NEC Powermate 286 Plus

 NEC Powermate 286 Plus

03/15/22

I think I got this computer from the landfill but I’m not sure. I may have got it with the surplus pieces I got when I got the two PS/2 machines. At any rate, I have been wanting to trythis computer out for as long as I have those PS/2 machines. After I failed with both PS/2 machines I decided to try getting this NEC machine cleaned up.

It was not too bad inside so I decided to try to power it on before I spent too much time cleaning. If it is dead I won’t bother. I attached the IBM 8513 monitor and the Dell PS/2 keyboard and powered it on. I came to life and reported the BIOS and memory check then reported that it failed to boot.

I tried booting from a DOS 3.3 disk and failed. It was a 720k disk. I figured this is probably a 1.44m drive so I found a 1.44m boot disk for DR-DOS and tried that. It worked! It booted to DR-DOS. I tried to run a game off another 720k disk. It didn’t read it. I found some more 1.44m disks from the DR-DOS install set. I was able to get a directory listing and typed a file to screen. I failed to read a few times. The heads are probably dirty or maybe the drive is going to fail. But I have working computer. Now I will go ahead and clean it.

—--

07/02/2022

It took me until today to finally start cleaning this computer. I’ve been working on the MicroLab 286 and the VIP 200 286, both of which are having issues. I set those aside for now and decided to start cleaning up this NEC 286. Unlike the other two 286’s this machine has built-in floppy and hard drive interfaces. It also has an integrated video and PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports. It should be easier to get this 286 working without any other interface cards. I will probably need to run a setup disk to get the hard drive initialized.

I removed the drives, power supply, and the interface cards and riser card. Then I removed the motherboard. I like computers like this. It is very well built and obviously superior to the no-name brands I have been working on with the other two 286’s. I am ready to clean the boards and power supply and case. There is no battery damage, just some dust and grime. It should clean up nicely. The battery is an external battery attached by a cable and held to the back wall with a velcro strip. I will need to get a new battery before I attempt to set up the BIOS.

There is a label on the drive cage that shows how to set the dip switches for the integrated ports, Parallel, serial, etc. It mentions setting the speed for the 287 FPU. But I am not sure if this computer has the 287 already installed or not. I don’t see a chip that says 287. There is an empty socket next to the keyboard chip but it is not labeled. It is probably the socket for the optional 287. I just don’t know yet.

The motherboard has some markings:

NEC-16T Made in Japan

G8EUL B2_

136-456295-B-02

Chip: N80286-12 Intel 1985 L0031180

Chip: VLSI 8944EV 170955 VL16C451-QC

There are a couple of threads on Vogons and VCFED about the Powermate series and the NEC setup utilities. I think I can download a setup program and write it to a floppy and run it under DOS.

I cleaned all the dust off the motherboard and interface cards. I blew out the power supply and case. Then I reassembled the computer, attached my external 6V battery tray, and powered it on. It worked. I was able to boot a DOS 5.0 1.44M floppy. I did a cleaning of the floppy heads with the cleaning diskette and some IPA. Then I tried again to boot. It worked. I was again able to boot to DOS 5.0 off my 1.44M DOS boot diskette.

Next will be to download the setup program and copy it to a diskette. I think I will attempt to format a diskette in the NEC floppy and then copy to it from my Windows 7 computer using the USB floppy drive. If that doesn’t work I’ll move the files over to a DOS machine and try to copy it there.

I was able to format two 1.44M diskettes in the NEC floppy. I was able to copy files to these disks on the Windows 7 machine using the USB drive. They read in the NEC. I was able to start the setup program and it runs. However, the hard drive installed in this machine is an ST3660A and is 545.5MB. There are no disk types that match this drive. I will try Gsetup.

I have not been able to get the hard drive working. I have tried three different drives. One was a 44MB drive that was on the list of Drive Types. But it still won’t work. I keep getting an error at boot that says Hard Disk Controller Failure. I think the controller is bad, or disabled. I don’t know how to disable the built-in controller. The dip switches only refer to the floppy controller. Maybe you have to disable the FD controller to also disable the HD controller. At any rate, I don’t have another controller. All I have are the same two controllers that were not working with the VIP 286.

It would help if I could find a manual for the computer.

To finish troubleshooting I need to first get a new controller that is known to work.

But, I do have a working computer. The floppy works and I can load programs from floppy disk. If I can’t get the hard drive working maybe I’ll make it a dual floppy system.

I tested a game to verify the VGA color screen. House of Cards works fine from floppy, in EGA graphics.

