Classic Computers Emulated Part 6: The PC/AT Clones

 

.....and then loses control of that standard!

Windows 386 2.01, which was released in September 1987 for Compaq customers who owned the Deskpro 386.

Like the PC/XT, the IBM PC/AT was widely cloned as well. While these class of computers was still well beyond the price point of what home buyers could afford, they became widely used in the office/corporate setting. And because they were widely cloned as well, the prices of these machines fell rapidly. Not only that, the manufactures of the AT-class systems were usually the early adopters of new technologies. For example, with the HP Vectra series of Compatibles, faster 286 processors were used. Compaq took a early lead by making a desktop computer with a 386 processor in it, beating IBM in a technological arms race. Big Blue was losing it's position as a market leader in the process. 

HP Vectra
The HP Vectra was not Hewitt Packard's first foray into corporate computing. In November 1983, the company released the  Model 150 computer. This computer was very innovative for its time in that it had a touchscreen display, which was state-of-the-art for 1983. This computer was one of the first to use those new 3-1/2 inch floppy disk, beating the Macintosh by two months. This workstation had a 16-bit Intel 8088 and ran MS-DOS, but it was not a IBM Compatible. It was not that successful in the marketplace due to the fact that the computer was not a IBM Compatible. The Vectra series of computers was HP's response to their customers wanting IBM Compatible machines. The computer sported a Intel 286 processor running at 8MHz. I was able to get the original software for the HP Vectra's running under PCEM. I decided to emulate a standard PC/AT 286 PC with a standard BIOS. At first, I struggled to get HP MS-DOS installed. I was successful after experimenting with different drives geometries that would be accepted by both the BIOS and MS-DOS. Afterwards, I've installed the Executive Spreadsheet and the Executive Card Manager. The Vectra's shipped with the Personal Application Manager, or PAM. This was a application launcher for DOS that allowed its users to open their programs without using the command-line. One of various attempts in the 80's to make MS-DOS easier to use.
Executive Spreadsheet for the HP Vectra PC Compatibles.
PAM, or the Personal Application Manager. This was a application launcher for MS-DOS.

Compaq Makes IBM Look Silly (Again)
To say that Compaq was a innovator in the industry would have been a understatement. Their Portables were critically acclaimed and praised by corporate users everywhere for their innovative design. The Compaq Portable was not only one of the first compatibles on the market, but it was also the first portable compatible as well. The computer was so well received in the marketplace that IBM responded with the Portable PC in 1984. This computer was essentially a IBM PC/XT in a portable form-factor. These computers were not as well received as the Compaq portable. Compaq saw an opportunity after the release of the IBM PC/AT in 1984. The Houston company realized that IBM would be slow to release a computer built around the Intel 386 processor. The Intel 386, released in 1985, was the companies first 32-bit processor. Compaq started to build a desktop computer around this new CPU. Released in early 1987, the new computer set the world on fire as it was the first PC to use the 386. The computer was critically acclaimed for both its design and its performance. It could beaten any 286 system on the market at the time. Many industry pundits constantly remarked how IBM was slow at adapting the new processor, and praised Compaq for taking the lead. The first revisions of the Deskpro 386 shipped with their own, Compaq-branded, EGA adapters as well. Eventually, the VGA (Video Graphics Array) video adapters were provided as an option once that standard was introduced in 1987.

The Compaq FASTART program. This program was used to configure the memory, BIOS, and DOS environment on the Compaq Deskpro 386

I opted to use PCEM to emulate this configuration. The screenshots are dated in that at the time, I was running PCEM Version 9.I was using a standard PC/AT compatible VM with a Intel 386  to run the Compaq software. I was using a standard AT-386 BIOS.  However, I've updated my configuration to PCEM Version 13, which does emulate the proper machine now. These screenshots don't reflect the current setup. However, I wasn't going to redo the screenshots of the software runnng on the Deskpro 386, as I would be essentially just be taking the same screenshot again. Besides that, the software runs without issue once the emulated computer was configured properly. These older machines needed DOS configuration programs to setup the BIOS. Once I located the software, I was able to configure the machine properly. This would have been reminiscent to how the users of these computers would have to had to configure their machines back in the day. Not for the impatient. However, I found enjoyment to emulate a computer that reminded the world that IBM was not on top of their game.

