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In January 1989 DEC announced the DECstation 3100, the first in their short-lived
line of MIPS workstations, along with the VAXstation 3100. Announced at the same
time as these well-known machines was a new line of often forgotten about
DECstation IBM-PC Compatibles, the companies first since the VAXmate.
DEC did not build the x86 DECstations themselves though. In Europe, they were built by Olivetti while for the rest of the world they were built by Tandy. It is the Tandy-built 320sx model covered here - I don't have access to any other Tandy or Olivetti-built machines so don't know how similar or different they are to the particular model I have.
The DECstation 320sx wasn't mentioned on DECs Electronic Store on the day the product line was announced. So it would appear this machine was launched at a later date though I can't find any product announcements that mentioned it specifically. The entire DECstation line of PCs was ultimately replaced with the new DECpc line of PCs actually built by Digital, starting with the DECpc 320sx LP and 325sx LP in April 1992.
This machine used a 3.65V 1.6AH non-rechargeable Lithium Thionyl Chloride battery
to keep the clock going and retain settings. After 34 years the battery is of course
completely discharged. The good thing is these batteries aren't supposed to leak. The
bad news is that Mac Classic owners have plenty of experience with leaking (or even
exploding in the case of Maxell branded) pram batteries of this kind. So if the original
battery is still in place, probably best to remove it.
Unfortunately running one of these machines without a battery isn't exactly practical as the BIOS has no hard-disk auto-detect and the BIOS setup utility doesn't reside in ROM - you've got to run it from DOS which means booting from a floppy disk whenever it forgets its settings. So if you've got a hard disk a battery really is needed.
The latest System Utilities disk for the 320sx model is available here (self extracting DOS EXE, write TEMP.IMG to a disk). For other DECstation models you should be able to find a suitable utilities disk here.
These machines originally shipped with a DEC OEM copy of MS-DOS version 3.30.01 or 4.01.01 on 720K
3.5" disks. MS-DOS 4.01.01 was part AK-PC4XQ-BA (the same for all four disks). The SELECT disk is
not write-protected and just appears to be a scratch disk used during installation. If you'd like a
copy, the disks are:
The DEC OEM copy of MS-DOS 3.30.01 can be found on archive.org.
| Name | Model | RAM | CPU | HDD | CD-ROM | Cards | Condition/notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PC443 320sx |
4MB | SX-20 | 40MB Conner | Digital DE200 network | Working 29/01/2024, needs a new CMOS battery. BIOS 1.10.00D dated 04-SEP-1990, Keyboard BIOS dated 23-OCT-1990 |