A case of dual personality?

[facattack]

I've got a really odd idea in my head. I've got a Dell Dimension 8100 P4 computer. The case has room for four (?) drives, has a 3.5 floppy drive, and can fit two hard drives. It has a motherboard with the P4 on it. Would I be able to put parts from a Tandy 1000 SX into it?

Like take the motherboard out of the SX, put the hard drive in one bay and the Dell hard drive in the other. Put a DVD-ROM drive in bay 1, have that being fed by the newer motherboard. A CD-RW burner in bay 2, also being fed into the newer motherboard. An old 3.5 drive in bay 3, being fed into the old motherboard. And a 5.25 drive in bay 4, being fed into the old motherboard.

Is this a crazy idea?


Failing all that, how do you boot the computer so that XMS doesn't run so I can use Tand-EM to emulate the Tandy?

 

[creepingnet]

I've got a really odd idea in my head. I've got a Dell Dimension 8100 P4 computer. The case has room for four (?) drives, has a 3.5 floppy drive, and can fit two hard drives. It has a motherboard with the P4 on it. Would I be able to put parts from a Tandy 1000 SX into it?

Like take the motherboard out of the SX, put the hard drive in one bay and the Dell hard drive in the other. Put a DVD-ROM drive in bay 1, have that being fed by the newer motherboard. A CD-RW burner in bay 2, also being fed into the newer motherboard. An old 3.5 drive in bay 3, being fed into the old motherboard. And a 5.25 drive in bay 4, being fed into the old motherboard.

Is this a crazy idea?


Failing all that, how do you boot the computer so that XMS doesn't run so I can use Tand-EM to emulate the Tandy?

Trust me, I've considered that idea heavily a few times, both involving a Tandy 1000 SX, and a 486, and especially in the case of the Tandy, the parts probably would not fit, and it would take a LOT of elbow grease and cutting and welding to get them to fit in that tiny space, as well as limit the expansion possbilities of one or both the computers in the same case. This comes from a guy who modified an old GEM AT clone to fit an ATX motherboard.

As for booting the computer so that XMS does not run, I dunno if your Dell has a floppy or not, but I think that was what the Tand-Em instructions said to use. Chances are you're probably using Windows XP if it's anything fairly recent, so booting to DOS is a no no (XP is NT base, not DOS based) if you don't have a floppy disk or a different FAT-16/32 filesystem partition. You MIGHT be able to make a CD-ROM that's bootable and run it off that, but that would keep you from playing certain games (such as Ultima) as the computer won't be able to write to the CD.

As for the TAndy 1000 SX, do you have one, if so, you could run the software on that machine natively possibly. One way I pull it off on my IBM XT is a 16 bit Floppy Controller with a 1.44MB floppy drive hitched up to the 16 bit controller with no special drivers, you can't write the disks, but you can read them, as long as they are 1.44MB. Also, don't use the regular Tandy controller because that will blow a stock 3.5" drive up (If I remember right, the 1000 SX draws power from the drive cable and NOT the power supply).

Just my bit of insight on tne subject since it's something I've fooled around with before.

 

[facattack]

Well, I have a Gateway with ME, a newer Dell with XP, and the older Dell has no operating system. I have a friend who could install Ubuntu (a Linux OS) on the older Dell. Or if not that, I ordered "FreeDOS" on CD-ROM.

But my other option is a Packard Bell 486 computer with Windows 3.1 that I'm expecting to be mailed to me today. The guy said he had 5.25 which he could send me seperately. If I hook up a drive bay adaptor, or whatever those things are called, I'd be able to power the 5.25 via the power supply? I'm assuming 3.1 is old enough so that it doesn't have XML.