Compaq Portable I/II and XT-IDE Universal BIOS (incompatible) \ VOGONS

Compaq Portable I/II and XT-IDE Universal BIOS (incompatible)

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First post, by aspiringnobody

Posted on 2021-08-29, 15:11

aspiringnobody Offline

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Just a bit of warning to those who are searching in the future. The XT-IDE BIOS causes the Compaq Portable to boot in low resolution mode, negating much of what is cool about this machine (super crisp text-mode). The key commands to switch back to high resolution mode don’t seem to work after XT-IDE loads either.

Pretty disappointing, but maybe it will save someone else some headache. I wasted money buying a ISA Network card for nothing!!

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Reply 1 of 2, by PTherapist

Posted on 2021-08-29, 15:32

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Did you try configuring the XTIDE BIOS to boot in 80x25 Monochrome mode?

Reply 2 of 2, by aspiringnobody

Posted on 2021-08-29, 17:49

aspiringnobody Offline

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PTherapist wrote on 2021-08-29, 15:32:

Did you try configuring the XTIDE BIOS to boot in 80x25 Monochrome mode?

Hey that worked a treat! RTFM I guess is the lesson here.

I did notice that the system refuses to post if the option rom is installed and the cmos battery is dead — you have to pull the card and run the compaq setup program before it will post.

This might not be an issue at an address other than C000h so your mileage may vary. D000h is probably “safer” but I wanted the high memory to be as contiguous as possible.

Thanks!

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