I attached the 3.5” floppy from the MicroLab 286 as the B: drive. Then I ran the setup program and added it as a 3.5” 1.44 drive. Then I entered the Hard Drive as Not Installed. Then I rebooted. The error message about the hard drive controller failure did not come on screen and the computer booted from the A: drive. 

There was no delay, it was pretty quick to boot from the floppy. Before, with the hard drive enabled in setup, there was a long delay and then eventually an error message, and then it would boot from floppy. I hope the controller itself is working and that it is just a matter of having bad hard drives hooked up.

I was able to read disks from the B: drive (the one taken from the MicroLab). I was able to launch a game from the B: drive and it seems to be working fine. I was able to format disks and copy to the drive. I ran Checkit off a 720k disk. It all works. This drive is good. This confirms that the controllers I was trying to use on the other computers are bad.

So, for now, until I can get another controller I will have a dual 3.5” floppy system. Maybe I will try one of the Compact Flash drives instead of an actual hard drive.

Next is to figure out how to attach the B: drive. This computer uses rails and the bay is a little oversized. I will have to use some screws and spacers to mount both drives and keep the A: drive on top. I ended up moving one of the sled rails from the A: drive down to the B: drive, both on the right side, and attaching a couple of metal rails on the left sides. That worked to keep the drives in place. I screwed in the mounting screws on the front and tested. When I first powered up I got an error and F1 would not work to recognize the disk in A: I powered down and reseated all the cables. Then I put in the boot disk in drive A: before powering on. After powering on the computer booted from the A: drive. I ran a game from the B: drive. It is all working.

Now to clean the case cover and face and put it all back together. I will use this as a dual-floppy system until I can get a Compact Flash interface card to try. I also need to get more battery trays. I am going to take this battery tray out to use it on other test systems. That will kill the CMOS and I’ll have to start over when I get back to this machine.

—--

11/13/22

Without the CMOS battery I have to boot with a DOS floppy and then run “Setup.exe.” from the setup/gsetup disk. I have both the NEC setup program and the generic Gsetup on the same floppy. I ran the 286_12 exe program and it copied the setup program to the diskette. All I have to do now is run “setup.exe” and it will start the setup program. Gsetup also works.

This is working fine as a dual floppy system. After running setup I can take out the setup floppy disks and run any other programs from floppy, such as PFS:First Choice.

After shutdown I need to re-run the setup.exe program first. Then I can run a program from a diskette. This is just like the days when I ran my Tandy 1400FD as a dual floppy system.

—--

12-17-22

I wanted to finish setting up a hard drive on this machine so I could install Concurrent DOS. I spent quite a bit of time trying to get either a compact flash card or an IDE drive working off the built-in controller and using the Setup utility. Nothing I tried worked. I tried the 1GB compact flash hooked up to the hard drive cable hooked up to the hard drive header on the riser card. I also tried the 32Mb card I took out of my old Nikon camera. I tried every “Type” in the BIOS that I thought might work. Nothing worked. I kept getting a Hard Drive Controller error. I was thinking maybe the error was the hard drive but maybe it’s the controller itself. I also tried three IDE drives and also tried to use both the Western Digital and the Maxtor hard drive overlay floppies. Neither of those saw the IDE drive. I think maybe the hard drive controller is bad.

I decided to try the XT-IDE interface card that was “burned” in the Leading Edge Model D. I was concerned that it may be defective and damage something in this NEC machine. But I went ahead and installed it and connected the same CF card I had set up on the Model D. It worked! It booted DOS 5 off the CF card. I tried to determine if it was overheating at all. I saw no signs of overheating. So, I decided to try to use this XT-IDE interface with the 32MB CF card and try to install Concurrent DOS.

I started by using the DOS 5.0 diskette that I had FDISK on and tried to remove the existing partitions and fix the MBR. It didn’t work. I couldn’t blank the CF drive. I looked up on the internet and found a program called “WipeDisk.exe” on the lo-tech site that was designed to remove the partitions on the primary hard disk. I downloaded it on the Win10 machine and copied to a floppy and then to my DOS 5.0 disk I was using. Then I ran it against the C: drive (the 32M CF card) and it worked to reset the partitions. I also fixed the MBR with “FDISK /MBR”. 

