386 box supertunning

[electronixguy]

@tom

No worries, I hope you can find someone to do the repair for you, it would be a shame to let it go because of a failed RTC...
I must say, from what I've seen of your 386, you've done an excellent job keeping it going so far. I'm sure you'll get it going again
If you have the time, I would recommend that you try to learn to solder, it's not as hard as it looks and it's definitely handy for working on vintage computers

Cheers,
-Bill

[paulpsomiadis]

electronixguy - @tom is correct...

I posted a nice set of 4x 4MB 30 pin SIMMs to @tom.

Whilst the packet arrived - the contents had been STOLEN!

It was a recorded packet too...

That's WHY I said DHL courier in my last post - this bypasses the Postal Services completely!

[electronixguy]

@paul

I remember reading that when I was reading the archived posts here before.
I wonder who ended up with the SIMMs? Not many people would even know what they are any more,
let alone have a use for them...
I can understand about using DHL in this situation, I would likely do the same.

They probably took the SIMMs because of the fact that it was registered mail, perhaps they figured that registered = $$$$

Some people.....

Cheers,
-Bill

[electronixguy]

News:

My thinkpad 390X finally arrived , over a month after it was ordered
from Toronto Ontario (about 2 hours from here). I know, it isn't the
newest thing (pentium2 400 with 128MB RAM & 6 GB HDD), but that
means that my fiance can now have my Toshiba Satellite Pro 330CDT,
and the AST Ascentia 800N can now be retired (again) and used for
playing with other old operating systems It's currently running OS/2
Warp 4 (really slowly, more of a controlled fall then running...).

Any suggestions what to put on it? 486sx 33 with 8MB RAM & 340MB
HDD, so nothing too modern will work. I was thinking about an older
version of Slackware or Debian Linux. Before installing anything, I'll
have to see what I can do about the dead floppy drive - I have a spare
floppy from an old Toshiba that works, I wonder if I can hook that up
to it temporarily... Either that or try to boot it with a PCMCIA flash drive
I have here (8MB)...

In other news, the snow is finally melting, so I've been working on
the boat some to get it ready for the season (I do diving charters with
it - people pay me to sit there and drive it, then listen to music or
read while they dive ). I've been thinking about mounting a computer
in the boat (1975 Mason 24 foot with a sleeper), mainly for MP3 and
some games, but not sure how to ensure that it will survive the dampness - maybe coat it in epoxy?

Anyhow, that's what's going on here in Canada at the moment.

@tom - I hope that you can manage to get your 386 running again soon, I'd like to see a few more of your
experiments with it.

Cheers,
-Bill

[jlf65]

You could try AROS. I don't remember if the 486 was supported, but the speed and ram is not a problem. It was meant for slow systems with little memory.

[electronixguy]

it looks interesting, but I doubt that it will work on this laptop.

Here's a bit from the AROS installation instructions:

"You will need a PCI-based PC-AT (based on i486 or later) with PS/2 or USB mouse, PS/2, AT or USB keyboard, IDE hard disk and CD-ROM on parallel ATA or SATA configured in legacy mode, and an (S)VGA video card and monitor. At least 24 MB of RAM is required. A VESA-compliant VGA card is recommended. There are generic 2D-accelerated drivers (HIDDs) for some ATI and nVidia cards."

Unfortunately, this machine only has 8MB of RAM, I think it's using ISA bus architecture, and it has no coprocessor installed (it's an SX-33). RAM is on proprietary modules, and I can't find any. Plus, the maximum amount of RAM available for this thing, I think, is 16MB Also, no CD on the old AST

Thanks for the info, though, I think I'll download the ISO and try it on another test box at some point...

Cheers,
-Bill

[electronixguy]

Hey again, everyone.

I finally got my hands on an old 386 laptop! Siemens-Nixdorf PCD-3Nsl (386SL-25), shipped with 2MB RAM, maxed out with 8MB (I think), this baby has a completely metal case. All that remains is to get it to power up. No hard disk at the moment, but I have a spare that should work in it just fine (340MB IBM), Floppy drive is there, no support for CD-ROMs (I'll use a parallel port external if I must...). Sadly, the LCD is busted, but it does have an external monitor port so I'll try that. I'll have to use my universal laptop power supply for it, as it didn't come with a power brick (it runs on 22.8 VDC!), so I'll have to find the right tip to plug into it... Such fun.

It has an internal MODEM, though I'm not sure of the speed (I'm assuming 14.4 KBPS), no PCMCIA expansion bus on this one - it predates it!

Wish me luck on powering it up, hopefully it still works (or at least doesn't blow up when plugged in...).

Also got an HP Omnibook XE3 (pentium 3-700, no HDD/RAM), needs to be charged to bring the CMOS battery back up, and I have to take the SODIMM from this one (Thinkpad 390X) and install it so the HP has any RAM, otherwise it just beeps very loudly when you turn it on. It's equipped with a DVD ROM drive (complete with CD player controls on the front of the machine, to run as a discman). Hopefully it will work tomorrow, it would be nice to have a laptop that could run most of the software I use on my tower... I'm too cheap to buy a new one, so I manage with older ones that I get free from a friend of mine who runs a local computer shop

Still looking for something interesting to run on the AST 486, and now to figure out what to run on that Siemens 386 (if it works...).

Cheers,
-Bill


UPDATE:

The Siemens machine doesn't fire up, hell, it doesn't do anything at all (no lights even)... I'm looking around for a service manual for it (preferably PDF or similar format), do any of you fine people think you might be able to help me in this quest? I would like to have the proper documentation on hand when I dismantle this thing, just to make sure that I do it properly, and to assist in locating and repairing the fault with the unit.

