3 Mar
2017
3 Mar
'17
3:52 p.m.
Just checking here, as someone told me that this is the case, but do the
Compaq Portable 286 and Portable III take stock 40-pin IDE hard drives? I
just wanted to make sure that they weren't expecting something that might
be a bit non-standard before I go trying to find modern replacements for a
pair of failing disks.
Assuming that an enormous modern(ish) drive is OK, are there any other
gotchas involved in configuration and formatting? Obviously I don't need a
partition bigger than a few tens of MB, but perhaps there are things to
keep in mind when fitting a drive that's most likely to be getting on for a
thousand times the capacity of the original.
cheers
Jules
3 Mar
3 Mar
4:08 p.m.
On Fri, 3 Mar 2017, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
Just checking here, as someone told me that this is
the case, but do the
Compaq Portable 286 and Portable III take stock 40-pin IDE hard drives? I
just wanted to make sure that they weren't expecting something that might be
a bit non-standard before I go trying to find modern replacements for a pair
of failing disks.
I think so, but I also think that Compaq's IDE was before it was
completely standardized, so there might be some glitches.
Assuming that an enormous modern(ish) drive is OK, are
there any other
gotchas involved in configuration and formatting? Obviously I don't need a
partition bigger than a few tens of MB, but perhaps there are things to keep
in mind when fitting a drive that's most likely to be getting on for a
thousand times the capacity of the original.
1) If you are going period OS, get Compaq MS-DOS V3.31. Anything prior
to that is limited to 32MB per partition.
2) You may want to use a "disk manager overlay" to be able to use specs
other than the BIOS ones:
http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/compaq3.html
5:07 p.m.
On 3/3/2017 1:08 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
I ran Pick and other systems other
than DOS and modified the roms to
have new geometry. The entries up to #13 match the IBM.
I think #4 and #20, IIRC are the common ones you see as evidenced by a
sticker on the case behind the plasma display.
The Roms are simple to modify, if you know that they are Even / Odd for
a 16 bit total width. you will have to figure out a new checksum and
modify the last byte of the rom to come up 0. Again, if i recall you
need to make the overall sum come up = 0.
I always read the rom from high memory into ram and wrote a simple loop
to add up the checksum in AL. The play with the last byte till you get
it back to 0.
I ran Pick R83 on all of mine, with an 8way and streaming tape card in
the expansion bay. A very nifty 286 or 386 8 user system for demos back
in the days
thanks
jim
On Fri, 3 Mar 2017, Jules Richardson via cctalk
wrote:
The bios has a table that you can dump out as usual, which is unique to
the Compaq portable 3. Other than that and having to modify the table
to accommodate the new drive geometry, I had no problem. It was
possible to run 200mb drives, as all of min have such on them.
Just checking here, as someone told me that this
is the case, but do
the Compaq Portable 286 and Portable III take stock 40-pin IDE hard
drives? I just wanted to make sure that they weren't expecting
something that might be a bit non-standard before I go trying to find
modern replacements for a pair of failing disks.
I think so, but I also think that Compaq's IDE was before it was
completely standardized, so there might be some glitches.
Assuming that
an enormous modern(ish) drive is OK, are there any
other gotchas involved in configuration and formatting? Obviously I
don't need a partition bigger than a few tens of MB, but perhaps
there are things to keep in mind when fitting a drive that's most
likely to be getting on for a thousand times the capacity of the
original.
1) If you are going period OS, get Compaq MS-DOS V3.31. Anything
prior to that is limited to 32MB per partition.
2) You may want to use a "disk manager overlay" to be able to use
specs other than the BIOS ones:
http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/compaq3.htm
5:33 p.m.
On 03/03/2017 03:08 PM, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
On Fri, 3 Mar 2017, Jules Richardson via cctalk
wrote:
Yes, that's my concern. I thought it may even be expecting something like
XTA, but I suppose that doesn't really make sense given the '286 or '386
CPU (I only picked up the Portable III last weekend and I'm not sure which
CPU it has - I believe that the later ones had the '386)
Just checking here, as someone told me that this
is the case, but do the
Compaq Portable 286 and Portable III take stock 40-pin IDE hard drives? I
just wanted to make sure that they weren't expecting something that might
be a bit non-standard before I go trying to find modern replacements for
a pair of failing disks.
I think so, but I also think that Compaq's IDE was before it was completely
standardized, so there might be some glitches. 1) If you are going period OS, get Compaq MS-DOS
V3.31. Anything prior to
that is limited to 32MB per partition.
