It's easy! I just watch Phil's Computer Lab.

I missed the whole DOS era because of age but when I got my first PC it was K6-2 and the service guy had installed Quake 1, Duke Nukem 3D and Diablo 1. I actually went back in time and played games Doom 2 alongside with the "golden era" PC games from the late 90s. I wonder if there are young gamers that actually travel back to play games from the era before they have been born?

Even though I never owned a 386 myself (I was still using an Atari ST at the time), I always remember my fascination with a friend's PC. It was a black T-Bird desktop PC. This PC was widely advertised here in Germany at the time. It had a 386 SX25 processor if I remember correctly. The computer had a cool black desktop case, which was rather unusual at the time. I remember in the beginning we had a lot of trouble getting games to work because none of us had any idea how DOS worked and how to configure everything properly. But somehow we did it and there was something magical about playing Monkey Island 2 on the PC. Thank you very much, Phil! Your videos bring back these old memories.

My PC friends in the late 80s were building 386 VGA systems. The raw power was so impressive.

My first pc, as a kid, was a 386 sx16 mhz, with 40 mb hdd, 1 mb ram. l played wolf3d, prehistorik 2, stunts, commander keen, doctor riptide, dyna blaster, lhx, body blows, sango fighter etc. Fun times and indeed a golden age. You are right about the CRT monitors. You just cant unseen it.

My mate had a 386 DX40 with optical drive and soundcard. I remember the first game I saw on it was a rail shooter called Cyberia, it blew my mind. Also played Dune 2, UFO Enemy Unknown, Warcarft 1, C&C, Space Hulk and many more! Good times.

The DX-40! My very first processor I got in 1993. So nostalgic.

I never had a 386. My first PC was a 286 that my dad bought in an auction for only £2! It was nearly 10yrs old at the time, which is why nobody wanted it. But I loved it. I played Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein 3D, Lemmings, Duke Nukem 1 + 2. I went straight from that to a Pentium 120Mhz (Non-MMX). You have inspired me to build some retro systems. I am currently building myself a retro PC cupboard. Inside is a pull out tray for keyboard/mouse and a trinitron CRT monitor. Theres three permanent "ultra" PCs with specs that are very overkill for DOS, Win98 and WinXP (based on some of your builds). Then, below the keyboard tray is a pull-out drawer that has a open bench inside so I can create any build I like in there for specific games. Then below that are two deep drawers for holding my collection of video cards and sound cards. On top of the cupboard is a shelf where my motherboard collection will go. I may possibly post a video of it once done

Stunts is so good! Fantastic game

In the beginning I was also enthusiastic about 386s or 486s. In the meantime, however, I prefer newer retro hardware with a Pentium system. The mainboards are simply more up to date and you can also play more demanding DOS games.

First Dos box was a 286 DX. I got it and a 386 SX at the same time from my then father in law. When I told him I was leaving Amiga for PC land he was so excited he dropped off ALL of his old hardware. Told me to figure it out and was so happy he hugged me. He never did that before. The 286 was an AMD chip and was faster than the 386sx in almost all ways so I stuck with that until I bought a 486 DX-100. At this time the Pentium MMX was just released so then I upgraded to a P-120. Then a P233 MMX. Then a PII 350, PIII 1Ghz and an Athlon 1Ghz (Thunderbird, OCed to 1.4 with a pencil). And that was pretty much my single core PC run. Prior to the 286 I had an Amiga, Commodore 64 and a Commodore Vic 20. I taught myself how to program BASIC when I was 9 from the Vic 20 manual. It included a BASIC programming manual. I also remember the Amiga games smoking it's PC ports and I could never figure out why considering the power of a VGA card. But this was before I studied any of it. I started my computer science class with an Amiga and was forced to use an 8088 emulator for homework. That's when I realized the custom chips in the Amiga gave it that power and without them it would have been much much cheesier as the processor would have to do the lifting. That was when it dawned on me why PC versions were cheesier. It wasn't until the 486DX that we would start to see the PC game space start to fire on almost all pistons. With it's built in math co and more than 40 mips on an ordinary, consumer chip, the PC was finally able to emulate all of those effects in software. As an example I highlight when John Carmack programmed a Mario Clone and left it for Romero to check out. That was when it started. That was 1994 or 1995. I forget which. It's in the ID video if anyone wants to watch it. But that was when the games started to smack Amiga games down. Games like Turrican II looked infinitely better on PC due to VGA. It had come to the Amiga years earlier but Commodore had gone bankrupt at this point and the new, AAA, games were gone. If you wanted better it was Mac or PC and the Mac never had a gaming rep. It was the PC for anyone that came from an Amiga at that point if you wanted to play "PC" games. And here we are.

