Uncreative Labs

Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 24 Location: Catalunya

I won on eBay (as a pay-off for my IBM's Convertible death)
A Toshiba T3200 Razz

I always wanted a Toshiba laptop...

Seller says it got 13Meg of RAM, for a 386 25 this sounds OK.

A nice thing is that this comp got two ISA slots (one 16 bit, one 8 bit) I am considering add-ons to use them (Maybe a network + a SCSI card)

The thing is the fully equipped model, with color screen (only 256 VRAM= 16 at 640x480 or 256 at 320X240).

The thing comes with a 120MB hard disk... Standard IDE... Shocked

I supose up to 520MB and no LBA. I am thinking about replace it for a CF reader with a cheap 512MB card on it. Those cards are rat-cheap now...

Questions:

Anyone knows about SCSI2 ISA cards? (50 pin small D connector) I seen some but with printer style connector...

Exists USB / FireWire ISA cards?

TIA for any comments or help!

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

usb or firewire in ISA, have you lost your mind!, those are 32 bit. your ISA bus is 16 bit. Id stick a PCMCIA adapter in it, like in my 386, im able to use PCMCIA cards in a 386(it evan had it wireless once, just to see if it was possible(win98)

got some pics of the new computer
is it a brownish grey one thats very thick? i threw one away 5 months ago due to a bad mobo, mabey it was something else, if i knew it had all these features, id of fixed it instead.

Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 24 Location: Catalunya

Well, 32 bit is just 16*2 Cool

The pcmcia sounds good too, this would stomp the lack of CD-ROM (Stick a PC-card to CF adapter)

The Closed auction link is this:
http://cgi.ebay.es/Portatil-Toshiba-T3200-sxc_W0QQitemZ280185552118QQihZ018QQcategoryZ177QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262

Consider 55 Euro in Europe isn´t much!

Now i think i don't know the total memory aboard, the seller simply pasted the specs from other site, but the comp. is shown running Win 3.1, i'l supose 4/8Meg of RAM.

Yep, pictures show it, but i confirm you, the computer looks massive, consider it ship a keyboard with separate keypad, and weights some 15 Lb.

I din't know a 386 can run Win98! Shocked

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

yea, 486s are pretty much 386s with a few extra features.
although, it take quite a bit of memory to run win98
i haven't tried win2k yet because im to lazy, but i got the 386 to boot halfway into winxp once.

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

If he graphics chipset is an SVGA chipset one resolution to look for is 640x400 x 256 colors which is the max for 256k of VRAM, very few vintage cards would do it but I had an old packard smell that would under win 3.1. 256 colors back then was a real novelty.

Good Luck On Your New Lappy.

Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 24 Location: Catalunya

ryan wrote:

If he graphics chipset is an SVGA chipset one resolution to look for is 640x400 x 256 colors

I read somewere a comment of a guy that get it to work under linux, he said it worked except the lower portion of the screen (It was black) This smells to me like he get it to work at 640X400 but the TFT screen was unable to handle the aspect ratio and simply wasted the down 80 px row...

Now i got fear of wasting half of the screen with QVGA games... Rolling Eyes

Merçes for the help ryan,386er

Joined: 19 Apr 2006 Posts: 261 Location: WisConSin

Who cares? There are so many more possibilities with 256 colors than on plain jane 16 under windows 3.1x

Furthermore, I rather have part of my screen black with more colors than having it stretched in a very blocky fashion (my stepnote would give the option to stretch and trust me it looked terrible)

And all this is speculation as I don't know what type of graphics chip was on the toshiba, many VGA chips would simply not do that because of the bandwidth req. Usually you could only do it if there was a driver for it, like many of the #9 cards. Some SVGA capable graphics chips that happened to have 256k installed would allow this in a generic sense (VESA) but not very many.

Good Luck

JaumeCAT wrote:

ryan wrote:

If he graphics chipset is an SVGA chipset one resolution to look for is 640x400 x 256 colors

I read somewere a comment of a guy that get it to work under linux, he said it worked except the lower portion of the screen (It was black) This smells to me like he get it to work at 640X400 but the TFT screen was unable to handle the aspect ratio and simply wasted the down 80 px row...

