justanotherhacker
Experienced Member
Hi all
I'd really like to seek your advice about what I can do about a failing hard disk.
I have an Olivetti pcs-286 that's been in my family a long time. Until recently it hadn't been turned on for about 10 years. A little while ago I checked it out, found the PSU was dead. Motherboard-to-PSU cable is not a standard I have ever seen or can find documented, but I worked it out and grafted in a standard AT PSU (outside the case, the Oli is pretty compact). That allowed me to boot it up and recover a lot of old family documents. Some of the advice in posts on this forum was really helpful (starting with "don't just plug it in and turn it on, check the PSU"!), so I'd like to thank this community for that
So far so good... but unfortunately the hard disk is clearly on the verge of death. There is a lot of data corruption, and it boots only about 1 time in 3 at best. None of the programs work, they're all too far gone. DOS format /s didn't work so I couldn't make a bootable floppy... until I found another copy of the DOS data which had an uncorrupted format.com, so at least now I can boot the thing from disk. chkdsk /f has hardly helped... things seem to be deteriorating as I use the thing.
However, it kind of gave me the bug for messing around in DOS again! Also, I want to try brushing up my classic C skills or even going down to assembler, in an environment I can understand the entire memory structure in; it'll be a massive change from the HLL SOA WTF TLA world of the day job... I soldered up a proper ATX-to-Olivetti-motherboard power adaptor and bought a slimline modern PSU. Subtly modded the case to fit and mount it and allow it to vent properly without wrecking the Oli's tidy lines. While I was in there I noticed that brown goo was oozing from the edge of the HDD... a 40Mb Conner - this may have something to do with the poor condition of my data. Wiped it all away, I hope it wasn't too toxic.
Unfortunately the BIOS is very limited and only has settings for the three specific models of hdd - 20, 40 and 100MB - that Olivetti used in those days.
So given that I am really keen to resurrect this machine both for sentimental and practical purposes
- Is it worth formatting the HDD and working on it or is it too close to death for that? (corruption rising as it's used, missing brown goo)
- Is it possible to replace it with a CompactFlash adaptor even though the BIOS won't accept any CF card sizes? Would I have to format the CF using a modern machine to appear as a 40 or 100Mb drive?
- Are any of the various impressive new-hardware-addon solutions that people have cooked up (like XT-IDE) appropriate, or is it too new/does the BIOS limit sink that?
All wisdom appreciated
Thanks very much, and happy vintage computing
- justanotherhacker
I'd really like to seek your advice about what I can do about a failing hard disk.
I have an Olivetti pcs-286 that's been in my family a long time. Until recently it hadn't been turned on for about 10 years. A little while ago I checked it out, found the PSU was dead. Motherboard-to-PSU cable is not a standard I have ever seen or can find documented, but I worked it out and grafted in a standard AT PSU (outside the case, the Oli is pretty compact). That allowed me to boot it up and recover a lot of old family documents. Some of the advice in posts on this forum was really helpful (starting with "don't just plug it in and turn it on, check the PSU"!), so I'd like to thank this community for that

So far so good... but unfortunately the hard disk is clearly on the verge of death. There is a lot of data corruption, and it boots only about 1 time in 3 at best. None of the programs work, they're all too far gone. DOS format /s didn't work so I couldn't make a bootable floppy... until I found another copy of the DOS data which had an uncorrupted format.com, so at least now I can boot the thing from disk. chkdsk /f has hardly helped... things seem to be deteriorating as I use the thing.
However, it kind of gave me the bug for messing around in DOS again! Also, I want to try brushing up my classic C skills or even going down to assembler, in an environment I can understand the entire memory structure in; it'll be a massive change from the HLL SOA WTF TLA world of the day job... I soldered up a proper ATX-to-Olivetti-motherboard power adaptor and bought a slimline modern PSU. Subtly modded the case to fit and mount it and allow it to vent properly without wrecking the Oli's tidy lines. While I was in there I noticed that brown goo was oozing from the edge of the HDD... a 40Mb Conner - this may have something to do with the poor condition of my data. Wiped it all away, I hope it wasn't too toxic.
Unfortunately the BIOS is very limited and only has settings for the three specific models of hdd - 20, 40 and 100MB - that Olivetti used in those days.
So given that I am really keen to resurrect this machine both for sentimental and practical purposes
- Is it worth formatting the HDD and working on it or is it too close to death for that? (corruption rising as it's used, missing brown goo)
- Is it possible to replace it with a CompactFlash adaptor even though the BIOS won't accept any CF card sizes? Would I have to format the CF using a modern machine to appear as a 40 or 100Mb drive?
- Are any of the various impressive new-hardware-addon solutions that people have cooked up (like XT-IDE) appropriate, or is it too new/does the BIOS limit sink that?
All wisdom appreciated

Thanks very much, and happy vintage computing
- justanotherhacker