Thanks for an excellent video as always Phil! Back in the day I had an IBM PS/2 55sx, and since that computer has the dreaded MCA bus I was pretty much out of luck with regards to sound cards and CD players. With exception of SimCity classic and Sierra games using the PC speaker, DOS gaming had to wait until I got a Pentium computer a couple of years later. In recent years, I bought an identical PS/2 and fixed it to what it should have been by adding a MCA SCSI card, a SCSI2SD (very similar to the one you reviewed a couple of years ago), an external CD player (connected via SCSI), a MCA ethernet card, and a modern reproduction of the extremely rare Sound Blaster MCA card. To top it of, I had to disassemble and hack the BIOS to make the computer boot from SCSI2SD.

Happy Friday Phil and Happy New Year!

That's a loverly Philips rebrand CRT PCM, nothing beats a CRT PCM when it comes to super silky smooth gameplay and IQ.

Olivetti 386 was my first PC. Had a volume slider for the PC speaker 😂 Never got a sound card or CD rom for it. But got Windows 95 installed....it was REALLY slow 😜 Later got an IBM Aptiva K6-2 350 mhz. Upgraded that with a Voodoo 2 and later with an nVidia Riva TNT2 PCI (No AGP slots). The performance jumps in those days where insane 😮

The 386 is before my time and I have no emotional connection to it but it's still fun to learn about!

Feeling old as I still remember something the senior tech told us at at the computer shop I did work experience at. He told us not to play games on the 386. Obviously as the 386DX was the most expensive machine they had there at the time. And didn't want us breaking it.

What perfect timing. I was going to start my 386 build today. Hello from Brissie!

If only someone would have told us to hang onto these machines back in the day. Most folks, like me, typically sold them off for the next best thing. Fortunately about the late Pentium era I stopped selling my parts. But finding good 386 (and even 486) parts today is not easy anymore. Great job on the videos too. Always look forward to a new one from you.

I don't mind the test bench. I've used them for years ever since. I first started repairing computers. But maybe once a year, something's special. Something that would catch everyone's eye, but that's just me

Slow is good, it is a phrase I appreciate more and more, not just in retro computing, but in life in general.

My first PC was a Turbo XT clone and I owned it the longest of all my PCs as the family upgraded. That’s why I have a NuXT as my retro machine.

I just managed to get a fully functioning 386 dx-40 setup , cant wait to play with it!

I love the Stunts game you show at the begining. I spent literally months with it, building whole new tracks, then sharing them with friends on 3.5 inch floppy and then competing who got the best time on it. The great advantage of that game was it ran smothly and stable on anything from 386 to Pentium so most of my friends in my class were able to participate in competition without having any unfair advantage due to having better machine at home :)

Great video! My first PC was a 386DX40 (Hercules branded small tower) in 1993. The 486 was the machine to have back then. Dos 5.0 and Win 3.1 :) Great memories

Aaah the AMD 386DX-40! My first PC was based on this incredible deal of a CPU when I jumped from the Amiga to the PC in late 1991 and built my first ever PC clone. I still remember all the specs: CPU as noted, 4mb RAM with 32k of high speed cache, 105mb Toshiba IDE HDD (what an upgrade from my clunker 20mb Amiga HDD, the drive itself was so old it used a stepper band and not a voice coil to drive the heads, it chattered like a typewriter and you could hear it accessing 2 rooms away and SLOW even with SCSI interface) and of course a Trident SVGA card with 1mb onboard. It supported VESA 1.2 in hardware but I would load a VESA 2.0 framebuffer into himem to get another 10-20% increase in framerate with games that supported VESA 2.0. Monitor was a basic Daytek (Daewoo) 14" with .28 dot pitch. Okay enough of me geeking out about my first PC, time to watch your retro build and see how it compares! ;-)

My beginning was in the 486 era. I'd like to get myself a 386 to tinker with at some point.