Otherwise, the HP is on the charger now, hopefully I have better luck with it...

Cheers,
-Bill

[jlf65]

I don't know where the "24 MB" comes from as it uses less than 2 MB, and most of that is the "kernel", such as it is. It might be that value comes from certain apps people try to run that fail with less than that amount of RAM, but AROS itself can run easily in less than 4 MB. It needs more than a real Amiga would as it loads its equivalent of the kickstart modules into RAM.

[electronixguy]

@jf65

Perhaps you're right on that, I seem to remember playing with AROS some time ago, and it was floppy-based... Maybe it's just the latest version that requires more RAM, I'll have to look into that more closely. Thanks for the info, I'll take a look again after I fix the wireless card on here (I think the antenna wire has let go, the signal is crap)...

Cheers,
-Bill

[Tom Maneiro]

electronixguy: Sorry about your Siemens laptop... finding service manuals for these things are hellish hard these days (if they exist at all). Have you done a deep check of the motherboard? Look for shorts, asploded capacitors, dead batteries and some misc failures... When i first had my 386, the thing refused to boot from the harddrive (a old Conner CP30084A)... until i whacked the drive several times. (BTW: that Conner drive recently died, but lasted a looong time....)

Have you considered to try MenuetOS there? I tried a long time ago... and it was an EPIC FAIL AROS? Sounds interesting... Let's save this one for another torture testing once i manage to fix that Dallas mess

[jlf65]

Apr 3, 2009 13:22:20 GMT -5 electronixguy said:

@jf65

Perhaps you're right on that, I seem to remember playing with AROS some time ago, and it was floppy-based... Maybe it's just the latest version that requires more RAM, I'll have to look into that more closely. Thanks for the info, I'll take a look again after I fix the wireless card on here (I think the antenna wire has let go, the signal is crap)...

Cheers,
-Bill

It's been several months since I last updated my AROS partition, but I can't imagine it started using that much memory that quickly. ;D

I made an AROS boot floppy for one of my systems (which doesn't have a CDROM), but most people use the boot CD. You can just boot the CD to try it - you don't have to install it on a HD first... assuming the system you have can boot from a CD. Systems that old sometimes didn't have the ability to boot from a CD. If it doesn't, you'll have to try the boot floppy. I'm curious about whether it'll work since I no longer have a system that old. The oldest PC I have still running is a dual P3 366 with 386 MB of ram. The system I use the boot floppy with is a CoreDuo SBC with 1 GB of ram.

[electronixguy]

jlf65 (it appears that I had your screen name wrong, terribly sorry about that)

I'll give it a shot and let you know what happens. The laptop in question completely lacks CD support, so I might have to try using an external unit, if I can find one that runs on the parallel port... Before I can even try the boot floppy, I'll have to get the floppy drive working properly (sometimes it works, but it usually refuses to read anything). I'll try it on my other thinkpad and see what happens (it's a P2/300 with a fried LCD).

As for the oldest PC - yours sounds interesting... The only multi-processor machine I have is a Netfinity 5500 M20-61Y, it's got 4 P3 Xeon 550s in it, but it really draws in the electricity. The oldest machine I have here that still works reliably is an Amstrad PPC512 (dual floppy, no HDD), it still works quite well.

Cheers,
-Bill

[Tom Maneiro]

I recently got a dual-processor Slot-1 Tyan motherboard, with TWO Pentium Pro's... on those ultra-rare "slotckets"... never thinked that there was such a thing like Socket 8-to-Slot-1 adapters...

However, i need to get a ATX PSU somewhere to see if this board still works... would make a nice Linux box Also got a bunch of Compaq PIII "kustom-ATX" motherboards. Since Compaq is evil crap, i have no interest in testing these (for starters: they DON'T WORK with standard ATX PSUs, they DO REQUIRE their custom and expensive PSUs. I got one matching PSU for these... but it was dead as a brick).

[electronixguy]

@tom

Sounds like you have an interesting board there, I wasn't aware of a slot adaptor for the Pro either. It likely would make a nice linux box, if it works properly. Let me know what happens when you locate a PSU for it, I'd be intrigued to see the system performance info.

As for the Compaq boards, I'd have to agree with you about them, they tend to be a pain in the ass at the best of times. Some older Dell machines are just as bad (even worse sometimes, as they look like a standard ATX connectors - they'll fry if you try it though). Maybe you could find someone to repair that PSU and try getting one of those boards running at least, if you find it to be worth the effort...

As for developments here: I have terrible news about the old Siemens 386 laptop - someone must have powered it up wet, as the regulator section is completely fried. It's been shelved for possible repair later. And the HP omnibook has been parted out, because someone strong-armed it while taking it apart, and the CPU socket is damaged beyond repair along with the heatsink/fan cooler... Oh well, at least I got some more parts for the collection.

Cheers,
-Bill

[jlf65]

I don't worry about screennames - as long as you can sorta tell who was being addressed, no big deal.

The system, specifically, was the ABit BP6, a very interesting mobo. I've also got a dual Opteron 240 system. My main system is an Athlon X2 4600+. I'll probably get an X4 later in the year.

I've got a couple older laptops: an ECS G320 (rebranded for WalMart) which is a VIA C7 1GHz system, and an older P3 system (the speed slips my mind at the moment). I've got an old P2 400 mobo around here somewhere... I never toss out any of my old computers, and you can't really sell them for what you put into them. I always laugh when I see a classified ad where someone is trying to sell their old 386 for $3000 because that's how much they put into the whole system. They don't realize such a thing might have cost them $3000, but they'd be lucky to trick someone into paying $300, and you can find the same or better for $30.