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Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 10:08 pm
by SpidersWeb
Whoops. Correction, it was a T1910CS I was talking about :S

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:03 am
by SpidersWeb
Well it fixed itself, although there is quite a nerve wrecking delay on power up now. Somebody needs fresh capacitors.....
You can see the black area near the power socket - that's from when it first went pop in the field (which oddly is the only reason it didn't get thrown out with the others when the company upgraded)

The Compaq Portable 486C from 1992 - not exactly a dinosaur but awesome in it's own right. Many thanks to Radar off here for letting me hold on to this gem.

http://youtu.be/slnXL_SegTE

Also for your amusement, search for "Compaq John Cleese" - hilarious adverts.

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 1:16 pm
by tezza
That was great Jono. I've seen pictures of these side-opening-type Compaq luggables before but have never seen them in the flesh or up and running. An interesting design. I didn't realise they went right up to VGA and 486.

Tell me, is the video, printer, RS232 etc. built into the board or do you need plug-in cards for those? How easy is it to install the cards? That sound was built in, yes? Did it need a special driver?

Is there a special compaq diagnostic partition like there is some of their other machines?

Yes, DOOM is my ultimate 486 demo game also. It was good to hear the theme from Larry again...I haven't heard that tune for about 20 years! It triggers some nostalgia.

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Mon Jun 24, 2013 3:10 pm
by SpidersWeb
tezza wrote:That was great Jono. I've seen pictures of these side-opening-type Compaq luggables before but have never seen them in the flesh or up and running. An interesting design. I didn't realise they went right up to VGA and 486.

Cheers :) There was a model after this one too, the 486C/66 (although throwing in a DX2/66 isn't really a milestone).

tezza wrote:Tell me, is the video, printer, RS232 etc. built into the board or do you need plug-in cards for those? How easy is it to install the cards? That sound was built in, yes? Did it need a special driver?


There is three boards internally which make up the system unit The main motherboard is mounted vertically behind the screen (and behind the speaker/controls). A second board runs the Parallel/Serial/FDD/PS2 ports and 2xEISA slots. With the back off, these two boards connected look like a big "L". The third board is the VGA card, which plugs in to the motherboard and sticks it's DB15 connector out the side.

The sound comes from a standard PC speaker - Compaq just added a 3.5mm mono output jack and a volume control - I'd have loved it if more computer makers did this in the pre-soundblaster era. The RCA outs you see on the side - that's actually my dead Sound Blaster clone which I need to replace (it detects fine, just no output).

Slotting in the cards is very easy, as there is lots of room and they just mount vertically (like a normal PC) - although I remember it being a bit fiddly doing up the screws. They're all security hex screws in true Compaq style.

I'll take photos when I open it up to replace that sound board.

tezza wrote:Is there a special compaq diagnostic partition like there is some of their other machines?

I can't be 100% certain, but pretty sure it's just the Compaq Diagnostics disk. I used a copy of this when it first arrived as it's HDD was failing. My Pentium Presario has that partition and the GUI BIOS though.

tezza wrote:Yes, DOOM is my ultimate 486 demo game also. It was good to hear the theme from Larry again...I haven't heard that tune for about 20 years! It triggers some nostalgia.

Awesome :D

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 7:49 am
by SpidersWeb
ugh, left youtube uploading last night, came in to work this morning to preview it - uploaded the wrong video file D:

Was supposed to be an overview of the Wang PC-240 with a quick game demo + ST251 noises. It's actually an MS DOS 5.0 install :S
It's set to unlisted now but it's here if you're really very bored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cduUw7bblYY

Some context to it, when using my OEM MS DOS 5.0 install disks, it would corrupt the hard drive when using a partition size greater than 32Mb despite supporting them - it even created the 40Mb partition the first time around, and formatted it! (machine is the PC-240-3 though, and ST251 noises @ 4min)

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Sat Jul 13, 2013 4:32 pm
by SpidersWeb
I replaced the Wang video with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zet6HwIg9yg

Currently deciding what project to do next:
- proper Wang video
- move Turbo XT in to an XT style case, install CGA, do video
- solder in a new floppy drive on the Toshiba, do video

I'd better pick something soon.
Also got an unused Microsoft glossy InPort mouse with the original card for 5 bucks. I have two of the cards already, but never actually had an InPort mouse before. Card has the usual jumpers - primary/secondary, IRQ, and XT Slot 8 / Normal. I'm thinking I'll give it to my turbo XT which will also be getting a HD 8 bit floppy controller - so I can have a 1.44Mb B drive.

