These flexible magnetic disks in hard plastic covers were a staple of computing until some time in the early 2000s, and their drives could be found by the crateload in any spares box. Once you have completed the setup, you can test it by booting a 1.44 MB Dos Boot Disk.Īlternately you can also use a GOTEK floppy emulator so you can save space and move away from Floppy Disks, which might be hard to find and are getting somewhat unreliable in 2019.Among the plethora of obsolete removable media there are some which are lamented, but it can be difficult to find those who regret the passing of the floppy disk. On my Compaq Portable 386 I use “Type 38”, and if needed change the Diskette drive to 1.44 MB Running the Setup Utility Diskette The welcome screen of the Compaq Setup Utility My original version of the User Diagnostics program on a 5.25 diskette This is taken from an emulator, but the steps to setup are the same: type “setup” at A> and press return to enter the setup program You should see something similar to this screen – press “3” to change the Fixed Disk Drive Type. The image files for the floppy can be found here.
If you have a 720K disk lying around and a computer with internet access and a 3.5″ floppy drive, then you just need to download and write the configuration utility image to disk. Fits the look and feel as well! Note I also replaced the hard disk drive with a Compact Flash card The floppy and hard disk caddy from the Compaq Portable 386 This newer floppy disk drive fits perfectly in the slot designed for the 5.25″ drive. However, the boot disk must be a 720KB 3.5″ disk – it won’t boot from the high density 1.44 MB disks. Luckily Compaq configured the Portable 386’s ROM to accept 3.5″ 1.44 MB floppy drives, selectable from the diagnostics utility. The default floppy drive that comes with a Compaq Portable 386 is the 5.25-inch 1.2MB variety – it accepts 360KB and 1.2 MB disks. Make sure you’ve swapped out the old battery before making changes to the configuration – if you don’t, once you’ve powered down the computer, you will lose all your settings.
The setup / diagnostic programs the CMOS chip that stores settings about the computer’s configuration. You will need to unzip the file and write the image file to a 720K disk, then insert the disk and switch on the computer. The first thing you need to get working is the floppy drive, as you will need to run a configuration utility to set up the computer before you can get past POST. You can jump to:Ĭonfiguration / Setup Disk for The Compaq Portable 386 This section looks at the floppy drive, the 720K disks it accepts, and the Compaq Diagnostics program to configure the computer. This is the 4th post in a 6 post series on the Compaq Portable 386 Computer.
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