Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines

[Jon Auringer via cctalk]

- Original Message -
> From: "devin davison" <lyokob...@gmail.com>
> To: "Jon Auringer" <aurin...@tds.net>
> Cc: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2018 12:51:14 PM
> Subject: Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines
> 
> It is the 2500 SX. The drive is a quantum prodrive LPs 105 AT.
> The drive spins up but is not recognized.

So, have you made any progress with the Tandy?

-Jon

Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines

[Warner Losh via cctalk]

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 12:56 PM, Ethan via cctalk 
wrote:

> That is a very standard IDE drive that you can replace with just about any
>> IDE drive you can find, at least to get things up and running. The
>> controller won't support the faster transfer speeds of later drives, and
>> may not support the full capacity of the larger drives, but the newer
>> drives should be backward compatible. Something in the 500MB range would
>> probably be a good choice. Also, looking at the information I have on the
>> motherboard the drive controller can't be disabled. You may be able to add
>> a secondary drive controller, but booting from the hard disk on that
>> controller _may_ not be possible.
>>
>
> On the old 386 era PCs you have to specify cyl/head/sector/lz type stuff
> in the BIOS usually? It's possible to sub in a CF card on the IDE bus with
> a cheap adapter, but I'm not sure how the cyl/head/sector stuff plays out.
> Maybe go with something fairly small like 32MB and a CF to IDE adapter
> (it's just wires, CF cards are similar to early PCMCIA which is ATA which I
> think is just buffered ISA but I could have it wrong?)
>
> I did this recently on a 486 but it had an auto-detect feature for the
> hard drive parameters. Maybe they don't really matter when using a CF Card
> -- does anyone know?
>

The CF card has a geometry it returns via the standard IDENTIFY command.
It's just a IDE drive after all. Some of the fields are a little different
than a spinning disk, and some newer BIOSes (newer than 386 era,
mid-486/early-586 era) have heartburn due to that. You can often find out
what it is if you can connect it to an PATA interface. USB adapters,
however, lie.

I've deployed thousands of CF cards over the years, and they all have
different geometries. Our imaging software had to cope (so couldn't just dd
the image on, but instead read the geometry, created appropriate
partitions, newfs'd a FS and mounted it, then copied the files to it), and
it was in the late-486/mid-586 era hardware. I was so happy when LBA
addressing went in...

Warner

Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines

[Ethan via cctalk]

That is a very standard IDE drive that you can replace with just about 
any IDE drive you can find, at least to get things up and running. The 
controller won't support the faster transfer speeds of later drives, and 
may not support the full capacity of the larger drives, but the newer 
drives should be backward compatible. Something in the 500MB range would 
probably be a good choice. Also, looking at the information I have on 
the motherboard the drive controller can't be disabled. You may be able 
to add a secondary drive controller, but booting from the hard disk on 
that controller _may_ not be possible.


On the old 386 era PCs you have to specify cyl/head/sector/lz type stuff 
in the BIOS usually? It's possible to sub in a CF card on the IDE bus with 
a cheap adapter, but I'm not sure how the cyl/head/sector stuff plays out. 
Maybe go with something fairly small like 32MB and a CF to IDE adapter 
(it's just wires, CF cards are similar to early PCMCIA which is ATA which 
I think is just buffered ISA but I could have it wrong?)


I did this recently on a 486 but it had an auto-detect feature for the 
hard drive parameters. Maybe they don't really matter when using a CF Card 
-- does anyone know?


Another option is the ISA CF/IDE card from GlitchWorks. It has it's own 
BIOS AFAIK and you don't need to worry about specifying the drive info in 
the bios. I have 3 or 4 but haven't tried them yet.


On PCI systems Promise FastTrak IDE cards take care of the BIOS drive 
specification annoyances -- I use a PATA IDE to SD card widget on a 
FastTrak 100 on my Pentium luggable -- works well.



--
: Ethan O'Toole

Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines

[Jon Auringer via cctalk]

- Original Message -
> From: "devin davison" <lyokob...@gmail.com>
> To: "Jon Auringer" <aurin...@tds.net>
> Cc: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Thursday, March 1, 2018 12:51:14 PM
> Subject: Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines
> 
> It is the 2500 SX. The drive is a quantum prodrive LPs 105 AT.
> The drive spins up but is not recognized.

