Everex 386Is improvement suggestions.

[igbeserk]

Hey All,

recently acquired a 386is overall pretty good condition. Looks like the bios battery leaked and i removed it. On the battery it indicated 3.6v a varta 3.6v 60mah ni/cd battery. I have a few LIR2032 laying about which are 3.6v, I just tested one with my multimeter and it indicated 3.9v. would that be ok to install in place of the old battery or is that too many volts?

I will try to add pictures but before i go off the deep end just wanted to see what I should or need to do. it has a vga card, a drive card comes with a 5.25 floppy and the 3.25 floppy drive it has an MFM hard drive but i believe that has failed. I can boot into bios and I snagged a keyboard that has a mouse below the spacebar and I was wondering what adapter piece i'd need to get that connected. it looks like a serial port cable.


Essentially I want to add / replace the storage I've seen adapters for ISA to Compact flash? if that is the best option could anyone recommend a brand model?

I snagged a coprocessor since when i booted into the bios it indicated no coprocessor found its a Math cosx which i believe should work i haven't tried it yet.

I'm not new to computers/computing but these computers are when I was a little kid so a lot of it is foreign to me, i can do dos, windows 95 and things like that but in terms of the hardware space i'm a bit foggy or not knowing when it comes to this. i've googled and found some articles for the everex 386is but most seem to have a daughter board where the coprocessor goes while mine is on the main board.

Kind of ranting here so i'll just post pictures. any insight would be appreciated. thank you.

 

[Zare]

Wow very lucky that battery leaked minimally and did no board damage.

XT-CF-Lite is the usual CF to IDE 8 bit solution. But you could just drop in a 16 bit IDE disk controller and connect a passive CF adapter to it.

Have fun with your new system, seems hell bent on working.

 

[igbeserk]

Wow very lucky that battery leaked minimally and did no board damage.

XT-CF-Lite is the usual CF to IDE 8 bit solution. But you could just drop in a 16 bit IDE disk controller and connect a passive CF adapter to it.

Have fun with your new system, seems hell bent on working.

Thanks, i'll look into that appreciate it

 

[igbeserk]

Winbond ISA MRB2041 HDD Controller would this be a 16bit ide one? can't find much info on it and i guess i'd need to also find drivers for it

 

[Zare]

If this is the item https://www.ebay.com/itm/134934626749 , it's a PCI card. I don't know why ISA is in the title.

You don't need drivers. DOS and Win 3/95 work with BIOS drives.
The controller cards usually have crude configuration via jumpers, some are undocumented as there were many cheap models in the early 90s available.

Are you good with installing the OS on CF via diskettes on the original computer, and just moving the data/files via that CF?
It's unlikely you'll be able to boot into a prepared CF just like that. Prepared meaning it's been generated via disk image on modern computer.

 

[igbeserk]

If this is the item https://www.ebay.com/itm/134934626749 , it's a PCI card. I don't know why ISA is in the title.

You don't need drivers. DOS and Win 3/95 work with BIOS drives.
The controller cards usually have crude configuration via jumpers, some are undocumented as there were many cheap models in the early 90s available.

Are you good with installing the OS on CF via diskettes on the original computer, and just moving the data/files via that CF?
It's unlikely you'll be able to boot into a prepared CF just like that. Prepared meaning it's been generated via disk image on modern computer.

Oh ok, I couldn't make out the connector properly but yea that was the one i believe they have another that also indicates ISA. Googling the connectors yea big difference in length so that is an oversight on my end. thanks for catching it, looking again i guess depending on what it is the connector can have the two sections or just the one? hm somewhat a trip down memory lane.

Am i good with installing the OS via diskettes, I should be? have a bunch of 1.44mb floppy disks as long as i can get to the command window and look up the old commands i should be fine.

 

[T-R-A]

Am i good with installing the OS via diskettes, I should be? have a bunch of 1.44mb floppy disks as long as i can get to the command window and look up the old commands i should be fine.

Certain the floppy drive works? Certain the disks are totally good? Certain the images of the OS you're going to write disks from will make them bootable disks? Need to know all that beforehand.

 

[Zare]

Is your 3.5 floppy 720k or 1.44Mb?
If 720k get a 1.44Mb one first.

Then get a USB to CF adapter and USB floppy because you'll need both whatever route you go.

Furthermore I suggest you get these :

Lo-tech ISA XT CF Adapter rev. 3 - TexElec

*PLEASE NOTE: Due to a shortage of ROM chips you may receive our SMT PCB Replacement ROM instead of the DIP ROM chip installed on the card pictured. The SMT PCB Replacement ROM is pictured in the last photo. This card will allow a compact flash card to be used as a hard drive in […]

texelec.com

ISA CF Bracket Adapter Kit for Lo-tech XT CF - TexElec

This kit includes a Compact Flash adapter made to mount in a free slot in your PC. (It will not mount in the same slot as the CF- IDE card.) It includes the CF adapter, a 20 cm or approx. 8 inch IDE cable, and a ‘Y’ power cable. The power cable is 6 inches long […]

texelec.com

Ultimately the combo of 16-bit IDE controller + CF adapter is faster however it will be stuck to a CHS scheme which makes it incompatible (as far as booting is concerned) with cards created via LBA. The only config options you have is an odd jumper on controller and the CHS fields you see in setup. With above items you get 8-bit I/O but XUB option ROM is running the adapter, and it has LBA translation in it, and a ton of configurable options.

But first make sure you have a single floppy you can populate on main PC and boot on 386.
USB floppy drives seldom work with anything bar 1.44Mb.

 

[igbeserk]

Thanks for the responses! I had a few issues that got sorted. my usb floppy drive worked once then crapped out had it for over 10 years but now have a replacement. Had to clean out wife's uncle's house he had two compaq pcs that had floppy drive that had power issues and I fixed them both booted into windows xp and on sunday somehow both of them crapped out as well, one wasn't plugged in. Not sure if it was the dell crt monitor the cables or something that did it. I thought the floppy drive on the everex was bad, tried one from the compaq and was able to boot to dos 6.22 from the floppy. I tried the original floppy drive again in the everex and it worked. I was able to boot to dos and switch top the 5.25 floppy drive and load a game. Only thing I cannot boot into is the mfm drive not sure if it is bad or that I am just not able to figure out how to set it up. ST-251 and going by the configurations online it should be hds - 6 and cylinder 820 which is type 44 in the bios.

Anyway, going to grab the suggested combo. I only seem to have one good working floppy that is 1.44mb. 4 720kb floppies and 6 1.0mb floppies. will order a few more 1.44mbs. I was able to create the boot disk through a virtual machine setup with windows xp pointing to the usb floppy. so i should be able to do the other stuff needed.