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Sat Jul 13, 2013 11:36 pm
by tezza
SpidersWeb wrote:Also got an unused Microsoft glossy InPort mouse with the original card for 5 bucks. I have two of the cards already, but never actually had an InPort mouse before. Card has the usual jumpers - primary/secondary, IRQ, and XT Slot 8 / Normal. I'm thinking I'll give it to my turbo XT which will also be getting a HD 8 bit floppy controller - so I can have a 1.44Mb B drive.

I remember using one of these in the day. It is a card mouse yes? I remember getting mine in a big box with Show Partner (precursor to Powerpoint) and a Paint program. I'd bought Windows 1.0 at the same time.

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Sun Jul 14, 2013 1:28 am
by SpidersWeb
Yep, has it's own ISA card, some people also call them a bus mouse. I didn't actually know they kept making them beyond the green eyed monster era.

Show Partner is interesting, first time I've heard that name. I do have a Microsoft Mouse and Paintbrush (for DOS) pack here though (serial). That Windows/286 pack came with an InPort mouse too but the mouse had run off at some stage.

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:29 am
by SpidersWeb
Bought another XT clone on trademe last week, you guys might've seen it, had twin Tandon floppy drives.

Anyway it'd been in a garage by the sounds of it for quite some time. I wanted it so I could restore it and make a restoration video.
Unfortunately the thing works perfectly and other than the IBM drive being added, looks original (matching cards etc). No rust, flip top lid, and removable drive bays. Dated 1986, 8Mhz 8088 256KB MGA 2xLPT 1xCOM 1xGAME and it even has a RTC. It's a 640KB motherboard, so I can populate that and I have an MFM controller and ST412 to go in there. I've run out of mono displays, so it could end up with VGA :S

Boots fast, it's on the floppy drive in around 1 second.

I've also finished my AI 286 PC16 laptop, it's as quiet as it should be now booting off a 45Mb Rodime.

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Mon Aug 05, 2013 9:25 am
by Radar
tezza wrote:
SpidersWeb wrote:Also got an unused Microsoft glossy InPort mouse with the original card for 5 bucks. I have two of the cards already, but never actually had an InPort mouse before. Card has the usual jumpers - primary/secondary, IRQ, and XT Slot 8 / Normal. I'm thinking I'll give it to my turbo XT which will also be getting a HD 8 bit floppy controller - so I can have a 1.44Mb B drive.

I remember using one of these in the day. It is a card mouse yes? I remember getting mine in a big box with Show Partner (precursor to Powerpoint) and a Paint program. I'd bought Windows 1.0 at the same time.


Here's a couple of boxed early MS Mice from my collection.
Image

Image

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 8:01 am
by SpidersWeb
It's not just any Microsoft Mouse, it's THE Microsoft Mouse.
I haven't seen that box before!



Anywho I'm not sure what is going on, but my subscribers have over doubled in the last 24 hours. So I'm going to have to get my A in to G and start putting together some better quality stuff.

The machines I've worked on lately, and I have footage of, but need to clean up/sort out/edit/do it again:

- AI PC16 286 laptop new hard drive
- Concept DTK 8088 clone + ST412 HDD install (and I mean an actual ST-412, not just MFM ;) )
- Tandom TM-100 alignment/rail cleaning/testing (two of them, 360KB, one has an Oct 1982 date code which was pretty neat)
- Magnum Turbo XT (Logi 88 640K CGA)
- IBM 5170 upgrade - it now runs a 320Mb Miniscribe ESDI drive from 1989 and has 640KB + 3072KB.
- 486DX/40 CMOS battery replacement and I have to build it - it's really a 386 board with a 486 CPU but I have a nice 1Mb ISA card that actually has VESA support (as in the graphics standard, not the bus).

