In the late 80's early 90's all PCs, obviously, were nothing like the plug and play we have today. Most the major players who made controller cards provided driver disks with their hardware. You're going to have issues with any manufacturer, drivers are always an issue when working with orphaned hardware slapped together into a single system that was never originally built that way.
The reason I am suggesting Dell in particular is that their 386/486 stuff was when they were "the best" growing company with the best value. Compared with contemporary Compaq or HP stuff of the same years I'd always find Dell easier to work with. EISA? You'd better start snapping up spare parts now, this is not a bus that I would pick as my ultimate 386/486 bus if I planned to support it in the future, too hard to find parts. Go with what's cheap now on Ebay, iSA and SCSI. Just so you know, I have Dell from this era but also Compaq, Gateway, IBM, HP, Digital Equip Corp, Packard Bell (it was good then too). No clones. Quietly I have been waiting for 386/486 to become "vintage"....I remember when on this list you'd get your head snapped off if you brought up an IBM 5150...time moves on. Bill