Then I removed the DOS 5.0 disk and inserted the Concurrent DOS XM disk #1 and rebooted into CDOS XM. After booting I ran FDISK and set up a partition on the CF hard drive and set it as bootable. After it finished I rebooted with the A: floppy and then ran the install routine using F10. It installed CDOS to the new C: drive and ran a setup for the keyboard and screen and printer. Then I removed the floppy disk and rebooted into the new Concurrent DOS XM system running on the CF “hard drive”, booted from the XT-IDE BIOS. It worked!

I now have this NEC computer running on a CF hard drive and running Concurrent DOS XM. I moved the 6-volt battery backup over from the PC Partner computer so the CMOS is keeping its settings. It’s all working now. This is a nice 286! Now I have the option to remove the second 3.5” 1.44 floppy and put in a CD-ROM. [Not sure if I can use a CD-ROM on the second/slave drive from the XT-IDE. I’m assuming the built-in HD controller is bad.] Maybe I can get the 360k drive from the Tandy 1000HD working?

Note - I can also use the DOS 5.0 CF card by simply taking out the 32M CF card and putting in the 1GB CF card before booting. I also may decide to reformat the 32M CF card and install DR-DOS 5 and then install CDOS XM over the top of that. [I did go ahead and install DR-DOS 5, but it did not require reformatting. The DR-DOS installed to its own subdirectory and made some changes to the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. CDOS XM does load through LOADSYS after DR-DOS is already loaded].

—--

12/18/22

I have been experimenting with running CP/M-86 programs in this CDOS XM system. This machine does not have a 5.25” drive so I cannot directly use CP/M disks using the “CPM” command. I tried using the CPM command with some 3.5” disks but was unable to make it work. I tried using a 3.5” 314k disk that was formatted on the KLH 286 running CP/M-86 but it would not read. I also tried formatting it with 22DSK from DR-DOS 7 in the KLH 286. Again, it would not read on this NEC machine. CDOS also does not read disks with the 144Feat overlay used by my version of CP/M-86.

So, I thought about it a bit and decided to try to copy some CP/M programs to a regular DOS disk and then copy the files from that disk to the hard drive. That worked. Here is the process I used to get the CP/M files to this NEC machine using DOS disks.

Booted the KLH to CP/M-86.

Inserted a previously formatted 314k 5.25” disk in drive B:

Copied the CP/M program files from A: to B: using PIP.

Shut down and rebooted to DR-DOS 7.

Made sure there were no files in C:\TEMP.

Started 22DSK with CMENU.

Set CP/M drive to B:

Copied CP/M files to DOS, to C:\TEMP

Quit 22DSK to DOS.

Put regular DOS disk in A:

Copied all files from C:\TEMP to A:

Removed disk from A: and moved it to the A: drive of this NEC running CDOS XM.

Made a new directory on the hard drive. Changed to the new directory.

Copied all files on A: to new directory on hard drive.

Ran CP/M programs by typing the name of the .CMD program at prompt. (i.e. WRITE)

This worked for WRITE. But I noted that the screen does some weird colors. Also some of the text was missing when I “typed” the document from the prompt. Also, TED loaded but was blinking and scrolling with weird characters. I think the terminal display is wrong for the CP/M-86 programs.

So, there does seem to be some issues with running some CP/M programs. But I can at least move them onto this machine using the above technique. I think if I had a 5.25” drive that could read native CP/M disks I may be able to use CP/M disks directly, instead of transferring the files to a DOS disk first. I believe this is what the “CPM” command was intended for. But it doesn’t really matter as long as I can move the CP/M files onto this system in some other way.

—--

12/18/22

I decided to install DR-DOS 5 on the 32M CF “Hard Drive”. After it installed I re-ran the CDOS XM install routine. When I rebooted it did not ask if I wanted to load Concurrent. I looked at the autoexec.bat file and the same lines are in there that are supposed to ask if I want to load Concurrent but they do not fire. Instead, the Config.sys file asks if I want to load Memmax and then loads DR-DOS. I played around with it and found that I could run the Loadsys file from the command line. So I decided to just add it again to the end of the autoexec.bat file after the DR-DOS stuff loads. It seems to work.

I wonder if CDOS will have any issues with how DR-DOS controls memory. I did get some out of memory errors when I tried to launch the Loadsys file high up in the autoexec.bat file, before the DR-DOS section. But I don’t get any such error messages when I put Loadsys last, or run it by hand from the prompt.

So, as of now, I have this NEC 286 running DR-DOS and Concurrent DOS XM, side by side. Now I need to do more experiments with running both DOS and CP/M programs. Of course, DR-DOS will only run DOS programs, unlike CDOS, which runs both. DR-DOS also does not do multi-tasking like CDOS.

