Building my childhood dream PC

Summary

May 1, 2025 Building my childhood dream PC In 1993, I was 14 and already passionate about computers[1]. That year my mother managed to buy a PC for the household. That was quite an effort for a single mother. My brother Aurelien and I spent every waking hour on this machine, staying up all night on weekends. Discovering the architecture of the PC, learning to program it, exploring how to manage its memory with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, installing isa cards, drawing with Deluxe Paint, and of course playing games like Dune II, Syndicate, or Day of the Tentacle was so much fun. That time period sets us both on a trajectory towards prolific engineering careers. One year later we found out the Conforama salesman had tricked us. The Cyrix 486SLC-25Mhz he sold us was just a 386 which could barely run games like DOOM and Strike Commander in stamp size at minimal details level. Of course the neighbor had an IBM PS/1 2168 486DX2-66Mhz where these games ran butter-smooth at 25fps. That IBM PC was as gorgeous as it was insanely expensive. Adjusted to inflation it fetched close to $6,000. By the time I was old enough to pick up strawberries during the summer to make my own money, Big Blue had been defeated by PC clones. They exited the desktop market shortly after their Aptiva line flopped. I never got a chance to own that IBM[2]. During the winter of 2024 I went back in time and gave that 14-year-old the means to acquire his dream PC. This is the story of how I restored an IBM 2168 and maxed out DOOM. Parts Part 1: Introduction Part 2: Unboxing Part 3: Picking a keyboard Part 4: Picking a screen Part 5: Capturing the screen Part 6: Installing PC-DOS 7 Part 7: Problems with the FDD Part 9: Networking Part A: Sound card Part B: CD-ROM Part C: MIDI musics Part D: Speakers Part E: DOOM Part F: More games Part G: Upgrading the L2 cache Part H: Upgrading the CPU Part I: Epilogue A design screaming "excellence" Announced in March 1993[3][4], the 2168 was part of IBM's 30-model line...