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Amstrad PC 2286

It is possible that Amstad just wanted to ship my stuff bundled with the 2286 down to us Coloninals at bottem of the Pacific Ocean to get rid of excess stock. I know this certainly has happened and still does from companies in other so called "Western" countries.
 
Caluser2000 said:
Dunno this is what came with the system I got. Nothing else. That OS was isntalled on the wee hdd.
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The Amstrad 2xxx series came out in 1989, about the same time that MS-DOS 4,01 was coming out. It's possible that the first 2286 units were bundled with DOS 3.3 and soon switched to 4.01 when the next batch of units were produced. I think this is unlikely because I've never seen a user's manual for the 2286 with MS-DOS 3.3 in it.

Also, just posing alternative explanations:

Being an auction, maybe the system and the disks weren't originally sold in the same package. MS-DOS 4.01 was still suffering from the 4.X bug-ridden reputation. The previous owner might have either already had the DOS 3.3 system disk from an older system and installed it over top of the HDD's existing installation, or purchased the 3.3 system disk separately. (Assuming Amstrad did that sort of thing.) Also, the 8-bit sound card might have been an add-on. I personally have never seen such a card installed in a 2286 and haven't come across any reference to the 2286 coming with any sound card pre-installed.
 
acgs said:
The Amstrad 2xxx series came out in 1989, about the same time that MS-DOS 4,01 was coming out. It's possible that the first 2286 units were bundled with DOS 3.3 and soon switched to 4.01 when the next batch of units were produced. I think this is unlikely because I've never seen a user's manual for the 2286 with MS-DOS 3.3 in it.

Also, just posing alternative explanations:

Being an auction, maybe the system and the disks weren't originally sold in the same package. MS-DOS 4.01 was still suffering from the 4.X bug-ridden reputation. The previous owner might have either already had the DOS 3.3 system disk from an older system and installed it over top of the HDD's existing installation, or purchased the 3.3 system disk separately. (Assuming Amstrad did that sort of thing.) Also, the 8-bit sound card might have been an add-on. I personally have never seen such a card installed in a 2286 and haven't come across any reference to the 2286 coming with any sound card pre-installed.
Click to expand...
Quite possible. I'll post a pick of the 8-bit Amstrad branded sound card in this thread. It is in my Redstone Computers XTTurbo EGA setup at the mo. Easy enough to get it out with out much trouble and the top of case is like a car bonnet;). My original x86 system, a 286/16 system, mini desktop case was just the same. I' neve had any issues with them at all and makes get ting inside the system as easy as. :)

Cop ya later ;)
 
Caluser2000 said:
I'll post a pick of the 8-bit Amstrad branded sound card in this thread.
[...]
Easy enough to get it out with out much trouble [...]
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I'm waiting to see this card. It's been days now. Please don't keep us in suspense any longer. :)
 
I have the same Amstrad sound card, What drivers do you use ?
 
Caluser2000 said:
As promised.;)
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Thanks for the pictures! Since this appears to be an AdLib clone, I'm assuming that black shaft sticking out of the back is a volume control knob. Is the 15 pin connector a MIDI port or did Amstrad add the more common joystick port capability to the card?
 
There is development in my Amstrad 2286 voyage. I now have working PSU and at least partially working motherboard for the Amstrad PC 2286!
It only took 169,- euro and win in a new local auction site :). Price includes shipping too. I have had this for a week now, and finally had a chance
to test it out last night.

This unit POSTs to the typical DATE/TIME error and complaint about dead BIOS batteries. The paradise VGA adapter on the motherboard thus works!

It will not however boot from the floppy with DOS floppy inside. What happens is that the floppy drive starts spinning, head moves slightly with green LED on.
Then it gets stuck at this stage. Tried with both units floppy drive with same result. I did clean RW head, cleaned and lubed the axel moving the head but
still the same.

It must be the floppy I thouht - but that's all right since I have plenty of known good IBM PC compatible 1.44 MB floppy drives.
Soon I realized that the Amstrad provides only +5VDC and 2x GND to the floppy drive. IBM PC compatible floppy drive need of course +12V also.

But that's all right - I thought again, and soldered extra pwr cable that has all the voltages. But, the IBM PC floppy does not react at all
despite getting the right voltages.

Later I realized that Amstrad may (and probably does) have different pinout for the 34 pin floppy cable and it must not match IBM PC floppy pinout.
Does anyone by any chance have correct pinout for Amstrad 2286 floppy cable? That might be very useful here.

