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Packard Bell Legend CD20 questions...

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RaptorZX3

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Joined
Mar 29, 2013
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Quebec, Canada
I got myself a Packard Bell Legend CD20 yesterday, and i've been wondering some things...

-Do this computer support Slave/Master? For example, using a 40pins IDE cable and setting Slave and Master on hard disks...though the default HDD doesn't have any setting it seem, and 2x CD drive have "IDs" and is connected to the Packard Bell sound card (which use a Crystal chipset i think).

If yes, then i guess it's ok to use this cable, and taking out this sound card to put in a SB AWE64, right?

If no, then where are the drivers for that computer? i'm planning to only use DOS in this one, and everything in this computer seem to be original stock hardware (nothing changed, and surprisingly in great shape, battery is dead, no surprise here, and it's soldered...)


This PC would be a good alternative from the Legend 125 i have which have a crappy built-in video, since this Legend CD20 have a Cirrus Logic GD54XX in there with 1mb video, upgradeable to 2mb.
 
Do you happen to know what the model number for the motherboard is? Packard Bell had lots of system names which sometimes got reused with every component being changed. All quite confusing.
Pictures of components help as do manufacturer names and model numbers.

HDD with no jumper: Some Western Digital drives would be set as master but also must be the only drive on the cable. WD drives need to add a jumper set to master if a slave drive is also attached. Must be a really early drive to lack a sticker showing how to set the jumpers. Other brands had their own strange jumper settings; I just remember being annoyed by WD several times. I expect that the system can take 2 IDE drives on one channel but I am not certain of that.

CD-ROM having "IDs" on it suggests that is a SCSI CDROM. Check it. If SCSI, it probably has 50 pins for the data connector and 3 jumpers to give IDs between 0 and 7. Take a picture of the ID setting. Any other CDROM you attach to that sound card will need the same setting. Count the pins anyway. There were a bunch of oddball early CDROM connectors which won't work with IDE.

Where are drivers? With the remains of the dead NEC/Packard Bell websites. Or maybe you got the CD-ROM. Or the hard disk still has a copy stored from the initial install. That system is from a bad period for reuse: lots of specialized OEM variants of cards which require specific drivers but before OSes could include every driver on a CD.
 
Sound card cdroms are not always IDE. Many are some obscure interface.
Some even use IDE cables but will not work on a regular IDE controller
 
i switched the CDRom drive for a newer one, a LG cd-writer, but it should be fine since my Legend 125 detect it. In the BIOS the CDRom drive can't be detected even if the Legend 20CD have auto-detect...i guess Auto only work for HDDs.

in the BIOS there are "IDE1 Master and Slave, and even IDE2 Master and Slave. So...when i'll find time to fiddle with that, i'll try something else.

And also, the damn thing, if it have the slightest error, if i turn it off, it won't power on again unless i unplug it and wait for like 20 minutes, it's annoying.
 
RaptorZX3 said:
And also, the damn thing, if it have the slightest error, if i turn it off, it won't power on again unless i unplug it and wait for like 20 minutes, it's annoying.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a power supply problem. And with packard bell it might well be proprietary in shape and size.
 
RaptorZX3 said:
i switched the CDRom drive for a newer one, a LG cd-writer, but it should be fine since my Legend 125 detect it. In the BIOS the CDRom drive can't be detected even if the Legend 20CD have auto-detect...i guess Auto only work for HDDs.

in the BIOS there are "IDE1 Master and Slave, and even IDE2 Master and Slave. So...when i'll find time to fiddle with that, i'll try something else.

And also, the damn thing, if it have the slightest error, if i turn it off, it won't power on again unless i unplug it and wait for like 20 minutes, it's annoying.
Click to expand...
With regard to the ide cdrom you'll just need a dos driver loaded.
 
it look standard...as far as i can see it, power plug is inside the power supply, not beside it.

Well in the BIOS it detect the hard disk, i'm able to boot on the floppy drive (using DOS 6.22 disks) but DOS doesn't detect the hard disk...what might be wrong here? i tried the HDD on both IDE connectors and while the BIOS detect it still, DOS doesn't detect it in the installation process.
 
"Error reading fixed disk"

It does that for both 4XXmb and 8XXmb HDDs i have here, though i'm sure both work fine, because i've been using this 8XXmb on the Pentium 75Mhz and it worked just fine. (DOS 6.22 installed on it too).
 
krebizfan said:
CD-ROM having "IDs" on it suggests that is a SCSI CDROM. Check it. If SCSI, it probably has 50 pins for the data connector and 3 jumpers to give IDs between 0 and 7. Take a picture of the ID setting.
Click to expand...
My two Panasonic interface drives have ID jumpers as well - 1 to 4 if I remember correctly.
 
So if you take the 400Mb drive, set it to master, connect it (by itself), go to the BIOS and configure it - can FDISK work with that?
 
nope, it say the same thing, "Error reading fixed disk"

Keep in mind that it's connected to IDE0 Master. CDRom drive is on IDE1 Master, supposedly (i tried the hard disk on IDE1 Master and it does get detected...so technically the IDE connectors does work)
 
PB_20cd_jumpers.jpg
These are a set of jumpers near the floppy disk and IDE drives headers. I have no idea what setting do what, since i don't have anything else than the computer here...

Pin 1 is on the right, 2 in the middle, and 3 on the left, so all jumpers are set to be on 2-3.

Edit: if it can help, the board seem to have this SMC chip, and others around are "Opti" chips (one being "82C6G2", another being "82C895"), and a Cirrus Logic GD5428 built-in video chip (with 1mb built-in, can be upgraded to 2mb)

Edit2: the booting sequence show "PB450M+ PNP release 1.1A", which might be the board model? Also it says "PhoenixBIOS Version 4.03", and down on the screen it says "Intel Plug and Play BIOS Extensions - Release 1.1u NJS ID: 99J-123-208". And then it give me an error "ACFG Error = 8603FFFF", and choices i have are F1 to resume, anf F2 to enter Setup.(or BIOS)
 
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ok. But what could be the problem here? the hard disk have the right jumper configuration, and i tried both IDE headers and it's doing the same thing, and Fdisk saying "Error reading fixed disk"
 
RaptorZX3 said:
ok. But what could be the problem here? the hard disk have the right jumper configuration, and i tried both IDE headers and it's doing the same thing, and Fdisk saying "Error reading fixed disk"
Click to expand...

Difficult to tell. If you have access to a newer IDE equipped system, test the drive there.
My suspicions are that either the drive used a DDO which got corrupted (possibly with a virus) or there is a hardware failure (hard drive or cable). Since a different drive of less than 500MB does not work, I would suggest changing the drive cable which is the most likely cause with symptoms reported and it is an easy troubleshooting step.

Edit: If there is any damage to the motherboard, please mention it.
 
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there's no real damage to the board, only the soldered battery that i took out (to prevent leakage of it), but the board seem to be fine.

Edit: the HDD in it is a Quantum Trailblazer tr84a011, 850mb. Here's a photo of my screen at the BIOS hard disk config.
quantum_hdd01.jpg

Edit2: i noticed that everytime it reboot (after "saving changes"), it still give me an "ACFG" error, and when i go back in the BIOS, the HDD configuration is reset to 0/none. So does that mean that everytime it reboot, it forget the hard disk configuration??
 
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