The FASTART program showing the configuration info for the Deskpro.
Windows 386
Microsoft brought many of the Deskpro 386 computers as development machines once the hardware became available. Windows 386 would be developed on these workstations as a result. As the name implies, Windows 386 was designed so that the graphical environment could take advantage of the capabilities of the 386. This included the Virtual 8086 Mode, which allowed Windows to have multiple DOS programs running at the same time. The 386 could virtualize graphics as well, which meant that graphical programs (depending on the video standard), could run in a window as well.  Each DOS session acted as a single-tasking, virtual computer running DOS. Or a virtual machine for short. Microsoft was busy developing this environment as the 386 processor was becoming more common. The environment was made available for Compaq customers on September 1987. The Deskpro 386 could run GUI environments at better performance that most of their contemporaries. However, Windows 386, like most of these GUI environments at the time, were still very demanding on the hardware they ran on. As a result, most PC users still opted to run text-based programs as they weren't as resource hungry as their graphical counterparts. If text-based multitasking was necessary, then these users opted could opt for Desqview instead, which could now take advantage of the new processor as well.
Windows 386 2.01 with a DOS window open. Norton Sysinfo is showing the memory configuration of the Desktop. As shown in the title bar, I'm emulating the proper machine now.

Computer users in the late 80's started to witness a technological arms race as computer manufactures were rushing to embrace the latest and greatest. By the end of the decade, high-end users were embracing the Intel 386, and be amazed by the graphical capabilities of the VGA Video Standard. The Creative Labs SoundBlaster, a audio adapter capable of CD audio playback, would be released by the end of that decade. Intel was putting the finishing touches on their new desktop processor, the 486.
Work Cited:

PCEM - https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/

Intel 286 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80286

IBM Personal Computer/AT - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer/AT

IBM Portable Personal Computer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Portable_Personal_Computer

HP Vectra - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Vectra

HP-150 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP-150

HP Computer Museum - Vectra (Archive.org Wayback Machine) - https://web.archive.org/web/20150403075612/http://hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=125

Windows/386 2.01 - http://www.os2museum.com/wp/windows386-2-01/

Pushing Windows/386 out the door… - https://virtuallyfun.com/wordpress/2011/06/24/pushing-windows386-out-the-door/

Deskpro 386 at 30 - http://www.os2museum.com/wp/deskpro-386-at-30/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WeatherStar 4000 Simulator For Windows (Part 1)

Image
  It's time to get the weather forecast, 90's style. A couple of months ago, I reviewed the WeatherStar 4000+ simulator for web-browsers. This simulator, created by Mike Battaglia, is a open-source, on-line simulator of the WeatherStar 4000 hardware used by The Weather Channel during the 1990's. This simulator ran without issue on both Firefox and Chrome on Windows 7 (Home PC) and Firefox on Windows 10 (Dell Optiplex).  It also runs great under Chrome on my Android devices as well. I use the online simulator when I'm on the road.  Now, I'm going to look into the WeatherStar 4000 simulator for Windows offered by Taiganet. This simulator offers a lot of features and can be customized in various ways. When I'm home, I use this program most of the time. Now, there is one notable hardware requirement. First, to run the Windows (and Mac OSX/Linux ports as well) simulator, you will need a computer that supports OpenGL 3.3. My home computer ha...
Read more

Classic Systems Emulated: Windows 95 (Part 1)