Okay. My last desperate act last night was to try out known working I/O card (GW 2760 PX) that includes also the FDD card functions.
Plugged in the card and connected it to my IBM PC compatible floppy drive(s). No reaction to the floppy. Tried multiple floppy drives
with cable having twist and without the twist. No luck.

Aargh! Right. No more thinking that's all right - this is a real problem! Very surprising to have so much issues just to get the Amstrad 2286 to
boot from known good floppy drive + DOS boot disc.

By the way, I did took out jumper 32 from the motherboard (disabling motherboard FDD) before adding the super I/O card to the extension slot.
 
To answer myself: YES!

And here it is. Assuming that the 2286 has exact same pinout as the Amstrad 2386. And why wouldn't it be?

Comparing to IBM floppy pinout here:

I do see differences in pins 10,12, 14 and 16.

Now I need to figure out how to adapt the wires. Factory standard IBM PC floppy is drive A and typically set as DS1 ?
Correct or mistaken here?

DS1 (Amstrad pin12) -> pin14 on the floppy (drive select A)
motoron (pin16) -> pin 10 on the floppy (Motor A enable)

Could it be that simple?
 

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Thanks Modem7 for that!

However, I had some time yesterday evening to fiddle with Amstrad and got some happy news to report!
I decided to try out if my earlier 2286 motherboard works with this working unit PSU. I took the motherboard,
just the main board, not the extension board that has ISA slots and the Paradise vga chipset. Connected the main board
with the new unit extension and psu and tried it out.

And it was working! The motherboard I mean. Floppy drives were still struggling, but I did notice improvement there as well.
Instead of hanging at boot attempt, the floppy drive was moving head and trying to read. And it failed to read, reported
non dos disk, please input boot disk - not word for word, but what you would expect. That was already great, since the other
motherboard just hangs and won't respond to keyboard after that.

I had at least four dos boot disks. All 1.44 floppies failed to read, but there was one original IBM PC DOS 5.0 disk that was DD 720kb
floppy. And just one of the two Amstrad original floppy drives agreed to read it!

Oh the joy, when the Amstrad 2286 finally booted for the first time in who knows how many years! At this time I did not have
any hard drive or controller card installed at the computer. The boot took really long, so I decided not to turn off the Amstrad. Instead
I used another pc to make diskcopy of that 720kb IBM PC floppy disk. I just happened to have NOS DD floppies, full set of 10.
I opened that DD floppy box and made a disk copy of IBM PC DOS disk to brand new (old stock) floppy. And put the sticker on the
floppy - now that is another thing you do not do every day any more :).

While at it, I also moved the Amstrad 2286 setup.exe to a 720kb floppy. And run it on the Amstrad 2286. I have probably never
run that setup on these computers before. I had my 2286 only for a short time back in -91 because thunder storm killed it in about one year.

Next, I wanted to setup my hard drive. It is actually 40 megabyte WD384R. But what type is it? I seeked information here:

While great link and good information, the link above suggests 40 megabyte drive to be set at Type 17 in the Amstrad 2286.
I learned that the type number differs from IBM PC and other clones, so there is no one universal answer to a correct HD type number at bios.

I followed the instruction and put HD type 17 at 2286 BIOS and saved. I expected the computer to boot after installing the HD and driver card,
but it failed to do so from hard drive. I was still able to boot from my original IBM PC 5.0 floppy - but curiously, not from the replica I made!
The floppy drive seems very weak and I may still need to replace it with IBM PC floppy, if I can just make one work.

I checked what fdisk says. It claimed the hard drive to have maximum space of 63 megabytes! Of which 40 megabytes were used. That is
wrong of course so I tried to remove main DOS partition and recreate it to properly initialize the drive. That failed in a crash. After second
boot, the fdisk still showed 63 megabytes size. I figured that BIOS setting type 17 was wrong and meant for the 65 megabyte drive used in Amstrad 2386.

But what would be the correct HD type then? I could not find good answer on-line so I used my gut-feeling. The 40 megabyte drive was the
first as standard so I just put the type 1. and I just happened to be correct !

Indeed the fdisk now showed correct size. C: drive was not immediately accessible after boot, but format c: would work without recreating
the partition. And I was able to install IBM PC DOS 5.0 partially, since I had only that one floppy and not the second and third of the set.

In any case, the 2286 now boots from the hard drive! I put fresh BIOS batteries to keep settings alive. The cable is very short and I may make
a mistake of pulling the batter wire open. Hopefully, if that happens the weak floppy still boots.

