Jo22 wrote:

Hey, I had one of these Deskpro's, too! Please, don't forget to make a backup of that setup interface!
It's stored on a hidden partition on the original hdd. Somewhere in that BIOS utility is an option to create a backup.
You'll need 2 to 4 blank diskettes for this..

Unfortunately I didn't realize until after the hard drive crash that the BIOs utility was on the hard drive. Is there any way I can download it somewhere and put it on a floppy to get it back and make that partition on a new hard drive?

chinny22 wrote:

Or you can use drive overlay software and use any drive. Phil did a video on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z15jdZEJiY

Thanks for the suggestion, I do like that idea however will I lose the BIOs utility and the ability to make a partion for it?

edit: I noticed in the video he says that the Seagate overlay software required high resolution, I'm not sure if my graphics controller can do high resolution, but I will test it and see if it works. I think the graphics controller is Compaq Qvision (I think it's Qvision 1024)

2nd edit: I think I will go that route, I know the hard drive tested was 80gb, but it should work on a hard drive that is hundreds of gigabytes like 250gb? The reason I ask is that these seem to be the size range where new hard drives are the cheapest.

I was testing some Overlay software just to see if it would boot and later in the day after I turned it on again to test another boot disk and then the hard drive started working again. I doubt it will last long, so I took the time to backup the BIOs using the BIOs utility.

I found a 160gb IDE hard drive new for a good price, I noticed it has UDMA and Ultra ATA are these things going to be a problem? Or if I use Overlay Software will I not need to worry about it?

jas4500 wrote:

Jo22 wrote:

Hey, I had one of these Deskpro's, too! Please, don't forget to make a backup of that setup interface!
It's stored on a hidden partition on the original hdd. Somewhere in that BIOS utility is an option to create a backup.
You'll need 2 to 4 blank diskettes for this..

Unfortunately I didn't realize until after the hard drive crash that the BIOs utility was on the hard drive. Is there any way I can download it somewhere and put it on a floppy to get it back and make that partition on a new hard drive?

Yes, you're lucky! HP has the Compaq files on its servers (called ROMpaqs or Softpags).
Just have a look at this index file: ftp://ftp.hp.com/%2F/pub/softpaq/allfiles.txt

I have a close cousin of this unit and have also been upgrading it. It came with an AM486SX2-66 CPU (5volt) and I upgraded it to a Cyrix 486-DX2-50. I had to throttle down the bus to 25Mhz from 33 Mhz or the chip couldn't handle the 66Mhz speed.

I wanted to use this Cyrix forever, but I also have a Intel 486DX2-66Mhz on the way.

Don't mean to thread-jack, but it's pretty much the same system and I have same issues. I am currently using and ESS ES1868F ISA card for audio.

Nice machine!

I have quite a bit of experience with these old Deskpro's, though only as far as the 386/486's... and generally I've found they are absolute tanks performing really well.

All that i've seen but one utilises EISA bus, an 32-bit extended version of the typical 16-bit ISA. Do you happen to know which yours has? If EISA, you can have a little more fun than regular old ISA users. 🤣

Regarding sound, I would agree with everything said already. The Awe 64 i'm not much a fan of, though it does give clean sound is not real OPL3 but rather emulated. If going down the 'Creative' road... I would suggest an Awe 32 (CT3900 non-p'n'p version) + Yamaha DB50XG DB.

p.s. If your system is EISA, you may then have to source config files for any peripheral added to the bus, similar to this guy: -

My new - Compaq DeskPro 386s/20

386_junkie wrote:

Nice machine! […]
Show full quote

Nice machine!

I have quite a bit of experience with these old Deskpro's, though only as far as the 386/486's... and generally I've found they are absolute tanks performing really well.