That is a very standard IDE drive that you can replace with just about any IDE 
drive you can find, at least to get things up and running. The controller won't 
support the faster transfer speeds of later drives, and may not support the 
full capacity of the larger drives, but the newer drives should be backward 
compatible. Something in the 500MB range would probably be a good choice. Also, 
looking at the information I have on the motherboard the drive controller can't 
be disabled. You may be able to add a secondary drive controller, but booting 
from the hard disk on that controller _may_ not be possible.

> >> The tandy 2500 is pretty nice as well, it has a cdrom and a hard drive
> >> installed, although the hard drive is dead and seems to only accept AT
> >> hard drives.
> >
> > Which model of the 2500 did you find? the 2500 SX/20, SX/33 & RSX
> > motherboards all seem to have built-in IDE drive controllers. What model
> > is the hard disk?

-Jon

Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines

[devin davison via cctalk]

It is the 2500 SX. The drive is a quantum prodrive LPs 105 AT.
The drive spins up but is not recognized.

On Thu, Mar 1, 2018 at 9:43 AM, Jon Auringer <aurin...@tds.net> wrote:
> Hi Devin,
>
> - Original Message -
>> From: "devin davison via cctalk" <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
>> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" 
>> <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 5:05:03 PM
>> Subject: Picked up a couple 386 machines
>
>>
>> The tandy 2500 is pretty nice as well, it has a cdrom and a hard drive
>> installed, although the hard drive is dead and seems to only accept AT
>> hard drives.
>
> Which model of the 2500 did you find? the 2500 SX/20, SX/33 & RSX 
> motherboards all seem to have built-in IDE drive controllers. What model is 
> the hard disk?
>
> -Jon

Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines

[Jon Auringer via cctalk]

Hi Devin,

- Original Message -
> From: "devin davison via cctalk" <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2018 5:05:03 PM
> Subject: Picked up a couple 386 machines

> 
> The tandy 2500 is pretty nice as well, it has a cdrom and a hard drive
> installed, although the hard drive is dead and seems to only accept AT
> hard drives.

Which model of the 2500 did you find? the 2500 SX/20, SX/33 & RSX motherboards 
all seem to have built-in IDE drive controllers. What model is the hard disk?

-Jon

Re: Picked up a couple 386 machines

[Bill Degnan via cctalk]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 6:05 PM, devin davison via cctalk <
cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:

> While working at the scrapyard today, i managed to get a couple 386
> machines right as they were being dropped off. One is a pakard bell
> with monitor, in pristine condition. The other is a Tandy 2500 with
> monitor, in rough looking shape but working too. The monitor is pretty
> beat up for the tandy but working.
>
> I have been on the look ut for a good 386 mahine for a while now, i
> got kinda lucky and picked up two working systems in one day.
>
>
Glad to hear.  I think it's worth holding onto one or two 386 machines for
their historical context.  the 286 / 386 was a jump into a new era of what
one could do with Intel desktops.
Bill

Picked up a couple 386 machines

[devin davison via cctalk]

While working at the scrapyard today, i managed to get a couple 386
machines right as they were being dropped off. One is a pakard bell
with monitor, in pristine condition. The other is a Tandy 2500 with
monitor, in rough looking shape but working too. The monitor is pretty
beat up for the tandy but working.

I have been on the look ut for a good 386 mahine for a while now, i
got kinda lucky and picked up two working systems in one day.

The pakard bell is up and running fine, it was a pretty standard
machine and just needed a hard drive.

The tandy 2500 is pretty nice as well, it has a cdrom and a hard drive
installed, although the hard drive is dead and seems to only accept AT
hard drives.

I am still learning about tandy computers, on my other machines, i was
unable to find an 8 bit isa cad that could support newer ide drives.
On the machine i just picked up it looks like a 16 bit isa slot is
free, if i were to install a 16 bit ide hard drive controller for use
with newer ide drives, would it work, or cause some kind of conflict
with the onboard hard drive controller?

The floppy drive is quite dirty but reads disks sometimes, i need to
clean it up. Im hoping to post back with a couple pictures of both the
machines running. I do not need them both, I really like the packard
bell, but if someone absolutely needs a 386 machine with monitor I am
open to offers to get one shipped out and keep the other one.

--Devin