My first MSDOS computer was a Leading Tech prebuilt 386 (25 Mhz I think). The first upgrade I did later was to turn it into an AMD 386DX/40. There was a local New&Used Buy-Sell-Trade computer shop that I frequented quite a lot, and that original PC got upgraded over and over again. I still have the keyboard (the clicky type) and 5.25 and 3.5" drives from that original 386, and they are now with my 486DX/120 in the baby AT desktop case. Don't have the 386/40 anymore, it got traded in for the 486/120, but I now wish I had kept it, LOL

I remember back in mid 1990's (my earlies memories of computers) when 486 and 386 was common (and pentium was a premium choise😁) no one had computer in our family,but i knew some people that had one in bigger cities. When i see a 486 or 386 computer somewhere,it reminds me two things: Banks and offices in 1990s,and the overpriced toy of the rich kids. I still love them.

Love your content, man. You rock, Phil! 💪

Another great video Phil!

🎉🥳Happy New Year Phil

Great video Phil! You inspired me to once again bring some stuff down from the Dachboden and drive the wife insane 😂 ended up rigging up a 386 system with a power supply with the switch missing. So I took the power switch off an old tschibo coffee machine and well alles geklappt 😅

Great overview/summary of the 386 platform, thanks Phil! ❤

Phil, you're website is amazing! 🥰

First Philday of 2024 🎉

Thank you for an amazing video! Very good as a basic source of information and a place to start. I just want to add for the real beginners. 1) do not start with the 386SX, these are more like 286 on steroids and if you are not a real collector and enthusiast you won ´t enjoy that too much! It runs 386 code but clock for clock it is still more a 286ish feeling. 2) If you are not lucky as Phill and can ´t get such a fancy motherboard, don ´t be sad! Any board with the plastic QFP AMD 386DX/40 will do the job as well. Remember - it is a 32bit system so you always need 4 same SIMM modules to run it! 3) If you wanna have it cool, get a 486DLC (or SXL CPU) 😉 - what you get is a pin compatible CPU with some 486 instructions and 1kb (8kb with SXL) of L1 cache. There are also rare clock doubled cpus, but this is another story...And that makes a lot of a difference! If you go this way ensure your bord suports that - later chipset with proper cache handling logic are the way to go. 4) One fun fact - there is one chipset from Macronix, that has no onboard cache but it has 8kb of fast cache right in the chipset!! Bloody advanced solution for that time. 😉 Simply said with a 386 plattform you could have a lot of fun. Enjoy! This beast deserves your antention!

This was a great video.. thanks for all the time and work you put in to the channel. cheers.

Don't forget if it's' a 386 "SX" then it should have 0kb cache. But yes, avoid that too if you can! My first PC had an AMD 386DX40 and I got it from an old University friend who had Chicago on it (Windows 95 BETA) and with 8Mb of RAM, it ran it *really* well!

Nice video Phil, my first PC was a 386 too. I was fortunate enough to be able to rebuild it a few months ago, it was like stepping in a time machine. I love using it regularly and playing those early 90's games.

Awesome, Phil - great to hear your memories of your first computer. The 386 was my second computer, growing up. (After my original Tandy 1000 SX.)

My first 386 was in 97 or so. Was an IBM Personal System 2 we got from a flea market that had Windows 3.1 installed and a few games. It had no CD-Rom drive or sound card, but it was still fun to tinker with and learn how to work MS-DOS commands. In Christmas of 98 we got an HP prebuilt machine with an AMD K6-2 and a pretty decent Crystal FM sound chip which really let me enjoy the buffet of DOS games that was available then.

