Caluser2000
Banned
As mentioned in http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?38427-My-Hoard&p=307347#post307347 I've aquired a Zenith Data Systems 286 system (top right in the pic with "Fourth" written in felt pen on it). It has 4 megs of ram of 30 pin simms with 4 simm slots free. The 20 meg hdd is dead so I'm testing it with my Quantum LPS 52AT drive. Ran CheckIt, which shows that it has a 286/12 cpu, no NPU and all seems well with this system.
It is a slimline design with two serial ports, one parallel port and VGA video on the planar. The cpu is on a card the lays flat at the front LH edge of the planar and the keyboard port to the left of that on its own card. Looks like it could be upgraded by just replacing the card and setting some jumpers. You plug the AT keyboard into the DIN socket in the front of the machine. There is room for one 3.5" fdd and one 3.5" hdd. These have a guide that is fitted to the LH side and screws on the RHS as you'd expect. It does have 3 ISA slots on the riser.
The bios is gotten at by holding down the ESC key on start up and then typing SETUP at the prompt. Typing a ? gives a few more options and typing TEST brings up a list of advance diagnostics tests you can do on the system. When in setup you can change the usual stuff such as fdds, hdds, ports etc. The hdd area has something like 60 hdd type selections but no option to set your own parameters that I could find. Most likely will have to set up any drives bigger than about 240megs using DDO software or other means. Not a problem really. The ribbon cables in it currently are fairly long so I'll fit some shorter ones.
I haven't found terribly much about the machine online as yet, but the search has just only begun. I'll post a few pics when I get some time.
I noticed I left a 2 out of the thread title. Can a mod correct that please?
It is a slimline design with two serial ports, one parallel port and VGA video on the planar. The cpu is on a card the lays flat at the front LH edge of the planar and the keyboard port to the left of that on its own card. Looks like it could be upgraded by just replacing the card and setting some jumpers. You plug the AT keyboard into the DIN socket in the front of the machine. There is room for one 3.5" fdd and one 3.5" hdd. These have a guide that is fitted to the LH side and screws on the RHS as you'd expect. It does have 3 ISA slots on the riser.
The bios is gotten at by holding down the ESC key on start up and then typing SETUP at the prompt. Typing a ? gives a few more options and typing TEST brings up a list of advance diagnostics tests you can do on the system. When in setup you can change the usual stuff such as fdds, hdds, ports etc. The hdd area has something like 60 hdd type selections but no option to set your own parameters that I could find. Most likely will have to set up any drives bigger than about 240megs using DDO software or other means. Not a problem really. The ribbon cables in it currently are fairly long so I'll fit some shorter ones.
I haven't found terribly much about the machine online as yet, but the search has just only begun. I'll post a few pics when I get some time.
I noticed I left a 2 out of the thread title. Can a mod correct that please?
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