He reached the level, where he not only can fix boards at will, but break them at will, just using pure thought. That "look, no short" "bämm!" "look, there's short now" felt totally scripted. Even though it - probably - wasn't. Great video. :)
This is exactly what happened to me. A 386 motherboard that I was restoring, badly damaged by a leaky battery. this one , in Vogons (like this to avoid YT delete this comment): viewtopic.php?f=46&t=97292 After completing the restoration of all the destroyed and/or missing lines, before connecting the PSU there were no shorts on the power lines. But when connecting the power supply, it stopped. When measuring the lines again, a "short" (8 ohms if I recall) appeared at -12V. ?? ?? ?? This was a few months ago, other projects have taken up a lot of my time to check it and try again (need to clean all the nail paint with acetone just to recheck). It is the only 386 I have on hand and restoring it, with all the damage it had, would have been a great satisfaction. I want to use a TI 486DLC/40 with it. EDIT: I forgot, is not the only one 386 I have, I also have a small Foxcon M396F, with a soldered 386sx
@@necro_ware I do like your response to the system smoking "capacitors decided which tantalum has to leave this world. Good bye little guy" Had me cracking up for a bit.
I think you just found my first PC - Phoenix BIOS quirks, and slow as you mentioned. But, as you said, it was useful that it was a 386 - it was able to do things the 286 most of my friends had couldn't. Thanks for the video, nice work.
I've recently found your channel when looking for good information about the 386. While I knew the Dallas clock had a battery inside I didn't know that it was literally an IC with potted enclosure on the top. I really liked the attention to make the mod robust and also to look neat and tidy. I really neat job that's worth showing rather than hiding under a new top 👍
This is a very good mobo. Some years ago I have had the PC with 286 and the Lexicon 1.4, it was a smart enough to make the printable text with proportional fonts and the columns text. With its Alt-255 management symbols it maybe seemed to be like TeX or something alike... Hope this supports Windows 3.1 and Word for Windows. Thank you so much, this is a great video.
Great video! I'm shocked that pin 50 in the CPU (at 01:10) was actually making contact. Or maybe that was a redundant ground connection and it wasn't really needed?
Yeah, I had absolutely the same thought as I saw it, but looking closely I saw, that it still has contact, however, as you assumed, this is just one of the ground pins. Thanks for watching and I'm glad, that you came back with a video recently ;)
Thank you good sir, the info you mentioned about XT-IDE was priceless, I had assumed that it worked with 286 and earlier machines. I found your older videos on this topic but I noticed you were using a 27c512 in this video (All I have is W27c512). I managed to get it working by duplicating the Rom info at 4000,8000 and C000. I finally have Sd cards working on my Fortiva 5000 486 with that annoying Phoenix bios. Can't thank you enough.
Probably the slowest 386sx in existence. Apart from the protected mode capabilities and the 8 simm sockets you could keep your 286-16mhz in those days. Still fun to see people reviving and playing with it.
My first own PC was a 386SX-25. When I got it in 1989/90 it was running at 33 MHz. I tried to "underclock" it down to its correct speed but the board didn't work anymore. After that it was running perfectly at 33 MHz for many years.
I was born on 1986 it is all fascinating and sad as well time goes so quickly. But I am absolutely with you on retro PC hardware time travels. While technology grew up quickly year by year you can expect innovation but not as much as today while already we can see everything and nothing
As far as I remember the 386SX only had an adress space of 24 bits, which translates to 16 MB (but everything else needs also to be within the 24 bits adress space). It is a very similar situation to the Amiga, where the 24 bit address space was shared by different types of memory (chip, ranger, fast) and the custom chips and Kickstart. So 8 MB usable memory are not that bad and given how little power that small 386 has you will not find software to run on it that demands more.
The PC is a little special in that it doesn't just bisect the address space between hardware and DRAM. Instead most hardware lives in its own IO space and isn't memory mapped - special feature of 8080, z80 and 8086 processors. The rare memory mapped hardware lives in the hole between 640k and 1M. There's a few more weird memory traits but i'm not really that familiar with them.
