I’m looking to build/ restore specifically 386 hardware to see what it can be made to do in 2020. If anyone would like to rehome some old hardware hit me up.
Thanks
Does it have to be 386? Can a 486 be used? I may have one, of most of parts - sand hard drive that died.
I might have some 486 era stuff around too, but I think all the 386 stuff was trashed years ago. I will dig around and see whats left tomorrow.
If I have a 486 motherboard, the 386 should fit since the are the same chip, Intel just burned the co-processor circuit out if you wouldn’t pay for … yeah cost more to make a 386 then charge less.
I have 2 386SX motherboards, test/working, each with a 512K ISA VGA card. $10 for each set.
I also have a 487SLC (super 387SX) Math Co-processor. Free with one of the motherboard/VGA card sets.
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I dug around and it doesn’t look like I have much left and I have no idea if any of the cards work, but let me know if you are interested in any of them. There is a old 486DX2 processor, but it has several pins bent and I have my doubts that it would work anymore as it was just floating around in the bottom of the box. The Cyrix processor was just something I hadn’t seen in a while, but I do plan on hanging onto it.
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I have an i386 with motherboard and 387 coprocessor. I don’t think it has the memory though
So Raymond hooked me up with 386sx motherboard, IDE VGA Sound and Network cards, and a power supply. I also picked up a Commodore 64 from him but that’s a different story.
I’m still looking for:
An Intel 386DX33 and motherboard. The ideal motherboard would be EISA and have 8-16 ram slots.
387dx Coprocessor in pin grid package
30pin SIMM memory >1mb per stick.
A 100mbit Ethernet card.
ISA memory expansion board.
2.88MB floppy drive.
Thanks everyone
I’d be interested in the board in the lower right corner of the picture. It looks like an EISA-Bus Adaptec SCSI controller. I have some data on an old EISA-Bus machine which has two Full Height 5.25" SCSI drives (8 platters each?) which each have a capacity of only about 760MB!!! I bet you don’t have the floppy with the EISA configuration data for this board? Also interested in an Adaptec ISA SCSI controller.
I still don’t know how they did all this on a 386 in '93
For those who don’t know what this is, it is a demo … code running on a 386 with no GPU… it is art and an exposition of what was possible if you knew all the short cuts and created fast algorithms. This won a competition for these
@chimpera … I don’t know if this is what you had in mind …
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Actually, I have a nice full size tower that I built way back with a Tyan 486DX2 EISA / VL motherboard that I’d love to donate if I knew how to turn it into a VM. It is running Windows NT Server 3.51 I believe. I suspect that it could be turned into a VM with the right tools. I think a Norton Ghost image might do the trick, but I don’t have Norton Ghost and it might have to be an old version of Ghost to work with an OS that old.
Any experts on making VMs from old machines or Norton Ghost experts out there?
I would try to boot linux and make a dd image of the hard drive as a first step. I ended up with the Adaptec I would be happy to pass it on.
Is there a process for converting a dd image (each of the two 760MB drives has about 4 partitions) into a VM image? I guess Clonezilla might boot with only 64MB RAM.
The machine is so old it doesn’t even have USB and the CD-ROM drive is SCSI and I doubt it’s bootable! That would have to rely on the Adaptec BIOS extension. I’ve been thinking that the easiest way to get a backup is to try installing an IDE drive using the motherboard IDE connector.
There are many tools for converting raw images depending on the VM software you chose
Sorry, but I gave all the cards to chimpera. Maybe you can talk him into letting you at least borrow it at some point. 
I used to have a few of those big old scsi drives around along with a 2.88mb floppy drive, but that stuff is all long gone. I did come across an old 5.25" quantum bigfoot drive when digging through boxes.
Oh awesome!
You can see some of when they were creating it here … turn on CC for English
Yeah, I remember those resistor based DACs that people use to use before the sound blaster or was this an actual chip?
Also, speaking of building thing … didn’t Future Crew make ScreamTracker?
What I admire about all this, is the innovation… It is still true today in many of the current demos.
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What’s the drive interface? ide/ATA right? if that’s the case I’d use an ide to usb adaptor and dd the whole device. For scsi; there’s a few adaptors out there on ebay.
Been wanting to run Jolix lately so I might hit you up for one of those 386s unless you’ve heard anything about a decent Amiga 1200 or NeXTStation?