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I've got a Compaq Deskpro 486/33M coming...

Mine came with an Assembly # 002319-001 / Spare # 129127-001 486DX/33 Processor Board.
It has (8x) Samsung KM44C1000AJ-8 1M x 4Bit and (4x) NEC UPD421000-70 1M x 1Bit DRAM chips for 4MB total on the processor board.

I replaced that with a different one I bought later. An Assembly # 003200-001 / Spare # 149924-001 which I think has a 486DX2-66 processor.
It has (16x) Samsung KM44C1000BJ-7 1M x 4Bit and (2x) TI TMS44460DJ 1M x 4Bit (Quad CAS) DRAM chips for 8MB total on the processor board.

It came with a Kingston KTC-9160 Memory Expansion Board. I currently have 4 SIMMs in half of the slots, A through D. Must be (2x) 8MB SIMMs and (2x) 4MB SIMMs as the system reports 32MB total (8MB on processor board, 24MB on memory expansion board).

It's been a while since the last time I did anything with it. I forgot I put an IDE/CF adapter and a 256MB CF card as a boot drive the last time I used it. Might take a while to find the EISA configuration floppies I created the last time I was using it.

I did verify that I currently have a 3Com EtherLink III Bus Master EISA (3C592) Network Adapter and an Adaptec AHA-2740A SCSI Adapter installed.
 
Does the 2740A have a BIOS or is it BIOSless ? I like that you have all EISA in it, that is cool. I'm going to try to do slot A on mine too when the other memory comes, we'll see if I can get it working.
 
Yes, the AHA-2740A has a BIOS. I currently have an internal cable attached to the controller but no internal drive. I probably had it set up to boot from an internal SCSI drive before switching to the IDE/CF card for some other experiments.

I don't remember why I went with a narrow AHA-2740A instead of a wide AHA-2740W since I have a lot more 68-pin drives than 50-pin drives. Maybe it was so I could use an external 50-pin SCSI CD-ROM drive instead of trying to find the right hardware to mount one internally. Or maybe just because the AHA-2740A was cheaper and easier to find at the time than an AHA-2740W. I should also pick up an AHA-2740W to try.
 
Ok, I got the simm/dimm moved to slot A and it is working. Looking at the one that doesn't work I am wondering if it is a parity model and that is why it doesn't work. It has:

81c1000a-60 (QTY 8 )
mcm54400an70 (QTY 16)

on it...

I cleaned up the contacts and put some deoxit on them. It did get recognized and work enough to survive the power on test, but memtest fails after a bit with an unexpected interrupt.

The memory board is a bit odd. It seems to require a power cycle after in initial bootup to reconfigure itself. For example, if you power on and get nothing, you may be able to power off, wait 10 second, powers on again and it has adjusted itself to the new memory configuration. I say this because you might think something is a fail when it isn't, just power cycle it twice to see if it works. We'll see how the other 8mb simm does tomorrow when it arrives in the mail.
 
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As far as I know, Compaq Deskpro /M CPU boards come with RAM (4MB or 8MB) so you only need the memory expansion card if you want more. My little Compaq book says that the Compaq memory expansion card will take 1MB, 2MB, 4MB and 8MB modules (70ns or 80ns) in any combination; I assume the Kingston memory board is the same. The maximum amount of RAM the system will recognize is 64MB.

If you put in a Pentium-60 or Pentium-66 CPU board, then you must use 70ns RAM and you must populate the memory board in groups of 4 same-size SIMMs.

I believe you are supposed to use parity RAM modules. I do not recall if they have to have the PD pins correctly coded or not.
 
The 4mb simm that works has 12 chips - 8 on one side and 4 on the other.
 
No memory in the mail today...arghh.

Does anyone know about the 8 pin miniDin that is for the business audio? Pinout? Did they make an adapter cable with line in, line out, etc.? I wonder why they would use such an odd connector other than perhaps they ran out of room for 1/8" minijacks.
 
iirc, the module that plugged in had 1/8" minijacks as well as a pair of RCA jacks. It was common at that time for CD-ROM drives to be external and those drives usually used RCA jacks for audio output.
 
