also had that so for speed Mitsumi! It's quite a collector's item now...

[@CosmoRiderDE]

Mitsumi LU005S it was called. I have that too in my 386 DX40 with CT1600 and ET4000. Funny is that it does read old and newly written CD-R much better than some newer ATAPI drives.

[@SharkoonBln]

@@CosmoRiderDE There was also a single speed version of the famous Mitsumi FX001D, simply named as Mitsumi FX001. It was a sliding-tray drive and needed no cartridges like the LU005S. I remember driving 2 hrs on public transport to the only shop selling it because it was sold on 1/3 of the price of the double-speed version. I had a 386 SX16 back then, my first computer, running SPEAKER.EXE for sound 😊

[@CosmoRiderDE]

@@SharkoonBln The LU005s does not need a cartridge, basically the whole drive slides out and you open the "bonnet" and put the disc in. I called it the "crocodile"

[@SharkoonBln]

@@CosmoRiderDE Thx, it has been "some" years I have last seen them. You are absolutely right.

[@piecaruso97]

i have a 386 dx 40 system and i have put an fpu in it, basically it allows me to run some programs, mainly it allws me to run tracker software and listen to some sweet opl3 tunes

[@mattscomp]

Feeling old as I still remember something the senior tech told us at at the computer shop I did work experience at. He told us not to play games on the 386. Obviously as the 386DX was the most expensive machine they had there at the time. And didn't want us breaking it.

[@floriandilewski8321]

I played Dune 2 on my old 16MHz 286 HighScreen PC from Vobis. It was extremely slow but I loved that game.

[@TheLionAndTheLamb777]

I had a DIGITAL Equipment with a Texas Instruments 386 40Hz with 32MB Memory. It also had a 2MB VESA VGA adapter, a 33.6Kbps US Robotics ISA Modem. Someone had already just about maxed that thing out. It had a 32x CD-ROM and even the cache memory was installed for I think 256K total. When I got it (free) it just needed a floppy drive and a hard drive. I ran windows 95 on it. This was well into the Pentium age because I remember my Dad had a Pentium 200Mhz machine.

[@k9cj5]

Amazing as always! One thing I would like to see more of is covering the power side for an at style machine like this, and how to turn it on and off. When you use a atx to at converter, I believe the black wires are in the middle (which you showed here), and the remaining wires hook into switch to turn on and off the machine but that's just a guess. I have yet to play with one.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yes it comes with 2 wires that you connect up to the case power switch.

[@Ralph-yn3gr]

I have a 25mhz 386 that I found at a thrift store years ago. Added a Sound Blaster 2.0 and one of those proprietary double speed Sony CD drives with its own controller card. I couldn't find anything about the controller online and had to spend 2 hours in MS-Paint drawing lines from the ISA connecter up to the jumpers to figure out what each one did 😅. I really love that thing. Put Windows 3.1 on it and it runs games like SimCity for Windows great. Doom is just barely playable. Been thinking about upgrading it to a 40mhz Cyrix 486DLC.

[@maxmuster7003]

Using a serial cable on COM port or laplink cable on parralel port to a second PC to copy files.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea that also works!

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

When i was young at school we had computers with 33mhz or 66mhz. You switched with a turbo button. And it used DOS and Windows 3.1. But I think it was probably 486. This was around 1994. I loved that little display on that would show 33 or 66 to indicate what speed you were at.

[@nodaitsu]

This is very timely for me. I had a 386DX-40 for a lot of the early to mid 90s, and I knew I needed to put one together eventually. Another kind of listing you might find, that I'll note since I suspect the board I just got in had this kind of origin, is from a commercial or industrial environment. These are parts that were built to last and be maintained, usually. The one I got even has an external 3.6V battery holder instead of on the board itself. On the downside, they may be a bit clunkier to work with. Thanks for the videos and all the drivers and software on your site!

[@tellyjoossens4186]

I have a huge collection of old pc harware (I still own every pc I had in the day, inclusing my 8088 Atari PC3 XT), including a mainboard with a 386-DX40 and a 387 coprocessor. I remember upgrading it in the '90 with a 486DLC to give it some more power to accompany the ET4000 Svga card I used in it. Paired to a CF to IDE adapter it does the trick for almost anything dos like gaming (in 320X200 that is, and apart from quake), but my everyday dos/win98SE machine is a Slot 1 Pentium 2 - 333Mhz (upgraded from the original Pentium 2 at 233Mhz it had due to being the bottleneck in some windows games). It has an ISA AWE32 installed and an AGP Riva TNT card which also runs great under DOS. It runs on a 160 Watt ATX pico adapter so no fan or noise, only the cpu fan which I hacked with a slow running 120mm fan to keep everything quiet. Since the bios lets me disable al de cache if needed, most older games run ok under DOS. The socket 7 boards are ok but more heat + older chipsets + slower memory + no real ATX support (apart from adapters) so finding a case to house it in is also a thing. I do still have a PCI motherboard with a Socket 7 Pentium 133Mhz in my collection which I know it will do quite OK for most "retro thinkering" since it has PCI slots to host a 3D accelerator cards and ISA slots for older stuff. In the end everyone has his/her memories of what they had at first and it's that what will make us say "hey that's the sweet spot for me"

[@philscomputerlab]

Great comment! I can recommend Super Socket 7 for you. The boards have a similar layout to Socket 370 but with Socket 7. I think you will love it. Get a Pentium MMX to be able to slow it down nicely.

