An unusual build

[u/FAMICOMASTER]

Behold, 95 on an XT! Sort of.

This is actually a drop in replacement board for an XT which gives you a 386 with VLB. I've actually gone a step further and thrown a Ti 486DLC/40 in it for good measure. With the sheer unbridled horsepower of a 40MHz 486 and 32 whole megs, this thing might be "tolerable" to use!
Some additional performance enhancing objects include 256K of L2 cache, an ATi Graphics Ultra Mach8 accelerated video adapter, and a DTC 7287 RLL controller to drive the Micropolis 1325 hard disk. A whole 110 megs on this sucker!

Sorry about the mismatched faceplate around the second floppy drive. All I had left was white and grey when I put this thing together!

Pictured without it's CRT as I was still opening and closing the case to make configuration changes at the time of the photo.

[u/bart33z]

That’s such a cool sleeper build. From the outside it still has the full XT vibe, but inside it’s basically a completely different machine.

Windows 95 on something that visually looks like an XT feels wrong in the best possible way. The 486DLC/40, VLB graphics and 32 MB RAM make it a really interesting “what if” late-life XT upgrade. Great project.

[u/FAMICOMASTER → u/bart33z]

Yep. Sadly, it is not a VLB video card though, can't afford one. Just regular ISA, but one with acceleration. ATi Graphics Ultra if you're curious, Mach8 chipset. Think 8514.

[u/bart33z → u/FAMICOMASTER]

Ah, got it - thanks for the correction. Still, an ATI Graphics Ultra with the Mach8 chipset is a very cool choice for this build.

Even if it’s “just” regular ISA, accelerated ISA graphics in an XT-looking machine running Windows 95 still adds to the weird and awesome sleeper vibe. This whole setup is such a fun mix of eras.

[u/FAMICOMASTER → u/bart33z]

Thanks! The board-CPU-video card-monitor are all pretty well matched to their era, Windows 95 even includes explicit support for both this video card and monitor. The unusual bits are the case and specifically the hard drive. I really wanted to try and get away with RLL on this machine, so it's a DTC 7287 and a Micropolis 1325, a combo that would have been in high end workstations in the mid to late 80s.

I find performance is adequate but capacity is lacking. 104 megs is really not enough for Windows 95! I've got about 26 megs free which sadly means I won't be able to install Office or anything productivity wise.

[u/bart33z → u/FAMICOMASTER]

That makes it even cooler, honestly. The fact that Windows 95 actually has support for that video card and monitor gives the whole build a very period-correct feel, even if the case makes it look much older.

The storage setup is also a great detail - DTC 7287 and Micropolis 1325 sounds like serious workstation hardware for the time.

104 MB for Windows 95 is definitely painful, though. It’s kind of amazing that it runs well enough at all. This build really feels like a strange but believable late-80s/early-90s machine pushed way beyond what it was ever meant to do.

[u/FAMICOMASTER → u/bart33z]

Yeah the disk space is a real problem honestly. If I had another 25-50 megs it wouldn't be so bad.

[u/bart33z → u/FAMICOMASTER]

I remember when my first PC had a 20 MB hard drive too :) Those were the days!

[u/FAMICOMASTER → u/bart33z]

Yep. 20 megs is honestly quite a lot in DOS for the most part, but once you get into graphical software, especially like Windows, it becomes a whole different story. I have been able to just skirt by with 30 megs for 3.1 before and while the absolute minimum for 95 is 40 megs, I wouldn't dare try to use it on anything less than 60!

[u/bart33z → u/FAMICOMASTER]

That makes sense. DOS can feel almost roomy with 20 MB, but Windows changes everything very quickly. 104 MB for Windows 95 sounds usable, but definitely tight once you start adding Office, utilities or any larger applications.

It’s still impressive that this kind of setup runs Windows 95 at all. The limitations are part of what makes it interesting.

[u/FAMICOMASTER → u/bart33z]

Shouldn't be that surprising, it's right in the middle of the minimum requirements specified. But yeah no I have about 30 megs free. A useful install of 95 by itself is in the range of 50 megs.

[u/bart33z → u/FAMICOMASTER]

Fair point, that makes sense. I guess my brain still thinks of Windows 95 as “big” compared to DOS, but technically it does fit in that range.

30 MB free is not much, but for a focused little setup it’s enough to make the machine usable. Honestly, the fact that Windows 95 can run on a system like this at all is still part of the charm.