Well, I suspect 32MB will be plenty :-)
I don't think I've ever actually tried putting a large-capacity IDE disk
into a machine which was designed for something much smaller (I've always
had a stash of period drives kicking around in case of failure). I'm not
sure if it all gets translated into a linear address somewhere between
system and drive anyway[1], so I can pretty much pick any BIOS drive type
and expect it to just work (obviously at massively-reduced capacity!), or
if the drive really is addressed via CHS and so I need to pick type[2]
carefully (or look into LLF).
[1] And I know that I used to know the answer to things like that, but it
all fell out of my head years ago :-(
[2] Maybe picking something that's "smaller in all dimensions" works,
though? It would waste some enormous number of sectors on each track, but
that's not really an issue if it works!
2) You may want to use a "disk manager
overlay" to be able to use specs
other than the BIOS ones:
http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/compaq3.html
Aha, some useful info there - thanks!
cheers,
Jules
5:54 p.m.
IIRC, at least some models did support a 500MB drive.
(1023 Cylinders, 15 heads, more then 17 sectors per track)
If you can find the Compaq EGA board, it will work with the internal
monitor, and provide almost usable Windoze.
(Look for the connector mid-board)
There was also an ATI EGA card (with add-on) for Compaq.
Or, you could add a VGA, as a second video card.
Windoze would work with CGA, but 640x200 was clunky.
For Windoze 3.10 or 3.11, you need some memory above 1MB. (A20)
(Windoze 3.00 did not need memory above 1MB, and could un on 8088)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
4:14 p.m.
On 03/03/2017 03:52 PM, Jules Richardson via cctalk wrote:
Just checking here, as someone told me that this is the case, but do
the Compaq Portable 286 and Portable III take stock 40-pin IDE hard
drives? I just wanted to make sure that they weren't expecting
something that might be a bit non-standard before I go trying to find
modern replacements for a pair of failing disks.
Assuming that an enormous modern(ish) drive is OK, are there any other
gotchas involved in configuration and formatting? Obviously I don't
need a partition bigger than a few tens of MB, but perhaps there are
things to keep in mind when fitting a drive that's most likely to be
getting on for a thousand times the capacity of the original.
cheers
Jules
One caveat... Max drive size was 500mb. You can use larger but the
first partition must be 500mb and the second is only
usable to the limits of the OS version. For example the hardware (BIOS)
will boot the OS in the first 500mb partition and
of the OS such as Win3.11 can handle up to only 500mb if memory serves
but there can be many partitions.
The other thing is the BIOS much be able to setup for the drive
geometry, some only have a predefined list.
That machine was seen with drives in the up to 340 or 420mb scale over
time and larger than 40mb was not uncommon.
If you can find a working ST3660A (500mb) that might be a good one to go
with.
I'd max the drive at 1Gb. Larger may not work.
Allison
4 Mar
4 Mar
1:37 p.m.
I'm pretty sure the Portable III used a Conner IDE disk drive, see
http://chmss.wikifoundry.com/page/Compaq%2FConner+CP341+IDE%2FATA+Drive
probably the CP344 but maybe the CP341 (there is some inconsistency in the
literature)
However that was the first public IDE drive so it is not at all clear how
compatible the Compaq HBA/driver was with future versions of IDE/ATA, so if
I were you I would get early Conner IDE drives as replacements such as
models CP3024, CP3044, CP344, CP3104, CP3114 and CP3204 - all listed in the
1989 Disk/Trend as Conner PC-AT drives (i.e. IDE drives).
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: Jules Richardson [mailto:jules.richardson99 at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2017 12:52 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Compaq Portable 286 and Portable III - IDE drives?
Just checking here, as someone told me that this is the case, but do the
Compaq Portable 286 and Portable III take stock 40-pin IDE hard drives? I
just wanted to make sure that they weren't expecting something that might be
a bit non-standard before I go trying to find modern replacements for a pair
of failing disks.
Assuming that an enormous modern(ish) drive is OK, are there any other
gotchas involved in configuration and formatting? Obviously I don't need a
partition bigger than a few tens of MB, but perhaps there are things to keep
in mind when fitting a drive that's most likely to be getting on for a
thousand times the capacity of the original.
cheers
Jules
2697
days inactive
2698
days old
6 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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ajp166＠verizon.net -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
jules.richardson99＠gmail.com -
jwsmail＠jwsss.com -
t.gardner＠computer.org