PC specs are as follows:
CPU: Am386 SX-40, 40 MHz
Cooler: no
GPU: Trident VGA card, 512K VRAM, clock speed: probably outpaced by an actual clock
RAM: 4096K SIMM clocked at 40MHz
Storage: 125MB HDD, 1440KiB floppy
Sound: Sound Blaster Pro 2.0
PSU: Dude this is a 1.55W CPU, a hamster could power it
5 Comments
You need to put more clocks in it to overclock it, digital clocks doesn’t work tho
On a more serious note, this is a 386 and the clock on them works a bit differently than on later PCs.
Looking at the photo, you may notice a crystal oscilator at the bottom. It’s 80MHz. If I’m understanding this correctly, it’s for both the FSB and the CPU clock so it is somehow split in half. So for example a 33 MHz CPU clock would need a 66.67 MHz crystal.
The heat on the CPU gets intense after about an hour of running Doom. Didn’t feel like getting my IR thermometer but judging by touch, I’d say about 80°. This is one of the most powerful 386s and I feel like they should have used at least a small heat sink. But I’ve never seen heatsinks on any 386 so maybe it was fine back in the day. But they are 35 years old now and well used so extremes could kill them.
It locks up from time to time even at stock speed. Probably age related.
Clearly it needs more VRAM.
put some deep cool freezer on that
🙂
386sx was my first build. Bit long ago, my brain remembers at that times cases were sold with preinstalled PSU as a standard.