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Dolch Pac 65 - Repair and fit out

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Tony_G:
Hey All,

Just picked up a reasonably good condition Dolch PAC 65:



and here is the shocking Win95 desktop:



The only major issue with it right now is the floppy drive has died.

Next steps for the unit are:


* Fix floppy drive
* Upgrade to SSD drive
* Replace Adaptec networking card with comething supported in XP
* Increase the memory to the max 512MB
* Add a NI PCI-GPIB+ card
* Add a HP 82324A MEasurement Coprocessor
* Check out the backlighting (Curious Marc did a vid on fixing his)
Anyway, will paste back here as I work on it. Final goal is to have a dual boot, DOS/WinXP machine capable of running old HP Series 200/300 programs, DOS based HPIB apps or Windows based ones in a smaller form factor than the large desktop tower I have now. I envisage this as something that I can keep out of the way either under the desk or in the storage cupboard and pull out as needed without taking up all the bench space.

TonyG

Ampera:
I'd suggest Windows 2000 instead of Windows XP. Has most of the same application support, possibly better hardware support, but most importantly, won't completely stall out on a Pentium 2 350 Mhz.

Just a suggestion.

Tony_G:
Thanks. I'll keep that in mind as I was also thinking of upping the CPU as well but thought I'd give it a try first. From what I can find on the web w.r.t the CI6BM motherboard I should be able to get a PIII 600 in there.

TonyG

Tony_G:
Well my weekend and this week so far ended up being a bit of a goat rodeo so I didn't get much done.

However what is has allowed is for some more of the bits to arrive.


* I fixed the floppy drive with the guts of a USB floppy but I really missed having the face plate so I bought another one of the exact model to replace it
* PCI Network card to replace the Adaptec one
* 512MB (2 x 256MB sticks) Memory
* Original NI PCI-GPIB+ card
* HP 82324A Measurement Coprocessor with 2MB ram
* Compact Flash adapter & Cards - 2 x 16Gb for DOS+Win3.11 and Win98SE - 1 x 64GB for WinXP
* Replacement CD ROM drive as it too was failing
One thing you'll notice is that I've changed from an SSD to a CF Card - Turns out the SSD was much more problematic than expected and the CF card IDE Drive replacement is what most people in the Industrial Control space do to prolong the lives of the machines in their production hardware. I'm still waiting for the bracket to arrive so I can attach the CF to IDE adapter to a slot rather than mount it in the drive bay. I'm going to do this so I can swap the CF Cards and not have to worry about dual booting.

As I wanted to make sure that that the 82324A was working, I actually just dropped this in - Here is it just fitting into the ISA slot and machine back (the top of the card has about a 1-2mm gap between it and the shield that goes over it:



and here it is running HP Basic on the 68K measurement coprocessor:



Hopefully I'll be able to get to this again on the weekend for a vide.

TonyG

Tony_G:
I've posted the first 3 videos on my channel.

It didn't go so straight forward.

https://youtu.be/LCC8Uvdyhpc

https://youtu.be/AnevCK59dPU

TonyG

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