[@aaron96244]

With the SDCard adapter. I've had luck switching my secondary to slave and having it work with no issues. In fact, I have a troublesome 540MB HDD which will only work as a slave drive so it was an easy pair with the SDCard adapter. ymmv of course.

[@7828191]

Good video as usual Phil, keep em coming 👌👍. I am rebuilding my first PC (Baby AT system, originally a 486 VLB DX2-66) from the mid 90's and it's missing the MHZ display (got removed) one with two full digits and a one (so max 199), with jumper settings. But i have now a working replacement, only that it has 3 full digits, is not controlled by jumpers but by a chip. Also has a changable battery on there, a small LR41 coincell battery. It will work in my case but i am wondering how to set up this thing to show thw correct MHZ??. It has 10 pins and they read from the left. LTHRR+-SST. PD 900 also printed on the board.Grateful for some help with this one thanks.

[@philscomputerlab]

Without a manual... Good luck that's all I can say. I remember the case I had back in the day, the manual diagram was like a rubric cube...

[@octopusgaming4027]

Ah, another of Phil's Videos. Again, very great. I skipped the 386 and went from an very old 286 to a 486 DX 33 One question to Phil: Did you ever play around with SCSI? My first CD-burner was a Plextor SCSI burner connected to an Adaptec 2940 SCSI controller. Mayby SCSI is also a interesting topic for a video.

[@zoomosis]

I ran Windows NT 4.0 in 1999 on a PC with an Adaptec SCSI PCI controller. I had a CD burner, CD reader and HP scanner all connected over SCSI. IDE/ATAPI CD burners at the time had problems with buffer underruns resulting in CD coasters, but the SCSI burner never had that problem. Prior to that I ran Windows 95 with an older Adapter SCSI ISA card on a 486. A pretty slow PC for running Win95, but good enough for the time. I was able to connect a Syquest 44 MB removable hard drive to the SCSI port and had a bunch of used 44 MB drives given to me which I used for backups. The precursor to the modern portable USB hard drive...

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

The 386 class machine I'd love to have would be the AST advantage pro 386sx/25 we once had.

[@HypnoticSuggestion]

I sort of missed this era of PC, got my first in '97, a little 110mhz Cyrix, it was pretty solid once I maxed the memory and put a Voodoo 2. I had absolutely no interest in computers at the time, so getting the cheap hand-me-down was a big deal. Flight simulator was the thing that blew my mind, especially going from the software renderer to D3D, it was like magic. That spawned a decades long fascination with simulation and gaming.

[@OSkar000se]

Some things to also consider is if you should go for a DX or a SX. And if you really want to make your life hard and expensive, getting an IBM PS/2 with MCA cards. That puts a another level of complexity to using and upgrading. I really love the 386 era of computers, I have about 10 of them left from SX 16 to a fully upgraded DX platform now running a Cyrix DRX2 33/66

[@philscomputerlab]

Now that's a nice CPU!!

[@OSkar000se]

@@philscomputerlab It has some quirks but it is a great thing to brag about on a LAN-party. You can't get much more performance out of a 386 platform.

[@t.v.9696]

To be honest, I've never had a 386 machine, but there are quite a few vintage parts in my closet: an AT PSU, an awfully yellowed AT keyboard and a 3 button mouse. Who knows - I just might give your advice a try and build something 😉👍. Also I remember that in early 2000s, there were many odd mice. For example, A4TECH WOP 35 model had 2 scroll wheels. I'm pretty sure, I saw an optical mouse with a serial connector. Sadly I cannot remember the model 😞.

[@lucasrem]

t.v.9696 Honest Everybody did trash these ISA card system years before that ! 2000 was Quad Core DDR 3, modern PCIe systems, able to swap cards with 2024 systems !

[@RetroTinkerer]

If only I could had found out about your channel and Vogons a little bit earlier, just 1 or 2 years I could had started collecting this stuff before the prices blew off, right now is very difficult to find a 386 or 486 for a sane price and that don't require extensive repairs (this market in my city is almost zero) so I have to compete with buyer all around the country or globe 😅 At least I can use your excellent 136in1 guide and enjoy the 200MMX as a 386 perfectly and wait for the deal to happen and rebuild my first computer i386DX33! So thanks for sll you awesome guides Phil!

[@philscomputerlab]

Now you can stick up on LGA 775 and AM2 gear 🙂 But yea I also wish I could go back and pickup some parts I didn't pay attention to.

[@aussiepunkrocksV20]

Another good method for extending the storage is the XT-IDE project flashed onto a chip and used in an ISA network card.

[@morantaylor]

AT cases can be expensive to source, AT boards still can mount into modern ATX cases that support full size ATX motherboards (Micro ATX cases are not compatible).

