oblivion
Veteran Member
been working on a 486 I'm putting together for limited use and I wanted to try using a CF card as a hdd replacement (512mb SanDisk) but apparently this motherboard (its a packard bell) is very picky about what hard drives it accepts. The only IDE drive I've gotten it to boot from without trouble is an old Conner 420MB drive. The BIOS has no auto IDE detection so you have to input the hdd values manually. I initially tried the CF card in another 486 I have and it installed and booted from it with no problems but when I try it on this other 486 the hdd light comes on and then I get "non-system disk or disk error"
I've tried using an older thick IDE cable from the period with same result, tried the drive alone with no CD drive on the cable, tried running the CF as slave, same effect. If I boot off a floppy though I can access and see the CF card fine as drive C: I just cant seem to boot from it. Also i tried installing DOS from the 486 in question and it always fails at 99% citing an error with command.com. (my DOS disks are good though and work fine in other PC's) I also get these exact same issues when trying to use any modern IDE hard drive. It will not boot to it and If i try to install DOS I get an error at 99%
my other option is SCSI but even that has given me issues. This system only has ISA slots and as far as I know there are no ISA SCSI controllers that use 68 pin connections just 50 pin. I only own 1 50pin SCSI drive which is a 2gb seagate BUT it also gives me issues. I can install DOS fine to it but it will not boot from the hdd. i get a "operating system not found error"
BUT
I can get a modern 68 pin SCSI drive from 2000ish to work and boot fine by using a 50 pin to 68 pin adapter. the issue? the adapter sticks out just enough that it makes the HDD not fit in the case mounting. being a very small compact 486 case I have no alternate place to mount the drive.
with all that being said any idea why I cant boot from this CF card?
I've tried using an older thick IDE cable from the period with same result, tried the drive alone with no CD drive on the cable, tried running the CF as slave, same effect. If I boot off a floppy though I can access and see the CF card fine as drive C: I just cant seem to boot from it. Also i tried installing DOS from the 486 in question and it always fails at 99% citing an error with command.com. (my DOS disks are good though and work fine in other PC's) I also get these exact same issues when trying to use any modern IDE hard drive. It will not boot to it and If i try to install DOS I get an error at 99%
my other option is SCSI but even that has given me issues. This system only has ISA slots and as far as I know there are no ISA SCSI controllers that use 68 pin connections just 50 pin. I only own 1 50pin SCSI drive which is a 2gb seagate BUT it also gives me issues. I can install DOS fine to it but it will not boot from the hdd. i get a "operating system not found error"
BUT
I can get a modern 68 pin SCSI drive from 2000ish to work and boot fine by using a 50 pin to 68 pin adapter. the issue? the adapter sticks out just enough that it makes the HDD not fit in the case mounting. being a very small compact 486 case I have no alternate place to mount the drive.
with all that being said any idea why I cant boot from this CF card?