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Compaq 386/20e HDD, Bios Problem!!!

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VintageWins!!!

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Nov 28, 2015
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So, I got my hands on a great compaq 386/20e. The problem I have is that it came without a Hard drive, and I heard that bios is on the HDD, and I tried to press every button I can imagine to enter the bios(F10, Del, F1......) when i beeps. Yea, and I changed a new dallas battery, and now it only posts a 162 error, and from a dos floppy it boots fine. My questions are: Can I install a 10GB HDD?, Where can I find the diagnostic diskette?, The Ide port on the motherboard is labbeled winchester, what does that mean?
Yea and specs are, 386DX 25 mhz with math processor, 4mb ram.

Please help, sorry for my bad english. In the attachement is the picture of the error.
 

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VintageWins!!! said:
The Ide port on the motherboard is labbeled winchester, what does that mean?
Click to expand...
"Winchester" refers to hard disk drives with heads and platters resisting in a sealed case. The term comes from the IBM 3340 and was also used to refer to early ST506/412 hard disk drives. But in fact, even today's hard disks are still Winchester drives. Anyway, since IDE was new back then, it's probably labeled this way so people who never heard of IDE would know where to connect a HDD.
 
So if winchester means Ide, then I can install a 10 GB Ide Hard Drive, can I?, and if i cant could somebody plesase say me for what HDD do I need to look.

Thanks
 
So if winchester means Ide, then I can install a 10 GB Ide Hard Drive, can I?
Click to expand...

Not directly. Compaq 386's suffer the same fate as almost any machine before the EIDE standard (drive limitation to 504/528MB or less). It may be possible to use a software overlay to get beyond this limitation, but I haven't tried on my 386/20e. Plus, if you use something below that limit, you'll need to make sure you have a working FDD to use the Softpaq---and several Compaq FDD's weren't generic (i.e. not 34-pin).
 
Do you have the diagnostic diskette T-R-A? And is there any way to format a 10 GB HDD to 500 MB?, and on the compaq everything works, I cleaned the floppy drive, so its like new.
 
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Somewhere (but finding it would be "needle-in-the-haystack" stuff). AFAIR, it was the same as my Portable II (sp0316.zip/0316.exe). Should be available here:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp0000-0500/

But it also looks like (from your screenshot) you may need to replace the battery as well (if you haven't already).
 
And you theoretically "should" be able to force the geometry of the 10GB HDD down to 528MB, but that'd be a terrible waste of space.
 
I had an error rtc, battery or something like that, so i replaced the battery, and the error was gone. Now i am going to test the file, hope it works, thanks.
 
I know that it would be a waste of space, but i want to test the motherboard fully before buying a new HDD.
 
Ok, I made a ms dos diskette and botted up, on the other one i copied the sp0316.exe, launched and it extracted something to the floppy, then there were some files, and a qrst.exe, i launched clicked on chosse diskette from set and got the error that I dont have a 360k drive in my system. And that is true cause just have 1.44MB FDD, Please Help. And T-R-A do you have skype or something, so we can faster commicate, you are helping me.
 
Sorry, not a skyper. Too much a luddite for such.

If memory serves, I had to force the SP onto a 720k floppy (i.e. 1.44MB with corner-hole covered) to get it to work in the Portable II.
 
Also you need to boot with the extracted softpaq in the floppy drive. Having an OS present beforehand isn't necessary. And make sure you don't try and make the softpaq on anything but a DOS machine to begin with. Win9x and beyond seemed to do something where the disk wasn't readable. Realize too that I haven't fooled with older Compaqs much in several years (though I have tons of them), so what I'm presenting here is from (potentially faulty) memories. The Port.II died an explosive death several years back (shorted P/S), so I haven't bothered to rebuild it...
 
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Wait, you think that I extract the SP0316.exe on an 720 k floppy and then put it in the machine and try to boot without dos floppy or anything.

EDIT: I have tried it, it shows remove disks or other media.Press any key to restart.
 
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VintageWins!!! said:
Ok, I made a ms dos diskette and botted up, on the other one i copied the sp0316.exe, launched and it extracted something to the floppy, then there were some files, and a qrst.exe, i launched clicked on chosse diskette from set and got the error that I dont have a 360k drive in my system. And that is true cause just have 1.44MB FDD, Please Help.
Click to expand...
That's because you need SP0308 for a 3½" drive. Didn't you read the .txt file that came with it. :)
 
Thank you everyone for help, I managed to enter the bios, the HDD is set to 0 which means no HDD, so thats it, many many thank you, you are great guys.


Thanks, Thanks, Thanks....
 
Glad you got access to the BIOS. Maybe my working with "old iron" wasn't such a bad thing after all.

FWIW---If you're going to still use the 10GB HDD to test out with, it may be of some use to find out the complete table of usable drive types before trying to set it up and format it to a different capacity. I have a utility called "ROMTABLE" which displays the available types (which keeps you from having to scroll through the BIOS). If you want, I can probably e-mail it to you.
 
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