[@GreySectoid]

386 is probably my favorite cpu of all time, I really wanted 33 mhz dx but they were kinda expensive so our family computer was upgraded from 286 17 mhz to more affordable 386 25 mhz sx. Learned to program on it so it was not only games either (of course I programmed games but still :)

[@joaoc_PT]

My brother-in-law had a batt-damaged 386 board, plus missing bios chip, may one day try to recover it (i cut out the batt and cleaned the small damage to prevent it to go too far gone). On my personal retro pc projects, i'm starting to understand you about cases, hehe. However, last two ones, i went for a couple of mini-atxs. The very last one is a reverse-sleeper RGB case (mars gaming mc-s1 white) with P4 s478 2.8@3 with a red msi mobo+red msi X1950 pro AGP and a red ESS 1988 Alegro-1 (same as you reviewed some time ago) - all red cards inside. Cheers!

[@philscomputerlab]

Use vinegar and then wipe with alcohol.

[@luismagallanes2371]

Phil, i never owned a x386 im a fan old old tech and this was cool to see. Not sure if i will ever get around to building a x386 system, but you make it look so much fun. Also love seeing the CRT love. I got nothing against more modern displays but a CRT will always be preferable way to play these old games.

[@lucasrem]

@luismagallanes2371 Why you cry x386 ? Need ISO support ? i386 ? WHAT IS IT YOU NEED ??? old games on CTR ? VGA is enough, just do modern build, many PCIe cards still support VGA out !

[@j32x]

Great video as always. Would you consider doing a similar video on the 486?

[@philscomputerlab]

I plan on doing some 486 content soon!

[@Pickle136]

Only thing i think you missed was explaining the SX/DX marking and the bus size. Also a FPU addon is not necessary or very useful. I pair all my 386 boards with XT IDE, just solves so many problems with booting (and gives full flash card sizes). I also like to use pico power supplies with these older boards, that with a ATX to AT adapter cable. I think though i agree with some comments you made in the past about socket 7 being the best all around system to target since you can get 386 performance and more (128 in 1 project)

[@philscomputerlab]

Good point!

[@DominatorHDX]

A Laser (Dutch computer brand) 386 SX 16 MHz is where it all started for me. My dad got it from his work to write a computer program at home (stock inventory in dBase III I think) while I got to use it for games 😅 Larry, Space Quest, Rambo III, Prince of Persia to name a few. Then I was hooked for life 😄 It also came with a Star dot matrix printer and I used it to print out pictures I created using Dr. Halo which again came with the Genius mouse. Perhaps I'll do 386 build some day. Did a 486 build last year, planning on a Pentium build this year so maby in 2025 I'll finaly have my very own 386 PC 😅

[@fnjesusfreak]

Isn't Laser a Hong Kong (V-Tech) brand?

[@philscomputerlab]

Great memories!

[@efpcvintageplanet3406]

The old X86s are always fascinating. However, for an ideal MS-DOS gaming machine for my favorite titles I chose a first generation Pentium 75 Mhz socket 5 with 8 MB of RAM. Full compatibility with the older titles I like and no problems with all the newer ones. For the first 3D DOS games instead Pentium MMX, 64 MB EDO, Matrox Mystique 220 and Voodoo1. To compete with Voodoo1, the PowerVR PCX2 had to be moved to a second generation Pentium always accompanied by a Matrox PCI, this time a Millennium II. Thanks as always for these videos that take us back to the 90s, my favorite period for computer hardware.

[@lucasrem]

efpcvintageplanet3406 What DOS games you run on Voodoo ? ISO system + voodoo cards ??? Soundblaster ISA ??? Mini GL ? Guess he needs other games, before 1997 titles without Voodoo support, ISO cards

[@weepingscorpion8739]

You know, I would love a 386DX-40, it's just such a fascinating profile. However, at the same time I have this crazy idea of building the slowest Windows 95 machine, so a 386SX-16 and an 8-bit VGA card. Another project I'd like to try is to use a 386 motherboard but with a 486SLC processor. Just to do something different. :) Great video, Phil.

[@maxmuster7003]

80286 16 bit without FPU, but with emulator TSR x87 for floating point instruction using DEBUG on MS DOS 5.

[@matusmitana8406]

Thanks Phil for the video. Very interesting. Maybe just to mention little bit more about CPU options like avoding slower 16MHz CPUs as it doesnt to make a sense to assemble slowest 386 PC :-) and difference between DX and SX - it's much better to buy DX to have faster bus and eventually 80387 math floating point unit. Thanks a lot.

[@ricardobornman1698]

At 04:21, looking at the motherboard, I assume that bottom bus type is MCA?

[@matthewday7565]

A low end 486 covers similar ground, 486sx 25 being somewhat on a par with a 386 DX 40 - and if its a VLB 486, then VLB graphics cards may often be cheaper than ISA

[@C4nn15]

My first pc was a 386 SX25 in about 1992

[@autingo6583]

EISA slot? Nice! :-D

[@dyter424]

The only 386 system I've ever had was an Olivetti Philos Color 22 laptop, which sadly had already been ruined by battery leakage. It did sort of boot from a floppy without ever showing anything on screen.