My first PC when I was a kid was a 386 SX 16. It took me quite a while to understand the Mainboard manual, because it was in english, I am german, and had just started learning english in school. But after working through it, making heavy use of a dictionary, I found I could overclock it to 20 MHz.
2MB is okay for plain DOS, I think: 640KB base memory, 1MB extended or expanded memory and the rest for shadow memory. Windows 3.1 wants 4MB, however. Especially on a 286 without virtual memory. On a 386 PC with 2MB or less, Windows 3.1x automatically runs in Standard-Mode unless forced with WIN /3, because Standard Mode requires less memory. OS/2 wants even more memory. About 8MB is minimum here, otherwise the system becomes sluggish. Windows 95 needs 4MB minimum too boot, but 8 to 16MB is real minimumon workplace. Please don't get me wrong, 2MB was common but not reasonable. Memory was most expensive component, so users (home users) hesitated to upgrade RAM properly. Instead, home users invested money in big HDDs and fast graphics cards and modems. Personally, I'd spend those 256KB SIMMs on an XT machine. They're slow, after all. 120ns or so. 1MB SIMMs are often 80s or 70ns, by comparison.
@@dreambyte7926 In the mid 90's I had a 386 with 2MB RAM running windows 3.1 and did everything from desktop publishing to web development on it. It was slow, but it did work.
Big thanks for the nice videos! I would love to see a video about what tools, cham's, measuring devices you have for the repairs. What is necessary in a home workshop? Thanks in advance.
I love the RTC revival, I've got loads of NOS Dallas battery backed SRAMs which will all be dead by now, I'll be trying to revive a couple this weekend. I reckon I'd have replaced all the tantalums though, I've seen the aftermath of them dying and have seen holed burned in boards more than once, that board's too nice to risk.
Nice video! My first pc was an Apricot Computer, 386 sx 16mhz, with 1 mb ram and 40mb hdd. I played a lot of Wolf3d, Prehistorik 2, Commander Keen and many other games. Fun times!
I remember being ripped off being sold one of these boards when upgrading my 286. I was so disappointed when I learned what the SX actually meant. I recall paying nearly $3000 for a complete system with one of these around the early 90’s
What a coincidence. I am still in the process of repairing an 386SX-25 mainboard. It is the NIC TECHNOLOGY HL386SX-20/25. A it seems the AMI Bios requires a special keyboard controller with some RAM or special code to work. None of my other controller are working. But i have a second HL386SX with an intel 16MHz cpu. And this board has an Phoenix bios and doenst care about the keyboard controller.
There's a theoretical way to save and restore old tantalums. Obviousy before they have exploded. By bringing the voltage up gradually. Ideally the board should be held in reset during the process. I have seen synthetic experiments that substantiate this, synthetic as in the test consisted of only capacitors and they were brought up to a likelihood of failure by thermal shock or mechanical impact, not by aging, but i haven't done the procedure myself. The drawback of running without a capacitor is not necessarily voltage noise; it is instead current spikes and EMI on the board, and only if there are actual consumers trying to draw current anyway.
Thank you. I'm probably not the best person to ask about the soldering iron. I don't care much as long as it gets warm fast enough. I have different cheap soldering irons, nothing fancy. The one which I use in this video is the fanciest and most expensive which I have. It's Fnirsi HS-01 and did cost me about as much as a good pizza :)
Yep. I do however recommend to go with a separate homebrew clock module board with a battery holder as replacing the modules every time batteries inside them die gets old quickly. Necroware sell them as well - that's the route I would go with.
Hi!!! Great video.... My first PC was a 386SX@25 branded Mic Computers, a very popular brand here in Portugal. Where I can find that ISA card with CF adapter? Thanks!
Hey, man. Thanks a lot for another super cool video. Two questions. Why don't we had a 2MB modules? Is it possible to build 30 pins 2MB modules? Just for fun. Regards from Brazil.
Watched a lot of your videos, keep up the great work, love them! Being in Europe, do you have any recommendations for a deoxit equivalent? It's so expensive here.
