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Newly acquired CompuAdd 810 XT Clone

F

Formulator

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 17, 2015
Messages
141
Location
Dallas, TX
This system is almost in perfect condition, as it appears to have barely been used. There are no scuffs or scratches on the case and very little dust inside. However, it does not boot. PSU fires up just fine, HD whirrs away, but blank screen on the monitor, no beeps, drive activity, etc. It is now disassembled and cleaned. I will begin diagnosing the issue(s) during the week, but for now a few pics:

Many thanks to users 'vwestlife' and 'jmetal88' for their help thus far.

Motherboard: AI088
Processor: NEC v20, w/ 8087 co-processor
RAM: 640K
BIOS: Award XT 128K

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Floppy Drive: Newtronics D503V 360K 5.25"
Hard Drive: WD93028-X 20MB 3.5" HH IDE/XT
Power Supply: Senstron SQH-4154 150W

According to the manual, this system can accommodate HD floppy drives. A nice feature for an XT system. I am to understand extended keyboards may be used as well.
 
Man, it's so cool to see another one of these pop up here!

The 810 was my childhood computer, so I was super glad when vwestlife replied to my post on here about finding one. Yours looks to be more in the same configuration as the one I had as a kid, whereas the one I purchased from vwestlife was significantly upgraded. And yes, it does accommodate HD floppy drives (vwestlife had a 1.44MB drive installed in the one I bought from him, and it works fine).

By the way, I somehow still have the hard drive of either mine or my brother's 810. I wasn't sure it came from the 810 until I saw your picture just now, and it looks to be the exact same drive (or at least same manufacturer/series). Didn't work when I hooked it to my current 810, though, so I got a different one off eBay that seems to be doing alright. Pity, though, as I bet one or more of the missing CompuAdd utilities was on that drive, and I have no chance at recovering them now.
 
jmetal88 said:
Man, it's so cool to see another one of these pop up here!

The 810 was my childhood computer, so I was super glad when vwestlife replied to my post on here about finding one. Yours looks to be more in the same configuration as the one I had as a kid, whereas the one I purchased from vwestlife was significantly upgraded. And yes, it does accommodate HD floppy drives (vwestlife had a 1.44MB drive installed in the one I bought from him, and it works fine).

By the way, I somehow still have the hard drive of either mine or my brother's 810. I wasn't sure it came from the 810 until I saw your picture just now, and it looks to be the exact same drive (or at least same manufacturer/series). Didn't work when I hooked it to my current 810, though, so I got a different one off eBay that seems to be doing alright. Pity, though, as I bet one or more of the missing CompuAdd utilities was on that drive, and I have no chance at recovering them now.
Click to expand...

This will be the first challenging project I have worked on, as any other vintage machine worked when I received it. It also has a DS1287, but was flat. I will test PSU first and then move onto BIOS. By the way, I noticed that you dumped it and thank you for that. If the HD works I will scan the contents for the UTILS and forward them on. I know these are fragile, however I read that this particular model did not need to be parked, so there may be a chance of recovering data.

The only upgrade I will do is a CGA card with composite output. I also have Hercules Plus 112 as another option. Seems like I may need two XT's.

Which HD did you end up going with?

My childhood computer was the Acer/Multitech 710, mostly the same except no HD, only two 5.25's
 
The Seagate ST351A/X was the one I eventually ended up with. One plus is that it's configurable for either XTA (which is how I have to have it set for the 810) or ATA, although the main reason I bought it is because in the weeks I was watching eBay for an XTA drive, the ST351A/X I bought was the first one that came up at a reasonable price for me ($35).
 
Nice to see someone in the community bought it. :) I had to force myself not to buy it. I hope you bring it back to life!
 
After testing this machine, despite its flawless appearance, suffered from both 1) a faulty PSU, 2) an extremely dirty 5.25 FDD. It is now operational. I will be on to testing the HDD later this week. We are hoping it works, as to see if the long lost DIAGS are present. Standby for more.
 
/slight thread bump...

I also still have my 810, which really was my sister's when she was going to college in the early 1990's and I was fine to acquire it when she moved on. I was actually the one to help her pick out the parts for it in the first place. It was straight out of the Compuadd catalog and we got it as a kit (with printer, monitor, surge protector, etc). To stay close to $1000 though we had to stay with the CGA monitor. Since then I put in the higher density floppies, because - I don't know why or remember - I thought we picked out the HD FDD's, but it came with the SD floppies instead. Perhaps that's what we chose and didn't realize it.
 
I have a CompuAdd 810 in my basement left from previous owner of my house. I brought it up today. The outside of the case bottom and back is rusty, but the inside is in good shape. cleaned it up blew out the dust. Has the green screen monitor. No hard drive, single 5 1/4 floppy. Found a bag of disk with it. Dos 3.3 and other programs. Computer works. Had to clean the floppy drive heads after trying some of the disks. I could us a copy for the original manual if someone has one. I searched the net but could not find one. I don't have the math coprocessor and the ide chip is missing. I don't think it came with a hard drive when purchased. If no copy of the manual, would anyone have the jumper and switch setting chart for the motherboard?
 
jmetal88 has the manual for the 810. Perhaps he could be kind enough to scan in the pages with the jumper and DIP switch settings.
 
I would appreciate that very much. Does anyone know if the onboard video of the 810 will support vga? Installed a 3 1/2 floppy today. works great. Brings back long lost memories 20 + years servicing and installing IBM's PC/XP/286/386 and clones. First time I come across a CompuAdd. Read some online history about company. They were fairly successful for a while. So I am surprised to not have come across one till now. But I mostly worked on government equipment and few private sector systems. Government has deep pockets "ours" and mostly bought IBM and HP were I worked.
 
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The onboard video supports CGA and MDA/Hercules. You can disable it and install a VGA card if you want.

Most large businesses, not just government, stuck with the brands that had the best sales and service networks. Plus it helps that IBM already had their foot in the door due to the extensive use of IBM Selectric typewriters. That gave them an excellent segue to start selling computers to the same customers.

But I remember that at least around here, Sears stores used diskless workstation CompuAdd 386s as their POS terminals (cash registers), running Windows 3.1x, well into the late '90s.
 
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Reviving this old thread...
I found this beast (Compuadd 810) by the side of the road in a bunch of other techie junk.
Power supply is good. There was no HDD or any other drives other than the original 5.25 FDD. My knowledge of 8088s is extremely limited. I go as far back as 286 only. Is there any information that anyone can possibly share to get this unit going?
I installed a 8-bit VGA card that I had laying around but at startup all I get is some random beeps and a quick flashing gray screen. Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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