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Getting my Vendex Headstart III Up and Running

A

Aristocrat

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Aug 22, 2007
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Hi, I'm hoping you guys might be able to assist me in getting an old Vendex Headstart III I have up and running. I'm pretty proficient with Windows, but when it comes to DOS and BIOS kinds of issues I'm a bit of a novice.

The computer worked a few years ago, but apparently the BIOS battery died. I replaced that, but I'm not sure what needs to be done now, becuase I still can't boot up properly.

I have the original master disk set, and I checked to see what kinds of files were currently on them. It appears they contain all the original data.

Here's what happens when I power up:

Bios screen and memory testing (1st attached pic)

Pressing delete gives me a keyboard error and suggests pressing ctrl+alt+esc to enter setup.

If I do that, then I get to Headstart III CMOS Setup. (2nd attached pic) Is everything okay here?

Then no matter what I do, I get "load failure, insert system diskette and press enter." (3rd attached pic)

Unfortunately inserting the system floppy disk and pressing enter doesn't help. It tries to read the disk, then just comes back to the same screen.

Here are the contents of the first master disk:

diskcontentscy2.png


Thanks in advance for your help and consideration.
 

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On the BIOS setup screen it is telling you that it has no hard disks installed. You are going to have to fix that.

On a modern machine you would set it to 'AUTO', and the BIOS would try to talk to the hard disk to see what it was. On a machine of this vintage you are either going to select from a list of pre-defined hard drive types or enter specific parameters for your hard disk.

Take a look at the hard disk and find the number of heads, cylinders, sectors, etc. Then either pick the hard drive type in the BIOS that matches exactly from the list, or enter in your custom numbers if it gives you that option.

Be very careful - choosing the wrong hard disk type or entering the wrong numbers won't kill the drive, but might scramble the data on it. (Chances are that it won't run long enough to scramble anything, but who wants to find out.)

If you tell us the make and model of the hard disk we can help you more.
 
Does your computer have a 3.5" 1.44MB Drive A and a 5.25" 1.2MB Drive B?

If not, you might want to correct those entries as well, since, if your system disk is bootable, it should boot from that floppy regardless of if it sees a hard drive or not.
 
Also, your BIOS is set up to halt on all errors, so the hard disk failure may be preventing it from looking at the floppy drive. Try setting it to not halt on any error, then boot from floppy and see if that gets ya anywhere.

--T
 
Ah, you guys are great! I appreciate all the contributions.
mbbrutman said:
On the BIOS setup screen it is telling you that it has no hard disks installed. You are going to have to fix that.
Click to expand...
Thanks! That's as plain as day now. For some reason the hard disk thing just didn't register with me as I was looking things over. Thanks for pointing that out.

I opened the case to have a look at the HDD, but it's hidden underneath the 5.25" floppy. I think I'll trust the manual which says this has the deluxe 40 MB hard drive.
Druid6900 said:
Does your computer have a 3.5" 1.44MB Drive A and a 5.25" 1.2MB Drive B?
Click to expand...
Yes, that is indeed how the floppy drives are configured. According to the manual it was one of the first PCs to have a 3.25" A drive and then the 5.25" configured to the B.
Druid6900 said:
If not, you might want to correct those entries as well, since, if your system disk is bootable, it should boot from that floppy regardless of if it sees a hard drive or not.
Click to expand...
I would have thought so too, but I think Terry probably pointed out why that wasn't working.

Anyway, if I understand correctly, this is how everything should be set up, right?

pict0007mi4.jpg


And, of course the "halt on all errors" is optional, along with Numlock. Is there any reason to expect that the post-Y2K date would do anything funny?

Edit: I didn't choose the number of sectors or anything for that Disk 1. I just changed the first number to 40 (I assume that number is the capacity of the drive in megabytes), and the rest automatically changed as I increased the capacity. Does this sound right?

Thanks again for the help! :mrgreen:
 
Although not an answer to your question, I found a review of the Headstart III, published in N.Y. Times 1989 and digitially available on their web page! That is quite remarkable; I wonder if they have full texts of most material from almost 20 years ago or have made a selection?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DB163CF937A25750C0A96F948260

As regarding whether wrong settings will damage the hard disk or not, I clearly remember once in teens when I played with a 286 that had a MFM disk. At one time the computer had lost its settings, and I didn't know which hard drive type to choose, so I set it to the first in the list. Upon rebooting, magic smoke came out from the hard disk and it didn't work anymore. :-( Perhaps I was unfortunate, or it depends on the actual HDD what happens if you feed the wrong parameters.

