I killed my DOS machine..

Whilst re-jigging my computer room, (box room really) i knocked a PSU onto my DOS Machine motherboard and although i see no damage now i can't get it to boot. (small lie there, i now see a bulging capacitor).

It was a VIA EPIA-M 900Mhz ITX board and was running using a PICO PSU, with DOS and Windows 3.11 on an SD Card. I was planning a CF card booting Win98SE after xmas. Drivers etc have been a pain to aquire but it was a fun project i kept going back to.

Now comes the ask... Does anyone have a socket 370 or 478 motherboard going spare, preferably with a CPU somewhere between 500Mhz and 1Ghz. Must be IDE which i think they all were. I can probably do a swap for some spare parts if required, may have a 775 motherboard and CPU.

And before anyone suggests DOSBox, i enjoy the building.

Thanks

If you’d broken it five years ago, I would’ve said yes . . . I had several Compaq Deskpro and Dell Dimension desktops that needed a new home . . .

Have a word with these guys, Aspire. I’ve sent them loads of obsolete but operational kit over the years

http://www.aspire-sheffield.co.uk

i'll have a look through, but I think I have an Athlon 1Ghz or 1.2 or something, with a bit of ram, on a board in my spare room, i'll dig it out tomorrow - not sure if they work or not but you're welcome to them!

might have a few bits, i'll see what I have laying around...

Thanks guys

I admire your efforts in resurrecting Windows 3.11 on hardware ; the furthest I ever went back was Windows NT 4.0 on hardware or NT 3.51 in a VM so I could try out the 32-bit versions of Microsoft Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0 with their long file names

Honestly though, after the initial giddy elation wore off, I don’t know why I even bothered in the first place

You won’t believe how much you miss the red-underlined spell correction until it’s gone

I got Photoshop 3.0 running (layers! Woohoo!) and an early version of Winzip 5 or 6

Browser support was woefully bad, being limited to little more than very early Netscape or IE

I know it's sad, but i have most fun hunting down drivers and getting them to work, trying different cards and boot options. Plug and play is great, but i do like solving an IRQ conflict. And i love the old blocky graphics of DOS games.

...Browser support was woefully bad, being limited to little more than very early Netscape or IE

Mmm! Netscape Navigator. Happy days.

I know it's sad, but i have most fun hunting down drivers and getting them to work, trying different cards and boot options. Plug and play is great, but i do like solving an IRQ conflict. And i love the old blocky graphics of DOS games.

I bet you have an eight track in the ford consul

Mmm! Netscape Navigator. Happy days.

Netscape Navigator 2 was good, 3 and 3 Gold (with the inbuilt HTML editor) was great.

How on Earth did they manage to mess things up so badly with Netscape Communicator 4

That convinced me Netscape would kill themselves before they were crushed by the Microsoft juggernaut

---------- Post added 15-12-2017 at 20:50 ----------

I know it's sad, but i have most fun hunting down drivers and getting them to work, trying different cards and boot options. Plug and play is great, but i do like solving an IRQ conflict. And i love the old blocky graphics of DOS games.

Try Windoom; all the fun of Doom, but without the nightmare of DOS

Remember the original Doom quit screen?

“I wouldn’t quit if I were you. DOS is much worse”

I've got you beat, I handmake flint arrowheads.

I know it's sad, but i have most fun hunting down drivers and getting them to work, trying different cards and boot options. Plug and play is great, but i do like solving an IRQ conflict. And i love the old blocky graphics of DOS games.

Talking of blocky graphics, Prince of Persia (the original DOS version) is now freely available and works on GNU/Linux too!