I want to try the GEM system in DR-DOS, with a mouse. DR-DOS also has a version of GEM called ViewMax built in, which is also on my Caldera DR-DOS 7 system.

Other DOS software to try - Norton Commander, First Choice, Alpha Four, PFS:Write, Quatro Pro, a few games.

CP/M software - Wordstar, dBASE II, SuperCalc, some games.

—--

12/19/22

I scrounged through my drawer for some ISA cards to see what I had that I might put in this NEC 286. I found an Aztech Sound Blaster 2.0 card and a DTC Hard drive/CD-ROM controller. I put the sound card in first and I downloaded a driver package from an IBM site. This package included a lot of Windows stuff that I didn’t need. After I got the drivers for DOS installed, which is really just setting up the autoexec.bat file, I went through the software that was installed in the SB directory and removed everything I didn’t need. I am running low on hard drive space so no need to have Windows drivers and software I will never use. [After I changed to a 1GB CF card I reinstalled all the software].

I played with some of the Sound Blaster software and confirmed the sound was working. It works.

Then I scrounged around in the storage room for a CD-ROM I could use and installed the DTK IDE interface card and connected the CD-ROM and power to test it. I downloaded a driver for the CD-ROM and set up the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files to test the CD-ROM. It turned out that my normal routine of using MSCDEX.EXE would not work with DR-DOS and CDOS. I did a little reading and found out that DR-DOS 7 had a CD-ROM driver built in named NWCDEX.EXE. I logged in to my KLH 286 that was running DR-DOS 7 and copied the NWCDEX.EXE file to a floppy and then moved it over to this NEC with DR-DOS 5. Then I edited the autoexec.bat to change to the NWCDEX.EXE driver and it worked in DR-DOS. It does not work in CDOS so I will have to troubleshoot how to set up the configuration files so I can continue to use CDOS without trouble. CDOS does work fine when I rem out the CD-ROM drivers. Maybe there are some drivers for CDOS I can use.

After I got the CD-ROM drive working I tested reading and writing from a CD-ROM that has some DOS games. It worked fine. I added a few games to the hard drive and tested the sound. Everything is working. So, I now have Sound Blaster sound and a CD-ROM drive. I removed the second 3.5” drive, the B: drive. I set the CD as the D: drive. So my drives are now A:, C: and D:. This all works fine in DR-DOS. I edited the config files and disabled the CD-ROM for normal use. I can enable the CD when I want to use it to add files using DR-DOS. Otherwise I don’t need it loading.

All that is left is to read up on if CDOS XM supports CD-ROM players and how to set it up. I also need to read up memory management. This computer has 2GB of Extended memory and I need to learn how to use it with both CDOS and DR-DOS. Although, I am not sure CDOS will use it - I think CDOS only uses Expanded Memory Cards. I need to read up on it.

02/19/23

I decided I wanted to use the 32MB CF card on the Tandy 1000HD instead of a 1GB CF card. DOS 3.3 only supports 32MB partitions and it was not convenient to partition the 1GB CF card into 26 partitions of only 32MB each. So, I moved the 32MB CF card to the 1000HD and I had to redo this setup on this NEC 286 for DR-DOS and CDOS XM. 

I was able to get DR-DOS installed to the new 1GB CF card but CDOS XM would not work on anything beyond 32MB. So, my swapping the 32MB CF over to the 1000HD left me without CDOS XM on this NEC machine. I setup DR-DOS with a 32MB partition and two Logical partitions of about 480MB each. DR-DOS works with this setup but not CDOS. For now, until I get another smaller 32MB CF card I do not have CDOS XM running on this machine. The floppy also will not boot if I have anything larger than 32MB for the CF card, so I can’t use a floppy setup either unless I first remove the CF card. I will try to get another 32MB card.

I could go ahead and try formatting the new 1GB CF card into several 32MB partitions, like I did with DOS 3.3 on the 1000HD. That may allow me to use CDOS on this CF card.

Okay, I went ahead and repartitioned to 32MB sizes only. I made two Logical partitions of 32MB so that I had the same number of drives, C:, D:, and E:. I copied CDOS back over to the CF Card and now it works again. CDOS recognizes the same drive letters as DR-DOS (except the Z: drive that I set on the CD-ROM). So, I guess I will stay with this setup because I want to have CDOS XM running on this machine. It is a pain to have so many partitions but I can manage it. I will create a text file in the root directory to help me remember what drive letters to use.

