Zenith ZWL-183-92 (DISK ERROR: Drive not ready!)

[thisguyneedsabeer]

Hello everyone,

I recently received a Zenith ZWL-183-92 with an embedded 3.5" Floppy Disk Reader and an External 5.25" Floppy Disk Reader. When I boot the system it says "+++ DISK ERROR: Drive not ready! +++." I assumed this was because I didn't have a boot disk in the 3.5" floppy drive, so I went online and ordered an MS-DOS 3.3 720kb 3.5" floppy disk for this machine. I received it today, popped it in and got the same error.

The machine itself is in immaculate condition, not even a scratch on it. I'd love to be able to get it booting into MS-DOS so I can see what's on the 5.25" floppies that it also came with.

I've worked in IT for about 20 years now, but my first system was Windows 98. I never really experienced the olden days of MS-DOS and the associated hardware. I'm no stranger to a circuit board, but I would consider my soldering and tracing abilities to be novice at best. I'm hoping someone who is a bit more old hat in this area can lend me some words of sage wisdom.

 

[modem7]

Hello everyone,

Welcome to these forums.

I recently received a Zenith ZWL-183-92 with an embedded 3.5" Floppy Disk Reader and an External 5.25" Floppy Disk Reader.

I am unfamiliar with the ZWL-183-92.

Based on what I am reading at multiple locations, the ZWL-183-92 contains a 10MB sized hard drive. The 'Drive not ready' error may be referring to the hard drive. Based on the thread at [here], I wonder if the hard drive is suffering from stiction.

Note that if that is the case, you may be able to force a boot to the diskette drive per the following:

 

[Istarian]

@modem7 The drive being "ready" or not is equally applicable to both floppy disk drives and hard disk drives. But I think you are on the right track with this particular error message having something to do with the hard drive in this Zenith laptop.

 

[Brian Todd]

I tend to agree with Modem7 that the error relates to the hard drive. I had a Supersport and it gave the same error message when the hard disk was stuck (it suffered from severe stiction). I'm not sure what HDD is used in these units, but the one in the Supersport was unobtanium unfortunately. Will be interesting to see if you can get it to boot from the floppy!

 

[thisguyneedsabeer]

Sorry for the delay here- I have been incredibly busy with real life commitments and not had much time to tinker. I was able to boot to the recovery menu but that was about the extent of things. Still can't boot from the floppy drive so I found that to be odd. I'll see what else I can come up with hopefully sometime in the next week or so.

 

[Istarian]

Sorry for the delay here- I have been incredibly busy with real life commitments and not had much time to tinker. I was able to boot to the recovery menu but that was about the extent of things. Still can't boot from the floppy drive so I found that to be odd. I'll see what else I can come up with hopefully sometime in the next week or so.

No idea what you mean here by "recovery menu".

Most machines from that era are way too old to have much additional software in ROM aside from necessary hardware routines, a very simple BIOS setup program (if that) or rudimentary diagnostics in ROM.

Some 8-bit computers and/or simple 16-but ones may have a machine code monitor, Basic interpreter, or a stripped down:customized. copy of MS-DOS in.

So whatever you're talking about would almost certainly be runninf from the