So it's early 2025 and there I was minding my own business when this guy who goes by the name of max1zzz shows up. He motions me closer and peels the top of his jacket back a bit, lifting a thin red rectangular object out a little. Just enough to get a peek at it. Then in a low shifty voice he lets out: "Hey kid, ever try printed circuit boards?"
Well, that's not actually how it went down. I still maintain that he made me do it and I had no choice in the matter.
Anyway
I had been waiting for a project like this for around twenty years. I always liked the idea of kit computers but most are weird one-offs and/or late 70s or early 80s era designs which pretty much require the user to be a programmer. I'm not a programmer. A few kits can run CP/M... which I have no nostalgia for and really isn't useful to me. Some other notable kits/designs are essentially an IBM 5150/5160 on a backplane. Super cool! but I already have a beautiful 5150 so there isn't an open gap to fill and I don't have space for anywhere near as many computers and parts as I used to.
Enter the M396F-Replika project by Marco Both on GitHub, a 386SX/486SLC clone-of-a-clone board. https://github.com/Marco-Both/M396F-Replika
Of course max1zzz had a few of these boards printed, for nefarious purposes, I'm sure. So I bought one...
The planning and parts ordering starts before M396F delivery. First to arrive is the CPU, a Lucent DSP3210... wait, what? That was supposed to be a TX486SLC/E-33PJF that I specifically ordered from USA to hopefully reduce risk of fakes. Okay, ebay seller fumbled that one, however they were good about it and sent out the correct part shortly after. Of course I wasn't inclined to risk shipping issues getting another package across the CAN/US border and ordered a couple TX486SLC/E-33MAB from an international seller as backup.
As a side note: now I need a project which involves a DSP3210 and/or more 486SLCs.
Next up is power. I don't have AT power supplies to spare right now, nor do I want that volume of wasted space so I went with the dekuNukem IBM PC PicoPSU Adapter in kit form. Don't recall where the PicoPSU and power brick came from, probably Amazon?
Following that, an open-box but like-new SIIG CN2401 SI-1132+ hard/floppy drive & I/O controller board.
For RAM we have 4x4MB PurpleRAM all the way from Jurassic Computing in France! It's to be seated into $70 CAD worth(after shipping, because ebay) of 30-pin SIMM slots. Ouch, at least they have metal tabs. I think the usually recommended vendor for 30-pin slots wasn't shipping here or something.
Right. So lets kick things off with the board and chipset(sans-CPU) as shipped to me, and a Digikey order, shall we? Assembly was fairly straight-forward with only minor hiccups induced by me.
The capacitors I had ordered were wider than the original design specified... So I fondled their legs a bit to fit so closely together. Having a BOM is great, but you really need to examine the board for clearances when ordering components.
The resistor packs located between the ISA slots are one pin wider than the ones beside the RAM slots, naturally I managed to bungle that due to rushing during part selection and having searched for the shorter ones first. The fix was bodge-resistors and some tiny dual-wall heatshrink tubing for class. Good thing I had ordered extras of almost every component, the extra resistors came in handy.
The AT power headers I'd ordered didn't match the board's design either, not just rectangular peg in round hole, but also slightly incorrect spacing. Some time with a file fixed those up.
And finally on the list of faceplaming was the DIN connector for the keyboard. Board layout had three holes for the shield, my connector had two. Oops! Two newly drilled holes, one bridge wire, and some solder later the issue was resolved.
At that point I tacked down some important-looking CPU pins, pushed down really hard, and applied power. Thankfully there was activity displayed on a POST card, so at this point I was reasonably sure the CPU was actually some sort of CPU and finished soldering it. In use this CPU gets wickedly hot. For initial testing/playing I was using a random old heatsink just stuck in place with thermal compound, but later sourced a different style with (hopefully)thermal tape. The CPU still gets pretty hot in stagnant air, but the heatsink helps a lot with any airflow at all.
Sounds like time to start filling out the system! Originally I wanted as many cards as possible to be kits assembled by myself, like the IDE and RAM cards in my IBM 5150, but that was not to be as the few kits I was seeing in stock at the time were more intended for 8-bit systems.