All that i've seen but one utilises EISA bus, an 32-bit extended version of the typical 16-bit ISA. Do you happen to know which yours has? If EISA, you can have a little more fun than regular old ISA users. 🤣

Regarding sound, I would agree with everything said already. The Awe 64 i'm not much a fan of, though it does give clean sound is not real OPL3 but rather emulated. If going down the 'Creative' road... I would suggest an Awe 32 (CT3900 non-p'n'p version) + Yamaha DB50XG DB.

p.s. If your system is EISA, you may then have to source config files for any peripheral added to the bus, similar to this guy: -

My new - Compaq DeskPro 386s/20

I wouldn't go Creative unless you want to install a second card for MIDI (or use an AWE64 Gold). There are other options from Aztech, Crystal (one or two models with real OPL3), Yamaha, and ESS (uses ESFM, but that's not too bad).

jas4500 wrote:

I was testing some Overlay software just to see if it would boot and later in the day after I turned it on again to test another boot disk and then the hard drive started working again. I doubt it will last long, so I took the time to backup the BIOs using the BIOs utility.

I found a 160gb IDE hard drive new for a good price, I noticed it has UDMA and Ultra ATA are these things going to be a problem? Or if I use Overlay Software will I not need to worry about it?

I don't think it should matter (I went the CF card option personally) But I would thing the HDD controller simply doesn't take advantage of whats not supported. The Drive overlay software would still be limited to the controller can support, it just has a way to allocate all the space of the drive.

Again not sure, But I doubt you can have a BIO's partition and the overlay partition, I would think the overlay wants control over the entire drive, and booting into the Compaq tools wouldn't load the required overlay drive software.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while I've been busy the past few days working on a research paper for a class. I bought a Labway A151-A00 Yamaha audio ISA card based on YMF719E-S, it was the cheapest option. I also got a brand new seagate 160gb hard drive. Last I turned on the computer (a couple of days ago), the current hard drive still worked after mysteriously not working for a few days. I ran Scandisk and it had about 5 bad sectors, so I'm guessing the hard drive will probably die soon. I received the audio card yesterday and the hard drive is on its way. I haven't had the time to install it yet, hopefully I'll get around to it this weekend and the hard drive should have arrived by then.

I tested out some different overlay software just to see if they would boot. The older versions of seagate overlay (9.xx) and the other available overlay software for other hard drives close to the same kind of software as the Seagate 9.xx seemed to be the only versions that would work. Seagate overlay 10.45 would not work because the i486sx processor doesn't seem to have proper math coprocessing. The 10.45 version gives me a system error: floating point error: emutnt.dll, I looked it up and it has something to do with the processor not having a math coprocessor, all the reason to upgrade to a DX2.

To 386_junkie:

Yes I believe it is an EISA, I remember seeing that in the BIOs and I didnt really know what that was. I'll have to look again in the BIOs to see what kind it is.

Quick question, I'm trying to install the Yamaha ISA card, but I can't seem to get it in the slot completely . I've tried to force it in but I'm worried about breaking the card. From what I understand the gold connector area should be completely in the slot right? I've tried the other slots as well

Heres a pic of my setup

Edit: nevermind got it in. Seems as long as you are not gentle it will go in

jas4500 wrote:

I tested out some different overlay software just to see if they would boot. The older versions of seagate overlay (9.xx) and the other available overlay software for other hard drives close to the same kind of software as the Seagate 9.xx seemed to be the only versions that would work. Seagate overlay 10.45 would not work because the i486sx processor doesn't seem to have proper math coprocessing. The 10.45 version gives me a system error: floating point error: emutnt.dll, I looked it up and it has something to do with the processor not having a math coprocessor, all the reason to upgrade to a DX2.

You can also try EZ-BIOS from Western Digital (I can send you file). I don't think it checks what drive it's being used on. Some hard drives also have a limiter selection. For example , my Seagate Medalist 4.3GB has a jumper to limit to 2.1GB.

EZ-BIOS has worked great for me, yes.

