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Vendex Head Start TURBO 888-XT

W

warekl

New Member
Joined
Oct 31, 2018
Messages
7
Location
St Paul, Minnesota
I have acquired a Vendex Head Start TURBO 888-XT in excellent condition. It has two 5.25 floppy drives and no HDD. I didn't get any manuals or disks with it and am trying to enter the BIOS to look around. I think I will have to install a HDD and I think they came with a 20 MB HDD as an option.

Anyone know how to get into the BIOS? I've tried everything I can think of or find....

Anyone have any support materials or software?

Thanks,
Keith
 
This unit may not have a BIOS since it is a 8088. My HeadStart III has a message pop up when booting up on how to access the BIOS. I do not remember what key it is. Will check this evening in case I can remember.
 
XTs don't have a CMOS Setup, or BIOS Setup.

I have a 30MB RLL drive and controller card combo that as good as Plug'N Play for that machine. It's already configured -- just plug in the the card and drive.
 
If you are willing to spend some money, you can also buy a LoTech CF to IDE card specifically for XT class machines. The universal XTIDE bios works really well.
 
There's an older thread on the forum about this machine with some really nice pictures. Search for HeadStart Vendex TURBO-888-XT Switch Settings.

I just found out this was a PC Magazine's Editor Choice machine - nice system for its time. I would do a couple of things:

1. Replace the D8088 with an NEC V20. Make sure it clocks up to 8 MHZ - should an NEC V20-8.
2. Add an 8087 Math Coprocessor.
3. Add a High Density Floppy Drive. If you can't find one with an onboard BIOS to support this directly, you can amend DOS to allow for it. I believe its using the DRIVER.SYS file, but I'm unclear on the steps. There should be instructions somewhere on the forums or you can google the answer.

This is a really nice system. Enjoy it!

Geoff
 
One more thing!

This machine has a real time clock battery on the backplane. You will want to go in with dykes and cut out the blue barrel nicad battery out. It will eventually leak onto the motherboard and possibly damage it.

BTW: This system uses the same basic case design and format that was used by Leading Edge. Good quality system from Korea.

For software, you can use MSDOS. I would recommend 3.3 but anything after that will work as well. Send me a PM if you need further help.

Also, please update your profile with your location.

Geoff
 
It doesn't. But IIRC, there is a way to enable it under DOS using a command. I just don't remember how to do so off the top of my head.
 
Stone said:
XTs don't have a CMOS Setup, or BIOS Setup.

I have a 30MB RLL drive and controller card combo that as good as Plug'N Play for that machine. It's already configured -- just plug in the the card and drive.
Click to expand...

Some of the "modern" XTs do. I have an Emerson 8000EC XT with a fully featured BIOS setup invoked at boot with F10.
 
FYI I have uploaded the system disks of this computer to vetusware some time ago (MS-DOS 3.20)

EDIT:
I've found them:
http://vetusware.com/download/Vendex%20Head%20Start%20DOS%203.2%203.20/?id=14827

I'm sure I have the complete set (OS+applications) I'll look for them as soon as I can.
 
Last edited:
Well, I have gotten a DOS 3.3 boot disk to work and learned something new. After booting, I can remove the boot disk and run programs in the same drive from other disks. I wouldn't have thought that enough of the OS was loaded into memory to make that possible.

Does anyone know how much of the OS is in memory? I tried to edit a BAT file on another floppy and the EDIT command didn't work, got a bad command response, so I'm assuming that not many commands are available when running a machine on 2 floppy disks and no HDD.

This Headstart machine is really nice and in really good condition, but I can see where a HDD could be in it's future as funds allow.
 
warekl said:
Well, I have gotten a DOS 3.3 boot disk to work and learned something new. After booting, I can remove the boot disk and run programs in the same drive from other disks. I wouldn't have thought that enough of the OS was loaded into memory to make that possible.

Does anyone know how much of the OS is in memory? I tried to edit a BAT file on another floppy and the EDIT command didn't work, got a bad command response, so I'm assuming that not many commands are available when running a machine on 2 floppy disks and no HDD.

This Headstart machine is really nice and in really good condition, but I can see where a HDD could be in it's future as funds allow.
Click to expand...
Sure, when you boot from your system disk the command interpreter (COMMAND.COM) gets loaded to memory. COMMAND.COM support certain number of commands (COPY, REN, MKDIR, CHDIR, ...) by itself and that's why they are called "internal commands"

EDLIN/EDIT are "external commands" you need to have the actual program in a floppy|hard disk in order to be able to run them.

I'll give you an example: you have only *one* floppy drive and you want to use XCOPY to copy files between two another floppies you have around.

* XCOPY is an "external command" and it's in your system boot disk. We'll call it floppyB
* The files you want to copy are in a second floppy disk. We'll call it floppyS
* And you want to copy them to a third disk. We'll call it floppyD.
What a mess!!, isn't it? Sure, the origin of some disc jokey careers :)

OK, you'll need to follow this procedure:
- Insert floppyB and boot from it. You have XCOPY in this disk
- Run XCOPY:
Code: 
A:\XCOPY A:*.* A: /W
Remember that your files are in another floppy disk. XCOPY will ask you for the *source* floppy disk
- Put floppyS on your drive. XCOPY will start to read the files in memory. It'll ask for the destination floppy when ready.
- Put floppyD on your drive. XCOPY will write the files in the destination disk.


Hope this helps ...
 
Edlin is a bit cryptic, but it works ok for editing texts.

Edlin syntax

EDLIN [drive:][path][file name]
[RANGE] L Displays a range of lines. If no range is specified, L will list the first 23 lines of the file you are editing.
[RANGE] P Displays listing of range of lines. If no range is specified P displays the complete file. This option is different from L in that P changes the current line to be the last line.
[RANGE] S [STRING] Searches the current file open for a certain string.
[RANGE], [LINE], [NUMBER] C Copies the specified range to the specified line. The number specifies how many copies to do.
[RANGE] D Deletes a certain range of lines.
[LINE] I Inserts new line at the beginning of line specified.
To save the line instead and exit out of the insert menu press <Ctrl> + Z + <Enter>
Press <Ctrl> + <C> to exit out of the insertion.
[RANGE], [LINE] M Moves a certain range to the specified line.
[LINE] Allows the editing of the specified line.
[RANGE] R [STRING1] [STRING2] Searches the specified range for the first specified string if the string is found replaces the string with the second specified string.
[NUMBER] A Reads the number of lines into memory.
[LINE] T [DRIVE:] [\PATH] [FILE] Merges the specified file into the current document at the specified line.
[NUMBER] W Writes the specified number of lines onto disk.
Q Quits Edlin without saving changes.
E Quits Edlin after saving changes.
 
warekl said:
I tried to edit a BAT file on another floppy and the EDIT command didn't work, got a bad command response, so I'm assuming that not many commands are available when running a machine on 2 floppy disks and no HDD.
Click to expand...
That's not correct.

In fact, you can run all DOS 3.3 commands from one floppy drive and no HDD.
 
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