Well, I did it. I stuck that Asus board I got for $5 with the AMD K6 500 CPU I acquired in it into the 386 luggable case. Unfortunately, I couldn't use the 32MB RAM chips I got for it in there, since they were a bit too tall and space is really tight. So, I'm stuck (for now, at least) with 4x16MB = 64MB RAM. Anyway, the thing booted fine. Despite the fact that the BIOS report shows only a 400Mhz processor, the test version of Linux that's on the HD I hooked to it shows a 500Mhz processor. One thing that gives me a little cause for concern is the power supply: I can hear the CPU fan bog down when there is heavy HD activity (the fan hooks into the HD's power cable). No problems with operation so far, but if the power supply is slightly inadequate, what detrimental effects could it have on this (old, throw-away) hardware? But more important is the screen. This thing uses a wierd old ISA video card that powers the attached, approx 9" LCD monitor, but it can also send display to an external VGA monitor (db15 plug on it). At first, I got garbage output from the LCD but fiddling with some of the dip switches got me a coherent display. However, the display output only takes up about 3/4 of the screen: at the top and bottom are horizontal black bands, where there is no video output. I'm clearly seeing all there is to be displayed in the 3/4 of the screen that does appear, though. It's not as though part of what's being displayed is getting cut off. Rather, it seems that about 1/4 of the screen is just not getting used - the two horizontal bands at top and bottom that I mentioned. This condition applies both to BIOS output display, as well as Linux console. So, the BIOS seems not to be making full use of the LCD's display area, right? Any suggestions about how I might make maximum use of my paltry screen real estate on this thing?
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