Ok so I've installed the hard drive and have installed DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. Everything seems to be working fine, but I'm have troubles setting up the YMF-719E-S ISA sound card. I downloaded the drivers for Windows 3.1x which comes with both the DOS and windows setup utility. I turned off Compaq Business Audio, the integrated audio. When I try to test any of the sounds I can't hear anything. I played around with the settings in the utilityl but still nothing. The card is securely in the slot, but I'm wondering if I was suppose to set any jumpers, if so would anyone happen to know the jumper settings? I've tried to do some research, but I can't seems to find anything. In the configuration utility there are no errors and everything appears as if it should work alright. I turned off Ymersion in the INI, as well.

Did you try to install Win95 on this machine ? For testing purposes, at least ? I never really used a Deskpro with Win 3.1..
But I can tell you, in 95 this business audio card was magically recognized (In fact, I was shocked. "This thing as built-in audio ?").
The Despkro also worked in Win98SE, but was quite slow.. Anyway, I'm glad you're using Win 3.1 here! I just wanted to share my experience.

The Compaq Business audio works fine when I enable it in BIOs, but it only supports FM Synthesis. I'm trying to get the the Yamaha YMF719E-S card to work. All I could find regarding the jumpers was that JP1 is the internal amplifier, but I have no idea what the other ones do and if I need to set them or not. The configuration utility would have come up with an error if it couldn't detect the card, so my only guess is that I may need to set the IRQ, DMA, port, etc settings either via software or by hardware, but I have no idea as I can't find any info on this card.

Edit: Nevermind found the problem, the speaker jack wasn't in all the way. everything seems work fine for the most part. I used Wolfenstein 3D to test it and I noticed that it either only plays the music and effects, but no digital effects or it only plays the digital effects and no music or other sounds, or sometimes it plays the music and cuts out when one of the digital effects are triggered, like when you shoot. I'm going to try more games and see if there are any more issues.

Jo22 wrote:

The Despkro also worked in Win98SE, but was quite slow...

Mine on 24MB with Win98SE ran like a dog. Of course, I am running a Cyrix DX2-50...will try with a just received Intel DX2-66. The shumck who sold it to me, sent it in an ENVELOPE. Pins all bent...managed to get most of them pretty straight. I am trying Win95c , so far so good.

Will get some pics up soon..

Ok, so after a few days of messing around with the settings I was finally able to find the best setting for the sound card. The trick seems to be to ignore the DOS configuration SETUPSA.exe and edit the .INI directly. The configuration that was assigned automatically by the utility was awful. I found that setting all the 3D settings to 0 and setting the 16-bit IRQ (or DMA, I can't remember) channel to some bogus channel like 2 or 3, instead of 7 or 5. Originally SBpro was set to DMA channel 0, when I changed it to DMA 1 and set the IRQ to 5 there was hardly anymore popping in the speakers and the digital sound in all the games I tested worked perfectly. I thought the card had MPU-401 UART capabilities, but I can't seem to get that to work. It worked once, but then locked up the computer, it will probably just be best to find a wavetable header for General Midi.

jas4500 wrote:

Thanks for the replies, I'm thinking about going the route brostenen suggested with the Dreamblaster S1. I've been looking at Yamaha YMF7xx ISA cards as an alternative to SB16/AWE64. From what I've researched they have OPL3, but do they have general SB Pro support as well and is it good? If not I may just get an SB16 with OPL and without the hanging note bug. Is there any disadvantage to having the fake OPL in AWE64 and having to load the drivers in DOS? I imagine that could cause issues with some games, if they aren't too big a problem then I might do an AWE64, so I don't have to deal with the noise of an SB16.

Oh any chance of some pics?

Sure

Pic takes me back to 1999. I dissembled almost 1000 of these in my driveway. Wish I had them back,

chinny22 wrote:
486's have 2 main hard drive limits. 500MB and 8GB. We already know your good to go above 500MB. So I would look at drives under 8GB.
Saying that my 486 detects 8GB but wont boot, so limited to 6GB

You have to use a Seagate Hard Drive with Seagate Disc Manager 9.56A a blue ribbon will appear on top when booting every time. I have used a 20 GB hard drive with my Compaq Deskpro 4/66i like that around 1998.