Now i got fear of wasting half of the screen with QVGA games... Rolling Eyes

Merçes for the help ryan,386er

Joined: 29 Mar 2008 Posts: 51 Location: czech republic

USB is possible on 16bit....
how? Well it is expensive. The only option is CF - USB card. So just put this CF card to PCMCIA-CF adapter and you are done Wink

That way you can (theoretically) connect USB to a 286 desktop. ISA->PCMCIA controller, PCMCIA->CF adapter etc. However having he drivers might be another story.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

i have usb drivers for dos, and a pcmcia adapter, and i can just get a pcmcia to usb adapter

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

I think this topic has come up before.

Are you sure there are USB "PCMCIA" adapters? A lot of people use the term "PCMCIA" pretty loosely, and don't take into consideration that there is 16-bit AND 32-bit PCMCIA. Usually the 32-bit variety is referred to as "CardBus". I learned all this the hardway when I was trying to install a 32-bit card into my 16-bit Stinkpad PCMCIA slot.

I see Cardbus USB adapters for sale all the time, but I did a pretty extensive search of the internets and wasn't able to find anything for PCMCIA. That was several years ago though, so maybe there's a new product out now.

I have seen ISA adapters with USB ports before. I think there is only one company making them. I believe it was "Chili Ports". I don't know much about it other than it is really expensive. I think at least $300USD

Joined: 29 Mar 2008 Posts: 51 Location: czech republic

No PCMCIA to USB card (those are all 32bit Cardbus I have never seen a PCMCIA 16bit) but yes the CF to USB exists. And it is 16 bit, therefore pin compatible with PCMCIA. You just need cheap PCMCIA-CF adaptor.

As for ISA-PCMCIA bridges - there are quite rare to get but are very cheap. Max 10 Euro in my country. It usuall consists of ISA card and a box with size of 3,5" floppy drive, where are two PCMCIA slots.

I will try to find a link for CF -> USB but I have no idea wheter it works under DOS.

I came to that idea sometime ago, when I wanted to go wirelless with a 286 PC. (that was a bet and I won). Because I did not find any ISA WiFi card, I used ISA-PCMCIA bridge and Orinoco PCMCIA wifi card Very Happy

(which btw tripled the price of that PC that time)

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Hmm...I'll have to look into this CF->USB thing as well. I am guessing that it doesn't actually give much functionality other than the ability to read USB flash drives...but hell, that's good enough for me.

What I've been thinking of lately is sticking wifi into my XT, but I am not sure if any PCMCIA wireless adapters would work in 8-bit mode.

Joined: 29 Mar 2008 Posts: 51 Location: czech republic

here is the adaptor I was meaning:

http://www.ratocsystems.com/english/products/CFU1U.html

There is at least one more manufacturer (and cheaper)

As you see DOS is not in list of drivers. Pocket PC and Linux only. So buying it just for testing under DOS might not be good idea in the case you find no other use for it. But there might be a chance that it uses some common chipset for which the dos driver exists.

Joined: 20 Nov 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Shandong, China

Nope, I think even if it used a common USB chip there would be no way for the software to find it since it's being connected to the IDE bus. If Ratco has programming information available it is possible someone could write DOS drivers to do it, but I'm no programmer.

Joined: 27 Jan 2007 Posts: 274 Location: USA

i seen another usb adapter for usb 1.1
linky here http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/EB1161ISA/card-senw-sml.jpg
its in develpment as of now, and yes, i have seen usb drivers for dos, hell i have them on a cd some where (boot cd for recovery and reformating, stuff like that) but i think there just for drives. if anyone is interested, pm me for a zip(if i can find the cd.) and yes, pcmcia is 16bit, my linksys wireless card didn't work, it did say cardbus on it. but i get the 2 confused since cardbus is backwards compatible and they look the same, and i dont fool around with pcmica or cardbus stuff as much as ISA and pci