TELEPACMAN wrote:

I would like to upgrade the 40MB Conner CP3000 that is on the 286, how much can it handle?

How long is a piece of string? You've got a few options. Fit and nic and in it's eprom socket fit an eprom with xt-ide bios extension you can access very big drives. Fit a newer Xt-ide card which will do the same without needing a nic. You can use Dynamic Drive Overlay software to use quite large drives. There were IDE controllers made by Promise and a few others that supported 4gig drives if not bigger. Or find out the max size your current config can support by doing a bit of research/trial and error. It's probably around 512megs or thereabouts without help.All depends on the bios. Also consider IDE-CF adapters. With Dos you're limited to 2 gig Fat16 partitions though. Oh and Scsi is another option to consider.

I upgraded from a 40meg IDE to 210meg IDE hdd on my original 286 back in the day.

I dont know, maybe sizes under 504 mb are ok, but if you aim at gigabytes, scsi or xtide bios is the ticket.

Ok thanks guys. Somehow I was convinced there were only two options for a 286: 20MB or 40MB hdd. (don't recall where I got that silly idea)
I was gathering two of dozens of games from 1988 until 1992 just to test what games it can cope with. For my surprise it easily surpassed 160MB.
I'm going to try a 345MB maxtor that I have stored way before I got my hands on a 286.

One of the first things I learnt very quickly when I bought my 286/16 new in 1990 was it's 40meg hdd was just not going to cut it capacity wise in the long term. The 210meg drive, along with the 40meg as slave lasted until I was given bits left over from a friends 486-pentium upgrade. Skipped the whole 386 thing altogether.

IIRC some 286 systems, namely laptops and systems with earlier MFM drives, only had a few drive options. I recall a member over at VCF being in this situation a few years back with his laptop.

Caluser2000 wrote:

One of the first things I learnt very quickly when I bought my 286/16 new in 1990 was it's 40meg hdd was just not going to cut it capacity wise in the long term. The 210meg drive, along with the 40meg as slave lasted until I was given bits left over from a friends 486-pentium upgrade. Skipped the whole 386 thing altogether.

IIRC some 286 systems, namely laptops and systems with earlier MFM drives, only had a few drive options. I recall a member over at VCF being in this situation a few years back with his laptop.

That's true. Many 286's (especially true of early 286's w/ MFM or RLL drives) didn't have a BIOS with a configurable drive "Type 47" for IDE drives. For those, you need a new controller with it's own BIOS. My old 286 used one of those "Hardcards" back in the day. I believe it was a 70MB Quantum hard drive+controller+BIOS built into a single full-length ISA card.

Ok it was not so silly after all, there was a reason for my reasoning.
After installing the 345MB hdd I'm going to further improve this 286. I'm going to install a "multimedia kit" consisting of quad speed cd-rom, a soundblaster 16 and active speakers, 🤣. Also I think some games will not play with 1MB so thinking of going 4MB ram. What do you think?

It's really up to you and how much time/money you want to waste, urm I mean invest, on the machine 😉 A NIC would be a good addition.

oh and pics please

Ram expansion from 1 MB gives a big boost to any 286. Windows can make use of more than 4 MB, but the processor is not really meant for multitasking... many boards max out at 4 MB RAM as well. Hopefully, you can get cheap SIMM 30s.

Many 286s could accept a generic BIOS from AMI, Phoenix or AWARD. I have a generic AMI in my 5170 which I installed specifically for the type 47 support. I know this works for boards with decrete logic, but probably less so for custom VLSI chips. In anycase, as long as you use a BIOS for a board that uses the same chipset you'll probably be okay.

Caluser2000 wrote:

It's really up to you and how much time/money you want to waste, urm I mean invest, on the machine 😉 A NIC would be a good addition.

oh and pics please

My main interest is the 90's ms-dos and 3d games with win9x, so this little adventure with a AT class machine is just to give it a try. I will try to get by with what I allready have, like the hdd. I think I have simms, but I have to take a look.
I realize pictures for this small project is overdue and you guys certainly deserve it. So I promisse to post some pics.
What's that about the NIC, what is the purpose? 🤣

Ram expansion from 1 MB gives a big boost to any 286. Windows can make use of more than 4 MB, but the processor is not really meant for multitasking... many boards max out at 4 MB RAM as well. Hopefully, you can get cheap SIMM 30s.

If it wont make a difference with dos games then I will not bother to get more ram. Will not install windows.

Many 286s could accept a generic BIOS from AMI, Phoenix or AWARD. I have a generic AMI in my 5170 which I installed specifically for the type 47 support. I know this works for boards with decrete logic, but probably less so for custom VLSI chips. In anycase, as long as you use a BIOS for a board that uses the same chipset you'll probably be okay.

