"CF->IDE controller"?

CF is basically IDE, CF-IDE adapters are normally passive, so no controllers involved in the adapter. It will be hooked up to a controller in the PC though - which kind?

386 systems can be a bit touchy with CD ROMs and with IDE slave drives. What I'd do to figure out which is causing the issues here is temporarily disconnect the CF+adapter and set the CD to master, then boot from floppy (that Win98 boot disc) and see if the CD works well then. If it does, the problem is with slave drives (or more specifically with your CF adapter vs a slave drive), and you might need a second controller (which you may already have on a sound card).

The deskpro/m has integrated IDE in the IO/audio board under the PSU. I can't comment on running an IDE CDROM on it thought, I use SCSI on mine

Hmmm... That really sounds like the problem I had on my Compaq Prolinea few days ago: Mitsumi 6x CDROM acting weird depending on OS [solved]

Spoiler: it was the CF card itself the problem.

I second that, master/slave is finicky with CF cards. You usually have better luck with 'industrial ' type cards in that scenario. I have a 486 that I was trying master/slave with a cd ROM, and it would always lock up, until I tried an industrial card.

Linoleum wrote on 2024-12-29, 02:44:

Hmmm... That really sounds like the problem I had on my Compaq Prolinea few days ago: Mitsumi 6x CDROM acting weird depending on OS [solved]

Spoiler: it was the CF card itself the problem.

Yup. I removed the CF card from the interface and booted off the floppy and the CD drive worked perfectly.

I had a look at the CF card that I was using and it was different (old camera card) a 16GB Sandisk Extreme Pro UDMA6 - it seems there is a UDMA incompatibility as non-DMA CF cards work perfectly, any UDMA cards do wild things with the IDE bus.

Thanks, I was almost at my wits end, I totally forgot I had put a random CF card in (it works fine on its own...) I will use this card with the FieldWorks "laptop" as it doesn't seem to care about DMA or the size.

Is there a good software that is able to give you the full specs of a CF card?

Now that I have more-or-less everything running I tried to install Windows 3.11 and started getting issues with only 16MB of RAM being available, turns out I need to add the /EISA flag to HIMEM.SYS - that got me past the 16MB limitation, but programs are crashing, Word 6 for Windows won't start at all, I get an Insufficient memory to run Microsoft Word. Then in other programs, e.g. Microsoft Access, I get random General Protection Fault. So I was thinking of memory issues, I tried SpeedSys first, that just locked up and I had to power cycle the machine, I then downloaded MemTest 5.10 and that just boot loops the machine. I tried an earlier (pre-Pentium version) of MemTest (4.10) and it kind of works, but it only sees 16MB. Eventually I found a Compaq Deskpro 4000 Diagnostics and Setup Disks (Archive.org link - https://archive.org/details/diagnosticsdisk), these work and I am leaving the memory to be tested to see if there are any latent memory problems. It will take a long time as there's 64MB and it's a 386/25...

maniacminer wrote on 2024-12-30, 23:59:

Now that I have more-or-less everything running I tried to install Windows 3.11 and started getting issues with only 16MB of RAM being available, turns out I need to add the /EISA flag to HIMEM.SYS - that got me past the 16MB limitation, but programs are crashing, Word 6 for Windows won't start at all, I get an Insufficient memory to run Microsoft Word. Then in other programs, e.g. Microsoft Access, I get random General Protection Fault. So I was thinking of memory issues, I tried SpeedSys first, that just locked up and I had to power cycle the machine, I then downloaded MemTest 5.10 and that just boot loops the machine. I tried an earlier (pre-Pentium version) of MemTest (4.10) and it kind of works, but it only sees 16MB. Eventually I found a Compaq Deskpro 4000 Diagnostics and Setup Disks (Archive.org link - https://archive.org/details/diagnosticsdisk), these work and I am leaving the memory to be tested to see if there are any latent memory problems. It will take a long time as there's 64MB and it's a 386/25...

I would downgrade to 16mb in a heartbeat! Even Win95 runs super well with 16mb…

Plus, there are tons of games that have problems with more than 32mb…

Any reasons why you want to keep that amount of ram on a 386?

Linoleum wrote on 2024-12-31, 01:32:

I would downgrade to 16mb in a heartbeat! Even Win95 runs super well with 16mb…

Plus, there are tons of games that have problems with more than 32mb…

Any reasons why you want to keep that amount of ram on a 386?

I have a memory expansion board that takes 8x8MB SIMMs, so I just filled them - I'm not intending to do any gaming on this, it's for messing around with old apps I used back in the early 90s. It has lots of other things in it that would make most grown men think I shave the palms of my hands, a Cyrix FasMath, 3C579, AHA-2742AT, CT3990 w/8Mb. If I wanted easy, I guess I'd just fire up DOSBox - I'm made of sterner stuff 😋

That took quite a while 🥳 The memory test was very revealing, six out of eight of the 8MB SIMMs are faulty, but only in a single memory nibble within the entire 8MB stick. The faulty modules are all Kingston KTC-8000N 70ns FP Parity. So I'm left with two KTC-8000N modules and the 4MB on board for a grand total of 20MB. Enough to get back into it and see what's going on. Good news, no more weird crashing! I still had the problem with Microsoft Word 6.0 - "Not enough memory to run Microsoft Word 6.0" system dialogue. Turns out that was an error as old as the hills themselves - I found something about Windows NT with the same error and the first entry in the list of causes - "No default printer selected" - D'oh! I haven't got a printer connected yet (another project) so I picked an Epson and that problem went away. Yay! https://ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/Patches/ftp.microso … -us/100/215.HTM I used my phone from the other side of the room, so the photos aren't great.