Hi. I tried different sprays around 10€. Products from Teslanol are quite good, though they smell horribly. WD-40 specialist for contact cleaning also did the job. Unfortunately most contact cleaners contain lubricants, which makes the hardware dirty. Try to find something what leaves no stains after drying.
The BIOS is probably hitting the 504MB limit. The CF card shown is 512MB 63 sectors * 16 heads * 1024 cylinders* 512 bytes gets you to 504MB. It's a well known early bios limitation
I would be tempted to wire up the case's Turbo switch to that 16/20 selector... I don't know the long term ramifications of overclocking such a CPU though, and if they could be mitigated by something as simple as a heatsink.
Slightly less terrified of turning on my project Arch Rival project 386SX-16 system. Though riddled with tantalum capacitor explody bits... Whom might I rely upon replacing thiose? Getting up there in my age and ability to soldier on.
Hi! I've been following your great videos for a while and I'm in the process of replacing the Dallas RTC module of the 386 motherboard I got in my very first PC over 30 years ago. What tool are you using to desolder the RTC module? I'd like to get the same for my repair project. Thanks!
@necro_ware - I was wondering what spray you use on the sockets that you soak them in before putting the chips in? There are a few different variations of Deoxit, which do you use?
Yes. There were improvements in memory allocation and protected mode. Some games started to use that, also 286 was a 16-bit CPU, where 386 was 32-bit. That and new instructions gave some performance benefits and simplified the implementation massively. Windows for Workgroups 3.11 required explicitly 386 and despite previous versions of windows did work on 286, since that CPU couldn't switch back and forward from protected mode it was not able to run two applications at a time. Technically 386 was far superior to a 286, but the 386SX version was just very slow to be able to benefit from the newer features properly. Though it was better to have a 386, because it's obviously better to be able to run applications slow, than not to be able to run them at all.
That is most probably not a software issue. I guess, this is a hardware limitation, but it will be hard to investigate without schematics and datasheets.
99.9% of 386SX motherboards I've worked in have one 27CXXX EPROM. Almost always the EPROM is connected via an 8-bit path. The fact this mobo only supports 1MB SIMMS tells you it is NOT a later board as you suggest. Later 386SX boards could use 4MB SIMMS.
Yeah, you are right, about that. My first impression was, that it looks more modern, because of the higher integrated logic and the variable clock generator, which was not common at all for the early models. However, the date code on the newest chips was from 1990. So it's kind of middle age 386sx, considering, that CPU was introduced in 1988 and was popular until around 1992.
IMO it's a complete waste of time replacing the capacitor. As you say hardly anything uses the +12V, and if an ISA card, such as a serial card does, it will have it's own local 12V decoupling capacitors.
As I said, clock for clock. Means 20MHz 286 would be slightly faster than 20MHz 386SX. If you compare 8MHz 286 with 20MHz 386SX, then of course 386SX would be much faster.
@@necro_ware And many, many people will benefit greatly from it. I might even get the opportunity myself... I now feel very bad for having thrown so many away.
Hi, Necroware, I have a question. 17:01 on my 80386 Wolf3d freezes when red stripe below "get psyched" comes to the end. Do you know what can be a reason? P.S good job, as usual on your channel :)
@@Dr_Mario2007You are 10 years of development to far :) ISA slots are connected in parallel to the bus, there is no difference in switching those. Also IRQ can not be assigned in BIOS of a 386, since it is from the time where PnP wasn't yet invented. The resources have to be set using jumpers directly on the expansion cards, or in the drivers.
He reached the level, where he not only can fix boards at will, but break them at will, just using pure thought. That "look, no short" "bämm!" "look, there's short now" felt totally scripted. Even though it - probably - wasn't. Great video. :)
Yeah, that would be hard to script :) Was a surprise for me as well.
This is exactly what happened to me. A 386 motherboard that I was restoring, badly damaged by a leaky battery.
this one , in Vogons (like this to avoid YT delete this comment): viewtopic.php?f=46&t=97292
After completing the restoration of all the destroyed and/or missing lines, before connecting the PSU there were no shorts on the power lines. But when connecting the power supply, it stopped. When measuring the lines again, a "short" (8 ohms if I recall) appeared at -12V. ?? ?? ??
