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Big problem with bootdisks

aquasonic

Member
Joined
Jul 22, 2006
Messages
27
I accidentaly formated my 720kb floppy. It had Dos 3.3a for schneider euro pc.

I had a backup and i restore it but now it will load but not show A:\ (only schneider and microsoft copyrights).

It won't load from some dos 3.3 images i downloaded from net. Can somebody help me? :cry:
 
xmm maybe i wasn't enough clear :p

Both my 8088s (schneider euro pc and hyundai super 16TE) whould boot with only one bootdisk, The one with MS-DOS 3.3a my schneider came with. It was a 720kb and to use it with my 16-TE system i formated a 360kb disk with /s parameter.

However, the external 5.25 drive of schenider didn't attach quite well. so the system asigned drive b: on the internal 720kb. So when i typed "Format B: /s"
it formated the bootdisk copying the system files. The system could boot, however basic and several other files (including setup software for schneiders bios) were wiped.

I had a copy of the disk in *.imz created by winimage, and re-flashed it to the same disk. Now, it boots from it, Show the copyrights of Microsoft and Schneider (could it be a modified version of dos?) but it will not show the command line :( (A:\_)

I have tryed to flash the disk with a dos 3.3 bootdisk but both systems will show "BOOT FAILURE PRESS ANY KEY TO RETRY" or another simillar message.

What can i do? I am in a "emergency" i at least found some time to play with my hyundai and i cannot boot it :(
 
Yes you were clear enough the first time. Anyway, make sure your windows diskette drive supports 720KB disks. People have been telling me that XP only supports 1.44MB diskettes, which makes sense as that is the ONLY choice you have when you format a 3.5" diskette.
So, if you are doing the .img thing in XP, might be a problem right there.

You might try writing the .img to the same disk again. Also, if you have another spare 720KB diskette, I would do the .img thing again on a 2nd diskette, then try them both out.

I recently created a 3.30 DOS diskette image myself and it boots fine on a 486DX4-75 with 40MB RAM.

I was thinking you could hold down the shift key at the start of the boot process but that function WAS NOT in 3.30. F5 and F8 didn't seem to do anything either. My thinking there was maybe your config.sys or autoexec.bat files were messed up somehow. If they exist on the diskette, I suppose you could rename them to .sav before taking the diskette out after doing the .img file. Of course, it's likely you don't have either one of those on the diskette anyway.
 
thanks for the reply! :)

The system i use for this stuff (images etc) is win98se based ;) The drive is able to read and write 720kb disks as far as i know. The problem is that the whole pc (Schneider) stops responding when it is about to load command prompt! it won't even go to CMOS utility!!!

Oh i can enter the CMOS setup utility anytime by pressing Ctrl Shift Esc however the keyboard is not at a great shape especialy Ctrl button and i don't want to push it to much, so i prefer using "setup.exe" :)

I dont't have another spare 720kb diskette :( only 1.44 :p

I will try with my 5.25 drive since it is 360kb and there are many more chances for it to work, However my 5.25 media is in really bad shape :(

p.s 486 with 40mb ram? NIIIIICEEEEE :D!
 
I had the same problem with an old Olivetti M19 PC. This System has two 5,25" 360 KB Floppy Drives with no Harddisk.
I had no Boot for that Computer, so i used a friend´s Old XT (which had also a 360 KB Floppy) to create a Boot-Disk. The M19 try´s to boot from this Disk and shows also the Dos Version String but than hang-up.
I resolved that Problem this way: I opened the M19 and removed one Floppy Drive. I moved that Drive into my Pentium PC and created the Bootdisk there. Than i removed the Drive back into the M19 and try to boot and ... <vola>.. it worked perfectly !!
The reason because it worked ? I asume the old Floppy Drives and Disks are so old that there a not compatible form Floppy Drive to Floppy Drive.

I hope this will help ... and please excuse my very bad engisch :(
 
Blotto - Your English is fine ..

Older floppy drives often are driven by a motor and belt instead of a direct drive motor. The age of the belt contributes to speed differences.

It is quite common for floppy drives to not be able to read disks created in other floppy drives.
 
You are right. I think the old C=1541, Apple ][ and the first IBM PC Drives had this belt. My 80286 has a TEAC 5,25" Half High Floppy without a belt.

I can remember, that 720KB Floppy had a different Read/Write-Head Size and therefor a bigger Tracks on the Floppy-Medium. 1440KB Floppy can also Read
and Write 720KB Floppy, but have a smaller Read/Write-Head. If one of the
Drives is a little bit maladjusted, it is possible the the other drive can not read
all the Tracks. I think that this is the cause of the problem. The generated
Bootdisk reads the inner Tracks of the floppy but has problems with the outer Tracks. The Schneider PC boots boots only a fragment and crashes.
Open up the Schneider PC, remove the 720KB Floppy and connect it to the
PC and creat the Boot Disk. Than assemble the Schneider again. I think this
will work.
 
Hello... Sorry for taking long time to answer but i am studying for school's exams (god this sucks :p)

Back to the point : Schneiders 3.5 drive uses a different (smaller) connector for floppies so i cannot connect it... :( However i did manage to connect the 5.25 drive :D and copied the files from a downloaded bootdisk and worked charming :D Must be the track size that caused problems...

Now i have to face another problem... Fdisk gives me "ERROR READING FIXED DISK" :(
 
are your CMOS settings all ok? usual reason for Fdisk errors is that it thinks that the drive parameters are one thing when they are really another.

If it's some time since you last booted, or if it is an old lithium battery keeping the CMOS intact then that is almost certainly the problem.

it's often best to clear the CMOS memory, then run setup.

if it really is an old pc then it may all be on switches, in which case there is possibly a hardware problem.

does the hard disk spin up?
 
yup it spins up! The controller card is ok. The motherboard has some jumpers on it but they do not affect HDD at all... It is not a very old, i believe 1988?
I cannot enter bios (it doesn't give me the option nowhere) and i donnot have any setup.com (or similiar) files as i have with my 386 or my schneider... :(

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! it appears that the old owner had messed up the HDDs cables... Changed them to the correct possitions and Voila! The system boots to MS-DOS 5.0 and it has a programm to use Greek characters :D Not bad at all! Now, all i need is to connect it to my pc via serial port and get Mike Chambers's IRC client :D
 
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yup it spins up! The controller card is ok. The motherboard has some jumpers on it but they do not affect HDD at all... It is not a very old, i believe 1988?
I cannot enter bios (it doesn't give me the option nowhere) and i donnot have any setup.com (or similiar) files as i have with my 386 or my schneider... :(

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! it appears that the old owner had messed up the HDDs cables... Changed them to the correct possitions and Voila! The system boots to MS-DOS 5.0 and it has a programm to use Greek characters :D Not bad at all! Now, all i need is to connect it to my pc via serial port and get Mike Chambers's IRC client :D

i've never heard of the euro pc before so i looked it up. that thing is pretty cool. it's a 9.54 MHz 8088.

does yours have CGA? my program will probably not work right without it. also, it's not fun to use on an 8088 right now but it does work! i've already made it work much faster, and fixed a few other bugs since i've uploaded it. i'm going add a few things and then upload a new version that should be much better on that slow of a PC soon :)
 
Both my Xts have CGAs :D My hyundai an Ati small wonder and schneider a integrated one :D

I love my schneider, but i cannot find an HDD for it :( it used an external one with a strange connector :(
 
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