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Compaq Deskpro 386/20

Sorry for the delay. School got in the way...haha! Anyways, I pulled the Compaq out tonight and I STILL can't get the thing to boot! I made a 720K 3.5" boot disk, found a power adapter for the 3.5" floppy drive, and it still says that there is a disk error. I am wondering if my floppy controller card has a misplaced jumper, but I can't for the life of me seem to find the jumper settings (or even the model number) for this card. The card has Winchester, floppy, DE9M and DB25F connectors. Currently only the floppy controller and the video card are installed.

Here's the system of events with a DOS 6.22 boot disk installed:
1) Checks 08192KB of RAM
2) Beeps twice slowly
3) Prints 162-System Options Not Set-(Run Setup)...etc.
4) Press F1
5) Beeps twice slowly
6) Beeps twice quickly
7) Prints 163-Time & Date Not Set
8) Prints "Non-System disk or disk error...etc.

What can I do? It does this for any disk in the drive. I have my floppy connections correct and have tried both A: and B: connectors on the cable, to no avail.

And, by the way...I still don't think I understand what to do with that SP_308.exe. Do I run that program on my current machine to make a bootable disk? Or do I copy that .exe over to a 720K floppy disk?

I thought SURELY by now I'd have this computer up and running!

Kyle
 
You need to run the executable on probably a DOS-based machine. It'll create a disk with the system configuration program on it. Then, boot from the configuration disk. You may need a 5¼" floppy drive with the 360k disk program if that doesn't work.
 
"Non-system disk or disk error
Replace and press any key when ready"

Is the message that comes from the boot sector of a diskette. Try the same thing without a floppy in the drive. Does the message change?
 
Alright, I'll try running that program in DOS 6.22 and see what happens. I'm going to first have to get my DOS HDD installed in my Windows machine so I can boot to it.

Chuck, the message is the same whether or not there is a disk in the drive.

Kyle
 
By the way, my 3.5" drive is a Mitsumi D359M3. Don't know if that will help or not, but maybe this drive can't read 720K floppies?

Kyle
 
Should be okay-I'm assuming that you're using real 720K media or 1.44M media with the density select aperture covered.

When the system POSTs, is the floppy drive selected (light goes on) and can you hear the seek test? I'm also assuming that you didn't attach the drive cable upside-down.
 
Alright, I have some results! I took out the drive in my main PC which successfully made the Setup disk while booted in DOS. After connecting it to the Compaq, I finally hear the drive seeking, but now when the Setup disk is in there, it says "Load failure." Drats! I put it a DOS 6.22 boot disk and it gives me the disk error message. At least it's doing something different! I presume the drive can't handle 720K media. I have one real 720K disk and a few are 1.44MB with the holes covered. So now I know I have one good 3.5" drive that can read/write 720K media and a good floppy controller. I guess that means the error is now in the setup utility, maybe?

Kyle
 
Success! It finally boots! The 1.44MB system disk works great. I still can't figure out why the Setup diskette isn't working. When I view the files on either of my DOS machines, they appear just fine, but when I run SETUP.EXE, it says something about a bad sector. I've tried two disks, with no luck. Is there a 1.44MB edition of SP0308.EXE?

Kyle
 
The key may lie in what your system thinks that the default settings are (i.e. what the diskette drives are when the CMOS isn't valid). Try running the attached and see what it says.
 

Attachments

  • VCONF.ZIP
    9.1 KB · Views: 3
With my main PC running DOS (with one 1.44MB floppy drive), it says:
Code: 
A: 1.44M 0 3f0H 0 2 6 6 CH 0

In the Compaq with a 1.44MB floppy drive and my newly added 5.25" floppy drive, it says:
Code: 
A: 1.2M 0 3f0H 0 2 6 6 CH 0
B: 360K 1 3f0H 1 2 6 6    0

I tried using the SP0316.EXE to make two 360K floppies for setup, but it thought I had the wrong kind of drive...maybe it was trying to write to my A: drive instead?

Kyle
 
Ah, well there's the problem--the durned thing thinks you have a 1.2MB floppy in the A: drive. So it's trying to use a 300KHz data clock on double-density (360K and 720K drives use 250KHz). Since the datarate in high density is the same for 1.2MB and 1.44M (500KHz), you can boot from a high-density diskette.

Ideally, you'd put your SP on a 5.25" DD floppy and use a 1.2M 5.25" drive in the A: position. This isn't uncommon in older systems--lots of 286 boxes default to 1.2MB when the CMOS setup isn't valid.

Do you happen to have a 1.2MB 5.25" drive that you can use? Otherwise, we'll have to punt a bit.
 
Interesting! I have the 5.25"/3.5" combo drive that came with the unit and a Panasonic JU-475-2 5.25" drive. I think the latter is a 1.2MB drive. The combo drive can't read 720K floppies and neither 5.25" will read disks either. The combo drive will boot 1.44MB disks.

Currently I haven't a computer at college that can read/write 5.25" disks. Seems like that's a problem...

I can't wait to see what's on the hard drive!!

Kyle
 
Try copying the following (extracted file: SETUP.EXE) onto your DOS boot diskette and run it. It works even on my non-Compaq 386 box.
 

Attachments

  • DPSETUP.ZIP
    76.4 KB · Views: 3
I copied it to my boot disk. It still boots just fine, but trying to run the SETUP.EXE program results in a
Code: 
Data error reading drive A
Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?

I still only have my FD controller and video cards plugged in. The battery is also plugged in. I have tried both the combo drive and my separate 1.44MB drive.

Kyle
 
And when I run the SETUP.EXE program on my main machine, it says
Code: 
Packed file is corrupt

Kyle
 
I just tried running SETUP at a command prompt on my XP system--it starts up with the Compaq splash screen.

You might get better results by adding a DRIVPARM /D:0 /F:7 to your CONFIG.SYS on your boot disk to tell DOS that you have a 1.44MB drive.
 
Hrm. I'll try running it on my XP machine later too. Do you think the .zip archive could have caused any corruptions? Is it possible to upload the .exe directly? I don't think an .exe would go through email too well due to all of the virus scanners and such.

I'll add that line of code later too. Could I add a line of code to configure the 1.2MB 5.25" drive?

Kyle
 
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