DOS rig help!

F

Fooozball

Member
I've got alot of spare parts in the attic and decided to create an old dos rig. I found a Pentium II 233 computer - Compaq 4824. It's got a crappy Quantam bigfoot 5.25" drive. I've got 1.44 floppy/5.25, and a CD drive for it. It has a daughter board, with a few slots for PCI/ISA. I've got a few ISA sound cards as well.

Now my questions are:

Is this board ATX? Apparently in '95 manufacturers switched over to the ATX form. Since it's a pentium 2 i'm guessing it is ATX.... my only doubt is that it is proprietary. I'd like to pick up a new ATX case for it, with some nice blue led fans/cathodes blah blah. Will it fit?

Also, while doing some more research... the max HD the bios will support is 8.5 gb. I have a 6.5gb. I'd like to do away with that quantam drive, and get a PCI to IDE controller card. Will my spare 60gb drive work if I get that card?

Thank you guys for your help!
 
Truthfully, I wouldn't bother with something that old. You can get all the legacy support you can handle in a virtual machine, and not have to bother with ancient hardware. A PCI IDE controller board would allow you to have a larger drive than 8.4GB, but that's still all the support that DOS has anyway, so it wouldn't make much difference. It would be painfully slow, too. I'm too spoiled by newer hardware to go back in time.
 
I knew someone would say that. I've done that already and would really like to play on the old hardware. Id run windows 98. Make it a cool gaming dos machine
 
1. For ATX, get the case anyway and if it doesn't fit, mod the case. It is only a matter of drilling a few holes in the motherboard tray. If you could get a picture, be it from the net or one you took, or the model of the board it would make it easier to give an answer.

2. Unless there is a BIOS flash available that will allow for larger drives, you can't use larget drives than the 8.5GB limit. Finding said BIOS though may be quite difficult given the age.

3. Do it anyway!! Being legacy hardware/software is not a reason not to use it, in a very nerdy way, DOS in general is a lot of fun to play with, for nostalgia and for learning purposes if used to everything being GUI rather than CLI
 
The board will not fit a standard ATX case, nothing will match up. Not even the back panel connectors or the slots. The 4824 has a sister board that the cards fit in.
This is the back of the case.
37215_4__86729_zoom.jpg
 
Thanks for the input guys. Strangehold, I finally realized that today. I picked up a P2 mobo atx. now just gunna pick up a case for it.... deciding wether or not to go with those old school white/beige ones... what do you guys think?

Will DOS boot from a CD? If I burn an ISO.
 
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I think it is imaged for a 3.5" floppy. You may get CD support with DOS 6 (the original base for windows) or DOS 7 (I think the base for 9x, but unsure).

good luck with your legacy build. Let us know how it turns out. Ive wanted to do something like this for a while.
 
Thanks wolfe! I definitely will! What do you think.... go with an older beige atx case... or a newer case with led's. I kinda wanna have that nostalgic feel of an older case with the hardware in it. but maybe have a few lights going.
 
the classic look for classic hardware. I think the idea of that.

Really, case is totally up to your taste. I like lights. The HAf912 is the god of cases IMO, but the classic beige is a enduring computer idea. Just depends on your taste.
 
Yeah definitely digging the older stuff. It's pretty tough to find anything half decent online. Looks like I'm gunna have to hit up my local computer shop.
 
it doesnt appear to have any cable management in it. Thats not a complete turnoff though, as a $10 bucket of zip ties and some electric tape/shrink wrap can work wonders.
 
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