[RULE] Re: My 486 won't boot

[C David Rigby]

Daniel,
    Have you checked the jumpers on the hard drive against the
manufacturer's specifications?  Some models of hard drives (particularly the
older ones) have a separate setting for single (only one drive) and master
(two drives, and the one drive in question is the master).  Other comments
below embedded in your text.

CDRigby

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Daniel O'Neill" <danj at netsoc.ucd.ie>
To: "The main mailing list of the RULE project" <rule-list at nongnu.org>
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 11:29 PM
Subject: [RULE] Re: My 486 won't boot


>
>
> I don't think the floppies are the problem as they boot fine on my parents
> computers. I couldn't find a reset option in BIOS so I disconnected the
> power lead from the battery for about 10 mins..... no effect.
> I disconnected the HDD and CDROM drives.... no effect
> The computer returns that it can't find the HDD controler and then tries
> to boot from floppy and then hangs.

This is not surprising if the system has not been told (and connect figure
out on its own) that there is no hard drive attached.  It hangs because it
is looking for a non-responding hard drive.  Another thing to try is to tell
the BIOS that there are no hard drives attached, even if the drive IS
attached, and see what happens.

> I tried another floppy drive I had
> lying about from a 386 but that didn't work either.
>

So the floppy drive is not likely to be the source of the difficulty.

> I have noted two other small anaolomies, the MSD report has two HDD's and
> the BIOS has options for both but claims that one isn't installed, which
> is OK 'cos I can only find one physical disk. I'm wondering why the report
> thinks there's two disks when I can only see one? BTW I probably quoted
> 450MB from memory and was probably wrong.

It might be the jumper issue, noted above.

>    Also is it normal to have two different cable buses? one for the HDD
> and CDROM and one for the Floppy drive?
>

Are both the CD-Rom and the hard drive on the same cable?  If so, try to
disconnect just the CD drive and leave the hard drive attached, if you have
not tried that already.  The HDD and the CDROM are both going to be devices
with an interface type of IDE and should use a 40-pin cable.  The FDD should
be on a separate cable with 34 pins, since it uses a different interface
standard.

It is not unusual for older systems to have both a single HDD and a CDROM
attached to the same cable (newer systems would have them on separate
cables).  In this case, the HDD should have the jumpers set as a master, and
the CDD should be a slave.  Often an older, 386/486 BIOS will not recognize
the CDROM as a "drive" since this was about the era when CDROM drives
started to become common, and the CDROM was controlled by a driver at the
operating system level, with no BIOS-level support provided.

Is there another connector on the motherboard near the connector for the
HDD/CDROM cable that looks like you could attach another cable?  If so, and
you have access to another IDE cable, you might try setting both drives to
"single" or "master" and attaching them to separate controllers, each with
its own cable.

>    I can't understand why it doesn't like Linux boot disks when it had no
> problem with Windows boot disks.

Because computers are inherently evil!  {8->

>    Would it be possible to copy the boot image to the hard drive and then
> boot from there to get the CDROM working?

Chicken-and-egg problem, since we need at least a minimal linux-based system
running in order to have access to the tools to create the linux partition
onto which to copy the  bootable linux system.  There is a feature of linux
that allows it to run from a DOS-formatted disk, but I do not know enough
about it to give you any useful advice.

> I also have at my disposal a
> Parrallel cable for direct cable connection and a external 2800 modem,
> could these be used for network booting?

The parallel cable could be used to transfer the installation files from
another computer, as could the modem, but I do not know of any way that they
can be used for network booting.  Other RULErs have any ideas here?  Daniel,
do you have a network card?

> One other idea occoured to me: I
> have a 5 1/2" floppy drive and I can (with some difficulty) get some
> disks, could I try booting from that or is that just plain barmey?
>

The boot disk images would need to be re-formatted for this type of disk,
and I do not know if they would fit, since the 5 1/4" disks have a lower
capacity.  Realistically, I do not believe this would help, since you have
already tried swapping in another  3.5" drive.

> The mystery continues!
>
> Daniel O'Neill
>
> 'You can put a cat in an oven but that doesn't make it a biscuit'
>
>
>
>
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