Dear Classic Computing Community,
I goofed when I was transferring data from a Compaq Deskpro 286 to my modern
machine via 1.2MB 5.25" floppy. Machine was difficult to boot due to
problems with config.sys and autoexec.bat. This time instead of booting from
DOS 4.0.1 floppy, I boot from startup program floppy which helpfully offered
to fix problems accessing hard drive.
I was tired enough that I did not realize that this meant it was offering to
repartition and format hard drive.
OK. Data is all still there because I have not done anything else to it. I
tried to run some of my utilities on the Compaq, but they did not like the
fact that the machine has only 8MB of memory. I would like to take card and
drive and install them in a more modern 75MHz Pentium system which has an
ISA slot.
When I put card and drive in Pentium it will not boot. It counts memory and
freezes. I have tried a number of ways to configure the dip switches and
play with the setup program on this machine. Machine is a Packard Bell 401CD
Here are the specs:
Core CNT-HCR controller, I have the manual. Here is a web page with most
of the information :
http://www.embeddedlogic.com/TH99/c/C-D/20256.htm
Core HC150HD, here are specs I found for this drive:
http://members.tripod.com/~oldboard/assembly/hard_disks_drives.html
http://www.powernet.co.za/info/tables/disk/hdd/Other.Htm
I also have Core Tape drive which has backups of all files if I could
get drive to work - I do not have software/drivers for any of this hardware,
but somehow I have the manuals, so I know the names of all the commands.
I found some settings in the Setup in the Packard Bell for shared memory for
the ISA card, and address and interrupt settings. I set them appropriately.
I suspect that it might be something like the ROM on the card interfering
with the ROM on the machine. This drive did something like overwriting BIOS
in memory while machine is booting. Or maybe I completely misunderstand what
is happening.
Anyhow I would like to at least figure out how to get card in newer machine
even if I cannot figure out how to get data off. I might eventually end up
sending it to DriveSavers. Very good people, and I don't mind paying them,
but I would like to see if I can get the partition table right and unformat
to run. That should be all this drive needs.
Bradley Slavik
Received on Mon Mar 29 2004 - 11:02:02 BST