Ok, so maybe I did buy myself an Old PC

[PhilC]

Evening All.

So the other day I said old PCs aren't my thing but then this just showed up today and I couldn't resist it.

20210501_204351.jpg (226.33 KiB) Viewed 3526 times

It's a Sharp pc-7200 80286 10mhz Luggable computer. Although, it could do with some wheels, this thing is HEAVY.

It boots up to the memory check and then mentions a bad configuration as the clock battery was flat.

It's the 7221 which is a 5 1/4" floppy drive with 20mb hard drive version but I don't have any boot disks at the moment and the hard drive won't boot (probably because of the incorrect bios configuration warning)

This thing seems really well made and internally it's in pretty good condition with a lovely blue back-lit display (more photos to follow)

Has anyone on the forum ever had or used one of these? If so do they know how to enter the bios?

Also, can any of you guys help me out with a dos boot disk? Originally it came with dos 3.22 but suspect 3.3 or 5 should work. I'd write my own if I had another computer with a 5 1/4" drive installed but no such luck here.

[PhilC]

So having a bit of a Google, it looks like I need something called a IBM 286AT Setup Diagnostics disk formatted to 5 1/4" floppy and that should help me reset the bios and then hopefully get the HDD and everything else up and running.

Next will be to check out the PSU and get it recapped as appropriate. If the HDD doesn't work all isn't lost as I'll just put an IDE card and a CF card of some description into it. The original is a 26 pin RLL type.

Then it'll be time to max it out with Ram, an 80287 and whatever else I can find. It already has an old coax network card in the expansion slot.

[mrbombermillzy]

I didnt have this model of laptop (if thats what this is! lol) but I used to do PC upgrades/repairs when it wasnt just plugging in a card and loading the drivers.

I'm a bit rusty on this era, but it would either be a matter of finding the correct HDD 'Type' in the BIOS and selecting that, or setting the actual drive geometry manually.

With a bit of luck, the drive will have the relevant information printed on it somewhere. Can you get the drive out?

As for entering the BIOS...is it an AMI/Pheonix BIOS or something else? (Can you see it come up just after switch on?) You SHOULD be able to use the usual suspects anyway (F1,F2,ESC,F12,DEL) to get into the BIOS. IIRC, some BIOS' are locked with a jumper on the mainboard. Check this if you can.

Is the drive spinning up then making a few clicks?

Obviously, you are trying to get diagnostics floppies for it, but getting the HDD to boot may be easier.

See how you get on.

[Steve]

Looks really nice cool little hefty things.

[derkom]

I ran into the same issue of not being able to write 5.25" disks in a PC a while back, and was able to solve the chicken-and-egg problem by replacing the floppy drive with a Lothatrek HXC floppy emulator, booting off that, and then using it to write a proper boot floppy on the real drive (moved over to B:). Worked a charm, and now I can boot that system (Atari PC-1 in case you are interested) "classic style".

[PhilC]

@mrbombermillzy that's what I was hoping to do but it looks like you need to access bios once you've booted a floppy or hard disk first as I've tried all the usual combinations.

I have a service manual but no user manual.

@Steve it is pretty cool but light doesn't come into it

@derkom I was thinking about using a gotek as a second drive but I suspect due to its age its got edge connectors not pin headers on the floppy drive.

Since I only got it yesterday there's still plenty of time for investigation to go yet

[rubber_jonnie]

Very nice, impressive for the 286 era.

I have a slightly more modern equivalent in the Dolch L-PAC 486:

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Though mine is a little more world weary as it was used by my boss as a network analyser. I think they cost around £25,000 new and I expect your Sharp had quite the price premium for its portability at the time.

[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie ive not managed to find any info on price yet but I expect expensive is the word, even 286s were expensive back then.

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie ive not managed to find any info on price yet but I expect expensive is the word, even 286s were expensive back then.

I think its mentioned here: https://classictech.wordpress.com/compu ... ramus-n-j/

[PhilC]

Thanks @rubber_jonnie , this is a 7221, so it'd have been $3995 new then.