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few quick question on Commodore Colt

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thanks guys and thank you Heather for testing out the jumper combos and making me aware of certain adapters. that was an immeasurable help. I was wrong about my fz-354 as it does have a jumper setting for MD. set MD and TTL as well as device D1 and it works! I used the cable that came with the Colt without a twist and used one of those 5 1/4 to 3 1/2 edge adapters you guys made me aware of and it works just fine. If I can get a hard drive going in it this may replace my PB500 as my main XT machine. I just wish the monitor that came with mine was CGA and not Monchrome. did Commodore make a matching CGA monitor for these machines? I like it cause its very light weight. I'll probibly get rid of mine though and use my Tandy CGA monitor since I prefer CGA over Mono.
 
Hurray! I'm so happy you were able to get it working! For the hard drive, I would skip attempting to use the on board IDE and get one of the XT IDE adapters that use the XTIDE Universal BIOS. The only bad thing about using the XTIDE instead of the on board controller is that it takes up a slot. Since the PC10-III only has three slots, you really need to pick and choose your cards.

I don't know if Commodore made a CGA monitor, but you would definitely think they did. I went with one of Sergey's SVGA cards and it's perfect. Too bad I can't get that card working in my 5160.

I'd really enjoy seeing a post about your Colt once you're done. :D

Heather
 
I don't know if Commodore made a CGA monitor, but you would definitely think they did.

Commodore sold many monitors, such as the 1084 series, which were compatible with composite video, luma/chroma video, digital RGB, and analog RGB. The Commodore 128's digital RGB output used the same pinout and specs as CGA, so if you need the appropriate video cable to use a Commodore monitor with a PC with CGA, just look for a C128 cable.
 
Commodore sold many monitors, such as the 1084 series, which were compatible with composite video, luma/chroma video, digital RGB, and analog RGB. The Commodore 128's digital RGB output used the same pinout and specs as CGA, so if you need the appropriate video cable to use a Commodore monitor with a PC with CGA, just look for a C128 cable.

thanks,. i'll keep an eye out

the one thing that sucks is the fz-354 has a black faceplate that completely clashes with the rest of the system. I looked at my other drives to swap face plates but not match up. I'm going strictly CGA with this machine so I'll probably just rely on the built in video. As Skydiving girl pointed out the built in IDE isn't particularly useful and I don't want to spend the high asking prices for a 8 bit IDE drive only to have it possibly fail on me in a few months or less. I have a Silicon Valley 8 bit IDE card that I may pull from my V30 system. I read they are faster then the XT-IDE drives.

still mauling over replacing the 8088 with a V20. My biggest goal is compatibility so i'm not sure how many games the V20 with creat speed issues for. I know Load Runner is the only known game that just won't run. I do like the ability to select 3 CPU speeds on this machine. never seen any other XT machine do that, usually its just the two.
 
CGA composite is way cooler than RGBI...
If you don't yet know why, you'll find out in about 3 weeks time (which is also why I won't take my PC20-III apart to mess with the drives again until after that).

Anyway, good to know that you got your 3.5" drive working. I guess the magic MD-jumper is the ticket... That, and probably an untwisted cable.
Which means I *should* be able to get a 3.5" drive going in my PC20-III as well. I am bound to have at least one drive in my collection with an MD jumper.
 
Commodore sold many monitors, such as the 1084 series, which were compatible with composite video, luma/chroma video, digital RGB, and analog RGB. The Commodore 128's digital RGB output used the same pinout and specs as CGA, so if you need the appropriate video cable to use a Commodore monitor with a PC with CGA, just look for a C128 cable.

Yup, I used a Philips CM8833, which was actually pretty much the 'real', non-rebranded 1084. Philips made the 1084 and various other monitors for Commodore.
Mine is dead now, and I'm looking at getting a 1084 as a replacement. Easier to get, since many Amiga friends have them.
The nice thing is that it does both digital RBGI and composite, and you can just switch between the two with a simple button (which is also very useful for C128, since its C64 output is composite where the VDC output is RGBI).
 
Ditto. My 1084S had two different style round connectors... one for digital RGBI (which is what you want) and one for analog RGB (for Amiga). My 1080 had a D-sub connector for digital/analog and a switch to select which.