This was a few months ago, other projects have taken up a lot of my time to check it and try again (need to clean all the nail paint with acetone just to recheck). It is the only 386 I have on hand and restoring it, with all the damage it had, would have been a great satisfaction. I want to use a TI 486DLC/40 with it.
EDIT: I forgot, is not the only one 386 I have, I also have a small Foxcon M396F, with a soldered 386sx
@@necro_ware I do like your response to the system smoking "capacitors decided which tantalum has to leave this world. Good bye little guy" Had me cracking up for a bit.
This channel makes me feel involved and creates illusion that I can understand complicated things. Thank you.
that cpu clock generator jumper is perfect place to use TURBO BUTTON connector.
That's a really good idea, actually!
I think you just found my first PC - Phoenix BIOS quirks, and slow as you mentioned. But, as you said, it was useful that it was a 386 - it was able to do things the 286 most of my friends had couldn't. Thanks for the video, nice work.
It's always a delight, to see something brought back from the dead! 👍
❤️
I was always fond of FIC boards, what a nice example. I believe my first 386SX was 25 MHz, on a KLH mainboard.
03:51 oh white smoke ==> Habemus papam!
I've recently found your channel when looking for good information about the 386. While I knew the Dallas clock had a battery inside I didn't know that it was literally an IC with potted enclosure on the top. I really liked the attention to make the mod robust and also to look neat and tidy. I really neat job that's worth showing rather than hiding under a new top 👍
first time in my life, I liked a video before watching it.
Your recycled dallas rtcs are a piece of art! ❤
My first own PC was 386SX... so many memories...
so clean....
don't you dare cover up that mod!
3:48 that explanation gave me a good laugh, i'm imagining electrolytics and tantalums gathered round like jedi in the prequels lol
03:49 Ohh! Way to go little cap!
Congratulations you finally get to retire! 🎉 😇
This is a very good mobo. Some years ago I have had the PC with 286 and the Lexicon 1.4, it was a smart enough to make the printable text with proportional fonts and the columns text. With its Alt-255 management symbols it maybe seemed to be like TeX or something alike... Hope this supports Windows 3.1 and Word for Windows. Thank you so much, this is a great video.
yay
Great video! I'm shocked that pin 50 in the CPU (at 01:10) was actually making contact. Or maybe that was a redundant ground connection and it wasn't really needed?
Yeah, I had absolutely the same thought as I saw it, but looking closely I saw, that it still has contact, however, as you assumed, this is just one of the ground pins. Thanks for watching and I'm glad, that you came back with a video recently ;)
Oh, I have LEO's 286 machine!
I always like seeing the older motherboards. I went from a C64 straight to a 386dx40 in 1993, and missed out on this era of dos.
Gracias por compartir sus conocimientos
Thank you good sir, the info you mentioned about XT-IDE was priceless, I had assumed that it worked with 286 and earlier machines. I found your older videos on this topic but I noticed you were using a 27c512 in this video (All I have is W27c512). I managed to get it working by duplicating the Rom info at 4000,8000 and C000. I finally have Sd cards working on my Fortiva 5000 486 with that annoying Phoenix bios. Can't thank you enough.
Probably the slowest 386sx in existence. Apart from the protected mode capabilities and the 8 simm sockets you could keep your 286-16mhz in those days. Still fun to see people reviving and playing with it.
My first own PC was a 386SX-25. When I got it in 1989/90 it was running at 33 MHz.
I tried to "underclock" it down to its correct speed but the board didn't work anymore.
After that it was running perfectly at 33 MHz for many years.
Your videos are interesting and useful. Even with subtitles, I watch it with pleasure) Thank you!
Thank you, glad you like it.
