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Help with 286 clone not booting from hdd

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mike52787

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2015
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Hello, I just bought an at clone machine made by acer from a local thrift store. I paid the princely sum of 4$ for it! The machine works great apart from the fact that it wont boot from the hard drive. The hdd works fine, as I formatted it and installed dos to it, and all the files are viewable from a dos boot floppy, but the machine just says "missing os" every time it is booted without a floppy inserted. All the parameters are correctly entered for the drive. What should I do?IMG_0212.jpgIMG_0213.jpgIMG_0214.jpgIMG_0215.jpg
 
sorry about the upside down pics, I took them on my iphone and forgot to flip them.
 
Boot block issue. Make sure the information in the BIOS for type 47 HD is correct with your drive (cylinders, heads, sectors). If so reformat the hard drive with a DOS disk (Format c: /s) and then re install DOS. Most likely a HD over 512MB cannot fully be used without driver overlay software.
 
Most likely, when you installed DOS, you failed to run "FORMAT /s" or "SYS" on the C Drive. So you have all the OS files installed but don't have them positioned to run. Which DOS version are you running? In more modern DOS versions, you can run "SYS C:" from a floppy to install the critical files in the right place. Older versions, just start the process over with "FORMAT C: /s" instead of just "FORMAT C:" and then copy the rest of the files.

Other possibilities include DOS was installed to the wrong partition or that the partition is set to be inactive.
 
krebizfan said:
Most likely, when you installed DOS, you failed to run "FORMAT /s" or "SYS" on the C Drive. So you have all the OS files installed but don't have them positioned to run. Which DOS version are you running? In more modern DOS versions, you can run "SYS C:" from a floppy to install the critical files in the right place. Older versions, just start the process over with "FORMAT C: /s" instead of just "FORMAT C:" and then copy the rest of the files.

Other possibilities include DOS was installed to the wrong partition or that the partition is set to be inactive.
Click to expand...

Thanks! Its been so long since ive used dos and I forget some things :)
 
Unknown_K said:
Boot block issue. Make sure the information in the BIOS for type 47 HD is correct with your drive (cylinders, heads, sectors). If so reformat the hard drive with a DOS disk (Format c: /s) and then re install DOS. Most likely a HD over 512MB cannot fully be used without driver overlay software.
Click to expand...

Type 47 is the correct parameters for that hdd. it is a 44mb drive so nowhere near hitting the 512mb ceiling, lol
 
I think if you failed to use SYS or /S, you'd actually see "Non-system disk or disk error" but I could be wrong, doing another FORMAT with /S wont hurt - I'd also make sure the partition in FDISK is marked Active, and try FDISK /MBR (in case there is junk in the master boot record).

mike52787 said:
Type 47 is the correct parameters for that hdd. it is a 44mb drive so nowhere near hitting the 512mb ceiling, lol
Click to expand...

This drive has native, and two translation options you can use for configuration parameters.
If you don't have any success with DOS tools cleaning up the boot, it might be worth trying a different set of options.
 
krebizfan said:
Most likely, when you installed DOS, you failed to run "FORMAT /s" or "SYS" on the C Drive. So you have all the OS files installed but don't have them positioned to run. Which DOS version are you running? In more modern DOS versions, you can run "SYS C:" from a floppy to install the critical files in the right place. Older versions, just start the process over with "FORMAT C: /s" instead of just "FORMAT C:" and then copy the rest of the files.

Other possibilities include DOS was installed to the wrong partition or that the partition is set to be inactive.
Click to expand...

It still does it after being formatted with the /s suffix. any tips?
 
Run FDISK from a floppy and see what it reports for partitions. I am thinking that the drive had been partitioned before and might be set in a way that DOS can't be booted from. That might happen if the drive had been used in a Netware 2 server before.

Provide the model of drive. Which version of DOS are you using? More information may spark the old memory cells.
 
"Missing operating system" is actually an error message from the MBR, so seeing that means the BIOS is successfully booting the MBR, but the MBR code can't find an active partition with a valid boot sector in it.

As @SpidersWeb said, marking the partition active should do the trick, providing the partition is bootable (which it will be now you've used SYS for FORMAT /S)
 
Well, I resolved it. Turns out the drive parameters scribbled on the psu were correct, while the parameters online were incorrect, go figure. It works great now. Another question, how would you go about replacing the battery on the board? It is corroded and has slightly damaged the board and I dont want it to do any more damage.
 
Chromedome45 said:
Well glad you got the HDD problem corrected.
Click to expand...

Yeah, thanks for the help. I have another issue with that machine too. when Both the 5.25 and 3.5 drives are enabled they both seek at the same time and neither can be read. I tried changing the drive select jumpers but then the b: drive wouldnt work, the error said general failure reading b:. The 3.5" driver is much newer, maybe the fact that it doesnt have drive select jumpers is confusing the controller?
 
rittwage said:
PC drives don't use select jumpers... Well, maybe you could, but PC standard was the twisted cable instead with both drives set to '1'.
Click to expand...

The Ribbon has the twisted cable on it, and I tried the drives with the jumpers on the 5.25 drive set to 1, but no luck. I have alot of old software on 5.25 discs (yes, theyre probably bad, but it never hurts to try) that I would like to use. if anyone knows about this issue it would be greatly appreciated.
 
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