Sorry for a late response, last two days have been a bit hectic at casa de OldCat.

chozilla wrote:

If i go for the bios solution shouldn't I pick on of the patched versions from this post? (Toshiba T5200 mods and upgrades)

Yes, at this time these are probably the best bios options for T3200SX, thanks to IanB. However, in the post above, I described what I did when I was working on my T3200SX - and these were not available yet back then.

chozilla wrote:

Finding a 27C1024 with less than 120 ns is quite hard i feel.

No, I don't think so. Took me five minutes to find electronics outlet in my city where they would sell you the chip and program it with the code of your choice - and I live in second-grade city in Poland, not fancy one. I suspect it is going to be the same in most EU countries - a bit of googling and you'll find it, if not local, then with mail delivery.

chozilla wrote:

Will I also need special cables to connect the CF Socket with the onboard IDE (since it has more pins?)

The good news is: no, actually you don't. If you check the Maintenance Manual, you will see that Toshiba used two types of HDDs in T3200SX: Conner and JVC. They had different connections, 40 and 44pins, and because of that you can use any of these. I'll put the photos below in the following post in order to make this point clearer.

chozilla wrote:

Once I got the bios working will any IDE-44 to CF adapter work?

I cannot guarantee ANY adapter to work, but I think that they all should work. Or use the IDE-40 to CF - I actually did.

Warning, this post contains graphic content. 🤣

This is the original Conner hard drive that was in my T3200SX:

Notice the adapter from 40 to 44 pin IDE:

But the drive itself was a regular IDE drive from the era with 40 pin connection:

Why the adapter then? Simply because JVC hard drives were connected using 44 pin IDE.

The CF adapter I had was 40 pin IDE one. But there are 44 pin IDE ones too, so don't worry. Still, mine was not compatible:

But using the Toshiba adapter it worked like a charm:

Continuing in another post due to attachment limit.

Below is my testing setup - the file is in quite big resolution, so click on it and zoom to check the details:

Thank you for all the help OldCat,

I am playing around with the system with the original hardware. I will try to get to a electronics store after the holidays.
Not sure if my system is otherwise broken but it hangs after 10-20 minutes with no response from any component (not even keyboard).
Do you got any idea how to find out whats wrong or should I try the other motherboard and carry over the components to that board?

reg4rds
\ chozilla

chozilla wrote:

Thank you for all the help OldCat, […]
Show full quote

Thank you for all the help OldCat,

I am playing around with the system with the original hardware. I will try to get to a electronics store after the holidays.
Not sure if my system is otherwise broken but it hangs after 10-20 minutes with no response from any component (not even keyboard).
Do you got any idea how to find out whats wrong or should I try the other motherboard and carry over the components to that board?

reg4rds
\ chozilla

You're very welcome. I 'm in love with these plasma displays (or, how jaZz_KCS described them "glorious orange beasts"), so it makes me happy to see more of them restored to their former glory.

As for your question, I honestly don't know. You might want to ask IanB in T5200 thread I linked to earlier - he has extensive knowledge, I am but an enthousiastic amateur.

This is correct. I am so freaking happy with my fully working T3200SX, I cannot even conjure the right words.

I have the original floppy drive still working, which is a rare sight indeed. I have actually switched it with a Sony drive just to archive the still working original drive. I guess that may sound overkill, but you never know.

I got some things to work and others I am still trying.

1. First things first, I bought a MiniPro TL866A Chip Programmer on Amazon and... bare with me... 18 x AT27C1024-70PU and another 5 x AT27C1024-45PU from mouser.
   The chips are sadly only one time programmable but have a good price-tag considering.
   In order to not pay 20 bucks for shipping I had to order more... not sure what to do with the spare but now I can try a bit more and I was not sure how many chips i would fuck up myself - so good to have some spare.
   Not sure if the 45 ns versions will work but the 70 ns are working great so far.
2. I still got two T3200SX. One minimal with no ffd, hdd(replaced with CF) and no monitor/broken one and one System that is so far unmodified with all this components. Unfortunately that system is freezing up after a while and I am not sure if the Keyboard just ignores input or if the system really crashes. (got a blinking cursor and no beeps when buttons are pressed down)
   I will try to flash that system and if the problem still exists afterwards maybe switch keyboard-chips/mainboard from the minimal system and see what happens.
3. Replacing the FDD on the T3200SX is quite a mess, since the cable-connectors on the mainboard are all non-standard (or a standard I don't find the name of...). I am not sure if I have the skills yet to build my own flat-band cable.
4. I will also try to build a cable for the floppy on the LPT Port. I got myself a Gotek that I have been modifying (solderer my first pin-header on the thing and so far it is still working) that i want to connect that way.
5. Got myself a Null-Modem cable (usb to rs-232). Does anyone know what software I would need to make a connection and backup the harddisk that way?

So far my progress.
Thanks for all the help.
\ chozilla

Serial to Serial (or Parallel to Parallel) can both be made either with for example INTERSVR and INTERLNK, or even easier with FileMaven app for DOS (no loading in config.sys required).

The FDD on the T3200SX has a proprietary end on the floppy drive itself, and on the planar end it's actually a fairly standard 26pin floppy connector (with power through cable itself). Your options are either to get a 34pin to 26pin adapter which you will have to modify to make it work here, OR, more recommended would be to make your own adapter cable 34pin to 26pin so you can use all your normal drives including Gotek.

You can find the pinout in one of the other linked threads (IanB's T5200 mods (same pinout) or Vipersan's thread)

Here's a picture of the adapter cable I made and are using in the T3200SX together with a generic floppy drive.

https://i.imgur.com/nJTgc68.jpg

Hello all 😀

Hope it's ok to chime in, in this old thread.

Just wanted to say, I've got good experience with PNP cards, in my T3200SX.

I'm using an Adaptec SCSI, (1542 variant) controller in the 16 bit ISA slot, which works fine to boot in mine.
Using a SCSI2SD with 8 GB micro sd card for storage.
This could also be a solution for optical drives etc.

I've not tested with a controller, that includes a floppy connector, in case the original FDD should become defunct.

It's not pretty hanging a bit out the back, but it's up against a wall and unseen in my case.
And it makes it real easy for file transfers, getting the micro SD card.

However, and don't ask me why, but I have had to connect an IDE drive too internally.
It's of no use storage wise, but somehow, it must give an OK signal to move on in the boot process. And not halting, to complain about a missing HDD.
It's funny that it somehow doesn't see, it's a wrong drive. It's a defective 400 GB at that, but can spin.

Also installed an ESS Audiodrive PNP sound card. The 16 bit section had to be chipped off, to make it fit. But that part was for the IDE interface only, hence I chose the model.
Wavetable added at one time, just for kicks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYABQghs-GA

I just wanted to add that the hang-ing mentioned a few years back could be by misaligned (or bad) IDE cable , I had similar problem on my T3100e. (took a while to figure out)