It lives!

I had a spare VGA cable, so I took the pin out. It's actually running MS DOS 6.21.

What a nice 386. With EISA too. I've always wanted one of these old compaq 386s.

I want to get a sound card for this machine but unsure what to get? Any suggestions?

I've just installed Windows 3.11 on it, It runs very well. Plans are to replace the 60mb hard drive with something bigger, 500mb-1Gb providing the BIOS supports it.
Ideally would like to put a early CD-ROM drive into it, but assuming I'm going to have to go SCSI (ISA Card + Drive)

CT1770.

What is that big intel chip near the CPU?

RacoonRider wrote:

What is that big intel chip near the CPU?

I think that just a controller chip to drive the main processor and the co-processor to communicate to the whole system board.

Robin4 wrote:

RacoonRider wrote:

What is that big intel chip near the CPU?

I think that just a controller chip to drive the main processor and the co-processor to communicate to the whole system board.

Do you mean North Bridge? oO

Pin 9 being obscured was present on the very first implementations of VGA (and MCGA / XGA-2 / 8514); I suppose it was designed as a mechanism for keying to prevent anything else which may have 15 pins to be inserted. Generally you see it on early PS/2s (where the standard originated from), but apparently Compaqs as well-- which is perplexing why Compaq was still doing that by the time they had EISA.

I actually own this weird adapter that plugs into VGA without pin 9 and converts it to VGA with all of the pins. I have no clue what kind of adapter like that is called, it came attached to a terminal base that didn't even need it.

Nice, however, and it's just my personal opinion, prefer to go with a P2 for setting up a pure MS-DOS system, but then I'd also have a lot of games that require a bit more horsepower than a 386 supplies loaded on it too so there, in addition to running DOS 7.1 becasue the FAT32 support since I'd be using a 10GB hard drive.

Sutekh94 wrote:

CT1770.

Thanks, I've ordered a Creative CT1770 SB 16 - just waiting for it to turn up! Now need to find a early SCSI CD-ROM (4-8x) which does not cost the earth!

With regards to upgrading the memory in this machine, I'm assuming I will need a EISA memory board?
I'm going to investigate the battery this evening.

Really nice machine. I like it a lot.

A few years ago I was trying to give away NOS 4X Pioneer SCSI CD-ROM drives, and there were NO takers!

A Cool old machine! I would add a 5.25 fdd and maybe a CD-ROM.

OK, Update time. Only small but notable. My CT1770 SB 16 arrived today, all the way from the US! It came complete with SCSI cable so will need to find a CD-ROM drive for it now.

While I had the case of I gave it a little clean inside and had a proper inspection of what could potentially be on the upgrade/add-on list.

SB16 Installed!

Almost looks OEM 🤣 great match!

Photo of the possible north bridge

This seems to be where I expand the RAM...

It's all installed and tested with Wolf3D, Windows drivers were installed as part of the installer (Thanks for the drivers Vogons 😀)

Next

Bigger, 500mb Hard Drive
SCSI CD-ROM Drive

That appears to be one of the newer 386 systems they made... While I can't find anything on the internet, I'm pretty sure the memory expansion board for that thing is the same as in a 486-based Deskpro /M which takes 72-pin SIMMs. The video card, backplane and case are the same as in the 486 Deskpros from the same vintage. You could actually make that mahcine more powerful by replacing the CPU board with a 486 CPU board. Also, the logic board or whatever compaq would have called it (the slide out board that sits under the power supply) can be replaced with a slightly higher optioned part that has "Compaq Business Audio" on it which is a wave only sound system (no MIDI, not even FM). The slots for the memory expansion appear to be the same as on the 486 versions of your system.

GXL750 wrote:

That appears to be one of the newer 386 systems they made... While I can't find anything on the internet, I'm pretty sure the memory expansion board for that thing is the same as in a 486-based Deskpro /M which takes 72-pin SIMMs. The video card, backplane and case are the same as in the 486 Deskpros from the same vintage. You could actually make that mahcine more powerful by replacing the CPU board with a 486 CPU board. Also, the logic board or whatever compaq would have called it (the slide out board that sits under the power supply) can be replaced with a slightly higher optioned part that has "Compaq Business Audio" on it which is a wave only sound system (no MIDI, not even FM). The slots for the memory expansion appear to be the same as on the 486 versions of your system.

Thanks for this.

I've had a scout on the net and ebay but can't seem to find any memory boards which would fit into the socket. There are a few but they seem to have a large pin block and not keyed.

I'm also unable to find a setup disk which works, I made a setup disk SP0308.EXE which runs but the setup part is not compatible with the EISA system. I've tried various others. This system seems to be very hard to find on the net as its often confused with the portable version. Any ideas? DeskPro 386s/20

I'm willing to take a punt on another logic board, there are a couple of ebay (486) do they come with memory on the logic board?

The CPU card in the 486 systems usually has 4mb on it. The system is odd in that there really isn't a central logic board. There's a board with CPU and a small amount of RAM, a (missing in your case; it was an optional extra for these things) memory expansion board which has a handful of 72-pin FPM sockets (I'm unsure if there was a board for 32 pin sockets), the backplane with the EISA slots then a smaller board under the psu that slides out the side of the computer containing ports and, in some models, integrated "Compaq Business Audio." The systems were very modular.

Just keep that in mind so you know when you order a board, which one you're getting. You're not going to have more than 4mb memory without finding that memory expansion though.

Nice looking system. What's the cable tie hanging out the front?
My 486 doesn't have a working CD drive at the moment.... Waiting to find a Panasonic interface drive which I'm not holding my breath for.
Until then Id recommend a network card to transfer files over (plus gives you a reason to go into windows if you just use basic windows file sharing)
Also you can go down the CF card instead of a hard drive option. Again easily swapped between machines for file transfer, faster then HDD's of the time and easier to get smaller sizes. (A 500 MB HDD will be pretty tired by now, but 512MB CF card are easy to get new)
You can even keep the original HDD as the boot device so you still get the sound of it starting, but not limited to space any more.

I bought a 12x Sony SCSI CD-ROM for the Compaq the other day, fitted it and working perfectly...
...however it does not fit in the drive cage, the drive is far to small, either side if you place it in the middle is 1cm each side. Almost like I need drive rails. I've tried fitting screws like HPs/Compaqs use either side of drive to slide in but even then its to small.

I can't find anything about this machine on the net! nor anyone else fitting a CD-ROM drive!? Any ideas?