386 and 486 have some same issues. Lots of jumpers, no or less plug and pray eeehh play. Although my 486 had Auto recognition.

But that whit the disk is normal, you also can't put a DVD in a CD-ROM drive. They look the same but they aren't.

King_Corduroy wrote:

I've never really had any experience with either but now I have a 386 computer and I'm in what some have kindly called "Disk Geometry Hell". Not only that but I'm finding out that disks written on a 1.2mb 5.25" drive wont work on a 320k drive unless the diskette has been formatted in the 320k drive first. 🤣 What a PAIN!!!

I am not particularly familiar with this problem, but I cannot see any reason why it would be restricted to 386 machines..? A 5.25" drive is the same regardless of what you plug it into, I would think.

The 320mb/1.2mb problem is to do with the disk drives capabilities [and maybe DOS formatting]. I have a damn drive that does 160k singke-sided or some such; utterly useless to me. But both that and the 1.2mb drive work in anything from 286 to socket 7 [not really tried beyond that]. I expect you knew all that.

From my experience - 286/386/486 are all pretty similar to work on. Jumpers. IDE cards. ISA graphics maybe. Disk geometry an issue sometimes.

Late 486s with PCI are more like early socket 7 machines, still can have a lot of jumpers but you are more likely to have IDE and floppy interfaces on board, for example.

@Jorpho No the 5.25" is a different problem, it just is making my life difficult at the moment. If I format a disk to be 320k on my Packard Bell which has a 1.2mb Mitsumi 5.25" drive and put it in my older computers like for instance my PCjr it wont read it at all. However if I put a disk in the PCjr and format it then move that blank 320k disk over to my Packard Bell and write information to it without reformatting it the disk and then I put the same disk with the information in the PCjr then and ONLY THEN will it read the information on the disk. 🤣

But yeah I was wondering if the 486 computers are any better for plug and play tech. 😜 Damn, OK I was just wondering because I had wanted to get an early 90's 486 but I was beginning to wonder if I should bother after my experience with this 386. 🤣

1.2 MB drives create thinner track. So 360 KB ones can't read it correctly.
Theoretically there is the "format /4" command in MS-DOS, practically - this was too long ago and I don't remember the success rate...

486s more often than not have auto detect IDE drive settings. Late model 386s also do, but many of the early ones do not.

Also again on later model 486s you get the IDE/Floppy controller on the motherboard.

For me these would be the main two differences. Although late model 386s are often pretty nice to work with.

King_Corduroy wrote:

I've never really had any experience with either but now I have a 386 computer and I'm in what some have kindly called "Disk Geometry Hell". Not only that but I'm finding out that disks written on a 1.2mb 5.25" drive wont work on a 320k drive unless the diskette has been formatted in the 320k drive first. 🤣 What a PAIN!!!

Are you using a DD or HD floppy disk for this? Theoretically, a DD disk written in a HD drive should be readable in a DD drive, but doing this with HD disks may produce unreadable disks (someone correct me if I'm wrong, it has been at least two decades since I last used a 5.25" floppy).

As others have pointed out, these density mismatch issues are not really characteristic for 386-era computers, they crop up wherever floppy disks with different track sizes are used.

mwdmeyer wrote:

486s more often than not have auto detect IDE drive settings. Late model 386s also do, but many of the early ones do not.

Yeah, this often takes Pentium users by surprise. Plus the inability to boot from CD-ROM drives.

King_Corduroy wrote:

@Jorpho No the 5.25" is a different problem, it just is making my life difficult at the moment. If I format a disk to be 320k on my Packard Bell which has a 1.2mb Mitsumi 5.25" drive and put it in my older computers like for instance my PCjr it wont read it at all. However if I put a disk in the PCjr and format it then move that blank 320k disk over to my Packard Bell and write information to it without reformatting it the disk and then I put the same disk with the information in the PCjr then and ONLY THEN will it read the information on the disk. 🤣

But yeah I was wondering if the 486 computers are any better for plug and play tech. 😜 Damn, OK I was just wondering because I had wanted to get an early 90's 486 but I was beginning to wonder if I should bother after my experience with this 386. 🤣

Like I said here the problem is not exclusive to the 386, it is merely something that is standing in the way of getting DOS to boot on it since I cannot write disks easily for it with the other drive I have. I am using DD diskettes, I have heard from a few people that it has to do with how the tracks are written.

