This machine was originally earmarked to be stripped down and used for parts. Instead, curiosity got the better of me and I ended up repairing it so it was in a workable condition. Powered by a 40MB hard drive and a 3.5″ 720KB floppy drive it was a challenge that was finally won in the last two days.
The machine is 12.5MHz and a close relative of the Amdek 286. They seem to share the same case and internal component layout. To access the BIOS either GSETUP or this setup file could be used. Of course, you’ll need to have a working floppy drive and I was able to hook up a 1.44MB floppy drive from another PC, so the floppy drive detection is flexible at least.
The hard drive proved to be a bit problematic to get up and running as the 40MB size (820 cylinders, 17 sectors, 5 heads) was not in the hard drive table, nor was there a user-configurable option that actually worked. So using the information on this thread I used a slightly smaller cylinder with the same sectors and heads. Type 8 seemed to be the best match.
Most of my issues were caused by the VGA video card having a floppy drive / hard drive controller on it. If I had just used my Trident 9000 card it would have been up and running much sooner. I blindly disabled the onboard controller by setting the jumpers in the mid-section of the card to 2-3 from 1-2 to disable. While I couldn’t find any specs on this card, I did find the VGA only version and 2-3 tended to be disable and 1-2 was enable – trial and error and it worked! Actually it was a Pine Technologies PT-604 card.
Here is the thread I created on the Vintage Computer Forums dedicated to this powerhouse of a machine. Also here is a website with a suitable setup disk for the BIOS that is also bootable so you can jump right into the settings.
since sometime in the mid-1990s. We are powered by a 