Compaq Deskpro boards/hard drives from the late 1990s

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Fri Jul 23 08:24:54 CDT 2021


On Fri, 23 Jul 2021 at 14:55, Christian Groessler via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> I think Compaq was the first company to offer a 386 PC back then (before
> IBM).
>
> I remember, when I worked as a student at MBB around 1988, that we
> visited another department (just next door) to see the Compaq 386 they
> had in action.

Exactly. We already had a demo PS/2 Model 70, a screaming 25MHz
80386DX _with motherboard cache_. But it cost over £10,000 in 1988 and
I don't remember us ever selling one.

(My Acorn Archimedes – 8MHz ARM2 – ran rings around it, which
delighted me. IIRC interpreted BBC BASIC V on RISC OS was
substantially faster than BASIC compiled with MS QuickBASIC 3 on PC
DOS.)

I think the Compaq was a Deskpro, and I was installing Netware 3 on
it. From floppies. Lots and lots of floppies. I had to mess around
with IRQ and DMA settings on its Ethernet and SCSI cards, so I had the
lid off... and left it off when I went to lunch.

Oops...

-- 
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