Great content as always. My first PC was a 286 with a horizontal case and I really miss that system a lot. Then I got a 386 and a 486 in the following years. I currently have a PIII 1000mhz Windows 98 PC with a Voodoo 3 3000 accelerator and it is a really good choice for me because I do not have a ton of space at my desk at home. And thanks a lot for sharing the MS-DOS Starter Pack! I still remember how frustrating it is to setup boot configs for certain games, so I am sure that will help a lot of folks :)

Hah, I JUST finished building my pre-teen NCR 20 MHz 386, spent several hours on it today. I actually had to declock a 25 MHz board (CPU and crystal swap), build an inverter gate to use the common ground dual LED. I also carefully added a reset and turbo switch. I even changed the 5.25 inch drive LED from green to red (as mine was 30 years ago). I actually went with an 8900D TVGA (NVRAM) over a Tseng ET4000AX as it was 25% faster in benchmarks, and you can SEE the difference in Wolf3D. I'm going to install it in my retro corner tomorrow, it's 1AM now. Having said that I have a wonderful 386 SX 16 with a CRT for sale now :D

Wow, that must've been a lot of work. Thanks Phil!

Very good video, Phil. Happy New Year!

Some great info in here! Got a Compaq Deskpro/i from an ewaste some months ago. The original 386 was taken out before getting dumped, so I popped in a 486 DX2. Except for that it was still complete and booted right into it's windows 3.1 installation.

Very interesting motherboard you have there

My first Intel PC was an old 396 Compaq Deskpro with the unheard of 11MB of RAM. It was an old server machine and it was beautiful. I actually installed a co-pro and it could play Quake at 0.5 frames per second! I played a lot of Doom and Heretic on it and got some Heretic mapping done on it! It was built out of sheet steel and was constructed like a Russian WWII Tank.

My first PC was an Turbo XT - we held onto it until the 486 sx20 and even played wingcommander (slide show) on it.

Hey my first PC was an AMD 386DX40 ! a very good machine bought for around 1300 USD in 1993, which stayed with me for a long time ! it's not making me any younger ^^

Happy New Year, Phil! Very useful information.

Looks like a nice 386/486 board :)

Happy new year

Just a couple thoughts from my own experience buying a 386. 1. Getting a machine that's already in a case with all or most of the component's your looking for will save a lot of time and (probably) expense. 2. Look for machines from name-brand builders (AST, Compaq, HP, IBM, etc.). In my observation most of these will have ps/2 mouse and/or keyboard ports - and their build quality is generally better than the generic PCs.

It's funny how frame of reference works. 386 computers were the ones I learned everything from when I was a kid. So I am (was lol) very familiar with everything and many things became just more simple after that. Especially the old IDE and Floppy cables that could be mounted two ways on the board as well as the drive because they didn't all have a notch yet, could really surprise you from time to time!! Compatibility was sometimes also a bot hit or miss with different cards. I think these days it's really something for people who want the experience. I would also get just a faster Pentium system and just clock it down.

When i was young at school we had computers with 33mhz or 66mhz. You switched with a turbo button. And it used DOS and Windows 3.1. But I think it was probably 486. This was around 1994. I loved that little display on that would show 33 or 66 to indicate what speed you were at.

This is very timely for me. I had a 386DX-40 for a lot of the early to mid 90s, and I knew I needed to put one together eventually. Another kind of listing you might find, that I'll note since I suspect the board I just got in had this kind of origin, is from a commercial or industrial environment. These are parts that were built to last and be maintained, usually. The one I got even has an external 3.6V battery holder instead of on the board itself. On the downside, they may be a bit clunkier to work with. Thanks for the videos and all the drivers and software on your site!

My PC way of life started on a 386, but I wouldn't want to go back to the slow hardware. Using Phils advice I built a "234 in 1" amd k6-3 system, which perfectly plays 386 era games and much newer games too. Thanks Phil :)

I played Dune 2 on my old 16MHz 286 HighScreen PC from Vobis. It was extremely slow but I loved that game.

I had a DIGITAL Equipment with a Texas Instruments 386 40Hz with 32MB Memory. It also had a 2MB VESA VGA adapter, a 33.6Kbps US Robotics ISA Modem. Someone had already just about maxed that thing out. It had a 32x CD-ROM and even the cache memory was installed for I think 256K total. When I got it (free) it just needed a floppy drive and a hard drive. I ran windows 95 on it. This was well into the Pentium age because I remember my Dad had a Pentium 200Mhz machine.