I was born on 1986 it is all fascinating and sad as well time goes so quickly. But I am absolutely with you on retro PC hardware time travels. While technology grew up quickly year by year you can expect innovation but not as much as today while already we can see everything and nothing
As far as I remember the 386SX only had an adress space of 24 bits, which translates to 16 MB (but everything else needs also to be within the 24 bits adress space). It is a very similar situation to the Amiga, where the 24 bit address space was shared by different types of memory (chip, ranger, fast) and the custom chips and Kickstart.
So 8 MB usable memory are not that bad and given how little power that small 386 has you will not find software to run on it that demands more.
The PC is a little special in that it doesn't just bisect the address space between hardware and DRAM. Instead most hardware lives in its own IO space and isn't memory mapped - special feature of 8080, z80 and 8086 processors. The rare memory mapped hardware lives in the hole between 640k and 1M. There's a few more weird memory traits but i'm not really that familiar with them.
For dx 40 maybe you could make use of 16MB ram, but here..
Really like your videos and appreciate sharing your tips through the process. I must have missed the video on the XT-IDE, will need to find it.
Great job =D
Quality as always from Necroware.
My first PC when I was a kid was a 386 SX 16.
It took me quite a while to understand the Mainboard manual, because it was in english, I am german, and had just started learning english in school.
But after working through it, making heavy use of a dictionary, I found I could overclock it to 20 MHz.
I really enjoy videos like this, thanks !
Even 2MB on that board is plentiful, and, it's a good way to spend a lot of 256K chips that is taking up space elsewhere!
2MB is okay for plain DOS, I think:
640KB base memory, 1MB extended or expanded memory and the rest for shadow memory.
Windows 3.1 wants 4MB, however. Especially on a 286 without virtual memory.
On a 386 PC with 2MB or less, Windows 3.1x automatically runs in Standard-Mode unless forced with WIN /3, because Standard Mode requires less memory.
OS/2 wants even more memory. About 8MB is minimum here, otherwise the system becomes sluggish.
Windows 95 needs 4MB minimum too boot, but 8 to 16MB is real minimumon workplace.
Please don't get me wrong, 2MB was common but not reasonable.
Memory was most expensive component, so users (home users) hesitated to upgrade RAM properly.
Instead, home users invested money in big HDDs and fast graphics cards and modems.
Personally, I'd spend those 256KB SIMMs on an XT machine.
They're slow, after all. 120ns or so. 1MB SIMMs are often 80s or 70ns, by comparison.
@@dreambyte7926 In the mid 90's I had a 386 with 2MB RAM running windows 3.1 and did everything from desktop publishing to web development on it. It was slow, but it did work.
Big thanks for the nice videos! I would love to see a video about what tools, cham's, measuring devices you have for the repairs. What is necessary in a home workshop? Thanks in advance.
I think this could be the best way to run those ega era games.
I love the RTC revival, I've got loads of NOS Dallas battery backed SRAMs which will all be dead by now, I'll be trying to revive a couple this weekend.
I reckon I'd have replaced all the tantalums though, I've seen the aftermath of them dying and have seen holed burned in boards more than once, that board's too nice to risk.
My first PC was a 386 DX/25, 2MB RAM and NO cache! A friend of mine always pushed me not to get the SX version, I know why now!
Nice video! My first pc was an Apricot Computer, 386 sx 16mhz, with 1 mb ram and 40mb hdd. I played a lot of Wolf3d, Prehistorik 2, Commander Keen and many other games. Fun times!
I remember being ripped off being sold one of these boards when upgrading my 286.
I was so disappointed when I learned what the SX actually meant.
I recall paying nearly $3000 for a complete system with one of these around the early 90’s
What a coincidence. I am still in the process of repairing an 386SX-25 mainboard. It is the NIC TECHNOLOGY HL386SX-20/25. A it seems the AMI Bios requires a special keyboard controller with some RAM or special code to work. None of my other controller are working. But i have a second HL386SX with an intel 16MHz cpu. And this board has an Phoenix bios and doenst care about the keyboard controller.
Good old times of jumpers and DIL chips. ;-)
Love his videos. Keep it up.
