Cleaning and Upgrading My First PC which I've had since 1994

[Irinikus]

I've had this system since 1994, so it's pretty special to me.

For a while I've been meaning to start upgrading it and I've now just had the first opportunity to give it its first of many future upgrades, in the form of a Gravis UltraSound PnP with 2MB of RAM.

Here are some shots taken while I was troubleshooting the GUS:

I originally had an issue as the CD-ROM interface was disabled in firmware, so I couldn't get the CD-ROM up and running! I initially thought that it might be a jumper setting, but after doing some searching I found that it was indeed disabled in firmware and that I'd need to FLASH the card in order to get the CD-ROM interface up and running.

Luckily I received the Gravis Preparation and Driver floppies, as well as the Applications CD with the card!

The Gravis Preparation Disk enabled me to FLASH the card allowing me to enable the CD-ROM interface:

Once I had the GUS up and running, I gave the machine a complete takedown and a deep clean.

I was extremely surprised as to how clean the Power Supply was, considering how many years it's been running for! (This pic was taken after I dusted it, but it looks really good on the inside!)

Here's the re-assembly:

To a clean Upgraded Machine!

 

[Irinikus]

Here’s some information from the system BIOS:

These are the various jumper settings for the board:

An interposer is required in order to fit a Pentium Overdrive into one of these machines. This interposer would be pretty much impossible to obtain today, but there is this risky workaround: (Removing a pin from the Pentium Overdrive chip)

However, you could mount the chip using tulip connectors, and omit the one that would be slotted onto the pin that must be removed. (A much less risky approach, and the one that I'm going to be taking!)

The machine's BIOS is already the LEJT67A BIOS update that's required to run an Overdrive!

I'd also have to remove the VRM and insert a jumper block:

And set the following jumpers:

 

[Irinikus]

There's something very weird going on here, just look at the CPU speed according to Snooper and Syschk45:

The CPU appears to ridiculously overclocked, but is running as stable as ever!!!???

The Motherboard's setup for a DX4 chip and this chip identifies itself as a DX2, so this could explain the severe overclock!?

 

[Irinikus]

I've just reinstalled the Cyrix 486 DX4 100MHz chip, and it at least responds correctly to the jumper settings!

The motherboard only seems to support a 33MHz bus, so when I slotted the Cyrix, it was initially only running at 66MHz.

Now it's also reporting properly in the BIOS:

In CPU-Z it reports as an AMD chip though!

 

[Irinikus]

I'm able to write to files floppies for use on this machine using an external floppy drive connected to my Mac Book Pro! (Extremely helpful!!!)

I managed to get the CD-ROM up and. running in DOS:

This is my current memory usage:

Here's my current config.sys file:

Here's my current auto exec.bat file

I did try qcdrom.sys, to try and free up some more conventional memory, but it doesn't work on my system!

I also edited the msdos.sys file, to allow the system to boot straight into DOS on startup, and if or any reason I want to boot Windows 98SE, I just type in "win" at the command prompt! (I was sick and tired of having to go for the F8 key!!!)

I'm able to run all the games that I want to for now with this configuration, but any suggestions as how to improve it will be welcome!

 

[7spirals]

That is a sweet little machine. Style has the PS/1 styling. I've often considered trying to find a PS/2 model 30 and doing the same thing, but yours is possibly cooler because of the GUS! Man, those things were gold back in the 1990's but even more gold, now. They go for a mint on Ebay these days.

 

[Irinikus]

That is a sweet little machine.

Thanks!

I've often considered trying to find a PS/2 model 30 and doing the same thing, but yours is possibly cooler because of the GUS! Man, those things were gold back in the 1990's but even more gold, now. They go for a mint on Ebay these days.

The PS/2 model 30's also a very cool, classic IBM design aesthetic.

Thanks, I'm enjoying the GUS! (I'm playing through Warcraft 2 and Hexen in DOS, and I'm loving it!)

 

[Irinikus]