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Sperry 286 - Mitsubishi MP 286? Setup prog. Looking for Mit 1.58 BIOS

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First post, by marcushg85

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Hi, I recently acquired this Sperry rebranded Mitsubishi computer, which I found a slightly different revision to be called Mitsubishi MP 286 (motherboard MP 2300), mine has 512k ram and a rare propietary ram expansion board (not isa). Looks like the dip switches on the front are almost he same, even tested few of them and work. Unfortunately the computer relies on some setup program for cmos settings but tried the one for Mitsubishi 286L and others and setup says its not for this machine.
The problem is I can't disable the integrated floppy and it is set to a 5,25" floppy (those images work on a gotek drive but not others) and of course, can't set a hard drive in case an external isa controller would work.
Any ideas? already tried gsetup (that generic setup utility for 5170..) and messes everything up.
By the way, i'm actually booting the computer with an xtIde adapter, and needless to say that I replaced the CMOS battery with a new recheargeable one
Thanks a lot

Last edited by marcushg85 on 2023-09-02, 15:56. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 4, by Horun

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Try the Landmark Setup for AT's, it might work....
Added: this is from VCFED, the diag/setup disk for a Sperry PC IT 286 360k images, use the .img one and extract the files with 7zip....

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 4, by dominusprog

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Have you tried this?

http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=1958&menustate=0

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A-Trend ATC-1020 V1.1 ❇ Cyrix 6x86 150+ @ 120MHz ❇ 32MiB EDO RAM (8MiBx4) ❇ A-Trend S3 Trio64V2 2MiB
Aztech Pro16 II-3D PnP ❇ 8.4GiB Quantum Fireball ❇ Win95 OSR2 Plus!

Reply 3 of 4, by marcushg85

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Hi and thanks a lot for your answers! My first choice was obviously that setup disk for mitsubishi 286/386 but unfortunately it's for that later laptop machine or 386, it is hardcoded somehow to just run on those, it just gives me an error stating "cannot run on this machine". Landmark also doesn't even boot because cannot detect even the release date of bios or if hard drives can be present... And finally, that Sperry 286 diag tool, the Diagx doesn't boot also saying its not for this machine, and the setup utility runs but just lets me choose between DS/DD and HD disks (but 5,25, not 3,5 disk drives).
I've tried all combinations possible, and looks like GSETUP (generic utility for 286) is quite close, as it has been able to set the date and time correctly and the video card type, but if I set the drive as 1,44mb 3,5inch drive will just give sector reading errors, and still reads only the 5,25 disks...
So I guess the 5,25 drive is the only option... Perhaps a SCSI controller with its bios would make it work.. otherwise xtide seems the only feasible option... but not being able to read 3,5inch floppies is quite bad...
EDIT: now I looked for a newer version of the Landmark setup and found one utility on WinworldPC called Landmark Service Diagnostics 2.13 and during diagnostics I tried to set up the first floppy drive to 1,44mb 3,5inch and do the diagnostic and worked... but then if I save the settings, reboot, fails to read 3,5 inch disks and still only works with 1,2mb 5,25...
I cant think of anything else...

Reply 4 of 4, by marcushg85

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googling around found some info related to sperry 286 machines mentioning few bugs (some related to floppy config) that are solved in 1.58 bios (others mention Mitsubishi Bios Ver 1.58F)
Now the only missing thing would be finding someone with that Mitsubishi MP 286 or the Sperry 286 IT which might have that upgraded bios...
Ive installed now an xtide rom in a network card and can boot from a CF card

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