I have seen some 1084s with D subs on them though too I think.
 
my Monitor has 1 D-sub connection. not a round DIN connection. other then that it just has RCA jacks and a switch for digital/analog
 
Ditto. My 1084S had two different style round connectors... one for digital RGBI (which is what you want) and one for analog RGB (for Amiga).

It should also have a cinch/RCA input for composite. Which is also what you want for 16-colour mode CGA.
 
It should also have a cinch/RCA input for composite. Which is also what you want for 16-colour mode CGA.

yeah. I got it working with a composite cable. okay so ive never messed with CGA composite so this is what I gather. CGA composite is a bit more blurry but by using dithering it can make games that support it look almost like EGA where if I went with the strait digital CGA I would only get the 4 colors on screen at once but the image would be sharper?

all I need to do now if see if I can get the hard drive controller and a hard drive running in this thing. I never have much luck with old hard drives and OS's earlier then DOS 5 that don't auto install. I never can seem to get old systems to boot from them but its mostly because I'm unsure of the procedure. do I need to do something other then copy the files from the DOS floppy to the hard drive?
 
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yeah. I got it working with a composite cable. okay so ive never messed with CGA composite so this is what I gather. CGA composite is a bit more blurry but by using dithering it can make games that support it look almost like EGA where if I went with the strait digital CGA I would only get the 4 colors on screen at once but the image would be sharper?

Yes, pretty much. The resolution of the colour signal is quite low, so things will look blocky/fuzzy.
Although, in my opinion, composite CGA generally looks nicer than EGA, since the colours are less harsh.

A nice example of a composite game is Burger Time: https://youtu.be/zWPEi9vI_oA

do I need to do something other then copy the files from the DOS floppy to the hard drive?

Yes, you would first partition the drive, then format it with the /s option.
If you can already copy files to it, then I assume you have already partitioned and formatted the drive. In that case you can use the 'sys c:' command to transfer the system files to the drive, and make it bootable.
That's pretty much the installation procedure for old versions of DOS: 'format c: /s' or 'sys c:' to get the system on there and make it bootable, then copy the DOS files to the drive, usually a c:\system or c:\dos directory. Then set up an autoexec.bat with a path variable to that directory, and you're all set up.
 
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no luck. I'm using a 32MB CF card as a hard drive as every other traditional hard drive I have is to big. everything looked to work and I got a "system transfered" message. copied all the files over but it still refuses to boot from the hard drive. if I boot from the floppy I can access and read/write to the hard disk with no issues, size also comes up correctly but the system will not boot from it. also is there no EDIT command in MS DOS 3? I cant seem to find it on my either my DOS 3.2 disk or a DOS 3.3 disk I have here
 
Edit did not join DOS until DOS 5. Earlier versions provided only Edlin which has a less than obvious user interface.
 
can the EDIT command be transplanted to an earlier version?

I haven't actually tried but the real trick is to make sure you copy QBASIC.EXE too, as that's the actual editor.
You should be able to find a generic text editor on the net to use that takes up less space / possibly better suited. That seems to be the more common route.

When I'm stuck and need to create/edit a text file, I use EDLIN (editing) or COPY CON: FILENAME.TXT (creating)
 
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can the EDIT command be transplanted to an earlier version?

EDIT works fine in DOS 3.3; I haven't tried it with anything older than that. But like SpidersWeb mentions, you need to copy QBASIC.EXE along with it as well, since all the little EDIT.COM program does is call QBASIC with the undocumented "/EDCOM" switch.

On a machine with a NEC V20 or 286 or higher CPU, you can also use the Windows 95 (or newer) version of EDIT which is self-contained and does not require QBASIC. But if you try to run it on a plain 8088 or 8086, it'll just lock up.

If you have access to IBM's PC DOS 6.x/7.0/2000, you can also try the IBM E Editor, although it is rather quirky, having its own command prompt (shades of vi :eek: ) and only the last version (3.13) giving in the conformity and adding pull-down menus.
 
no luck. I'm using a 32MB CF card as a hard drive as every other traditional hard drive I have is to big. everything looked to work and I got a "system transfered" message. copied all the files over but it still refuses to boot from the hard drive. if I boot from the floppy I can access and read/write to the hard disk with no issues, size also comes up correctly but the system will not boot from it.

DOS needs to be on the first partition, which should be a 'primary' partition, and should be set to 'active'.
This should be the default if you used DOS fdisk. If not, you can use fdisk to check and modify.
 
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