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Compaq SLT-286 Possible System Board Failure?

gun_mikw

New Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2011
Messages
4
Hello all,
I have acquired a Compaq SLT-286. Ive run some diagnostic tests using the sp0308.zip file found on Compaq/HP website. I've attached leads to the Dallas RTC chip to power it with a 3v button cell. I've taken apart the machine and blown all the dust out of it. After a few days of trying many different things, I've come up with the following data.

When the hard drive is plugged in and the system is turned on, the machine loads its 640kb memory then proceeds to tell me 1790-Disk 0 Error after the hard drive revs up and an orange LED is lit on the machine indicating drive activity.

After running Diagnostics from the floppy, I was given the fallowing errors.

Error 1703-06
Failed write/read/compare test
Fatal error while reading

Error1702-06
Failed Read Test
Fatal error while reading

1705-44
Failed Controller Diags test
Failed fixed disk controller diags

1717-05
Failed Error Correction and Detection test
Failed to reset controller

1719-77
Failed Power Mode test
Failed to change mode

There is one thing I haven't tried yet, that is changing the jumper settings, I deemed it to risky as I don't have any information on how to set them. currently there are no jumpers on the drive.
This leaves me to believe that the disk controller is faulty? perhaps the hard drive too? From what I can gather, the disk controller is part of the system/motherboard?
I think I've sourced out a new motherboard, But before I make the plunge I would like to have some expert opinions.

Thanks for your help,
Mike
 
Mike, just a thought. Presumably you had to take the laptop apart to wire in the new battery. Just check that everything was plugged back in properly during reassembly. Could you have missed something, or plugged something in the wrong way?

Tez
 
Thank you for the reply,
I took the computer apart inspected all the pins for bent pins and cold solder joints, nothing seemed to be wrong in that sense, I checked all the cables in accordance to the photos I had taken prior to the first disassemble, It looks like every thing was plugged in correctly. I powered up the machine again, and the same error. However after some reading I'm a bit more optimistic. Seems like the fixed disk controller is part of the hard drive and not the motherboard/system board. It will be much easier to find a new hard drive. I spoke to a knowledgeable employee at a local "retro" computer shop. He suggested I try using an IDE to flash card adapter. I questioned him about how BIOS requires the drive type (cylinders,heads,and sectors). He said there are ways around that, but did not divulge any information on how to work around it.
Does anybody have an experience with IDE to flash card adapters in vintage computers?

Thanks again,
Mike
 
Why hello again. What a small world it is. ;)
I forgot to mention that you can also probably use an older laptop IDE drive as well (and we got an 810mb drive you can have). Like the CF - IDE adapter I mentioned, these are dirt cheap as well. I use one in my Compaq Portable/386 with a 2gb drive (and am able to use such a large drive by using an overlay which is suprisingly hard to setup).
One thing I would also is try and configure the system BIOS with the drive unplugged. If you still get errors, something else is funky. If you don't, then it is something pertaining to the drive/IDE bus. My Compaq went nuts when it's CMOS went and it restarted and saw my 1.44 and 1.2mb floppy drives. It would not shut up about them until I set everything up again using the configuration diskette.

Edit: I'm aslo assuming you specified the correct drive type when you reconfigured the system, right?

If you wanna be really nostalgic, I could probably pass the old drive from my Compaq your way. It's an old Maxtor 7080AT 80mb 1024/9/17 hard drive.
 
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What a small world indeed.
I've started up the machine with out the hard drive plugged in and I updated the bios for no drive installed. No errors. I specified the drive as type 22 like is says on the drive's case, I plugged the hard drive into another PC of mine and it didn't seem to work either. What do you think the best route would be? I like the idea of using CF...low power consumption, quiet etc. Would writing an overlay be an impossible task for someone with no programming experience?

Thanks for your help,
Mike
 
It's either my poor memory or the task on its own was horrendous enough but I myself can't remember how exactly I got my overlay to work other than I had to first setup the BIOS with one of the drive types that matched my drive the closest. From there on I beleive it was pretty much work done in software, partitioners, and formatting.

I'm sure looking at the wiki for Dynamic Drive Overlays is a good place to start.
 
I managed to get the machine running today. I had an old maxtor 40gb drive that I thought I would plug in and give it a shot. After wiring the 4 plug connector to work with the system board's 3 plug connector, It started up with out any familiar errors. I ran fdisk through an ms-dos 5.0 disk to format it, then installed it to the hard drive. so far so good. One interesting thing, the compaq setup/diagnostics disk identified the drive as type 14 which is 34.1 MB. This was very surprising to me, as I was preparing myself for a lot more work to get this thing working.

Anyways thanks for all your help,
Mike
 
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