Finally solved this one. It appears this particular motherboard or BIOS simply will not boot from a CF card. It appears this motherboard or BIOS is extremely picky about what cards it will boot from. EZ-Drive DDO produces same failures on 5 different CF cards. However, since it’s Friday night and …

I ended up paying $120 on eBay for an “untested” (which really means, it’s broken) 486 Packard Bell. I think that’s outrageous really, but I’ve been watching 8 thrift stores for the past year and never saw a 486 system. Add in the parts to repair everything and get it back up and running and I’ve …

I have a Packard Bell Legend 2276 (Model PB420TA), 486DX2/66, Phoenix BIOS v1.01.E, and I’m having issues trying to get it to boot from a CF card. I got the computer from eBay, it had a bad Varta battery and power supply (only 10V on the 12V rail). I replaced the battery with a 3xAA battery pack, …

I booted up my Packard Bell 486DX2 system for the first time since I got it from eBay. It had a failed power supply, and a failed and leaking CMOS battery. Got those replaced, it booted to BIOS setup with no issue, I was able to configure all my drives and it booted right to Windows 3.1. No games on …

I would just get a good working IDE CD drive and use it with the IDE controller. Don’t use the Sound Blaster CD interface unless it is for an IDE CDROM drive. This is probably what I’m going to do. I was hoping to use the sound blaster for the CD interface since the original hard drive is working …

I suggest keeping that card since it is the "gold standard" for Sound Blasters when it comes with compatibility on DOS games, otherwise selling it might be a better idea than tossing it since it is selling at very expensive prices on eBay lately for such as old card. Yeah I should be more careful …

I’m in the process of refurbishing an old Packard Bell 486 that I snagged on eBay. It has a Sony CD-ROM drive which is not compatible with the Sound Blaster Pro 2 CT1600. It looks like the previous owner was using a generic CD interface card that has spots for several different brands of CD drives. …