Image
  Start Me Up! Windows 95 (Chicago Beta Build 189 released September 1994) running under PCEM What would eventually become Windows 95 was affected by several turn of events that occurred during its development. Windows 95, code-named Chicago, had been several years in the making. Microsoft had already been planning the next version of Windows right after they got 3.1 out the door on March 1992. What would determine the course of the new OS? DOS Compatibility for one as it was still deemed essential at that point. One has to remember that even though Windows 3.0 had been the most successful version of Windows to date, the GUI in general was still a novelty at that point. Most used Windows 3.0 for simple task like typing list, letters, or playing solitaire. Most PC users who needed to work on major projects were still running DOS applications like WordPerfect or Lotus 123. However, the transition to GUI's would begin in earnest.  The 486 processor ...
Read more

Classic Systems Emulated: Windows 3.1 OEMS

Image
  The OEM's Want In On The Action The PC Market of the early 90's was a very competitive one. As such, having a easy-to-use environment was a must for these companies pushing there hardware. Hardware has caught up to software, and as such, it was now time to push the command prompt out of the way for the GUI. Several of these companies spotted opportunities to make  deals with Microsoft to pre-install Windows on there computers. This phenomenon didn't start with 3.1 though. Even in the late 80's, both Compaq and IBM often preinstalled Windows 386 for corporate customers that brought there 386 systems. Windows 3.0 was bundled with a lot of systems too. It was preinstalled on the IBM PS/1 budget PC's and various Tandy models. It came with the Amstrad MegaPC and various other PC's offered by ZDS (Zenith Data Systems) as well.  The number of OEM partners grew with the Windows 3.1 release. Some of them were familiar faces, like Compa...
Read more

Old Hardware Emulated :Psion Model 3a Emulated On DOSBox Windows

Image
  Psion 3a and 3c Psion Series 3c Handheld Computer (Wikipedia) Psion 3a As mentioned in the previous articles, the emulators for the Psion 3 exist only on DOSBox. I decided to take the challenge of setting up a emulated configuration. What must one do. There is already a very good guide on the internet titled "PocketBook II emulation..." which is linked below in the article. Highly recommended. Setting up a emulated Psion 3 takes a little bit of effort, but it's possible and is a good exploration of setting up a DOSBox configuration. I'm making the safe assumption that the fast majority of those reading this are using Windows systems, but DOSBox has been ported to Mac OS X and Linux as well, so this guide might work on those systems.  The first thing I did was created a folder called dosbox_psion3 (Folder naming is based on personal preference). Make the following new folders within dosbox_psion3; psion3, a, b, and m. With the f...
Read more

Classic Systems Emulated: OS/2 Version 2.0 On PCEM

Image
  The Arrival Of 32-Bit Power For The Masses The past couple of these PC articles have been very Windows-centric. This isn't a surprise as Windows 3.0 was a major release that made a very massive impact on the marketplace. Windows 3.1 sold 3 million copies in 6 weeks. 1992 was a very different time. Back then, it was possible to request a PC without an operating system. If one did want an OS, they could choose between OS/2, DOS, or the DOS+Windows combination. I've had not forgotten OS/2 in these articles. The 286 versions of OS/2 had already been covered in my articles about the IBM PS/2 family of computers. The messy IBM-Microsoft "divorce" had been covered in detail as well. To quickly recap: Microsoft didn't like the direction that IBM wanted to take OS/2. Microsoft envisioned OS/2 as being the "next-generation" OS, while IBM simply saw the OS as a tool to sell more hardware. OS/2 did terrible in the marketplace. The ...
Read more

Old Hardware Emulated - Windows Mobile 5.0

Image
Working title for this post was "But Mama, That's Where The Fun Is!". Appropriate as by the middle 2000's, Windows Mobile was where all the action was at. The sky was only getting brighter for Microsoft as Palm was slowly imploding on itself. With Microsoft's mobile offerings becoming more widespread by the day, the Redmond Giant followed up with the newest version of WM, version 5.0, on May 2005. On the surface, it appears that little changed. However, the biggest change were "under the hood" with the incorporation of the .NET Compact Framework, which is basically the mobile version of .NET. Also, WM 5.0 introduced newer power-saving capabilities which often improved the battery life of devices by as much as 50%. WM backed up everything to flash memory. WinMobile would use a combination of RAM and flash memory to preserve battery life. This wasn't noticeable by the user.  As such, their is no data loss if power is lost.  Windows Media Player was upd...
Read more

