First post, by Swiego
This post won’t be of interest to more than a small handful of people who own this computer, but I have been exchanging PMs with a few people who own one. Since there’s so little information out there, I figured a thread that compiles everything known about this system could be useful to anyone who stumbles across one down the road. Note, this is a work in progress for the next few hours.
Introduction
The Deskpro XE 560 is one of the early Pentium PCs offered by one of the first-to-market manufacturers. It wasn’t Compaq’s first Pentium system, as the very rare Deskpro 5/60M and 5/66M models arrived a few months earlier. They were replaced relatively quickly by the Deskpro XL and XE series. The XE series was primarily a 486 line in a chassis similar to the Prolinea and Deskpro/I--but included a single Pentium 60 model. Some key strengths and weaknesses:
+ One of the earliest Pentium machines
+ High likelihood of getting a FDIV bugged P60 (I did!)
+ Quiet and incredibly robust chassis that stands the test of time
+ QVision 1280 on-board video has good DOS performance using a proprietary local bus
+ 128-bit bus between CPU, RAM and cache means this is one of the faster stock Pentium 60 systems
- Terrible expansion - 4 ISA slots, no PCI, EISA or VLB
- On-board IDE controller does not appear to be on a local bus resulting in middling performance
- No on-board cache by default… a 256kb cache module was available but nigh-impossible to find
- On-board video has 1MB VRAM… the optional 1MB VRAM expansion module also is hard to find
Key Links
Quick reference guide: https://web.archive.org/web/19961226054359/ht … lume2/dpxe.html
Memory upgrade chart: https://web.archive.org/web/19961226052115/ht … emory/dpxe.html
CPU Upgrade options (no useful information for the XE560): https://web.archive.org/web/19970605111034/ht … e2/appgtoc.html
Unknowns / Investigations
- Locating QVision 1280/I VRAM expansion modules
- Locating the 256KB L2 processor cache module
- Is the system upgradable with the Pentium 120/133 overdrive?
Latest ROM - v. 94.11.02 (released 4/10/1995) - SP2165
F10 Setup - SP1363 (v10.06E 12-October-1995)
DOS Support - SP0518 (08-July-1993)
Windows 95 drivers - SP3317 (13-June-1997) and SP9542 (v1.92B 18-February-1999)