This video would have been extremely useful for me 11-12 years ago when i first dipped my toe in the retro computer scene. I'm born in 1994 so I was not around for the 386. Whn I was about 18, I came acrouss a 386 motherboard with the cpu soldered. For the life of me I could not find any info about it. I did not know what memory it needed, how much memory or if I could power it. I figured it out mind you, some years later. It still runs great in one of my retro PCs. It's a 386-DX 33MHz. Fun times

I sort of missed this era of PC, got my first in '97, a little 110mhz Cyrix, it was pretty solid once I maxed the memory and put a Voodoo 2. I had absolutely no interest in computers at the time, so getting the cheap hand-me-down was a big deal. Flight simulator was the thing that blew my mind, especially going from the software renderer to D3D, it was like magic. That spawned a decades long fascination with simulation and gaming.

Another great video Phil. I had a Packard Bell 386SX-16 with 1 meg of ram (640k extended) and a whopping 120mb hdd. I learned a lot by trying to get Wing Commander to work by making a boot disk. Then came the Sound Blaster upgrade, which was literally a game changer. Then 4 sticks of 256K ram to get two megs and later 4mb to play Doom (Shareware) in the tiny window of course. I remember getting creeped out by the lower levels of Eye of The Beholder late at night. XCOM, Master of Orion, Ultima VI, all great titles. 386enhanced really meant something back in the day.

386 is probably my favorite cpu of all time, I really wanted 33 mhz dx but they were kinda expensive so our family computer was upgraded from 286 17 mhz to more affordable 386 25 mhz sx. Learned to program on it so it was not only games either (of course I programmed games but still :)

386DX33 was the first PC in our house in the early 90s. It replaced a Commodore128. Cd-rom games from Sierra were an incredible step up. Unisound! It is simple and can be configured for complicated multiple sound card setups when required.

Ah, another of Phil's Videos. Again, very great. I skipped the 386 and went from an very old 286 to a 486 DX 33 One question to Phil: Did you ever play around with SCSI? My first CD-burner was a Plextor SCSI burner connected to an Adaptec 2940 SCSI controller. Mayby SCSI is also a interesting topic for a video.

The 386 class machine I'd love to have would be the AST advantage pro 386sx/25 we once had.

If only I could had found out about your channel and Vogons a little bit earlier, just 1 or 2 years I could had started collecting this stuff before the prices blew off, right now is very difficult to find a 386 or 486 for a sane price and that don't require extensive repairs (this market in my city is almost zero) so I have to compete with buyer all around the country or globe 😅 At least I can use your excellent 136in1 guide and enjoy the 200MMX as a 386 perfectly and wait for the deal to happen and rebuild my first computer i386DX33! So thanks for sll you awesome guides Phil!

Another good method for extending the storage is the XT-IDE project flashed onto a chip and used in an ISA network card.

Phil, i never owned a x386 im a fan old old tech and this was cool to see. Not sure if i will ever get around to building a x386 system, but you make it look so much fun. Also love seeing the CRT love. I got nothing against more modern displays but a CRT will always be preferable way to play these old games.

Just to give everyone an idea of price. a month ago I sold a mobo, ram and cpu for $60us on ebay. That was on one and only bidder and I had pictures of the board, ram, cpu and manual .. They got a great deal IMO. includes the following Mother board = UMC Vesa Local bus mainboard G486usp Cpu = intel i486dx Ram = one 72 pin ram module Mainboard manual No graphics card, the card in the photo was to test board only. Mainboard Battery was removed as a precaution to prevent any leaking. New owner must provide their own battery solution. great conditions, see pictures, booted up into bios .

You have a very nice Motherboard there! A bit Jealus.... Not only it is a 386 / 486 combo one, but also the last slot is probably an OPTI bus one. Do not confuse this with EISA. There are very few cards for the OPTI bus. There is a VGA Tenseg one and performs the same as the VLB version (I have this). I hope to see more videos one this M/B!