A shrink-wrapped 3.5" floppy drive sourced locally seemed like a good fit. Yeah. That had dust in it. However it does work well and the dust wasn't goopy, very easy to clean. Any other used drive would have likely been worse, at least my dust was preserved by the shrink wrap!
RTL8019AS networking card that I'll probably never use. Sure, why not?
Trident TVGA8900C 1MB. Trident cards are kinda trash, but it was from the same ebay seller as the NIC and multi-I/O card to save shipping. ISA cards are getting pretty expensive these days and I wasn't about to sit around for years waiting for the perfect deal on something performant.
Pine PT-230X sound card. Everybody and their dog seems to like soundblasters. I've had some but I wanted to try one of these ESS AudioDrive cards.
Can't forget a mouse! How about a beautiful condition Logitech Mouseman M-C43 three-button PS2/serial? Yes. This one was actually in a city a couple hours away from me, had it shipped anyway because that trip is $60 of diesel and 4h30m-5h round trip.
If you hadn't figured this out yet I live in the middle of nowhere and can't just get stuff locally. This whole project ended up costing at least $600 CAD when including shipping and that's going to go up when the PicoIDE arrives... Not that I really need to play CD games, they are a little new for this system. We'll see how all that pans out.
Running the thing
It's currently booting DOS 6.22 from a CF card in a cheap IDE adapter right now. Some classic favourites include StreetRod, SkyRoads, and Operation Neptune. Operation Neptune's music really shines when played through the beeper, using a sound card with this game simply doesn't sound as cool. The blips and beeps are just right.
Demos have been pretty neat to run on it as well! However with the 486SLC just being a heavily caffeinated 386SX, finding programs beyond it's capabilities isn't difficult.
I'm not running DOOM, go away.
Further thoughts:
I probably can't be bothered adding a FPU. It sounds neat but most software I'll run won't need one.
A case. A form-fitting case. Someday. I don't play with this thing daily and it can easily live in a cardboard box when put away.
If I could have reasonably gotten white ISA slots, that would have been NUTS! Unfortunately I'm 40 years too late for that.
Well, that's not actually how it went down. I still maintain that he made me do it and I had no choice in the matter.
Anyway
I had been waiting for a project like this for around twenty years. I always liked the idea of kit computers but most are weird one-offs and/or late 70s or early 80s era designs which pretty much require the user to be a programmer. I'm not a programmer. A few kits can run CP/M... which I have no nostalgia for and really isn't useful to me. Some other notable kits/designs are essentially an IBM 5150/5160 on a backplane. Super cool! but I already have a beautiful 5150 so there isn't an open gap to fill and I don't have space for anywhere near as many computers and parts as I used to.
Enter the M396F-Replika project by Marco Both on GitHub, a 386SX/486SLC clone-of-a-clone board. https://github.com/Marco-Both/M396F-Replika
Of course max1zzz had a few of these boards printed, for nefarious purposes, I'm sure. So I bought one...
The planning and parts ordering starts before M396F delivery. First to arrive is the CPU, a Lucent DSP3210... wait, what? That was supposed to be a TX486SLC/E-33PJF that I specifically ordered from USA to hopefully reduce risk of fakes. Okay, ebay seller fumbled that one, however they were good about it and sent out the correct part shortly after. Of course I wasn't inclined to risk shipping issues getting another package across the CAN/US border and ordered a couple TX486SLC/E-33MAB from an international seller as backup.
As a side note: now I need a project which involves a DSP3210 and/or more 486SLCs.
Next up is power. I don't have AT power supplies to spare right now, nor do I want that volume of wasted space so I went with the dekuNukem IBM PC PicoPSU Adapter in kit form. Don't recall where the PicoPSU and power brick came from, probably Amazon?
Following that, an open-box but like-new SIIG CN2401 SI-1132+ hard/floppy drive & I/O controller board.
