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Compaq 386/20e HDD, Bios Problem!!!

I'm running a 32 GB HD in my 386/20e (actually 80 GB jumpered to look like 32 GB). I set the BIOS type to 49 - the largest supported by the Compaq BIOS, which shows up as a 640 MB drive. Using Compaq MSDOS 5.0, I was able to partition it and get it formated for DOS 5.0. Once that was done, I was able to create a second partition of the same size to install NT 3.51. I kept this to the same size as the DOS partition, but I may have been able to extend this up to 8 GB with an NTFS partition - I didn't try that. Note that this would extend past the end of the BIOS drive settings, but I was able to do it. Running ZipSlack (Slackware Linux on a ZIP drive), I was able to partition the rest of the drive for Linux swap and root partitions. Linux is new enough to interrogate the IDE drive for its actual parameters instead of relying on the BIOS settings. Linux now resides on the ~30GB partition, although it boots off the DOS partition with LOADLIN.

The trick to making it all work is keeping the active boot partition matched up to the BIOS HD type. Booting somewhat newer OSes, or a driver to allow access to the rest of the drive, is the way to go.

BTW, the 386/20e is my favorite PC of all. A style and build quality that remains unmatched, IMHO.
 
T-R-A said:
Glad you got access to the BIOS. Maybe my working with "old iron" wasn't such a bad thing after all.

FWIW---If you're going to still use the 10GB HDD to test out with, it may be of some use to find out the complete table of usable drive types before trying to set it up and format it to a different capacity. I have a utility called "ROMTABLE" which displays the available types (which keeps you from having to scroll through the BIOS). If you want, I can probably e-mail it to you.
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Yea, I acessed the bios and put the Hdd to type 49, and now I am Installing dos 6.22. I am going to send you my mail on PM, and one more time thanks.

EDIT: I am total newbie here, how do I send Private Messages?
 
Interesting read. I'd imagine you've got lotsa RAM in that machine to handle NT 3.51. From what I remember, you could also swap out CPU boards with some of the "newer" Deskpro/M series and go to (at least) a 486DX2-66 CPU in the 386/20e series (maybe even higher).

BTW, the 386/20e is my favorite PC of all. A style and build quality that remains unmatched, IMHO
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Yep, most people don't realize that the older Deskpro series was one of the toughest-built machines around...a little difficult to configure sometimes (especially EISA-models), but once you got them setup correctly, they'd just about run forever.
 
EDIT: I am total newbie here, how do I send Private Messages?
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I think it depends on how "new" you are here (you may not have PM yet---think I just got it recently). Nonetheless, I've posted my e-mail addy on your messages on your profile and invited you to my friends list.
 
T-R-A said:
Interesting read. I'd imagine you've got lotsa RAM in that machine to handle NT 3.51. From what I remember, you could also swap out CPU boards with some of the "newer" Deskpro/M series and go to (at least) a 486DX2-66 CPU in the 386/20e series (maybe even higher).



Yep, most people don't realize that the older Deskpro series was one of the toughest-built machines around...a little difficult to configure sometimes (especially EISA-models), but once you got them setup correctly, they'd just about run forever.
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The 386/20e predates the plug-in CPU cards, like the L boxes. However, you can still find the Cyrix 486drx2 to upgrade it:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?46488-Cx486drx2

I'm running the Cx486drx2 with drivers for DOS, NT 3.51, and Linux - roughly equivalent to a 486/16. Also have 16 MB (the max amount) so it runs NT 3.51 and Slackware 7 nicely.
 
However, you can still find the Cyrix 486drx2 to upgrade it:
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I've got a Texas Instruments TX486DLC-25GA sitting around here waiting for a machine to drop it into. I'm sure there's a 386DX-25 sitting in the basement somewhere. Would be interesting to have NT3.51 setup on a machine somewhere---NT 3.x is probably the only version of Windows (before Win7) I don't have running...
 
T-R-A said:
I've got a Texas Instruments TX486DLC-25GA sitting around here waiting for a machine to drop it into. I'm sure there's a 386DX-25 sitting in the basement somewhere. Would be interesting to have NT3.51 setup on a machine somewhere---NT 3.x is probably the only version of Windows (before Win7) I don't have running...
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Windows 3.51 was the last version of NT to support the 386. However, by installing all the service packs, including the newshell (win95 GUI), you get something very close to NT 4.0 but still lean enough for limited hardware. The 386/20e is my only machine from the '80s that can still be a first class citizen - the perfect bridge machine. With networking, 5 1/4, 3.5, Zip 100 and CD-ROM, it covers all my PC media formats.
 
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Windows 3.51 was the last version of NT to support the 386. However, by installing all the service packs, including the newshell (win95 GUI), you get something very close to NT 4.0 but still lean enough for limited hardware.
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So I would imagine that NT3.51 would scream on a 486DX4-100 w/64MB of RAM. Interesting. How "close" is the newshell to the explorer interface on NT4? And finally, what would be the last version of Firefox that would work on NT3.51 (I'm assuming 32-bit, since MS only supported the 16-bit version of IE)?
 
