anyone here uses 286 IBM AT clones? or am i the only one?

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anyone here uses 286 IBM AT
clones? or am i the only one?

Unfortunately my 286 clone is currently out of service due to a mobo bodge wire that popped off tht I have no idea where it went. :(

It's a Pulstar if anyone as any info on these knockoffs.

I do normally log in with my 486 though.. and actually more often (like now) on my Atari 800XL.



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anyone here uses 286 IBM AT clones? or am i the only one?

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I have a 286 that I found on the side of the road in hard rubbish, but unfortunately the CMOS is a bit screwy. It comes up with a "GATE A20" error on boot. Not been able to resolve the issue, but there is a bit of corrosion around the motherboard where the CMOS battery was. (it leaked it seems).

... You can learn many things from children... like how much patience you have

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On Monday, April 14th boraxman said...

error on boot. Not been able to resolve the issue, but there is a bit of corrosion around the motherboard where the CMOS battery was. (it leaked it seems).

if it is ruined by corrosion, unless the damage is too great, you can visually inspect the traces, from which pin it is from and where it should go, and you can solder "bodge wires" to complete any traces that are incomplete. You can also solder copper wire directly onto the traces to bridge the spaces they are broken.

I say it like its easy, but I tried to repair an Apple ][+ board that had battery corrosion (from a 3rd party thunderclock card), but I put hours of work into it and there was still "something" wrong with it. Instead of buying a nice digital oscilloscope for several hundred, I repaired it by buying a fully complete, chips and all Apple ][+ board fully tested for under $100..

My first computer was a 286, and I shot it up with a bb gun during a power outage as a teenager. I wouldn't recommend a 286 for anyone... the "games" were really bad for that CGA graphics era...

You do probably have a working 5.25" disk drive, and that can be restored and reused with a GreaseWeazle, "The Greaseweazle board is compatible with any [..] Standard floppy drive, that includes any 3.5 and 5.25-inch drive with a 34-pin connector"

https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

You can then image from and to floppy disks for all the other 8 and 16-bit systems of the era, lots of archive.org work has been done to make these "flux" images of floppy disks available. This technique also allows
reliable duplication of "copy-protected disks"


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On Monday, April 14th boraxman said...

error on boot. Not been able to resolve the issue, but there is a b of corrosion around the motherboard where the CMOS battery was. (it leaked it seems).

if it is ruined by corrosion, unless the damage is too great, you can visually inspect the traces, from which pin it is from and where it
should go, and you can solder "bodge wires" to complete any traces that are incomplete. You can also solder copper wire directly onto the traces to bridge the spaces they are broken.

I say it like its easy, but I tried to repair an Apple ][+ board that had battery corrosion (from a 3rd party thunderclock card), but I put hours
of work into it and there was still "something" wrong with it. Instead
of buying a nice digital oscilloscope for several hundred, I repaired it by buying a fully complete, chips and all Apple ][+ board fully tested
for under $100..

My first computer was a 286, and I shot it up with a bb gun during a
power outage as a teenager. I wouldn't recommend a 286 for anyone... the "games" were really bad for that CGA graphics era...

You do probably have a working 5.25" disk drive, and that can be
restored and reused with a GreaseWeazle, "The Greaseweazle board is compatible with any [..] Standard floppy drive, that includes any 3.5
and 5.25-inch drive with a 34-pin connector"

https://github.com/keirf/greaseweazle

You can then image from and to floppy disks for all the other 8 and
16-bit systems of the era, lots of archive.org work has been done to
make these "flux" images of floppy disks available. This technique also allows reliable duplication of "copy-protected disks"

I tested the traces with a multimeter, and they all seemed functional. The corrosion did not appear to, at least from my testing, affect the PCB all
that much, but I may have missed a spot elsewhere. Gate A20 error actually relates to the keyboard somehow. While I don't really need the 286 working, as I have a couple of other 486s to serve as my "legacy" machines, it would be nice to get this working so I can use my CGA card and my old CGA monitor.

As for 5 1/4 inch drives, I have a few, but only the HD variety. I lost (quite literally just lost) the 360K drives I had with my XT. Have no idea where I put that machine.

I've already imaged most of the disks when I could, but only data dumps, so just writable disk images.

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