Old Hardware Emulated : Pocket PC 2000/2002

Image
  Windows CE On The PDA Pocket PC 2002 starting up. For the remainder of the 90's, Microsoft had a tough time gaining a foothold in the handheld market. Windows CE 2.0 was well received on the palmtop PC's. However, that market-share was small compared to there PDA counterpart that were rocking to the tune of PalmOS. The first incarnation of WinCE on the PDA seemed sparse compared to Palm. At this point, the PDA port of Windows CE was re-branded as Windows Mobile. Around this point, Microsoft's fortunes began to change. For the first time, the Palm platform had that "Oh Crap!" moment when Compaq released the iPAQ in April 2000. The PDA came with the new Windows Pocket PC 2000 operating system. This version of Windows CE was specifically geared towards PDA's in particular. The iPAQ line of PDA's became must own devices for those that wanted the latest and greatest. As how Compaq made IBM look silly in the 80's and 90's...
Read more

Old Hardware Emulated :Einstein emulating the Apple Newton (Part 3)

Image
  NewtonOS Android in Action! Einstein emulating the Newton Messagepad on a Amazon Fire HD7 tablet. Einstein Seriously, did you not expect me to run a OS designed for a classic handheld device on a modern tablet!? It's interesting running Einstein on a PC, but I want to try this platform out on a handheld that was similar in form-factor to the original device. Einstein had been ported to Android as well. It's not as recent as the current builds available for iOS, MacOS, and Ubuntu Linux, but it works well enough. Running the emulator means doing a few things before hand, like loading the Android package, ROM, and other needed files. The apk file that I downloaded was "einstein.05.01.2013.apk", which can be found at a archived version of the code.Google.com page (link posted below). You will also need a ROM file named "717006" that needs to be placed in the "/sdcard/Downloads/Einstein/" directory of your Androi...
Read more

Classic Games Emulated: Revisiting NFS High Stakes Modding

Image
  Modding On The Mind! As anyone who's read my NFS:HS article or watching my uploads on YouTube, one can tell that they're two things that I'm a fan of: NFS:HS and Virtualization. I like contained environments that allow me to run beloved games from the past on far more powerful configurations. It only seemed natural for me to embark on the journey of getting NFS:HS running under VMware Player. I had a original copy of the game on CD-ROM which was installed on my guest setup. The guest configuration had two cores allocated to it, 2GB's of RAM, and 3D acceleration via my Nvidia GTX 950. The guest OS running was Windows 7 32-bit. After installing HS, I copied the patch, and started to burn rubber. After that, I duplicated the game folder so I could have two installations: one stock and another one for mod. Within the NFS:HS folder, their are various directories. The "DATA/CARS" folder has both the racing and traffic cars. The first t...
Read more

OS/2 Warp 4

Image
(Any blogpost where I don't have to cover politics is a win in my books!) OS/2 Warp 4 was a very noble endeavor. It was IBM's statement to the world to demonstrate there commitment to the OS/2 operating system. However, when it arrived in 1996, OS/2 Warp 4 was dead on arrival. A lot had happened between the launch of Warp 3 and Warp 4, with the biggest of them being the arrival of Windows 95. Microsoft, making the most of their OEM connections, started to lock OS/2 out of the OEM markets prior to the launch of Windows 95. With threats of either not receiving the latest Windows or paying much higher license fees, many OEM's relented to Microsoft's pressure. Warp 3 struggled against Windows 3.1 along with the soon-to-be-tidal wave that would be Windows 95. Not only that, Microsoft had a vendetta against Big Blue for previous acts.  Lotus 123 For OS/2 Warp 4 Faced with accusations that Microsoft incorporated OS/2 source code into Windows 3.x which would have violated the j...
Read more