T-R-A said:
So I would imagine that NT3.51 would scream on a 486DX4-100 w/64MB of RAM. Interesting. How "close" is the newshell to the explorer interface on NT4? And finally, what would be the last version of Firefox that would work on NT3.51 (I'm assuming 32-bit, since MS only supported the 16-bit version of IE)?
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Yeah, a 486DX4-100 would scream. Unfortunately, finding a decent browser is near impossible. The 16 bit IE is the only one I know of that runs on NT 3.5 But, here is how the desktop looks:
NT-351.jpg
 
Ok, so I got a new HDD 428 MB(dirt cheap, for 1$), and installed dos 6.22 and win 3.1, now my question is do I need any drivers, for the graphics card or so.
 
You never mentioned if you were using the onboard video or a video card but in both cases look up the chipset (or card model) and see if someone has the drivers archived somewhere, otherwise they will run the basic MDA/CGA/EGA/VGA modes under DOS applications and Windows which isn't really bad unless you know it can do something better.
 
NeXT said:
You never mentioned if you were using the onboard video or a video card but in both cases look up the chipset (or card model) and see if someone has the drivers archived somewhere, otherwise they will run the basic MDA/CGA/EGA/VGA modes under DOS applications and Windows which isn't really bad unless you know it can do something better.
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I use the onboard graphics, but in bios it shows up as "compaq onboard graphics" and in windows as "vga", there are many chips on the motherboard, for what chips do I need to look(what form are they), I can take a picture of the motherboard if it is helpfull.

EDIT: I atached the picture of the motherboard(needs deep cleaning), where could the graphics chip be?:confused:
 

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VintageWins!!! said:
I use the onboard graphics, but in bios it shows up as "compaq onboard graphics" and in windows as "vga", there are many chips on the motherboard, for what chips do I need to look(what form are they), I can take a picture of the motherboard if it is helpfull.

EDIT: I atached the picture of the motherboard(needs deep cleaning), where could the graphics chip be?:confused:
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The built-in video on the 386/20e is a bog-standard VGA. Nothing fancy at all. It will do 800x600 with the NT 3.51 VGA driver, assuming your monitor can handle it.
 
Chuck(G) said:
How about an old version of Netscape Navigator?
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I haven't been able to get any 32 bit web browser to run. IE 3.0 (but in 16 bit mode) and 16 bit Netscape 2.01 run, but they are so old that the browsing experience it pretty awful. If browsing is your desire, I think NT 4.0 is the earliest NT version to support anything usable.
 
VintageWins!!! said:
I use the onboard graphics, but in bios it shows up as "compaq onboard graphics" and in windows as "vga", there are many chips on the motherboard, for what chips do I need to look(what form are they), I can take a picture of the motherboard if it is helpfull.

EDIT: I atached the picture of the motherboard(needs deep cleaning), where could the graphics chip be?:confused:
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The video chip and the RAM for it are on the bottom right of the board above the power connector. It looks like there is 512k of video memory which would just barely allow you to squeak by at 800x600@8bpp (469k vram usage.) If you're feeling adventurous, you could try soldering extra video memory on the open pads above the existing video memory. Old S3 video cards have what looks like the same type of memory so it might be a good place to get donor chips from. If the existing memory is 512k then you'd be up to 1 MB of video memory with the additional chips.

With 1 MB of video memory, you'd be able to run 24 bit color in 640x480, 16 bit color in 800x600 and have an additional mode (if the video chip supports it) of 1024x768 at 8 bit.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
The video chip and the RAM for it are on the bottom right of the board above the power connector. It looks like there is 512k of video memory which would just barely allow you to squeak by at 800x600@8bpp (469k vram usage.) If you're feeling adventurous, you could try soldering extra video memory on the open pads above the existing video memory. Old S3 video cards have what looks like the same type of memory so it might be a good place to get donor chips from. If the existing memory is 512k then you'd be up to 1 MB of video memory with the additional chips.

With 1 MB of video memory, you'd be able to run 24 bit color in 640x480, 16 bit color in 800x600 and have an additional mode (if the video chip supports it) of 1024x768 at 8 bit.
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Unfortunately the 386/20e only has 256K of video memory, as it is VGA only. To get anything SVGA-ish will require a plug-in video card (and disabling the on-board VGA). Although the built-in VGA is really a 16-bit ISA implementation, it has faster access times than most. If you don't need anything more than VGA colors and resolution, it's a good choice.
 
resman how do you find NewShell? I recall trying it quite a while back on one of my systems but didn't find it that stable at all. Could've been my setup though.

The browser Chuck linked to looks interesting indeed.

Nice setup btw.
 
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