Troubleshooting is your passion:-)
There's a theoretical way to save and restore old tantalums. Obviousy before they have exploded. By bringing the voltage up gradually. Ideally the board should be held in reset during the process.
I have seen synthetic experiments that substantiate this, synthetic as in the test consisted of only capacitors and they were brought up to a likelihood of failure by thermal shock or mechanical impact, not by aging, but i haven't done the procedure myself.
The drawback of running without a capacitor is not necessarily voltage noise; it is instead current spikes and EMI on the board, and only if there are actual consumers trying to draw current anyway.
Thanks for another great video! Can you please tell me what a soldering iron you use?
Thank you. I'm probably not the best person to ask about the soldering iron. I don't care much as long as it gets warm fast enough. I have different cheap soldering irons, nothing fancy. The one which I use in this video is the fanciest and most expensive which I have. It's Fnirsi HS-01 and did cost me about as much as a good pizza :)
@@necro_ware thanks for the reply! I have an oscilloscope from them and thought of buying Fniris soldering iron
Spoiler:
I could smell that smoke
Do they still make Dallas modules?
Yes, they are still made as far as I know, but they are hard to find and quite expensive. If they are cheap, they are usually fake.
Yep. I do however recommend to go with a separate homebrew clock module board with a battery holder as replacing the modules every time batteries inside them die gets old quickly. Necroware sell them as well - that's the route I would go with.
@@Dr_Mario2007 I don't sell them. Just open sourced the project.
Hi!!! Great video.... My first PC was a 386SX@25 branded Mic Computers, a very popular brand here in Portugal.
Where I can find that ISA card with CF adapter?
Thanks!
Hey, man. Thanks a lot for another super cool video. Two questions. Why don't we had a 2MB modules? Is it possible to build 30 pins 2MB modules? Just for fun. Regards from Brazil.
Watched a lot of your videos, keep up the great work, love them! Being in Europe, do you have any recommendations for a deoxit equivalent? It's so expensive here.
Hi. I tried different sprays around 10€. Products from Teslanol are quite good, though they smell horribly. WD-40 specialist for contact cleaning also did the job. Unfortunately most contact cleaners contain lubricants, which makes the hardware dirty. Try to find something what leaves no stains after drying.
The BIOS is probably hitting the 504MB limit. The CF card shown is 512MB
63 sectors * 16 heads * 1024 cylinders* 512 bytes gets you to 504MB.
It's a well known early bios limitation
No, it doesn't want to see even 128MB CF cards. There must be something else, but I didn't investigate yet what it is exactly.
I would be tempted to wire up the case's Turbo switch to that 16/20 selector... I don't know the long term ramifications of overclocking such a CPU though, and if they could be mitigated by something as simple as a heatsink.
QUESTION - can't we merge those two BIOS ICs into a single higher BIOS and add a XT-IDE BIOS as 2nd BIOS?
Unfortunately, this wouldn't be that easy.
@@necro_ware oh ok
The 386SX was the "Overdrive" CPU for 286 boards before they invented that term...
Slightly less terrified of turning on my project Arch Rival project 386SX-16 system. Though riddled with tantalum capacitor explody bits... Whom might I rely upon replacing thiose? Getting up there in my age and ability to soldier on.
My first PC was 386sx ♥
I wonder if tantalum caps could be reformed just like aluminium ones.
Heil to third King Of The Friday! (BuB+Tony+You) ;)
Hi! I've been following your great videos for a while and I'm in the process of replacing the Dallas RTC module of the 386 motherboard I got in my very first PC over 30 years ago.
What tool are you using to desolder the RTC module? I'd like to get the same for my repair project.
Thanks!
Thanks! Search for ZD-915 videos on my channel
@necro_ware - I was wondering what spray you use on the sockets that you soak them in before putting the chips in? There are a few different variations of Deoxit, which do you use?
Cool video
I wonder why you would need the 386 features? Did games need that over the 286?
