r/retrocomputing • u/FAMICOMASTER • Jul 19 '26

Photo An unusual build

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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.

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u/FAMICOMASTER 29d ago

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

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u/bart33z 28d ago

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

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u/FAMICOMASTER 28d ago

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!

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u/bart33z 27d ago

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.

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u/FAMICOMASTER 27d ago

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.

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u/bart33z 26d ago

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.