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Looking for system disks for Compaq LTE

dieymir

Experienced Member
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Jan 11, 2017
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I had an LTE 286. From my notes, the setup/config disk can be found online as SP0308.ZIP and I think it covered the later models too. Mine ran Compaq DOS 3.31 though.
 
I have SP0308.ZIP and it's for:


DIVISION: Portables, Desktops

PRODUCTS AFFECTED: COMPAQ Portable, COMPAQ DESKPRO, COMPAQ DESKPRO 286,
COMPAQ PORTABLE 286, COMPAQ PORTABLE II, COMPAQ PORTABLE III,
COMPAQ PORTABLE 386, COMPAQ DESKPRO 386, COMPAQ DESKPRO 386/20,
COMPAQ DESKPRO 386/25, COMPAQ SLT/286, COMPAQ LTE, COMPAQ LTE/286,
COMPAQ DESKPRO 286e, COMPAQ DESKPRO 286n
 
Fine, I have the setup program I'll test it ASAP. I think that you can choose between Compaq 3.31 and 4.01 when you purchase the computer and I'm sure this one came originally with Compaq 4.01 Unfortunately, among most other things, the original software got lost long time ago ...
 
I have a copy of 3.31 on 360k floppies, which I believe is also available at winworldpc but on 3.5" floppy images.
 
I've got 3.31 revision G (May 1990) minus the User Programs diskette. I've also found what I think is the very latest verion of the User Programs diskette (7.34 Jul 1993). It contains updates for Compaq DOS 3.31 & 5.0 but not for 4.01 Seems that 4.01 did not get much love even from Compaq ...
 
I had one of these when they were new. I think I used MS DOS 5 on mine. In my computing timeline I skipped from 3.3 to 5.0 with most systems I worked on then I found no benefit to version 4, but 5 was worth the update.
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I was doing some experiments with Compaq DOS 3.31 rev. G (May 1990) and the utils included in the User Programs Diskette version 7.34 (CEMM & RUNHI). It contains other utilities like CACHE, HIMEM.EXE, VDISK, ... and well as updates for Compaq DOS 3.31 & 5.0 (but not 4.01). CEMMP is not included.

CEMM is a very late version (5.15, 1992) but it still does not require XMS memory like previous versions and unlike M$ EMM386. It's able to provide UMB memory but it doesn't work as XMS UMB provider. It works as XMS UMB provider under DOS 5.0 with DOS=UMB on config.sys so I suppose DOS 5.0 did something to "enable" this support in that case.

RUNHI is able to load programs into UMBs created by CEMM as long as you don't use DOS=UMB. It can do other nice tricks like load SFT into UMBs. link/unlink UMBs from MCB chain, change memory assignment strategy, ... Copyright is from 1990 so, maybe, an older version was included in the complete DOS 3.31 system diskette set (I know there were 4 720kb disks but I only have the 3 of DOS 3.31 rev. G itself)

Using both CEMM + RUNHI I was able to get 592KB free on this beastie. I've also tried it on another non Compaq clone and it works just fine. 386MAX or QEMM386 did not do better on those machines and they aren't free and you don't need to go/wait to DOS 5.0 to get UMBs. Yes, Compaq was a good buy back at those days.
 
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