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Vintage 1995 Pionex 486 DX2 66 Mhz Computer

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vintageestatefinds said:
Alright, so I found a Hitachi 24X CD-ROM drive here : http://www.ebay.com/itm/261988009571?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT. Wanted to confirm it doesn't have a proprietary interface or some other compatibility issue beforehand. I know an option to load a Hitachi DVD CD-ROM driver comes up after the boot disk is inserted, would be nice if it happened to work.
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24X is almost certainly new enough to use a standard IDE interface. The auction states that it does as well (IDE or ATAPI). It should work for you.
 
Well the audio out cable for the Sony CDU-31A and the Hitachi CD-ROM I got use different size connectors, so I am unable to connect the CD-ROM to the sound board. Still, I installed it after putting the jumper on slave, connected it to the slave part of the IDE cable, and powered it up. I selected Hitachi DVD CD-ROM on the Windows 95 startup menu and this time it stated ,

"Hitachi C/DVD-ROM device driver 'HIT-DVD.SYS'" and below "Device Name : MSCD001".I am able to change the device name, but if I don't it defaults to the following page where it states

"MSCDEX Version 2.25". "Drive C : Driver MSC001 unit 1"

What should be the next step I would need to try? Thanks in advance.
 

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vintageestatefinds said:
Well the audio out cable for the Sony CDU-31A and the Hitachi CD-ROM I got use different size connectors, so I am unable to connect the CD-ROM to the sound board. Still, I installed it after putting the jumper on slave, connected it to the slave part of the IDE cable, and powered it up. I selected Hitachi DVD CD-ROM on the Windows 95 startup menu and this time it stated ,

"Hitachi C/DVD-ROM device driver 'HIT-DVD.SYS'" and below "Device Name : MSCD001".I am able to change the device name, but if I don't it defaults to the following page where it states

"MSCDEX Version 2.25". "Drive C : Driver MSC001 unit 1"

What should be the next step I would need to try? Thanks in advance.
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Looks like it's working. Try running FDISK and see if you can see your hard drive in there (it's either not being detected or it's not partitioned since your CD drive is being assigned C: rather than D: ).
 
Well the Seagate hard drive I have installed is 545.5 MB and I believe I read the 11/11/92 AMIBIOS on it allows for a max hard drive of 520 MB or so (not sure), so I'd guess it needs partitioning then. The hard drive always is detected in BIOS as the C: drive, and it doesn't show a D: drive anywhere in BIOS.

I'll look into how to run FDISK as you suggested, thanks for the quick reply.
 
vintageestatefinds said:
Well the Seagate hard drive I have installed is 545.5 MB and I believe I read the 11/11/92 AMIBIOS on it allows for a max hard drive of 520 MB or so (not sure), so I'd guess it needs partitioning then. The hard drive always is detected in BIOS as the C: drive, and it doesn't show a D: drive anywhere in BIOS.

I'll look into how to run FDISK as you suggested, thanks for the quick reply.
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Yeah, D: would be assigned by MSCDEX, as it is doing with C: now. So it sounds like your BIOS sees the hard drive and DOS doesn't, which would mean it needs to be partitioned.
 
Well hopefully it's not that. I remember that AT&T 2296 AT computer I tried to fix last year which I posted about on the forum you told me either had a failed hard drive or bad had drive geometry. I sold it as is for $125 plus shipping a few days afterward, so if I get $50-$75 for this one as parts since it now at least reaches POST I have some spare parts from what I've bought and know a little bit more about trying to fix these things at least haha. I'm sure this post card will help out in the future. In any case I'll have to wait a bit before I can get around to trying this suggestion out though, crossing my fingers.
 
I tried running fdisk but got "No fixed disks present". I then typed Chkdsk and it stated "You cannot check or repair drive C because it is a network or CD-ROM drive. Specify a different drive letter, or /ALL to check all drives." I don't know why it's saying this when no CD-ROM shows up in BIOS and the hard drive is detected in BIOS in drive C:. Typing scandisk /ALL results in a blue screen flashing momentarily then going back to C:\> command prompt. The hard drive is set to master and the CD-ROM is set to slave.

I'm still getting CMOS battery low error every time on startup despite I just replaced it with a "new" one, and I read sometimes when the battery is low it can't hold the hard drive parameters so perhaps that's it? Every time I power the computer down and enter BIOS again the settings have all defaulted, but if I back out and don't save the page before it goes to Windows 95 setup shows the settings I had saved, so I don't know.

