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DECstation 320SX scored today

NathanAllan

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Today was interesting, my neighbor gave me three computers, the most interesting was this DECstation 320sx.

It has a bad hard drive, but booted up to the bios. It's complete, has a 1.44mb drive, will very soon have a 5.25" drive, and I am seriously thinking of replacing the hdd with one of those nifty little IDE-SD adapters (the other one is still up in the air, waiting on parts still). I have a video uploading of it now, it's taki nits time to upload.

Anyway, the other two machines are a PB 386 that has already been partially stripped, and a custom built 486 with a PCChips mainboard in it. The bios is shot, it's giving garbage data in the shape of a bios setup screen. It's a pretty neat board, it has what looks like VESA slots in it with two cards in there. I might or might not mess with that machine, getting a-hold of a BIOS flash utility on a floppy disk is near impossible for me now.

The DECstation is the best of the bunch. It's got some 72-pin simm ram, with room for 30-pin simms in it, I've already set the 5.25 drive in place just haven't hooked anything up. The harddrives in the other two might help this one out, so I'll do that before I order anything else (thinking of the SD adapter).

It's a really nice machine, has some upgrade options. I'm going to see if the sound card from the other one (CT1600) can be made to work in it. There are three free ISA slots. The DECstation is what I will concentrate on. The other two are far less interesting.

/edit Just took some pictures, and I was mistaken about the memory, it's all 30-pin simms, I was thinking of one of the other machines. Pics coming!!

/editagain pics!! https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3954736475929.2136108.1505717430&type=3
 
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Today was interesting, my neighbor gave me three computers, the most interesting was this DECstation 320sx.

Nice score! I looked at the Wikipedia article, and it says "These computers were not built by Digital, but by Tandy Corporation in the United States and Olivetti in Europe. At the time of introduction, Digital offered a trade-in program for owners of its earlier x86, but PC incompatible, computer, the Rainbow 100." I wonder how common these are.

BTW, the picture link you posted is not available to the public. :)
 
There don't appear to be; math co-processor, ISA slots, on-board video, jumper-able video, all pretty standard stuff. I still find it really interesting, regardless. The 386SX has corners that stick out, and it seems like a portable processor in a desktop, though I can't say for sure on that.

It looks like a Tandy and I think I own it, too.
 
Is that a socketed 386SX? I'd had a vague awareness that such a thing existed, but have never actually seen one before... I've only ever encountered the soldered QFP type.
 
Is that a socketed 386SX? I'd had a vague awareness that such a thing existed, but have never actually seen one before... I've only ever encountered the soldered QFP type.

Yes, it's socketed, it's the first one I have ever had, too. It makes me think it's a portable processor, from a laptop or luggable.
 
That looks identical to a Tandy 2500SX, except it just has knockout plugs on the back where the Tandy would have input and output jacks for its onboard PSSJ/DAC audio.
 
Setup dsk

Setup dsk

This is a bit of a cross-post, but has anyone got the setup/bios util used to set the system config for these guys?


Haven’t tested this in my DECstation 316sx, but seems to be the setup boot disk

http://unimatrix.gomtuu.net/DEC_legacy/legacysupport/digital/epid103.html

http://unimatrix.gomtuu.net/DEC_legacy/legacysupport/digital/zips/UG43316C.EXE for the 316sx
http://unimatrix.gomtuu.net/DEC_legacy/legacysupport/digital/zips/UG43320C.EXE for the 320sx
 
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