Recent content by matthew180

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions. The good stuff seems to be a fair distance out of D.C., but I'll see what I can manage.

I'll have some spare time in the D.C. area in February. Is there anything retro-computer related in the area that I should be sure not to miss? Also, any good surplus or similar kinds of places would be great to know about. Thanks, Matthew

Right, I should not have used MBR when talking about the floppy disks. It has been a while since I messed with the disk media at this level (not sure I ever dug into floppies at this level). My idea (before using the Compaq service pack programs) was to try and copy the files from the 720K...

@mbbrutman This is the page with the images I downloaded: https://archive.org/details/CompaqPortableDiagnosticDisk @bolex Thanks, but as mentioned above I did manage to get floppy disks created using the Compaq service pack programs. The MBRs on these disks is strange too, which makes me...

@mbbrutman Thanks for the tips. The disk images are not mine, I downloaded them from archive.org, so I do not know what kind of drive was used to dump them. My dskimage settings were 0:40:2:9, as you mentioned, and the disk media is new old-stock (Verbatim and Memorax), and I formatted them...

Ok, so a few notes: Trying ImageDisk after converting the 360K IMG file to IMD file, and then running IMDA suggested double-step and 250K->300K conversion. Since the drive is 1.2M I tried the suggested settings, along with a few others. In all cases the disk would not boot, and it actually...

I have a Compaq Portable III and the system defaults to 1.2MB floppy drive after losing its settings (replace the battery for the clock chip DS1285). I would like to have a bootable Diagnostic floppy for a Compaq Portable III (286 CPU), for which I have downloaded (from archive.org) the 720K...

Does anyone know the magic incantation to get dskconv to convert a 720K disk image to 1.2M disk image? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding the program and it cannot actually do this kind of thing? Without any -format option, the output is the same size as the input. As soon as I specify "-format...

I'm restoring a Compaq Portable III and was hoping to find the Technical Reference online somewhere. Primarily I would like technical details and the pin-out to the expansion header on the back, but the whole reference manual would be nice. This system is 286-based, just to avoid any confusion...

The F18A MK2 is taking longer than expected, unfortunately. However, the primary hold up since 2020 has been the parts shortage. Even making more of the original F18A is not possible due to the shortage (Spartan-3E FPGAs dried up too). As soon as I can get my hands on parts, I'll make...

I have two ATI FirePro V8800 graphics cards, and one nVidia Quadro 4000. Make offer. I prefer shipping via USPS flat rate box, but I'm flexible (origin zip code: 32708)

I really need to find a new home for this SunBlade 2000 computer. Works great, see photos, as questions. I would like to get $60, or make an offer. I would prefer a local pickup (SoCal, L.A. area), but I'll ship to where ever you want to pay for it. This is a *big* system. Weight is 55...

My eyes!! ;-) That website looks as old as the tapes they are selling. Every page on the site is a new adventure. Haha. I'll have to give them a call and see what the prices are, since they don't show pricing except to say the minimum order is $100 (ouch). They list "re-certified tapes"...

I have a SunBlade 2000 workstation with a single CHE1200 CPU, 5GB RAM, and a 72GB 10,000 RPM drive. The video card is the XVR-100 (ATI Radeon based, DVI and VGA outputs). Comes with the Sun USB keyboard. Runs Solaris 10 (currently installed), but FreeBSD also supports SPARC64, and I'm sure...

I finally managed to get a 9-track tape unit, a re-branded CDC 92185, and I spent the weekend cleaning it up and replacing the deteriorated foam (full of 1-inch foam to help with noise, I suspect). Being a new tape unit owner, I'm now full of questions. So I cleaned the tape path as per the...