old PC

Ok, here's what I have, a Packard Bell Legend 386SX. I got it off a neighbor for nothing with a Macintosh PowerPC, but had no use for the Mac so I had it recycled. Now I'm thinking that this PB is useless also. After messing around with it I learned that the 386SX was the only 386 to only run 16-bit instructions, which sucks because almost any software I find on the net is in 32-bit. I went to my local electronics shop and picked up two Soundblaster 16's (one pro, one regular) and a 3Com Etherlink III network card for 3 dollars a piece. All ISA cards, of course. Turns out the network card is 32-bit, but I managed to get the Soundblaster installed with no problems whatsoever. Except everything on the PC seems to use the system speaker and the only noise I've seen to be able to get out of the SB16 is what it does in the diagnostics. Looked on the net for a 16-bit MP3 player, but no luck.

Also, the floppy drives seem to dislike unformatted discs. When trying to format, it displays a disc read error. If I format on XP it works on the old machine, so I can't really understand why it won't format. Is it the drive or the PC? Both drives do this, but I can only test the 3.5in drive because my XP machine doesn't have a 5.25in drive (not like I have a use for it, anyway.)

I picked this up off my friend because I need a case to get my AMD 486 clone system running. 100 MHz baby! But Packard bell's proprietary motherboard has me stuck with using the 386 until I can find an AT case, which isn't particularly easy around here. I goto the used PC store that's by my house and ask for if they have any AT style cases and they point me to the ATX cases. Do these people know anything? I would just run it without a case, but my dad will doesn't want any caseless PC's running in his house.