For RAM we have 4x4MB PurpleRAM all the way from Jurassic Computing in France! It's to be seated into $70 CAD worth(after shipping, because ebay) of 30-pin SIMM slots. Ouch, at least they have metal tabs. I think the usually recommended vendor for 30-pin slots wasn't shipping here or something.
Right. So lets kick things off with the board and chipset(sans-CPU) as shipped to me, and a Digikey order, shall we? Assembly was fairly straight-forward with only minor hiccups induced by me.
The capacitors I had ordered were wider than the original design specified... So I fondled their legs a bit to fit so closely together. Having a BOM is great, but you really need to examine the board for clearances when ordering components.
The resistor packs located between the ISA slots are one pin wider than the ones beside the RAM slots, naturally I managed to bungle that due to rushing during part selection and having searched for the shorter ones first. The fix was bodge-resistors and some tiny dual-wall heatshrink tubing for class. Good thing I had ordered extras of almost every component, the extra resistors came in handy.
The AT power headers I'd ordered didn't match the board's design either, not just rectangular peg in round hole, but also slightly incorrect spacing. Some time with a file fixed those up.
And finally on the list of faceplaming was the DIN connector for the keyboard. Board layout had three holes for the shield, my connector had two. Oops! Two newly drilled holes, one bridge wire, and some solder later the issue was resolved.
At that point I tacked down some important-looking CPU pins, pushed down really hard, and applied power. Thankfully there was activity displayed on a POST card, so at this point I was reasonably sure the CPU was actually some sort of CPU and finished soldering it. In use this CPU gets wickedly hot. For initial testing/playing I was using a random old heatsink just stuck in place with thermal compound, but later sourced a different style with (hopefully)thermal tape. The CPU still gets pretty hot in stagnant air, but the heatsink helps a lot with any airflow at all.
Sounds like time to start filling out the system! Originally I wanted as many cards as possible to be kits assembled by myself, like the IDE and RAM cards in my IBM 5150, but that was not to be as the few kits I was seeing in stock at the time were more intended for 8-bit systems.
A shrink-wrapped 3.5" floppy drive sourced locally seemed like a good fit. Yeah. That had dust in it. However it does work well and the dust wasn't goopy, very easy to clean. Any other used drive would have likely been worse, at least my dust was preserved by the shrink wrap!
RTL8019AS networking card that I'll probably never use. Sure, why not?
Trident TVGA8900C 1MB. Trident cards are kinda trash, but it was from the same ebay seller as the NIC and multi-I/O card to save shipping. ISA cards are getting pretty expensive these days and I wasn't about to sit around for years waiting for the perfect deal on something performant.
Pine PT-230X sound card. Everybody and their dog seems to like soundblasters. I've had some but I wanted to try one of these ESS AudioDrive cards.
Can't forget a mouse! How about a beautiful condition Logitech Mouseman M-C43 three-button PS2/serial? Yes. This one was actually in a city a couple hours away from me, had it shipped anyway because that trip is $60 of diesel and 4h30m-5h round trip.
If you hadn't figured this out yet I live in the middle of nowhere and can't just get stuff locally. This whole project ended up costing at least $600 CAD when including shipping and that's going to go up when the PicoIDE arrives... Not that I really need to play CD games, they are a little new for this system. We'll see how all that pans out.
Running the thing
It's currently booting DOS 6.22 from a CF card in a cheap IDE adapter right now. Some classic favourites include StreetRod, SkyRoads, and Operation Neptune. Operation Neptune's music really shines when played through the beeper, using a sound card with this game simply doesn't sound as cool. The blips and beeps are just right.
Demos have been pretty neat to run on it as well! However with the 486SLC just being a heavily caffeinated 386SX, finding programs beyond it's capabilities isn't difficult.
I'm not running DOOM, go away.
Further thoughts:
I probably can't be bothered adding a FPU. It sounds neat but most software I'll run won't need one.
A case. A form-fitting case. Someday. I don't play with this thing daily and it can easily live in a cardboard box when put away.
If I could have reasonably gotten white ISA slots, that would have been NUTS! Unfortunately I'm 40 years too late for that.
