Big Flippers Ep5 - The Big Sold, but first I need to install MS-DOS on a 90's 486 PC and upgrade it!

Lightning Boy Audio
Lightning Boy Audio
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Published 2024-06-13
In this final episode of Big Flippers, Mike upgrades a 90's PC with modern parts and installs MS-DOS on it just in time for the AMEK Big 28 mixing board to be picked up by it's new owner, Adam Horwitz of New Jersey. The console will be living in his home studio where Adam plans to provide mixing services online.
The primary content of this video is a walk through tutorial in which you'll see how to set up a compact flash card as a solid state alternative to an old noisy mechanical HDD. Then you'll get a how-to on swapping out the mechanical floppy drive for a solid-state floppy emulator. The computer power supply gets recapped and a new fan, the coin battery gets replaced, and then the installs! The next thing covered is how to install MS-DOS 6.22, then how to install a mouse driver, and lastly the installation of AMEK's Super True automation program. The final thing to do before Adam shows up is to configure the computer to automatically boot directly into the Super True automation program as soon as the PC gets turned on. Adam got a whole lot of console, so to help him wrap his head around the system, he spent the first half of the day learning from me on my Big 44 at LBA Studios (www.lbastudios.com/).
I'm selling a nearly identical automation computer on Reverb. Here's a link to that listing: reverb.com/item/82976454-amek-super-true-automatio…

- I used a Gotek Floppy Emulator: a.co/d/hsdQ5b3
- Here's the Compact Flash to IDE adapter I used: a.co/d/8ZlQbd0
-You'll need a compact flash card to set up as a hard drive. Here's the one I went with: www.ebay.com/itm/145249078742

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All Comments (11)
  • @andrewtaylor9704
    Great video; I think I would have went for finding an early ATX pentium board. You could have then used a new case and a new modern PSU.
  • @charlievela
    This is FANTASTIC, I own an Angela II and have thought about doing exactly this for years. Thank you!
  • @gsestream
    yeah rpi zero style mini computers are just fine, and those 486/pentium computers
  • @lucasrem
    I moded MSCDEX so it can address all drives in DOS 6.22
  • @StenIsaksson
    Mac users would struggle to install DOS, or Windows, because they can't find the Any key. ;)
  • @Lmoes
    Great stuff!! I want to do this with my 501. No chance you could add a simple parts list to this for some easy ebay browsing? Followed this whole restoration and am very impressed.
  • @fwingebritson
    Given the aversion, and disdain for older hardware, why not just use PCEM or 86box to do effectively the same thing with newer hardware?