The last thing I did was type dir to see if it showed up any contents in the drive and it did. Among other files it shows this drive has Windows 95 already on it with files last accessed in 1997. I checked BIOS to see if any settings seemed off, but I don't know what a lot of it does. One was hard disk type 47 RAM area. Default has it at 0:300 and other option is 1KB DOS. Haven't tried changing anything without knowing it needed changing. Also shadow RAM is enabled.
 

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vintageestatefinds said:
I tried running fdisk but got "No fixed disks present".
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That's often the result of the drive being hosed, e.g., track 0 is damaged.

If you really want to know what's up with the CD (and HD) you need to start the machine with only one drive attached to the IDE cable. Set them both to master and try them one at a time. There's always less chance for confusion when you reduce the number of variables.
 
kyodai said:
Could try a low level format on the HDD, if that won't help I'd call it a brick.
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Have you ever LLF'ed an IDE drive successfully?

Do you have the necessary equipment to lay down the servo track?

Since these drives can only be successfully LLF'ed at the factory level I seriously doubt that anybody (here) can successfully complete this type of operation in a home or office environment.

Now, if you've successfully LLF'ed IDE drives on your own equipment I'd love to know (and have access to) the software you've been using as I have a stack of drives that need this process done to them. I just don't think it's possible to really LLF an IDE drive without having all the factory equipment.
 
I tried powering on the system with the one hard drive set to master and no CD-ROM, same result. Set CD-ROM to master and unhooked hard drive, same result. Also today I noticed when I did the C:\dir command it just listed the files on the Windows 95 CD-ROM I had in the system rather than the hard drive. Why would the CD-ROM be on drive C: on Windows 95 setup instead of the D: drive when BIOS shows hard drive type 47 in drive C: ? Is this something that can happen with a faulty hard drive or something else?
 
It seems that the *only* IDE device that your system is recognizing is the CD-ROM. If you don't have a hard drive installed the CD-ROM will appear as C:. Logically, that means that the HD is not working.
 
Alright I figured it must have been the CD-ROM defaulting to C: but figured I'd check. If I got a working HD then would I have to install a CD-ROM driver on it, run fdisk and then should be able to run the installation process?
 
I sure hope so. I got a refund on the battery I got so I guess I'll try a different one from a different seller and see if I have better luck. These Chinese sellers I've seen on EBay list them as new but I don't know if any of them actually manufacture them or if they're all just salvaged from old PCs. The old dead battery in it was the cause of it not posting or beeping at all, so I wouldn't be surprised if this one that will post but is still low still causes issues for me.

I would figure at least one of the two drives would work, but then again they are very old at this point. Thanks for letting me know the battery could still be the problem here.
 
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Krille said:
Yes, that's it.
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I disagree...

I've got systems that have had the battery *removed* and still hold all settings properly. Once you enter the CMOS values and reboot (warm) the system will retain those values. The battery only comes into play when the system is powered down.
 
Yeah as I mentioned before if I save the cmos settings, reboot, and then exit bios without saving, the settings show as they were saved before powering down. I just find it odd that after every time I power it down when I go back in BIOS it shows everything at default, but if I leave without saving it shows the settings saved from the previous shutdown. I don't know if that's typical or not. If it is I'd like to look into how to install a new hard drive rather than finding a battery that fixes the cmos low error but doesn't fix the boot issue.

On another note before I got this replacement battery I tried powering it on without the RTC battery and it still gave no display, but instead would give continuous long, low beeps and not do anything. The post card I had inside gave a code showing the system got stuck on trying to find the system settings on the RTC battery and couldn't proceed any further since nothing was there. This particular PC has to have a battery with at least some life in it to even post. Whether it should be able to work completely normally with a low RTC battery though, I don't know.
 
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The BIOS verifies the contents of CMOS on every startup using a checksum. If the check fails (for whatever reason) then the BIOS will ignore the settings and print an error message to that effect. So, even if the settings for the drive are correct that won't matter if there's just a single bit error (somewhere else) in the CMOS contents.

This means that you will never get the harddrive to work as long as that error message appears. Note, it is possible that the battery is just fine and the problem lies somewhere in the RTC circuitry.
 
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