I believe this 286 is from 1991, the AMI BIOS on it allready supports type 47, does this mean more than 504MB hdd?

No, I think 504MB will be the max using that BIOS. However, you can always use the XTIDE (AT version) BIOS from vintage-computer.com. You just need an NIC with an empty ROM socket. I think it supports at least 100GB PATA drives.

If it wont make a difference with dos games then I will not bother to get more ram. Will not install windows.]

It will. Even a DOS-only 286 can make good use of 2 MB RAM with some games. Any tiny leftover of XMS can be turned into disk cache. So adding another 1 MB might be the ticket.

TELEPACMAN wrote:

What's that about the NIC, what is the purpose? 🤣

Transfer files or even run programs from a remote computer, use a Dos IRC client, FTP, correct system clock time using a remote time server, add XT-IDE eprom for even larger drive support as AC mentioned to name a few.

Even surf the interweb if you're up to it for giggles- http://hackaday.com/2014/10/23/hackaday-retro … n-the-internet/ That was done on a measly 50meg hdd.

Extra memory can also be used as a ram disk.

What about something like EZ-BIOS?
I used that back in the day on my Pentium to bypass the size limits of the BIOS. It should work on most 16-bit IDE-based machines, possibly even 286.
It's basically a BIOS extension that is installed in your boot sector. Simpler and cheaper than adding a ROM, if it works.

I've had some machines where it doesn't work, but they were Compaqs with a custom BIOS that loaded from harddisk. It simply wouldn't get as far as POSTing properly, with a drive > 8.4 GB, so it wouldn't get to load EZ-BIOS at all.
On standard Phoenix/AMI/Award etc BIOSes, things should work fine, since it will read the first sector of the HDD even if the drive geometry is incorrect. That's enough to get EZ-BIOS started, which will then fix things.

What about something like EZ-BIOS?

Dynamic Drive Overlays were already brought up in this thread (see Caluser2000's posts). EZ-BIOS is a DDO as well - in fact, this techonology was licensed by Maxtor (among others) so it is part of Maxblast 3, available at vogonsdrivers 😀

One complaint about DDOs is that they all reduce conventional RAM by a few kilobytes by default, making some programs commit suicide when they check for presence of standard 640k (so even if you have enough base RAM, you are screwed because you have it in a non-standard configuration.)

Aitotat's XTIDE Universal BIOS is generally more compatible - usually consumes 1kb conventional RAM and 8 to 12kb in the UMA. It can be tailored to your particular machine as well.

I've got an old 4gig BigFoot drive with OnTrack v9.x I've used on a few 286/386 mobos for testing purposes in the past and a quick way of transferring files to a smaller slaved hdd. It currently resides in my 386DX25 box.

Hey I got one of those bigfoot, but only 1.2G - anyway I know I promised some photos. It is rather late here in Portugal and I've been working until now, but I can't go to bed without sharing some quick photos I took the other day. Nothing much but it is a start. See you 😀
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j19/telepac … zpsrg288kf2.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j19/telepac … zpshuzyyzfn.jpg

TELEPACMAN wrote:

The motherboard is identified like so: "286-12/16E REV. B" and it takes SIMMS.

Funny i have two of these boards here.. They where made by diamond flower inc. One is from that manufacturer, the other was sold from Modulair circuit technology,

But both comes from the same DFI factory.

This is what you are looking for:

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/D/DI … ml#.VRywP-Hkigw

TELEPACMAN wrote:

Ok it was not so silly after all, there was a reason for my reasoning.
After installing the 345MB hdd I'm going to further improve this 286. I'm going to install a "multimedia kit" consisting of quad speed cd-rom, a soundblaster 16 and active speakers, 🤣. Also I think some games will not play with 1MB so thinking of going 4MB ram. What do you think?

4MB is a good idea on this board (it seems also the max), because you can split it in sections.. In the bios you can set the amount of EMS memory you want to use.. The amount of EMS set by the bios would recalculated from the total you have installed in the board..

So if for example: If you install 4MB of ram.. It will use as normal the 640KB conventional memory.. The rest of the memory is just a left-over,
If you dont set the EMS amount in the bios, the rest of this memory would be extended memory.. I think you need a manager to get a high memory section..

The rest of the memory is set in the bios will act as EMS memory.. To use it you need to load the EMS driver. (this memory that was set as EMS will disappear when to system is counting the memory.

I also have a question for other users.. I red you need to load a driver to access the upper-memory area.. Would HIMEM.SYS that came standard in MS-DOS 5.0 do the same that it would create an upper-memory area?

64kb UMA is usually no problem for himem.sys on most systems.. UMBs are much more problematic... It all depends on the chipset. You need either a manufacturer driver or 3rd party manager that supports the chipset. Himem Sys cannot make umbs.