I have a huge collection of old pc harware (I still own every pc I had in the day, inclusing my 8088 Atari PC3 XT), including a mainboard with a 386-DX40 and a 387 coprocessor. I remember upgrading it in the '90 with a 486DLC to give it some more power to accompany the ET4000 Svga card I used in it. Paired to a CF to IDE adapter it does the trick for almost anything dos like gaming (in 320X200 that is, and apart from quake), but my everyday dos/win98SE machine is a Slot 1 Pentium 2 - 333Mhz (upgraded from the original Pentium 2 at 233Mhz it had due to being the bottleneck in some windows games). It has an ISA AWE32 installed and an AGP Riva TNT card which also runs great under DOS. It runs on a 160 Watt ATX pico adapter so no fan or noise, only the cpu fan which I hacked with a slow running 120mm fan to keep everything quiet. Since the bios lets me disable al de cache if needed, most older games run ok under DOS. The socket 7 boards are ok but more heat + older chipsets + slower memory + no real ATX support (apart from adapters) so finding a case to house it in is also a thing. I do still have a PCI motherboard with a Socket 7 Pentium 133Mhz in my collection which I know it will do quite OK for most "retro thinkering" since it has PCI slots to host a 3D accelerator cards and ISA slots for older stuff. In the end everyone has his/her memories of what they had at first and it's that what will make us say "hey that's the sweet spot for me"

Ah… the game Stunts or 4ds driving. Good times.

I love the 386 as a platform! I also started out in the PC world with an AMD 386-DX40 with 4MB memory (quite an upgrade after the Commodore 64). I actually still have that very 386 board in storage, but sadly it doesn't power on anymore...

11:37: An additional convenient option: LGR and Tech Tangents made videos about an ISA USB card you can use. Tech Tangents found the appropriate driver, so you can use your high capacity USB sticks with retro computers. I have those ISA USB cards both in my 386 and 486 machine and they work great for transferring over games/files.

10:35 Never knew LG made I/O cards. I've only ever seen the GoldStar brand on things like VCR's and televisions.

dude just when i randomly got gifted an old AT system you post this lol on the same day even. i think it has a pentium of some kind idk it has a tiny heatsink with dried thermal paste but i don't have the time to clean or do anything to it right now. it came with a compatible keyboard and mouse too!

I have a 25mhz 386 that I found at a thrift store years ago. Added a Sound Blaster 2.0 and one of those proprietary double speed Sony CD drives with its own controller card. I couldn't find anything about the controller online and had to spend 2 hours in MS-Paint drawing lines from the ISA connecter up to the jumpers to figure out what each one did 😅. I really love that thing. Put Windows 3.1 on it and it runs games like SimCity for Windows great. Doom is just barely playable. Been thinking about upgrading it to a 40mhz Cyrix 486DLC.

The old X86s are always fascinating. However, for an ideal MS-DOS gaming machine for my favorite titles I chose a first generation Pentium 75 Mhz socket 5 with 8 MB of RAM. Full compatibility with the older titles I like and no problems with all the newer ones. For the first 3D DOS games instead Pentium MMX, 64 MB EDO, Matrox Mystique 220 and Voodoo1. To compete with Voodoo1, the PowerVR PCX2 had to be moved to a second generation Pentium always accompanied by a Matrox PCI, this time a Millennium II. Thanks as always for these videos that take us back to the 90s, my favorite period for computer hardware.

Amazing as always! One thing I would like to see more of is covering the power side for an at style machine like this, and how to turn it on and off. When you use a atx to at converter, I believe the black wires are in the middle (which you showed here), and the remaining wires hook into switch to turn on and off the machine but that's just a guess. I have yet to play with one.

With the SDCard adapter. I've had luck switching my secondary to slave and having it work with no issues. In fact, I have a troublesome 540MB HDD which will only work as a slave drive so it was an easy pair with the SDCard adapter. ymmv of course.

