From 5412760663217cc7897c29884fcc7e3fe6ec6085 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Stefan Koelle Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2026 22:51:46 +0200 Subject: [PATCH] Remove incorrect ET4000 references from DOS 486 article --- retro/dos-486-tower/index.njk | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/retro/dos-486-tower/index.njk b/retro/dos-486-tower/index.njk index a723c85..81016af 100644 --- a/retro/dos-486-tower/index.njk +++ b/retro/dos-486-tower/index.njk @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ parent: "/retro/"

Long before Atari ST and Amiga took over the retro corner, a Vobis-Highscreen 486 DX2-66 in its distinctive Colani-designed tower case was the main PC. The original hardware is long gone, and I never kept a backup, so this MiSTer FPGA build isn't a byte-for-byte copy. It's a rebuild from memory, set up the way I remember it and the way it felt to use back then, the DOS version, the drivers, and the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS that got everything working.

The original hardware

-

The Vobis-Highscreen was a premium PC in its day, the Colani design gave it a distinctive curved case that still looks futuristic. Inside it ran an Intel 486 DX2 at 66MHz with 8MB of RAM, a Sound Blaster 16, and a Tseng ET4000 graphics card. A 200MB hard drive and a 3.5" floppy drive completed the setup. The machine was the go-to system for early-90s classics like Doom, Wing Commander, Duke Nukem 3D, and Lemmings.

+

The Vobis-Highscreen was a premium PC in its day, the Colani design gave it a distinctive curved case that still looks futuristic. Inside it ran an Intel 486 DX2 at 66MHz with 8MB of RAM and a Sound Blaster 16. A 200MB hard drive and a 3.5" floppy drive completed the setup. The machine was the go-to system for early-90s classics like Doom, Wing Commander, Duke Nukem 3D, and Lemmings.

The MiSTer recreation

The AO486 core on MiSTer FPGA handles the hardware convincingly. The real work was rebuilding the software environment from memory: the MS-DOS version, the memory managers (HIMEM.SYS, EMM386), the Sound Blaster drivers, and the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS tuning that made the original machine run smoothly.

@@ -33,6 +33,6 @@ parent: "/retro/"

AO486 vs real hardware

-

The MiSTer AO486 core handles the emulation convincingly. Timing accuracy is good enough for games that rely on cycle-sensitive behavior. Sound Blaster emulation covers the standard OPL3 FM synthesis and digital audio. The main trade-off is that some hardware-specific quirks, like the exact timing of the ET4000 graphics card or the behavior of specific ISA bus peripherals, aren't perfectly replicated. But since this is a rebuild from memory rather than an exact copy anyway, that's more than good enough for a working DOS environment.

+

The MiSTer AO486 core handles the emulation convincingly. Timing accuracy is good enough for games that rely on cycle-sensitive behavior. Sound Blaster emulation covers the standard OPL3 FM synthesis and digital audio. The main trade-off is that some hardware-specific quirks, like the behavior of specific ISA bus peripherals, aren't perfectly replicated. But since this is a rebuild from memory rather than an exact copy anyway, that's more than good enough for a working DOS environment.