For now I'm really happy. But I still want to replace that original floppy drive away. It only seems to work as DD drive, it won't read or format any 1.4Mb
floppies. Even though it is set correctly at BIOS as a 1.44 Mb drive.
 

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Thanks for the thumbs up Caluser2000 :)

I was now able to hook up IBM PC compatible 1.4mb floppy drive to the amstrad by making this change to the
Amstrad original floppy cable:

(Amstrad pin12) DS1 -> pin14 on the floppy end (drive select A)
(Amstrad pin10) DS0 -> pin12 on the floppy end (drive select B)
(Amstrad pin16) motor ON -> pin 10 on the floppy (Motor A enable)
(Amstrad pin16) motor ON -> pin 16 on the floppy (Motor B enable)

This works on modern floppy drive that has factory setting DS1.
However, again the floppy drive is forced double density, 720.
HD floppies do not work. I suspect there may be some fault at the motherboard.
But at least it's something, the computer works and I have backup for the floppy drive.

Moving media is twice the pain though. I really wished I got the HD floppies to work somehow.
 
VintageVic said:
However, again the floppy drive is forced double density, 720.
HD floppies do not work. I suspect there may be some fault at the motherboard.
But at least it's something, the computer works and I have backup for the floppy drive.

Moving media is twice the pain though. I really wished I got the HD floppies to work somehow.
Click to expand...

Congratulations, Vic! I'm so glad for you. It's been a long haul to get this far.

I've a few suggestions for you:

1.) If you have another older-model working PC that you can install the HD in, try using that system to install DOS. You'll need to know what the values are for the Amstrad 2286 type 1 disk drive. I should be able to dig those up for you tomorrow. Once you have DOS installed, replace the drive in the 2286 and you should have no problems booting the drive.

2.) Try installing an Amstrad floppy drive in another IBM compatible. You might find out whether the drive is fully functional or not that way.

3.) Compare the 2 PSU's with a multimeter. You might be able to track down where your old PSU is still faulty. If you can find the problem, you should be able to fix it and end up with a backup PSU.
 
Thanks Acgs!

The Amstrad does boot from it's original 40Mb hard drive! That part is great! DOS 5.0 is only partially installed though, since
I had only one floppy. There is easier way to improve this, I could find dos installation images on-line and create full set of installation disks
as long as they are in 720kb media.

Yes, I do plan on working again on the faulty old PSU, when I have spare time for that.

Yesterday evening when I got back to work on the Amstrad, my first wonder was why the floppy drive is rattling like there was
something loose inside it. There was. My now 2 and half year old who had come home earlier than me had "helped" by pushing
several tiny screws inside the floppy door. Great! Daddys little helper always willing to mix things up a bit :).

I'm positive that the IBM PC compatible floppy drives do work as HD 1.44 Mb drive in the other PC's I have.
Trying out the Amstrad floppy drive in IBM PC is not that straight forward as the cable needs modification and the 12V may
need to be restricted from the drive.

Anyway, I'm considering alternate solution for data transfer. I remember back in the day using a null modem cable (COM1 to COM1
from one pc to another). I cant remember what software I used, but probably it was some norton utility that could transfer files between PC's.

Alternatively, I do have some ISA network adapters too. This may be a bit fiddly to set up at first as they need dos drivers (to be transferred
with 720kb DD floppies too) and some software after that to transfer the files. Or perhaps no special software, if I could open network
share from dos prompt. Maybe a bit fiddly to set up, but if successful, it would be rewarding and make file transfer much easier.
 
It's obviously been a while since I looked at setting up HD types with the 2286. I forgot that all the parameters you need to be able to configure an IDE HD type are listed on the SETUP.EXE config screen when you choose a number. So, you should already have those parameters.

On another note, though, I found a way to diagnose your floppy drive problem. According to Bigelow's "Troubleshooting & Repairing PC Drives and Systems" book, you probably have a faulty normal/high-density sensor. These sensors come in two types: a light sensor or an actual switch. To see if this is the problem, use your multimeter to measure across the sensor. For light-based sensors, pass something through the path the light travels. For a switch-based sensor, try pressing it. In either case, you should see the readout change on the multimeter. The switch-based sensors can become jammed and you might be able to free it. Whatever the case, you should probably replace any faulty sensors.

If the problem isn't in the sensor, check the signal at pin 2 on the physical interface. Double density is indicated with a logical 1 output and HD with, of course, a logical 0 (the only other possibility.) No change in the signal on pin 2 when you are working the sensor probably means that the control circuit IC is faulty and should be replaced.
 
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