386/40 - Fun, Frustration, & Taking It To The Next Level
One of the computers I wanted to add to my retro computing collection was a 386. My initial plan was to find a period correct case and then just build it out from there. I made a post on the Vintage Computer Forum asking for such a case. A forum member, who is a recycler, reached out to me he may have what I was looking for. It turns out he had complete systems. I picked the one I liked which he told me that one was a 386. To my surprise when I got it was a 386/40 in nearly perfect condition. I upgraded the memory to 8MB, added a Cyrix FasMath math coprocessor, XT-IDE CompactFlash adapter, Tseng Labs ET4000AX video card, Sound Blaster 16 sound card and 3Com 3C509B network card. I replaced the AMD 386/40 CPU with Cyrix 486DLC/40 CPU. I thought I was all set, but then problems began to set in. I could not get any protected mode games like Doom to run. They would just start up and then quit. I could not load an extended memory manager like EMM386 or QEMM386. I would get protection fa