Boot Disk failure

[lianergoist]

Hi

I don't know if this is a software or hardware question - and I don't know if my computer is "vintage" enough to ask questions here... ;-) but....

Well, I have found the original disks for my Amstrad PPC640 on the net. There is just a minor problem - the Amstrad return "Boot Disk failure" when trying to boot... The floppy IS working, because I can boot other computers with it.

The DOS on the floppy is MS-DOS 3.3. There are no problems with MS-DOS 6.22, and I think I have also booted on FREE-DOS and DR-DOS, but MS-DOS 3.3 seems to cause problems...

Anyone know why?


Thomas

 

[SwedaGuy]

While I'm not familiar with the machine, per se, I would venture to guess the DOS 3.3 is on a 360K 5-1/4" floppy, while the later versions were on 1.2M 5-1/4" floppy. The way to tell the difference is in the hub. If there is a ring around the inside hole of the disk, it is the 360K version, the 1.2M version has no such hub.

Theoreticaly, the 1.2M drive can read the 360K floppy (the reverse is not true), though this isn't always the case.

 

[Luke]

You are propably using 1,44 MB disk, while PPC640 have 720 kB disk drive.
Of course you can format standard HD disks to 720 kB format, just make sure you set correct format on Winimage or any other program you use.
It might be also neccesary to stick piece of tape on hole wich determine diskette format.
I have image of disk wich is working on my Amstrad PPC I could send you if you want.

 

[lianergoist]

You are propably using 1,44 MB disk, while PPC640 have 720 kB disk drive.

No, I use 720KB floppies.

I have image of disk wich is working on my Amstrad PPC I could send you if you want.

Well, I would very much like to give it a try. Please send it to tj (at) fabel.dk.

I have been thinking the dead CMOS battery could be making problems - but then, why only with MS-DOS 3.3 and not later DOS versions? I have really no clue about what's wrong...

 

[Luke]

I have been thinking the dead CMOS battery could be making problems

Well, these machines didn't use CMOS, or... maybe I'am wrong... they use batteries to save the time, but I don't remember if they had setup program on diskette like PC1640.

You can find diskette images (first - system, second - modem drivers) here:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cliff.lawson/files.htm
If that won't work I'll make image from my disks, but that should work as I used that images to make my system disks.

 

[lianergoist]

Well, these machines didn't use CMOS, or... maybe I'am wrong... they use batteries to save the time, but I don't remember if they had setup program on diskette like PC1640.

You are right. No setup disk.

You can find diskette images (first - system, second - modem drivers) here:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cliff.lawson/files.htm

The images are for 360KB floppies. The PPC use 720KB drives and I don't have any 360KB drives, so if you can make a 720KB image of the bootdisk, I would really appreciate.

BTW, I am really sorry to ask for help to such a trivial problem. I just have no clue about what is wrong.

 

[Luke]

Well, you propably downloaded images for PC1640 wich was a desktop computer.
Image of disks for PPC640 is on bottom of list, here's direct link:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cliff.lawson/files/ppcdisks.zip

Just use program in archive "FDCOPY PPCDISK1.CFI A:".

By the way, you can use ZIP100 drive on that machine, it's slow, but useful if you want to run large programs, you need at least DOS 5.0.

 

[lianergoist]

Okay, I found an image of a plain MS-DOS 3.3 bootdisk. After I have sys'ed and copied command.com to the ppc bootdisk, it boots. I don't know what the difference is between the two versions of MS-DOS 3.3, but now it is working.

Thanks for the help.