Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-04, 05:40

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally here is the MR BIOS for the "OPTI 386WB" a.k.a Shuttle HOT-307. Speedsys refuses to dump a BIOS without a working HDD in the system for some reason although it dumps the BIOS to its own the directory on the floppy... that's the reason for the delay. I also made a new BIOS dump of the OPTI …

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Re: Installation of DOS 6.22 from cd-rom disk

Posted on 2018-03-04, 01:03

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

That certain "abandonware" site is revising history again. MS-DOS 6 CD releases don't legally exist. It doesn't exist in a bootable form either. You're talking freaking DOS, an OS without a CD-ROM driver of its own, to be isntalled from disc. On a fresh system, that's impossible without a boot disk …

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-03, 14:30

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally here is the MR BIOS for the "OPTI 386WB" a.k.a Shuttle HOT-307. Speedsys refuses to dump a BIOS without a working HDD in the system for some reason although it dumps the BIOS to its own the directory on the floppy... that's the reason for the delay. I also made a new BIOS dump of the OPTI …

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-03, 02:10

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

does cache make a huge difference in performance? because i only have 128kb in both my 386 + 486 128k should be plenty on the 386. Unless *really* want the extra 1% performance boost you’d get from upgrading to 256k or already have the cache chips, it’s really not worth the money. Going from no …

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-01, 23:20

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One thing that interests me about this board is that proprietary memory expansion slot in the back. I would love to know more about it. Is there anyone who knows anything about it or similar ones? A lot of higher end 386DX boards of that era had 32-Bit memory expansion slots. Unfortunately, as far …

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Re: Best 386 Motherboard?

Posted on 2018-03-01, 17:12

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/SHUTTLE-COMPUTER-INTERNATIONAL-INC-386-HOT-307.html I think it's a bit funny that the Shuttle HOT-307 is 100% identical (except for the silk screening and the colour of some jumpers) to the generic OPTI 391 386 motherboard I posted two pages back. I want I …

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Re: AST Bravo 4/33 - Motherboard battery

Posted on 2018-02-27, 17:46

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks for that - that should hopefully give me something to work with, Just as an FYI, it’s easy to find out what fits if you’ve got a little mm or cm ruler. These types of coin cell battery part numbers are easy to decode: CRXXYy CR = Primary Lithium - 3V; LIR = Secondary (Rechargeable) Lithium - …

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Re: AHA-1542CF Floppy Controller Problem

Posted on 2018-02-26, 15:48

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice to hear that you got it working fine now. A MR BIOS designed for an OPTI 391 w/486 should work on an OPTI 391 w/386. On my system, I didn't notice any speed advantage when using the floppy controller on the 1542. I tried it last night, but sadly the MR BIOS for that OPTi 391 486 board doesn’t …

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Re: AHA-1542CF Floppy Controller Problem

Posted on 2018-02-25, 12:18

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by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The ideas which came flowing to my mind without significant thought were: 1) Could the hardware on this particular 1542CF card require a specific BIOS revision? I have a few of these cards and have never tried updating the BIOSes to the latest ones. 2) Does your motherboard have a working real-time …

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AHA-1542CF Floppy Controller Problem

Posted on 2018-02-25, 02:44

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hey guys, so I started setting up my new 386DX-40 system last night, but I’m having a bit of an issue getting the floppy drives to work. I’m trying to use the floppy controller built into the Adaptec AHA-1542CF SCSI card. Here’s the situation: If I set the Drive A/B fields in the AMI 386 BIOS to the …

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Re: Cleaning up old PC, particularly from dust

Posted on 2018-02-22, 10:21

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

On this subject, I have an old hard drive which works OK but makes a horrible squealing sound as it spins. How do I lubricate this? I'm frightened of breaking something so haven't attempted anything yet. 9 times out of 10, hard drive noise is caused by the heads dragging on the platters. I like to …

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Re: Cleaning up old PC, particularly from dust

Posted on 2018-02-22, 00:53

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does WD40 help with the fan? God no! Plain WD-40 is pretty horrible (as far as long term lubricants go). It will gum up after awhile and make things worse. Personally, I use Hoppe’s Number 9 Lubricating Oil to re-lube fan bearings after cleaning them. It doesn’t gum up or evaporate and tolerates …

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Re: Cleaning up old PC, particularly from dust

Posted on 2018-02-22, 00:40

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For all the mobos I cleaned, I never had corrosion, right after giving it a bath, I use a hairdryer to make most water to go away All you need is to remove everything that may still produce some electricity (batteries, etc) and don't use it untill it's dry. Water only hurts when it's doing short …

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Re: Replacing IDE hard drives with something more modern

Posted on 2018-02-17, 00:45

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HDD's seek time is generally 8-12ms, not 100s of milliseconds. Good SSD access time is generally about 0.1ms, which is 100,000 nanoseconds. (May be faster as not sure if that measurement is a limit of the testing software). Whoops, that’s should have read “10’s of milliseconds” and yes, I should …

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Re: Replacing IDE hard drives with something more modern

Posted on 2018-02-16, 21:46

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What would I gain from using a $20 512MB DOM versus a $7 512MB "Industrial Grade" CF card ? I see that DOMs are often marked as having SLC NAND, which is good (faster and longer life), but what do CF cards generally use and does it even matter on systems that were originally using incredibly slow …

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Re: Replacing IDE hard drives with something more modern

Posted on 2018-02-16, 18:25

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't recommend using Compact Flash or SD cards as replacement for hard drives, since they wear out the more you keep writing to them and often CF cards only support PIO mode. You can pickup 8GB Industrial Compact Flash cards in bulk lots on eBay fairly cheap these days. They use the much more …

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Re: Virtual floppy drive under MS-DOS?

Posted on 2018-02-16, 00:17

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

SHSUFDRV or SHSURDRV will do exactly that! http://adoxa.altervista.org/shsufdrv/index.html You will end up with the virtual drive on a non-floppy drive letter (not A or B), however you can fix that with ASSIGN. For example, if your virtual floppy is mounted to F: via SHSUFDRV, simply type “assign …

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Re: 386SX-20 Randomly Rebooting

Posted on 2018-02-15, 14:26

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So, I switched out the chipset ICs and now the board is completely dead. I suspect one of the two ICs got too hot when I removed them from the old board (though I’ve done hundreds of QFP packages with hot air and never had that happen before). Oh well. I’ve spent more than enough time trying to fix …

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Re: 386SX-20 Randomly Rebooting

Posted on 2018-02-14, 12:01

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So more playing around tonigh, I got the memory test to run for two hours straight before stopping it. I toggled the power and ran it again, without changing any settings and it reset after 20 seconds of testing... I also ruled out the power supervisor IC (it’s not generating the reset). Thinking …

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386SX-20 Randomly Rebooting

Posted on 2018-02-13, 14:52

by

by timb.us

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hey guys, so a few years back I picked up an early 90’s vintage generic lunchbox portable (PC-III Portable w/ Paper White VGA LCD). It had a “Topcat SX” motherboard in it (based on the VL82C320/i82C343 chipset and AMI Hi-Flex BIOS). At some point I cannibalized the BIOS EPROM because I needed a …

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