Does anyone have a part number for the minidin audio cable?

I have a part number sheet for it and all it says is "Windows models include an audio adapter with input and output jacks"
 
I've got these listed:

Code:
I/O Board	002002/002304/002307 	---	129123-001
Audio I/O 	002428 	              June '92	129449-001
 
Your 129449-001 looks like the board I have. Have you ever seen the cable for the left most audio connector (or even the pinout)? It is a mini-Din 8 pin connector.
 
I've got these listed:

Code:
I/O Board	002002/002304/002307 	---	129123-001
Audio I/O 	002428 	              June '92	129449-001

Thes above are the part numbers for the Deskpro/M I/O boards (the versions with, and without, audio).

The part numbers for the cables are:
Code:
Cables				Where Used	Spare Part
Audio Speaker Cable		Audio System	129445-001
External Audio Adapter Cable	Audio System	129444-001
 
This is what the audio adapter cable looks like:
IMG_0356 25%.jpg IMG_0357 25%.jpg

As is common with Compaq parts, the "part number" (139037-001) is different from the "spares number" (129444-001).
 
Pinout:
Code:
LINE OUT	Mini-DIN-8
tip		4
ring		5
shield		shield

SPEAKER OUT
tip		1
ring		2
shield		shield

LINE IN LEFT
center		6
shield		shield

LINE IN RIGHT
center		7
shield		shield
Using a multimeter to test for continuity, I did not find anything connected to pins 3 or 8.

For pin numbering I consulted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-DIN_connector. Since I am looking at a male connector, pin 1 is at the bottom left and pin 8 is at the top right.
 
Thank you kgober!!! I appreciate it - this will let me get some audio out of it!
 
Has anyone with one of these have the problem of any configuration problem taking out the hard disk? If the memory changes or any cards change, it is confused about the hard disk and can't/won't boot it so I have to load the EISA config back off the disks again.
 
I don't recall ever having such problems. Do you have the system configuration utility installed on the hard disk in the special utility partition? I have always made sure on any Deskpro /M or XL I've built to always create that partition first, even before creating a DOS partition.

I'm guessing that after a physical change the BIOS is maybe wanting to go into the configuration utility and looking for it on the hard disk, and can't find it?
 
Yes, I have the special utility partition first. This is a problem that occurs before the boot process. If anything changes in the config, add memory, remove memory, add a board, remove a board, change a board. Really seems that anything that changes the configuration causes 1780 or 1782 disk errors. The only thing I can do is boot the diskette version of EISA config. It complains that the hard disk is unavailable. Until I accept the changes and write the new config, then it still complains no hard disk at the very end when it tries to save to hd. Once I reboot and the config matches again, the hard disk will come back. I can then boot EISA config on the HD and update it there. Maybe my system BIOS is old? NU SYSINFO says 6/22/92. It has a 486/66 CPU board in it.
 
It's possible the utility partition needs to be last rather than first. But the diskette should have set it up that way automatically. I don't remember if you use the Diagnostics floppy to do it (and it gives you the opportunity to copy the config tools at the same time), or if you use the System Configuration floppy (and it lets you also copy Diagnostics at the same time).
 
It is an odd thing. I have finally obtained "all EISA bus mastering goodness" by pulling out my last ISA card (3C509) and replacing it with a 3C592. So now I've got the memory board, CPU board, Compaq EISA video, AHA-2740, and finally the 3C592.

On the configuration though, it still did the same thing. Error at bootup about the missing card, new card, and disk error and no hard disk boot. Had to run through the floppy EISA config and it fixed everything. This time though was a bit different, though it had the disk error at startup and wouldn't boot the hard disk, it seems like the floppy EISA config could talk to the hard disk just fine. It didn't have any errors about not being able to.

I wonder if it is because the hard disk is a custom type instead of a standard one. That may have a bearing.

Probably that will be a problem of the past when I finally get a wide SCSI hard drive to replace it - that will be managed by the 2740W and not the BIOS and will probably work fine!
 
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