5 Jun
2013
5 Jun
'13
4:47 a.m.
On Wed, 5 Jun 2013, Jim Brain wrote:
Good news, after dremeling the Dallase RTC and
performing minor surgery
to add an external coin cell battery, the 286/SLT is not complaining at
me on boot.
Double bonus, the 21.4MB HDD looks to be operational and boots to DOS
Triple bonus, the diag disk I made works, and cleaned up all of the
errors from not having a battery for so long.
Quadruple bonus, I've temporarily connected a 40GB 2.5" drive, fdisked
(to 528MB), formatted, and booted off said drive (regular 3.5" drives
suck too much power and just overwhelmed the little PSU in the machine,
even newer 160GB eco-models.)
So, my questions:
Is there any value in keeping the larger drive in the unit? I would
like to install Windows 3.1, DOS, some utils, etc., and I don't know if
all that will spill out of 21MB or not.
If the larger drive is in the unit, what would be suggestions on
accessing the rest of the disk? I assume DOS will never see more than
528MB, since I had to tell the BIOS it was a COMPAQ drive type 42, which
is 528MB. I thought maybe Windows could see the rest of the space once
out of real mode, or maybe using the DOS from Win95 and formatting FAT32
might help. I remember there being drive extenders at some point, but I
never used one (thankfully, all of my machines understood LBA).
Thoughts appreciated. Permanently replacing the 21MB drive means doing
some soldering on the little funky power cable used in the unit, so I'd
rather not mess with it unless there is some value to the additional
space.
Still, regardless, it lives, and research suggests the external KB
connector is XT, so I can use this to test an AT->XT converter project I
wanted to implement.
In a word, yes. Whatever elastomer Connor used for the cover gasket in
original 3.5" 20MB drives turns into a sticky, runny, goo over time and
the drive eventually fails. It is very similar to what you see with many
of the black "rubber" feet on the bottoms of peripherals turning to goo.
The 3-pin connector used as an alternative power connector on these Connor
drives is still available (I can't remember the brand/model offhand, but
they were also used for analog audio for certain sound cards/cdrom
drives). Rather than hack up an original cable, I'd suggest obtaining the
correct connector shell and pins and use it to supply power a 2.5" to 3.5"
adapter board.
You could also use a CompactFlash card with a CF to IDE adapter board.
They even make some of these adapters in a 2.5" HDD formfactor which can
be used with a 2.5" to 3.5" mounting bracket.
How much memory did you end up with in your 286/SLT? There are 3 slots
under that aluminum box/cover at the center-front of the machine with the
outer plastic shell removed. Those slots can use any combination of 1MB
and 4MB modules, but those modules are proprietary and are practically
impossible to find today.
Be very, very careful with the LCD in these machines. The backlights are
not well supported and are very easily broken. I'm still on the hunt for a
replacement LCD for one of these that's been sitting in my project pile
for /years/.