Yes. There were improvements in memory allocation and protected mode. Some games started to use that, also 286 was a 16-bit CPU, where 386 was 32-bit. That and new instructions gave some performance benefits and simplified the implementation massively. Windows for Workgroups 3.11 required explicitly 386 and despite previous versions of windows did work on 286, since that CPU couldn't switch back and forward from protected mode it was not able to run two applications at a time. Technically 386 was far superior to a 286, but the 386SX version was just very slow to be able to benefit from the newer features properly. Though it was better to have a 386, because it's obviously better to be able to run applications slow, than not to be able to run them at all.
A CR1225? I would have expected the more standard CR2032. Not a complaint.
Also possible of course, but as you saw in those modules were also used 1225.
what's that oscilloscope you're using? It looks super practical
What about desoldered condenser next to the AT power connector?
I added it later. It's not super important, since every expansion card has own decoupling capacitor on every power line.
8MB of RAM made OS/2 2.0 somewhat usable on a 386sx-20. 😀
I wonder if you could modify the BIOS to allow for 16MB of RAM
That is most probably not a software issue. I guess, this is a hardware limitation, but it will be hard to investigate without schematics and datasheets.
Hi, would you be interested in a 286 motherboard which refuses to boot? It's an AUVA BAM/12-A0. I'll leave it for the price of shipping.
4:10 now you have short
Wait, did he just casually show us how to revive all Dallas clocks without buying an adapter?
He previously made a full vid on the topic just a couple weeks ago.
99.9% of 386SX motherboards I've worked in have one 27CXXX EPROM. Almost always the EPROM is connected via an 8-bit path. The fact this mobo only supports 1MB SIMMS tells you it is NOT a later board as you suggest. Later 386SX boards could use 4MB SIMMS.
Yeah, you are right, about that. My first impression was, that it looks more modern, because of the higher integrated logic and the variable clock generator, which was not common at all for the early models. However, the date code on the newest chips was from 1990. So it's kind of middle age 386sx, considering, that CPU was introduced in 1988 and was popular until around 1992.
IMO it's a complete waste of time replacing the capacitor. As you say hardly anything uses the +12V, and if an ISA card, such as a serial card does, it will have it's own local 12V decoupling capacitors.
Nice mooo gun :)
can you mod the bios to have it run on 16 MB of RAM or is the hardware too old?
I don't think, this is a BIOS issue. More likely the chipset doesn't support 4MB modules.
I had a 286 them a 386sx/20 and, no, the 386 was not slower, it ran rings around the 286
As I said, clock for clock. Means 20MHz 286 would be slightly faster than 20MHz 386SX. If you compare 8MHz 286 with 20MHz 386SX, then of course 386SX would be much faster.
Didn't the 386 SX CPU support 16 MB of RAM? That board must be really old...
Yepp, I would say odd and not old ;)
My first CPU was also a 386. But I lucked out, got a 386 DX40. Top of the pile!
EDIT
Not counting 6502 stuff
I wish it would be possible to add "likes" during the video. I guess there would be a not insignificant number of those. At least from me.
I saw 386 likes... Sorry for ruining it :D
Watching this after my cat peed on about 6GPUs, 2motherboards and 30 ram sticks. This is the only thing keeping me from deepfrying her
You just wanted to show off your new technique for fixing the RTC module.....
Wow what a rude/reductive comment. I found it fun and informative.
Well, since those RTC modules are quite common, of course I will use that solution quite often.
@@necro_ware And many, many people will benefit greatly from it. I might even get the opportunity myself... I now feel very bad for having thrown so many away.
Hi, Necroware, I have a question. 17:01 on my 80386 Wolf3d freezes when red stripe below "get psyched" comes to the end. Do you know what can be a reason? P.S good job, as usual on your channel :)
Could be a resource conflict. If you have a sound card, remove it and try without it.
That or just pick another ISA slot and / or reassign the IRQ in the BIOS just so the video card doesn't go crazy.
@@Dr_Mario2007You are 10 years of development to far :) ISA slots are connected in parallel to the bus, there is no difference in switching those. Also IRQ can not be assigned in BIOS of a 386, since it is from the time where PnP wasn't yet invented. The resources have to be set using jumpers directly on the expansion cards, or in the drivers.