I found that AT drive type #10 equals 820 cyls, 17 sectors, 3 heads = 20MB. If there exists any logic in calculating capacity from disk dimensions, it sounds like 820 x 17 x 6 should make 40 MB. Possibly there are other combinations that yield the same capacity.
 
carlsson said:
I found that AT drive type #10 equals 820 cyls, 17 sectors, 3 heads = 20MB. If there exists any logic in calculating capacity from disk dimensions, it sounds like 820 x 17 x 6 should make 40 MB. Possibly there are other combinations that yield the same capacity.
Click to expand...

Quite logical.

820Cyl/head * 17 Sectors/Cyl * 3 heads/drive * 512 bytes/sector = 21,411,840 bytes/drive

The units even cancel.

so 820 Cyl/Head * 17 sectors/Cyl * 6 heads/drive * 512 bytes/sector = 42823680 bytes/drive.

Of course, I just made up the units, but they make sense to me.
 
Chances are pretty good that the hard drive will probably be some flavour of the ST-251 and they look like the right settings for one, IIRC, but, it might pay to look at the HD to be sure.

If you can give us a picture of the drive stack in your case, we'll be able to advise you if it's a simple two screw "rail job" or the "screws all around" type.

In either case, taking out the 1.2M floppy and looking at the hard drive below it may be preferable to handling the HD itself. We need the manufacturer (probably Seagate) and the model (most likely ST-251-x, where x is a zero,a 1 or, possibly a R, but not really important as it only indicates access time and or encoding method). It could be some other drive of the time such as a Miniscribe, but, it helps to know to get the pre-com and landing zone right. Although not having these correct won't physically damage the drive, it may well screw up some data on the drive.
 
I think a post y2k date will be fine. Most systems that don't support it wouldn't allow you to put it in anyway or would just have MM/DD/YY and likely wouldn't care.

Although the comment is correct and drive type means a geometry setting not a size setting it looks like that's correct anyway so you should be good. I agree with T, I'd turn off the halt on errors though (it's rarely useful).

I've never personally seen an incorrect setting in the BIOS screw up data on a hard drive but I suppose it's possible, but since it looks right I'd say go for it. The other consideration is if you actually have data you care about on the drive vs you're just trying to get it back up and reload the OS.

btw.. I was looking around for BIOS drive types (thought they were much more standard) and found this atleast for now http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hdtypes/hdtypes-3.html which several agree with your type 40/settings and with kb2syd's math it looks ok.

- John
 
safest way indeed, and of course- any reason to take a PC apart is a good reason :D
 
barythrin said:
I think a post y2k date will be fine. Most systems that don't support it wouldn't allow you to put it in anyway or would just have MM/DD/YY and likely wouldn't care.
Click to expand...

Some do, some don't. The AST clock card in my XT accepts dates after 1999, whereas the Quadram clock card in my 5150 does not. The solution is simple, I just set it to 1987 instead :p

If the original poster tells us the hard drive make and model, then we can look up the paramaters on the 'net to match against the hard drive types in the BIOS. That way you won't risk any possible damage to the drive itself.
 
So from the list I had (which honestly is no very good as far as what I wanted to post) it looks like type 41 might be those settings (go to 41 and see if all the math changes to what carlsson posted and you should be good on that part).

- John
 
That setting is pretty standard in most PC BIOS, and should be an exact Type Number, but, IIRC, there are several 977 cyl entries, so, make sure you get the EXACT one in Carlsson's post.
 
Actually.. I forgot (man it's been along time since I've worked on a computer old enough to choose from drive types but new enough to have a hard drive lol). You can just scroll through your drive types and see if you can find that geometry match. Once you do you'll be good.. we don't need to waste a lot of time trying to guess which BIOS your machine was using to get it's drive types from (seriously I thought they standardized that stuff but I guess not).

- John
 
Uh-oh. None of the settings match Carlsson's post exactly. First off, as you can see in the picture I posted earlier, it doesn't tell anything about landing zone.

Second, none of the configurations match all the other specs either. The closest two are:

#17 - 977 Cyls, 5 Hds, 17 Sect, Precomp 300
#24 - 977 Cyls, 5 Hds, 17 Sect, Precomp None

It's an exact match except for the precomp specified of 977 and the landing zone which is unknown.

Thanks for all the help.
 
I believe precomp = none is another way of saying 977, i.e. it is the last cylinder of the hard disk. From the second link I posted, it actually said precomp = none, so I'd suggest you try drive type #24.
 
Success! Thank you all for the comments, suggestions, and instructions. It's back to running just as it used to.

Second question: Does this thing have any historical value? I'm thinking about donating it to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. I've got almost EVERYTHING for this computer, including manuals (many still in shrink wrap), registration cards which never got mailed in, keyboard shortcut overlays, original keyboard and mouse, master disk set, etc.
 
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