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First post, by Dant

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Just a disclaimer before I start: I'm new both here and to vintage computers so excuse my noobness...

Here's what happened, I recently picked up a 386 SX machine to get started with. It was an ISP machine so it has no math-co, video card, sound card, CD, or hard drive.

Anyway the I/O card it had, has an IDE interface so I decided to go ahead and add a hard drive and CD drive I had laying around. When I went to do this I discovered that the plug wasn't keyed but, my devices and cable were.

So, can I break off the un-keyed pin or do I need a new cable and other devices in order to get it to work?

Reply 1 of 4, by Anonymous Coward

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My solution is to just take a mini screwdriver and bore a hole into the blank space on the cable. Occasionally they come with plugs that you can pry out instead.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 2 of 4, by Dant

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Tried it, at first I couldn't bore the hole but, I did weaken it enough that the pin on the card bored through the rest.

After that happening and turning the system on the CD drive went into a constant read mode, and the system didn't pull the floppy or give me the no video beep error.

Reply 4 of 4, by Dant

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Likely not, doesn't matter anyway.

After going into a bit of discussion with the former owner, turns out the OS that was designed to be used with it, was intergrated into the BIOS with just a config file on the floppy disk.

So basically I have a useless 386 SX that can be used for parts should I need them.

On the other hand I just found out where I can get a Cyrix Pentium 166Mhz...

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