You know, I would love a 386DX-40, it's just such a fascinating profile. However, at the same time I have this crazy idea of building the slowest Windows 95 machine, so a 386SX-16 and an 8-bit VGA card. Another project I'd like to try is to use a 386 motherboard but with a 486SLC processor. Just to do something different. :) Great video, Phil.

i have a 386 dx 40 system and i have put an fpu in it, basically it allows me to run some programs, mainly it allws me to run tracker software and listen to some sweet opl3 tunes

A Laser (Dutch computer brand) 386 SX 16 MHz is where it all started for me. My dad got it from his work to write a computer program at home (stock inventory in dBase III I think) while I got to use it for games 😅 Larry, Space Quest, Rambo III, Prince of Persia to name a few. Then I was hooked for life 😄 It also came with a Star dot matrix printer and I used it to print out pictures I created using Dr. Halo which again came with the Genius mouse. Perhaps I'll do 386 build some day. Did a 486 build last year, planning on a Pentium build this year so maby in 2025 I'll finaly have my very own 386 PC 😅

EISA slot? Nice! :-D

To be honest, I've never had a 386 machine, but there are quite a few vintage parts in my closet: an AT PSU, an awfully yellowed AT keyboard and a 3 button mouse. Who knows - I just might give your advice a try and build something 😉👍. Also I remember that in early 2000s, there were many odd mice. For example, A4TECH WOP 35 model had 2 scroll wheels. I'm pretty sure, I saw an optical mouse with a serial connector. Sadly I cannot remember the model 😞.

Some things to also consider is if you should go for a DX or a SX. And if you really want to make your life hard and expensive, getting an IBM PS/2 with MCA cards. That puts a another level of complexity to using and upgrading. I really love the 386 era of computers, I have about 10 of them left from SX 16 to a fully upgraded DX platform now running a Cyrix DRX2 33/66

Thanks Phil for the video. Very interesting. Maybe just to mention little bit more about CPU options like avoding slower 16MHz CPUs as it doesnt to make a sense to assemble slowest 386 PC :-) and difference between DX and SX - it's much better to buy DX to have faster bus and eventually 80387 math floating point unit. Thanks a lot.

My first PC was a Socket A Machine with an AMD Athlon 1,33 GHz - 512 MB RAM and an ATI Radeon 7000 Graphics Card vom ca. 2001. Quiet a bit later than the 386 ;)

AT cases can be expensive to source, AT boards still can mount into modern ATX cases that support full size ATX motherboards (Micro ATX cases are not compatible).

I also added a single speed Mitsumi CD to my 386 when they first came out. Came with its own interface card. The whole drive slid out and then opened the top like a CD32. Can’t remember the first game cd I had, but certainly remember X-Wing and Seventh Guest on that machine. Last video card I had in that machine was an ATI Graphics Ultra+ which had Mach32 and excellent image quality on my NEC Multisync. Great video Phil and good advice as always!

Only thing i think you missed was explaining the SX/DX marking and the bus size. Also a FPU addon is not necessary or very useful. I pair all my 386 boards with XT IDE, just solves so many problems with booting (and gives full flash card sizes). I also like to use pico power supplies with these older boards, that with a ATX to AT adapter cable. I think though i agree with some comments you made in the past about socket 7 being the best all around system to target since you can get 386 performance and more (128 in 1 project)

My first pc was a 386 SX25 in about 1992

Oh, memories... AMD 386sx @33, 2 MB RAM and 80MB HDD :) Trident VGA with TSR allowing to switch card's compatibility to EGA, CGA and Hercules. Great to test by Xenon 2. Only sound was great downgrade against Atari800. Until Adlib purchased, my ears were martyrs :D

Using a serial cable on COM port or laplink cable on parralel port to a second PC to copy files.

In like 8 years of going to flea markets i never seen a ISA GPU. And i scored loads of rare hardware othervise.

Nice too see that 386 is enough to play TrackMania xD (But Jokes aside, I know It's Actually Stunts, but definitely looks like a game that Inspired that series to become a thing.) 386 seems like a great platform to be in, if ya looking for those speed sensitive games. With a Custom MS-DOS install this makes even more convenient. Never had a 386 at all, but sometimes makes me want one. Since I'm always kinda nervous about slowing down a more modern PC in a BIOS, like Athlon 64.

Great video as always. Would you consider doing a similar video on the 486?