After some trial and error I found that CDOS only uses the partitions up to the K: drive. (DR-DOS used up to the P: drive. Neither OS used all the partitions up to Y:) So, I removed all the partitions above the K: drive. This leaves the amount of space at 288MB, with drives C: thru K:.

There is still one quirk when running the DR-DOS CD-ROM driver. If I set up the config.sys and autoexec.bat files to include the CD-ROM driver then CDOS gives me an error at startup. It says there is insufficient memory to run the HDMENU.DAT and one of the other sessions shows that the CD-ROM driver is running. But if I move over to that session using the Control-# key binding the CD-ROM driver goes away on its own. Once the CD-ROM driver is gone I can launch the HDMENU.DAT and it works just fine. If I rem out the CD-ROM driver lines then CDOS works normally. There is something about the CD-ROM driver that bangs into CDOS at launch. But it seems to be a temporary glitch and I can work around it.

So, now I am back to running both DR-DOS 5.0 and Concurrent DOS XM 6.

I have played around with CDOS a little. It seems to me that the only reason to have CDOS is if you had a large number of CP/M programs and data and needed to try to use the CP/M programs while you transitioned to DOS. Or, if you needed multiple users all using a terminal program. CDOS often won’t run a program due to memory issues. DR-DOS does not have this problem with memory. I will go ahead and keep CDOS on here for now as an experiment. But I may decide to go only with DR-DOS in the future. That will allow me to use the entire space on the CF card.

Maybe I can figure out how to use the 2MB of Extended Memory in this computer as Expanded Memory?

—--

02-26-2023

I used my second 1GB CF card to install DOS 5.0 and Win 3.1. It works with the full 1GB partitioned as one drive (unlike CDOS and DR-DOS 5). This morning I re-installed the Sound Blaster files to this CF card (I had previously trimmed these files due to low hard drive space) and installed the CD Audio driver. I began to experiment with playing an audio CD.

I put in a Little River Band CD and tried to play it using a windows program. I could not find any audio CD software. I looked it up on the internet and I learned that the CD Audio device is found on a sub-menu of the Media Player. After starting up Media Player you pull down the Device menu and select CD-Audio. That started the CD player but I could not hear anything. I could see it was playing but there was silence. I plugged in a pair of headphones and the audio was playing fine through the headphones. So, something was not connected properly. I assume it is a missing audio cable from the CD-ROM to the sound card.

Before I opened up the case to troubleshoot the internal audio cable I wanted to find out if I could get sound out of the sound card if I plugged an audio patch into the Line In port on the sound card. First I tried connecting an RCA patch cord to the CD card outputs on the back to the computer and into the Line In on the sound card. This did not work. I plugged this same cable to my stereo and got nothing. So, the RCA outputs from the CD-ROM card on the back of the computer are not active. So, I tried plugging a patch cord from the front of the CD-ROM directly into the stereo. That worked, as expected. Next I had to find a patch cord that had a male 3.5mm stereo connector on each end. I could not find one but I did find a splitter with two male connectors. I plugged one of these plugs into the Line In and the other into my extension cable that was plugged into the front panel of the CD-ROM. It works! I had sound coming out of the sound card through the desktop speakers.

So, now I have verified that I can play audio CD’s through the sound card. But I need to figure out if I can get the audio into the sound card internally instead of using the external patch cords.

OK, I opened the case and looked at the CD-ROM and the sound card, and the CD-ROM interface card that has the two RCA outputs. Sure enough, there is a Audio output on the CD-ROM that was not connected to either the sound card or the interface card. I scrounged for a matching cable that I could use between the CD-ROM drive and the sound card. I did not have an exact match. But I did connect a cable to the CD-ROM that would reach to the sound card. Then I jerry-rigged the connector onto the pins on the sound card. It worked. Sound now goes through the sound card without having to use the external Line In. But the connection is not perfect, it could come loose if the case is wiggled around too much. But it is working for now. If I can’t find the right cable I may have to use some tape or something to keep it from popping loose.

I did not connect the interface card so the RCA connectors on the back are still dead.

Next, I need to look for software for Windows 3.1 that is an audio CD player.

It seems there is not a lot of software available for CD-Audio on Windows 3.1. This did not become fashionable until Windows 95. But there are a few to try. I would like to find one that can control the sound volume.

I found a program called CDPlayer v3.4. It is a shareware program and provides both a Windows program and a DOS program. It also includes a Volume and Balance slider pop-up. But no mute button. It works. Most other programs I found require more stuff to be added to Windows 3.1 and were intended for at least 386 or 486 machines. This program seems to run fine on this 286 and is a little better than the built-in Media Player option.

