Niezgodka wrote on 2021-11-06, 13:05:

Datadrainer wrote on 2021-11-06, 09:13:

Just a guess, from the photo, seems to be a Toshiba T5200. See if I'm lucky 😉

Very close 😀
It is T3200SXC.

Indeed. And the C in the name is for the plasma color screen. Nice "little" machine 😉
Some early 286 models and later 486 models where able to connect to the Toshiba Desk Stations to allow more ISA slot but I think, unfortunately, the 386 generation cannot. That need to be checked in the documentation to confirm.

It has no more expansion option. I must say - computer is beautiful and kind of vintage technologied 😀 They used cables display connectors instead of tapes like in laptops. Taking it apart - super challange.
I read http://www.steptail.com/toshiba_t-series_supp … oshiba_t3200sxc and it says you can even upgrade cpu to 486. I wish I would have such skills 🙁

The motherboard is spitted in two pieces, and connected together in the middle 😀

For the CPU, I have seen a video from Adrian's Digital Basement a few weeks ago where he is speaking of an upgrade for 386 CPUs that is just a board to plug on top of the CPU. Here it is [https://youtu.be/QhqZiMhe5UA]. He made funny experiments, but the principle of it is great, it reminded me system upgrade for Amiga machines. The advantage is that no modding is required. But a 386SX-20 is cool by itself and many things can be done with it. For a true 486 experience, I think it is better to get a 486DX2-66 machine with 256 KB of L2 cache(1) than to upgrade a 386SX which is limited by its bus anyway. So I recommend to enjoy it like it is.

So, what do you plan to do with your Network + Sound card problem? Wait for an XT-IDE BIOS that is working with your computer?
Until there is a solution you can try a compact flash adapter and go with a 512 MB CF card and use both ISA slot for network and sound. I don't know what do you want to store into your disk, but 512 MB is a lot for DOS programs of the era.

(1) Some would consider to go with a more powerful 486 CPU based on P24T architecture like 486DX4-75 or DX4-100 with write back or IBM/AMD/Cyrix even more powerful clones. Why not, but to me that's not a true 486 experience and I would rather consider a Pentium instead. But that's not the debate here.

That is actually so cool, such addon, no soldering. I wish it would be available for buying 🙁
So right now I'm stucked. Regular Xt2IDE does work but in a weird way 🙁
Here is what I got:

I had to disable hdd in Bios, to make it working. Without the disabling - it was throwing some command looking for Toshiba Basic (?)
In this case, for some reason it switches me for a:
Any idea what to do?
Optimally, retro computer for me is a Pentium 120, with multiple isa slots for soundcards (Gus + Awe64 + Lapc-I)

it's not switching you to A: .
It's not finding COMMAND.COM !

you don't need EZ-BIOS with xt-ide , maybe that messes things up?

Humm. I have no experience at all using an XTIDE. I just read a few articles and docs about it. I have a 286 to restore that would benefit to have one.
Your problem seems to be a wrong partition scheme. The message "Starting MS-DOS 7.1..." is read from IO.SYS or MSDOS.SYS, I don't remember. As it is DOS 7.1, it could be formatted to FAT32 and small files like IO.SYS or MSDOS.SYS are directly stored in the FAT I think, not on the storage space. COMMAND.COM should be stored out of the FAT on the other hand. It is a .COM file, normally under 64 KB, but maybe too large to be stored in the FAT. If you have a wrong partition table or format sector size, it could lead to the startup files not able to read the storage space, but read without problem the FAT. You can try to fix the MBR or reformat the C partition but I think it will not solve anything. And I agree with @keropi, you don't need any additional HDD tools to allow the use of the correct disk size. The goal of XTIDE is to do just that.
The T3200SXC seems to be compliant to IDE, using the correct address space and interrupts.
So what I recommend, because I don't see any other options. Backup the content of your CF file on a PC. Then put the CF back in the T3200SXC. Use a Windows 98SE startup floppy with FDISK, SYS and FORMAT on it. Boot on it and use FDISK to remove all partition, then create them again and mark the C partition as bootable. As XTIDE as loaded its code, FDISK should be able to recognize the whole disk capacity. Reboot on the floppy and format using FORMAT C: /SYS. Then restore the content to the CF. And start the computer again without the floppy. If everything is done correctly the PC should boot correctly, if not, then it is a more deeper problem that need some work to understand.
Please, let us now.

Ok. Thank you for for advice - the xt2ide now works! So now I need to look around for a nice oldschool soundcard.

Happy to know. That's great.
I would not recommend a sound card from the same period of the computer because they are very noisy. And the space in your computer is limited too, so only short ISA card can fit I suppose.
So why not the Orpheus made by @keropi three posts ago ? Look for its signature 😉
He have made a wonderful sound card very well designed, based on Cirrus Logic/Crystal CS4237B chip. I have a big collection of ISA sound cards and I do not recommend it without reason. I bought an Orpheus and I can tell there is no noticeable noise using studio monitors, I got no problem with the lot of games I have tested. It's really great for MS-DOS games and it uses a very powerful and configurable driver made by @640K!enough that have a low memory print. All of that at a justified price. One of it's big advantage is it can embed another of its great work: the PCMIDI, that can do MPU-401 Intelligent Mode for MIDI devices like Roland CM-32L/MT-32. But if you do not plan to use that, the card exists without it.
If @keropi doesn't give me discount on my next purchase, I don't know what to do. Just kidding 🤣