Building a Better 386/486 Hybrid DOS PC!

Let's upgrade the IBM Blue Lightning build, and turn the World's Fastest 386 into a competent, middle-of-the-road 486 with some quirks and neat features! Today, we'll explore the world of building a 486 DOS PC, and we'll see just how easy it is to get something together! Of course, there'll be plenty of games, and even some benchmarks (and perhaps a surprise or two)!

00:00 Intro
03:57 Parts Overview
13:43 Building the Thing
29:56 First Boot (Direct Capture)
30:06 BIOS Setup and Benchmarking
33:45 Benchmark Results
33:50 Installing DOS 6.22
35:34 GAMES
43:32 Conclusion and Quake Benchmark

● 486 DOS PC Specs:
Predator I Plus Motherboard
66MHz Intel 486DX2-66, C-Step, SL-Enhanced
32MB (60ns) Fast Page Mode 72-pin SIMM RAM (2x16MB sticks)
4GB Compact Flash Card
Boca Research Voyager 2.25MB VLB Video Card (Chips F64300)
Kingston NE2000-compatible Plug n' Play Ethernet Card
VLB SMC (?) I/O Controller (integrated on-board)
Gravis UltraSound MAX Rev. 1.8
ESS AudioDrive ES1868F
ESS E-Wave (SerdaCo)
Generic Baby AT Case

● Awesome channels to check out:

● RetroTechBytes links:

All Music Courtesy of the YouTube Music Library

#Retro​ #Computers #DOS #Vintage #486 #Gaming

[SUCRA]

Great build! Thanks for sharing your latest 486 test bench with us. That motherboard and it's history are fascinating. The video card and sound cards are top notch choices, and hey, a toast to your GUS, those things are hard to find now. Great choice of games, made me feel like getting the Rust Bucket 486 and giving it something to do. Furthermore, congratulations on 600 subscribers, my friend. You're definitely a passionate guy when it comes to retro and tech and it goes to show on the work you do on your videos. Thanks for another great video!

[RiksRandomRetro]

Dang what a neat build! So versatile and such cool parts. I learned a lot watching this and I have to give huge props to your presentation skills. Easy to follow, natural and just great. Awesome build and video!

[vswitchzero]

Great build Will! Very nice board. I haven’t seen much from Symphony before. I have a Compaq branded wavetable sound card with the same ESS chip. It sounds amazing.

[UncleMikeRetro]

Nice one! I have a very similar board with a Cyrix 486DLC-40 in the 386 socket and no VLB. Super presentation and great luck for you to have these parts in such good condition. Keep up the great work 😎

[nicwilson]

10:45 Man, that is a beautifully designed board :)
I love seeing some love for the old 66MHz, had two systems as a kid that an Uncle and I built(as my own systems, otherwise it was the 'family' PC and we always had a decent one for the time as the guy that my mum married was an engineer at Virtuality) as he taught 6-7year old me how to build a system. I also love hearing some appreciation for Duke 3D. It's been one of my favourite games ever since it was released and that same then 8year old(I think) kid mentioned earlier experienced it. It made quite an impression!
That's the first time I've ever heard that version of the Doom soundtrack and I've been playing Doom (and later Doom II) since it came out and it kept me quiet as a child that was probably too young to be playing Doom, not that I was any good at it at that age, of course.
In general I just love the appreciation for this hardware and the quite apparent and obvious passion you have for these wonderful examples of computing history :)

[modernandretrogaming]

That's great machine, you can use there few soundcards like having Gravis with Sound Blaster AWE32/AWE64 and even use with all that MT-32. That motherboard looks so beautiful, I miss a lot of green colored motherboards.

[viti]

I wish I had one of those hybrid motherboards!

[ctiborkoza]

You have the same PC setup build like my, only different graphics and motherboard. Nice video

[BadManiac]

I'm not really sure what I would do with that blue lightning build. To me the only reason to have a 386, 286 or older is for the speed sensitive games and software that won't run on a 486 or faster machine. And your blue lightning, as cool as it is, is simply to fast for that purpos. So why not just have a fast 486 DX4 or 5x86 and build a "normal" 386 for speed sensitive stuff?
I mean apart from "you CAN" and "It's AWESOME" which, don't get me wrong, it absolutely is. Maybe just not... practical :P

[henkpasman]

You know about the 486.000? You can actually fit a quad core chip in the socket of a 486. It wil run single core but on a speed compatible with a pentium 5000.. next to that there are memory banks of 256mb that fit, those are very special but you could fit something like 768 mb .. the 486.000 pc

[Pickle]

that is a very flexible machine. My 486 is a SX2 50 mhz and ive been thinking to upgrade it to the DX2 66. I recently updated the video (cirrus logic) and hard drive card to VLB. I had a ESS 1869, but currently switched in an Avance chip in for sb16 and true opl3.
Were you running one of the sound card into the line in of the other one?

[BFox]

It would have been REALLY nice if you'd have also shown us how the ESS WaveTable card sounds... not just how it looks.
Waited the whole video for that :-/

[ccanaves]

Nice video. That motherboard is sweet as honey.
What version and configuration did you use for the doom benchmark? Sound or no sound? Window size? Which demo?

[glittlehoss]

Can you install these old at boards into atx cases?

[mikespikeey]

you didnt put link in for format gotek drive

[ChrisNova]

my first job thats all i did was build 486 DX2 + DX4's all day, i was the only white person in the computer lab everyone else was asian, it was, 1992 or 1993? i was 16 years old, i worked + saved my money to buy my own 486 eventually

[cuttingedgeretro]

this channel smells like old electronics