After such a massive memory fault I recommend to reinstall all from the scratch. It is likely you'll have corrupted files on your system.

maniacminer wrote on 2025-01-01, 23:25:

Linoleum wrote on 2024-12-31, 01:32:

I would downgrade to 16mb in a heartbeat! Even Win95 runs super well with 16mb…

Plus, there are tons of games that have problems with more than 32mb…

Any reasons why you want to keep that amount of ram on a 386?

I have a memory expansion board that takes 8x8MB SIMMs, so I just filled them - I'm not intending to do any gaming on this, it's for messing around with old apps I used back in the early 90s. It has lots of other things in it that would make most grown men think I shave the palms of my hands, a Cyrix FasMath, 3C579, AHA-2742AT, CT3990 w/8Mb. If I wanted easy, I guess I'd just fire up DOSBox - I'm made of sterner stuff 😋

Wow! That's small package with a lot of punch! But I get it... DosBox is only interesting for 5 minutes until you figure out you need the real deal!

maniacminer wrote on 2025-01-02, 00:14:

That took quite a while 🥳 The memory test was very revealing, six out of eight of the 8MB SIMMs are faulty, but only in a singl […]
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That took quite a while 🥳 The memory test was very revealing, six out of eight of the 8MB SIMMs are faulty, but only in a single memory nibble within the entire 8MB stick. The faulty modules are all Kingston KTC-8000N 70ns FP Parity. So I'm left with two KTC-8000N modules and the 4MB on board for a grand total of 20MB. Enough to get back into it and see what's going on. Good news, no more weird crashing! I still had the problem with Microsoft Word 6.0 - "Not enough memory to run Microsoft Word 6.0" system dialogue. Turns out that was an error as old as the hills themselves - I found something about Windows NT with the same error and the first entry in the list of causes - "No default printer selected" - D'oh! I haven't got a printer connected yet (another project) so I picked an Epson and that problem went away. Yay! https://ftp.zx.net.nz/pub/Patches/ftp.microso … -us/100/215.HTM I used my phone from the other side of the room, so the photos aren't great.

The deskpro/m is extremely picky about memory, it will produce errors with sticks that work perfectly in other machines.

I have gone through the big pile of 8MB and 4MB SIMMs and the machine had problems will all of it. The RAM definitely works in other machines (as previously mentioned, this machine is picky) so I put the machine on the oscilloscope and noticed that the supply rail was dipping during the random address test. I noticed that the board had two positions for a capacitor, but none were fitted. I added a pair of 1000uF polymer capacitors to the pads and tried again, this time no voltage drop. Yay!

However there were still some memory problems so then I tested each stick on its own and found the real culprits, so where I thought I had 20 or so bad SIMMs I have three. The other oddity is I could not boot the machine with 8x8MB as the RAM on the processor card was not disabled leading to an illegal 68MB RAM.

I put in a 4MB SIMM and that problem went away. But with 64MB odd things happened, it wouldn't install Windows 3.11, it would freeze with a black screen when it went to show the Windows GUI during installation. Restarting the machine and re-running setup and I got a message telling me the video hardware was incompatible with Windows. So I tried the Compaq display drivers and it froze in the same place. I'm wondering if there is some kind of compatibility that the BIOS does (or it is expected that it does) to map (E)ISA devices into the memory map and if that is constrained to exist in the 64MB memory region, it would explain why that doesn't work.

I cannot find any information on the STC 9160 memory board - made by Simple Technology Incorporated. It allows the fitting of both parity and non-parity RAM - perhaps what the "ASIC" refers to? I will try again with 60MB RAM and see how I get on...

I had to create a new set of EISA configuration discs and found it hard to locate all the files.

I have not been able to get this Simple board to work reliably with 8MB modules. I have tried 60 or so modules, on their own, discarded 10 as they either wouldn't POST or had memory errors. The remainder, a mixture of 70ns, 60ns, parity and non-parity work sometimes, they will all POST and count correctly, but then fail during the Compaq Memory Diagnostic Test when in any combination with each other!

The worst part of doing anything on this Deskpro/M is that I have to disconnect the HDD, boot the configuration from floppies and then set the block mode, then reboot again and do the memory test - each loop of this takes around 4 hours.

I can't find any information on the Simple board, the wobbly Comic Sans font for the logo doesn't inspire much confidence when dealing with workstation class hardware... I'm going to try 4MB non-parity 70ns next as that is what the board had fitted when I first got it, those two 4MB modules never cause issues. I was hoping to get 64MB working, but alas, there is zero chance of that with this Simple board.

Looking at it again, I assume Simple decided that the answer to memory upgrades where parity RAM was required would be to use an ASIC to pretend to have parity RAM and use non-parity RAM?

The memory board is interesting. It seems to have the parity chips installed allready, so the SIMMs do not need their own.
I only know/own the Compaq and the Kingston RAM Expansion boards and they both need parity on the modules.

The need for unplugging of the HDD may be caused by a bug in the Compaq config tools.
It seems necessary if the full 64MB are installed, otherwise the system freezes during boot of the config-SW.