I was able to play a CD and run PFS:First Choice at the same time. Not bad, for an old 286.

When I went to quit Windows I just exited the CDPlayer and Closed the Program Manager. But the CD kept playing! Apparently this is using the DOS TSR. I’ll have to read the manual! Okay, it’s not the TSR program it is normal operation. The CD continues to play according to whatever “mode” was set. The standard mode is to play the entire disc from wherever you started it. So, when you “exit” the program it continues to play until the end of the disc (or mode). To stop the disc and quite just start the program again and either press Stop or Eject. Just exiting does not automatically stop the playback.

I was able to use both the Windows and the DOS program. They both work the same way. I can play a CD while doing other DOS things, such as running Laplink or First Choice, etc.

—--

3/9/23

For the past few days I’ve been exploring interesting software titles that might work on this machine in either DOS or Windows. I put together a list on my Google Drive.

One of the first things I tried was a copy of System Commander. I had tried to use my System Commander Deluxe version 4 when I was looking into managing both DR-DOS and MS-DOS. But for some reason that version of the program refused to run on this machine. It said it had an 8088 processor and that at least a 286 was required. As far as I could tell this machine has an Intel 80286. But maybe it’s an NEC brand, like with the V20 and V40 in some of my XT clones. At any rate, System Commander would not run. So I moved on and started my reviews of some other software.

I was able to get Win286 installed in a separate directory and I managed to run Win286 without any ill effects on the Windows 3.1 setup already installed. But as I was scanning through some software titles I came across System Commander in a couple of earlier versions. I wondered if maybe one of these earlier versions would run on an 8088 and allow me to get past the error I was getting with Version 4. So, I tried it. It worked! I had to find a serial number on the internet before I could successfully install version 2.6. (I had tried version 2.7 but could not find a serial number). Once I got System Commander 2.6 working I reviewed how to set up multiple DOS instances by reading through my Version 4 manual. I figured it would work similarly in version 2.6, it did. As of now I have three separate instances of DOS and Windows launching from System Commander - plain DOS 5.0, DOS 5.0 with Win286, and DOS 5.0 with Windows 3.1. 

I decided to try some Windows 2.x software first. I had never run any Windows 2.x software before and was curious. I downloaded and installed the following Win 2.x software:

MicroSoft Word 1.0 - Word Processor

MicroSoft Excel 2.0 - Spreadsheet

Omnis Quartz 1.13 - Database

Aldus Pagemaker - Desktop Publisher

Corel Draw 1.10 - Drawing Program

Micrografx Designer 2.0 - Vector graphics

Pubtech File Organizer 2.11 - MAC-like shell for Win 2.x

All of these programs run when launched from Win 286. I do seem to be having some issues managing memory with Win286 but so far everything is running. Win286 works a little differently than DOS 5.0 and the files from Win286 are not always compatible with the DOS 5.0 files. But it seems to work, even if I don’t yet understand exactly how to set up HIMEM.SYS and SMARTDRIVE.

I wondered if any of these Win 2.x programs would run in Win 3.1. I tried running each one from Windows 3.1 and all but one gave me an error message. MS Word 1.0 runs, all the rest did not.

While setting up the autoexec.bat file for Win286 I wondered if there was a way to set the computer to Turbo mode from the batch file. That way I would not have to remember to use the key binding of Ctrl- Alt- - before launching windows from the command line. If there was a command I could use I could do it all automatically from the autoexec.bat file. I looked around the internet and did not find much. But I did read a document from a Tandy computer where they mentioned a command that would work to set turbo mode. I had just found the original DOS diskette for this NEC computer so I put it in the A: drive and looked around. I found a program on that disk named TURBO.EXE. I ran it and it came back with help on how to enter the commands to set the turbo mode. The commands were “TURBO +” for High and “TURBO -” for Low. This was exactly what I was looking for. This was a DOS 3.3 disk but I copied the file to my DOS 5.0 directory and ran it from there. It worked!

So, with this little utility now installed in my DOS 5.0 sub-directory I was able to automatically set the turbo mode to HIGH in the autoexec.bat file, just before launching the WIN command. Then I rebooted. When the autoexec.bat file ran I saw the Turbo light come on and the computer beeped. Then Win286 came on screen. It works! I then did the same thing for the DOS with Win 3.1 instance.

Now, on to trying some more software titles on my list.