Also made a "low level format" video for the Magnum, and it's on YouTube now but unlisted as I don't like it :/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THWcWAttBns (let me know if you think it's worth listing or garbage in which case I'll do a better one :P

Toshiba floppy adaptor didn't go well, but I think I know why, lines are active low and I've left pins floating instead of connecting to ground. I just assumed it sent +5 to the DS and MOT pins it wanted, but turns out it's the opposite - 5V to what you don't want, and 0-2V to what you do. The Toshiba only has one set of pins for Motor / Drive Select and it feeds those +5V (according to my multimeter during a drive seek - unless I made a mistake)

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 12:45 pm
by tezza
SpidersWeb wrote:Also made a "low level format" video for the Magnum, and it's on YouTube now but unlisted as I don't like it :/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THWcWAttBns (let me know if you think it's worth listing or garbage in which case I'll do a better one :P


Not too bad. I don't think it's garbage but like everything, there is room for improvement. My suggestion would be have a closer image of the screen so the viewer can read it. I find narrating on the fly difficult and I always record the images first, then narrate over the top of that. Also, you went through FDISK pretty quickly. Not everyone will know about FDISK so if it was me, I'd spend a bit more time on it.

I think videos like this are important. Low level formatting was a mystery to me when I got my XT and it took me a while to figure out all the nuances. A video would have helped.

I''m still amazed the Microsoft, even as far as MS-DOS 3.3, still hadn't replaced that awful edlin program with a full screen editor. Thank goodness a few public domain/shareware ones were around at the time. Edlin should have been dumped after PC-DOS/MS-DOS 1.0. It would have been a trivial exercise to write a full screen editor and the 5150/5160 machines had more than enough capacity to use it.

I used to use my Xywrite editor or one called "Mince" as a full screen text editor. Both fitted easily on a bootable 360k disk. I never used Edlin.

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Fri Aug 09, 2013 1:56 pm
by SpidersWeb
Thanks Tez, that's excellent feedback. I'll see what I can come up with this weekend.

Yeah I thought the lack of full screen ASCII text editor was odd, and even when added in 5.0 it was the QBASIC editor with different labeling. I'm not sure why you'd want a line editor - perhaps it was just easier to write and smaller?

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 1:43 am
by xjas
Agree on the editor, always found that strange. I guess it just wasn't considered an OS feature at the time. I never did figure out Edlin; I never liked the DOS edit much either, as it was impossible to control where the EOF went and there was nearly always a blank line or two inserted at the end no matter what you did. (That's a perfectly good reason not to like it right?)

I still run an old version of Qedit on my DOS machines, which IIRC I inherited on a random hard drive yeeeeeears ago. It's 90k and can load files of almost any size super quickly even on really hopeless hardware. Might be a great option for systems like these. There are no window borders so you'd never have to scroll horizontally when reading 80 column files, and there is no mouse support at all. It does have a complete (keyboard controlled) menu system & command help screen. It even allows you to open multiple files simultaneously and copy / paste between them which was ridiculously advanced for the time. The executable is timestamped 1989 but I'm not sure how accurate that is anymore as it's been through a lot of HDD transfers on a lot of different machines since I got it. I made some clunky macros to pan the screen up and down without moving the cursor; I don't even know how anymore but my version escaped onto the internet and I ran across it elsewhere. If you're ever using DOS Qedit, and you can crudely pan the screen up and down with F11/F12, it's my Qedit. (I changed the colours around periodically - you can reconfigure them however you want - I think the copy that 'got loose' had white text on red background.)

I generally drop to the console and run Vi(m) when I need to edit plaintext on my modern machines. Not identical but quite similar in a lot of respects. I guess I just don't like graphical interfaces to my text editors.

Re: Show and Tell

PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2013 2:05 am
by SpidersWeb
Back around 2000 my boss forced me to edit perl scripts with vi. Glad he did, the commands may be obtuse but it's very efficient. I use it almost daily at work.
Being able to use regular expressions is nice too, not a huge number of editors do that.

I didn't realise how old it was until recently, found it on my IBM RT 6150 as part of AIX 2.2.