486s might be a little less temperamental. They usually also have better BIOS setups.

That said, your problem is not unique to a 386 as the others said.

486s are a pain to work with, you might have to set 10-15(+) jumpers just for the cpu, on a 386 theirs are only 2 or 3, fsb & cache are usually the only jumpers you need to touch.

It all depends on what you get, some of the later from both eras are pretty easy to work with. I don't mind jumpers but I do mind dodgy ram and glitchy boards that are showing their age. When it comes to the storage issues that is when I go hunting for better goodies.

In my experience, late 386 boards from 1993-1995 are very easy to work with. The CPU is soldered, so no CPU-related jumpers. The FSB is confugured by replacing OSC. Most boards don't have any cache to configure as well. However, earlier boards might be a challange.

From my experience 386s are easier to deal with. They usually have the cpu onboard so no messing around.

This particular thing is labelled EV-3000a on the motherboard, unfortunately I don't have the cover on the case and as such I cannot know exactly what model I have but it appears to be from 1986-1987. The BIOS is very primitive looking, it doesn't actually give me any real menus like on a pentium (and other systems people seem to have) but it prompts you for things once you go into "Setup" mode.

dirkmirk wrote:

486s are a pain to work with, you might have to set 10-15(+) jumpers just for the cpu, on a 386 theirs are only 2 or 3, fsb & cache are usually the only jumpers you need to touch.

That all depends on the mobo. Some 486s I have only have SX/DX jumpers and 25/33 jumpers for the cpu. Other boards do have quite a few because of voltage arrangements. Nothing like the 10-15+ you describe. Even the mobo that takes 486 and 386 cpus doesn't have that many to set what type of cpu it has. Essentualty 386s and 486s are very similar to setup. Depending on how old the mobo is will determine how many features are available in the Bios. Then there's ISA, vlb and pci thrown in the 486 mix.

Generally 386s and 486s are quite easy to set up with the aid of appropriate documentation. Things like XT-IDE bios extention can get around things like hdd size limitations.

King_Corduroy wrote:

I've never really had any experience with either but now I have a 386 computer and I'm in what some have kindly called "Disk Geometry Hell". Not only that but I'm finding out that disks written on a 1.2mb 5.25" drive wont work on a 320k drive unless the diskette has been formatted in the 320k drive first. 🤣 What a PAIN!!!

That's a well known and well documented issue for over 25 plus years. So nothing surprising there.

Solution- fit a 360k drive to the 386 if you want to create boot disks etc. for the PCJr.

The whole thread is about '320K' disks/drives. These do exist, but the most common format is 360K.
Otherwise it is true indeed that 360K disks and 1.2M drives tend to have compatibility issues.

Lol Indeed. But the thread title is "Are 486 computers easier to work with than 386 machines?" I'm so confused...

Well if everyone had actually read any of the rest of the conversation then no one would still be posting about the 360k disk compatibility problem since that was sorted out almost immediately. I had not realized 1.2mb drives wrote thinner tracks than 360k (I remembered the number wrong) and therefore the disks wont read on older 360k drives.

What my original question was is "Whether 486 computers were easier to set up (like a Pentium) than a 386 computer". Admittedly maybe I should have edited it so everyone would stop quoting the original post and saying the same things over and over but to be honest who doesn't read the responses before answering? 🤣

I know you didn't read the other posts cal because you said to throw a 360k in the 386, when as explained 7 posts above and again 4 posts above that the offending 1.2mb drive is in my Packard Bell Platinum 55 and it's my "bridge" computer that I use to transfer files from my new computers via USB to old media like floppy diskette. The 386 has a 360k drive which is having problems reading the diskettes written using the Packard.
Now obviously what I'm going to do is steal a 360k drive out of one of the other computers and use that in the Packard now that I know this compatibility issue is a thing. I was previously unaware.