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My 286 I just got going and have no clue about

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First post, by domelectronics

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Hello all! I was recommended here by a couple friends, basically I have a small computer shop out of my basement, and have worked on all sorts of systems, old and new ect ect.. I have all walks of life down here such as a Pentium Pro Compaq Proliant, 386, 486dx2, Tandy 64 all the way up to big Xeon monsters (My favorite) like my T7500 and Z600.

Anyways, I was at my local scrapper\supplier and saw this beauty on the bottom of the garbage skid, so I pulled it out and took it home with me. It had a 360k floppy and a Seagate St251 MFM drive inside (which scared the living crap out of me on startup, later would find out that its apparently normal to make those noises). Inside the case itself was a lonely Winchester MFM controller card.

I never have had anything this old, its got the Intel 08286 10MHZ chip and 640k RAM. I tried putting a archaic Adaptec ISA SCSI card with a macintosh SCSI drive attached but with no luck (working but driver issue). Luckily a friend hooked me up many months later with a nice IDE card, and so I dropped a WD Caviar drive in, played around with the cylinder settings and had a working hard disk 6 months later!

Now, I have finally reached the operating point with this guy, and it reminds me so much of my childhood computer ( I was born 1995 but had something like this as a young child, playing f19 stealth fighter and armour-geddon on it daily)

I literally am at a stump because this thing is older then the internet and Im too young to have had any experience with hardware this old!

I have the dos shell program going good but my C:\ boot drive literally does not even have an autoexec.bat but still runs DOS 6.2...

I would LOVE to have this machine running like a top, I really hope someone can help me out! I am located just north of Toronto Canada but have lots of computer parts I could donate for information and help to get this machine going properly 😀

Here is a list of known specs and some pics:

MOBO: MUltibest MB-286 01
CPU: Intel 08286 10mhz
RAM: 640K soldered in
1024kb video card with VGA.. It says Realtek VGA bios on startup, works A++ so never bothered to research it

Now for stuff I dont know about:

US Robotics 550 6345 modem (or something modem looking)
Creative audio CT2960 sound card. (speaker will click but no sounds come out, need driver methinks)
MB 160E paralell or serial port card. (I want a mouse some day!)

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Machine is working good, basically I am looking for help on the audio drivers, and maybe the autoexec.bat to start dosshell and actually do something 😀

Thanks,

Dom

Reply 1 of 6, by kanecvr

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Hi, and welcome.

That's a really nice machine you got there. I like to run pre 92 games on a 286 myself, so that PC is kind of like a window into PC gaming history. There's quite a few dos games that will run great on a 286, and some that will run only on a 286 with a working turbo button or an XT - lots are worth checking out. My machine is a 12MHz amd 286 with 1MB of ram, a 256kb paradise video card, 1.2GB WD HDD, Sound Blaster PRO 2.0 sound card and the usual storage options (CD-ROM, 3.5" and 5.2" FDD).

To get sound, you will need to download and install Sound Blaster 16 DOS drivers for the CT2960. You can find them here on vogons: http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid=7

Get the driver disk images and "burn" them to floppy disks using winimage or similar FDD image software (you should be able to find free or shareware online), OR, look for extracted image files and manually install the driver that way. It should in theory be easier to get the disk images onto floppies and install using the disks. Let us know how it goes, and good luck.

Reply 2 of 6, by Jo22

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True, the SB16 line works just fine in 286es. But beware, some sound card drivers use 386 instructions.
For DOS, this is no big problem, as EMU386 can solve this.

For Windows 3.1 (yes, Win 3.1), a 286 user just selects the built-in drivers for SB 1.5.
It's not perfect, but will provide support for AdLib and 8-Bit mono audio.

It says Realtek VGA bios on startup, works A++ so never bothered to research it

Tip: VGA cards as old as this usually came with a mode utility. 😉
So you can run emulation modes for EGA, CGA, Hercules.

Also, if you need a simple way for transfering files between you old computers.. There was FileMaven for DOS (FM3).
It was Freeware, I think, and could establish a connection via serial and parallel ports. I ran it on my 286 (1MiB RAM), too.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 3 of 6, by brostenen

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I have a Yamaha YMF-71x running in my 286 without issues. Its an Audician32-Plus. It gives me SB-Pro and Opl. Fits the era nicely.

For vga, I am running a Cirrus Logic 5422.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 4 of 6, by domelectronics

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Awesome and thank you all for the help! Any ideas where I can go about finding a mouse for this thing? I have a serial to PS2 mouse adapter and a whole bunch of converters but not really sure what to do yet again. I remember seeing a mouse.cfg file or something like that at one point when working with this system 😀

Reply 5 of 6, by brostenen

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domelectronics wrote:

Any ideas where I can go about finding a mouse for this thing?

If you are looking for a serial mouse, then there are lots of them on eBay. Some under 15 US Dollars plus shipping.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 6 of 6, by chinny22

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few upgrades might be worth thinking about.
Gotek Floppy emulator, Once you run out of floppy disks, or sick of all the errors
or
IDE to CF or SD adaptor.

Both options just make transferring files between computers so much easier

Re the mouse good chance the ps2 adaptor wont actually work, but a 286 wont have much use for a mouse anyway, once you get a serial mouse should be as simple as plugging it in and running a generic mouse driver

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