Subj : My new* 486 (*=old)
To   : Cougar428
From : Ben Collver
Date : Wed Feb 22 2023 13:02:32

  Re: My new* 486 (*=old)
  By: Cougar428 to BEN COLLVER on Wed Feb 22 2023 07:30:00

 CO> I'll check out what I have and see about creating images.  I have a
 CO> registered version of Winimage 10 that I can use to create the
 CO> diskette images for download.  It creates .img files.

Thanks!  I'm interested in obtaining the original disks in case the
diagnostics prove useful in the future.

 CO> I also have a 386SX and I tried a USB floppy on my newer systems to
 CO> write files for the older system.  I didn't have much luck with it,
 CO> hopefully you have better luck.

I read that USB floppy drives manufactured prior to 2004 are more reliable.
I ordered a Sony USB floppy drive that was manufactured in 2001.  It has
been working fine so far.

The PC came with a box of floppies and so far they have all been blank.
About half of them are failing a low level format with verification.
I'm marking the bad ones with a sharpie and using the good ones.
Memtest86 passed 100%.  BasLinux read the whole hard disk, so i assume
it is good.

 CO> I also replaced the CMOS battery on the 386 and the PC350 P90.  I am
 CO> suprised you got ME working, I bought that OS new and after
 CO> 'upgrading' from 98SE, I had lots of BSOD's just using the ME OS
 CO> normally.

I got into Windows ME by stepping through the boot-up and telling it to
skip loading the registry.  I think it has a corrupt registry and quite
possibly other problems.

I hoped to back up the hard disk to a USB drive.  Unfortunately, BasLinux
lacks USB support.  I wrote NetBSD/i386 9.3 boot floppies and am currently
using NetBSD to back up the disk.

The USB ports don't seem to work with my USB 2 hard drive, nor with my
USB 3 Micro-SD adapter.  These USB drives seem readable but not writable.
They report "drive busy" when i try to mount the filesystem writable.
I had to dig out an older USB thumb drive to get this backup started.

Looking around on the internal hard drive, i found a DOS driver for the
PCI audio card.  However, i am wary of using it after reading the
documentation.  It mentioned timing issues.  The driver includes a
utility to patch game executables to work around the timing issues.
I think i'll skip that.

 CO> For the PC350, I purchased a 1 GB DOM on Ebay and formatted it with
 CO> PC-DOS 6, the system came with dual boot OS/2 (red spine so it can
 CO> also run Win31 stuff). I don't normally use OS/2 but boot to DOS.

Thanks for the tip about using a 1 GB DOM.  I'll look into that.

That's fun that you are maintaining a DOS 386SX.  Does it come from the
era before PC's had BIOS setup screens?  What do you use it for?

I remember buying a used 386 for $100 and it seemed like such an upgrade
at that time.  I bought a used VGA card for $20 from an older friend and
that really opened up possilities for gaming.  At the time the school PC
lab had a single 386 as the server and the clients all ran real mode
software.  I installed Wolfenstein, Doom, and Star Control II from big
sets of floppy disks.  I didn't have a sound card, but Star Control II
could play its soundtrack through the PC speaker.  The playback volume
was quiet so i disconnected the internal speaker and fitted a headphone
jack into the case.  Then i plugged in amplified speakers.

-Ben

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