Recent content by dhamilton

Are you still in contact with the person who has the system today? It'd be interesting to compare notes...

Here are some more photos of my system. S-SPEC S40344, 386-16. Also had a 287-8. The BIOS on this board is Rev. E. I dumped it and passed it along to Jeff over at pcjs.org.

Mine also does not have the marking. Mine is just like the one pictured above (40344). Same S-SPEC number. These are known as the "B1" stepping, according to information compiled over on pcjs.org: https://www.pcjs.org/blog/2015/02/23/

That's a very good point. Compaq worked with dealers and didn't do mail order like Dell or Gateway, so they certainly would have needed to build up inventory. The motherboard is Rev A, but the BIOS is already on Rev E. I've not seen any public references to any earlier revisions. So I guess...

So I recently acquired a Deskpro 386/16, dated from September 1986, the month they began shipping. Some clever person has already explained either here on VOGONS, that the beginning of the old Compaq serial numbers give you the year and week a machine was assembled. This machine's serial...

There are some IDE controllers that have their own BIOS for setup, kind of like an Adaptec SCSI card. I can't recall what brands they were. Your best bet is to find a junker on a local Facebook group or something that just has all the stuff built in. If you find basically any run of the mill...

I love these Compaq computers, I have one. That being said, you couldn't have picked a worse computer to use as a test-bed for IDE disks. This computer has what at the time was referred to as a "Winchester" hard drive interface. Is it IDE? Yes. Is it the IDE you're familiar with? Not...

The 386/16 (2570) was a very crude beast, they were in a hurry with it. The August 1986 BIOS in mine doesn't even support 1.44 MB drives! The 386/20 (2571) came out a year later in 1987. It was much more refined. They changed the memory card socket from the 2570. The 386/25 (2572) was the...

Between those two, it's not even a contest-- the 5162. You're in an special club!

Hi there, I'm looking for a specific Tandy PC from 1989 or so. It's the 3000 NL. This is a nice pic of it I found online. Is this guy a unicorn? It seems to turn up on Google searches at least, unlike the 5000 MC. :)

I've managed to reconstruct an original Deskpro 386/16 (2570) from August 1986. Found the original bezel and motherboard. Had to transplant it into a 286 body. Boy is the BIOS a mess. :) It doesn't support 1.44 drives lol. This was a dream machine of mine to get. If only I could find an...

Meh, these guys get away with as much as eBay allows. It's in eBay's interests to look the other way for the most part, they make $$$ off the fees regardless. What's strange is I've ordered things that said they were coming from China, but arrived in a few days. While at the same time I...

I recovered some pretty nice 24-volt fans out of some old IBM printers. Not sure what use they'd be, but they seemed too nice to just throw away. Would these be used in any really old computer hardware from the 70s or 80s? These fans date from around 1985. If anyone is interested I can snap...

I'm been learning how to troubleshoot and repair circuits because of this very issue. Unfortunately, power supplies are like one of the most complicated things to learn on. :\

Doh, I didn't see your post! I also found one of these from CR!