wierd_w

OK, just being sure. It's easy to overlook things.

Stupid question: Do you have any speakers to hook up that that soundcard you ordered?

Indeed. You should also unsolder and remove that old battery before it destroys the motherboard as well.

Dont be silly! That was a joke!! Cellular uses a pretty gnarly encoding scheme to squash the audio, and probably wont allow even a 300 baud connect over it that way!

That sb16 has the creative labs IDE controller on it, IIRC. (the jumpered version anyway) If push comes to shove, he can put it there. I never had issue with the generic 16bit isa controllers of that era as regards cdroms. The issue with things like the XT-IDE is that they are 8bit controllers, and atapi demands at least 16bit data transfers. Since 8bit IDE controllers are rather rare, especially ones with multi IO (which that thing clearly has, judging from all the stuff on the back), I rather doubt he has one. I would bet a buck that it works just fine.

I should look to see if it really actually *needs* extended basic. It might be possible to re-write it with some dirty tricks if all it needs Ex-basic for is the increased character set.

(shakes head) Honestly...

That's more a factor of MSCDEX (and alikes) not knowing how to deal with UDF disks. For normal CD media, the DVD drive will work fine. You mostly want the burner for the improve reading capability anyway. For file transfers, I would just use the laplink cable and FX. No burning or fiddling required.

What's wrong with commodores? Some of their systems were quite swanky! TI just got a bad deal from Commodore's market flooding, which forced TI to stop selling to stay alive. That's not the computer's fault, that's the fault of managers from yesteryear.

(I would use FX.EXE and a laplink cable, using that swanky PII laptop.) (FX easily fits on a floppy. You can push hundreds of megabytes over the cable. Either way.)

CDrom should be fine. Getting one in IDE these days might be a trick, but ATAPI works on basically any IDE interface. (with exceptions for things like XT-IDE and pals. This is a 16bit interface though, so it should work fine) Edit-- No, you're right about it being a late one. Still probably lives in CHS mode with no ECHS or LBA function at all. That means Dynamic Disk Overlay time.

The IDE interface inside should work fine even if the hard disk does not. This opens options to you, such CF->IDE adapters. (and SD->CF adapter inside that even.) Since this is a 386 (and an early one at that), to get a drive over 500ish MB, you will likely need a dynamic disk overlay. This version of Disk Manager is universal and will work with anything. It should let you have very large capacity HDDs in the system. Be aware that DOS6.22 cannot see or use partitions larger than 2GB. For that, you need either FreeDOS or abuse Win98's "Dos parts". (EG, use a win98 EBD, with files copied from a win98 system's C:\windows\command folder, put in C:\dos instead, with appropriate paths set.) That will let you have FAT32, and large volume support.

I may have to try this with the Oregon Trail. It's an extended basic game-- will that alter the process?

8MB is a little on the thin side, but many dos games will work great with that. edit: Also, many PS/2 keyboards will work with an AT<->PS/2 adapter. I know model M keyboards do for certain. Oh, and mouse-- That's gonna need a serial mouse. A guy in the TI forums recently scored a classic Pre-Microsoft 3 button optical mouse (From Unisys) with the metal grid mousepad, and intends to list it on ebay. Go hit him up. And sound hardware (The back of the unit shows no sound hardware) (For slightly more you can get the older jumpered version) Should be good for just about anything after that.

Yes, Indeed! The very first mice were indeed optical, and used that pad. Since it has all the stuff, it may well be worth 50$.

Why not get a very retro wall phone? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg1960s-White-western-Electric-AT-T-Model-Rotary-Dial-Wall-Phone-Original-Box/153785687495?hash=item23ce575dc7:g:85cAAOSwt0FeEQc9

pics of the back? Looks like early 90s to me though. (91, 92..)

PC Mouse. http://oldcomputer.info/pc/apmice/index.htm RE: CTMOUSE Per the documentation you may have to use the /M argument

It's a serial mouse! Those are valuable for old DOS PCs! (Not sure if it speaks MS Mouse, or PC Mouse dialect though. Maybe something else? You said you have old retro PCs sitting around-- see if CTMOUSE sees it.)

It might just be a normal PS2 mouse... Just saying Unisys on it.

I find it useful for booting older laptops that have failing laser pots in their drives. It just needs to load a small stub reliably, rather than trying to read a whole OS's install files. For those units with the combination of "failing cdrom" + "Cannot boot USB natively", it's an effective combination. I have a fujitsu laptop that meets that description. Useful for starting linux live sticks on it. Said Fujitsu's button is, IIRC, F12. Brings up the boot drive selection menu.

True enough, but if the issue is "dodgy USB boot support", then PLOP should sort it, since you can boot that from a CDrom, then chainload the USB drive.

There is a cdrom that enables USB boot on systems that lack bios support.(or have dodgy support). http://m.majorgeeks.com/files/details/plop_boot_manager.html

Browsing the drivers for it at Fujitsu reveals it is AC'97. Specifically: Intel(r) 82440MX AC'97 Audio Controller

If it's like my Fujitsu Lifebook e2010, the audio hardware is AC97 based, so any games will have to run in a win98 dosbox, or you will need to install win2k and use either vdmsound+ntvdm, or dosbox.