This is fantastic! No idea how you've found this wealth of info, but I've located the original BIOS, so I'll restore it back (even though it does lack a few nice-to-have options in the BIOS config). Many thanks!
No problem, glad I could be of assistance! Although we don’t have ours anymore, it is still nice to see this being restored (especially in 2018), and while it isn’t the exact same model, it’s very close to what my first PC was (I’m thinking a Club 9350, but I was too young at the time to actually know for sure)
Well, after a bad flash (the first I've had in ages!), I was able to emergency flash it back to the proper Packard Bell BIOS. I can only assume it didn't like being updated from the OEM one, and the checksum went bad. Nevertheless, it's all back to stock, and much happier now.
I think now that I have the full restore CDs for this machine, it would be a shame to keep the beefed up components inside this system. I'll pop the original motherboard back in, but I'll bump the RAM from the stock 32MB to 128MB, and perhaps put the Matrox card back in that I was using when I first got the machine.
I’d be interested to hear how the restore goes/how long it takes - the restores I’ve done in the VM have taken about half an hour on an SSD with 512MB RAM on 2016 hardware...
wrote:Well, after a bad flash (the first I've had in ages!), I was able to emergency flash it back to the proper Packard Bell BIOS.
I wonder if this has wiped out your tattoo from the BIOS - as long as at least two of: BIOS, Hidden Sectors, or Boot Floppy have matching tattoo data you’re fine, but if you FDISK your drive and lose the HS, or use the generic floppy I linked earlier, restores and other functions may stop working. I might think about restoring the Tattoo to the BIOS again for safety’s sake (or you can use BIOSPEEK.EXE to check if the BIOS has lost your info).
How can I check the BIOS and restore the tattoo to it if required?
As promised here are the Master CDs.
https://mega.nz/#!SYl2DLbT!PmoL3CJHfg9RHX7nxk … w-nC9PWReVSZVZw
https://mega.nz/#!mRUUDQqK!cch1zgVYejfx2irxgd … QcbmNlDB7ebWTr0
I assume that some machines differed purely in what software they were loaded with? How can this be changed? Can you use the password to edit the tattoo and add/remove stuff?
Yes you can edit the tattoo, and you would need to change the format switch specifically to achieve this. Alternatively, in SmartRestore you can double click on the yellow house, and it will show a technical support box asking for a code. I have yet to determine how this works, but for now I modified it to accept any/no code. This unlocks all the software available on the particular Master CD for that system, even if the system wasn't originally supposed to have it. Attached is a work-in-progress restore 'matrix' for the UK Hercules format as listed on my Master CD set.
In the format part codes section, RED indicates that archive is never copied to the hard drive, ORANGE indicates it is copied but may not be used.
In the format switch section, GREEN denotes that the associated software will be installed, RED indicates it will not. Some software may be RED in the switch section, but YELLOW in the part code section - the CD will copy the software to the hard drive, but will delete it straight after the restore without installing it...
To check the tattoo in the BIOS, run BIOSPEEK.EXE from C:\DRIVERS, and choose PRELOAD INFORMATION. If the values are empty, then you should tattoo the system from your hidden sectors or the BIN backup file. Do the same thing, but with HDPEEK.EXE to check your hidden sectors are still OK. If they are, it's a case of running TATTOO.EXE /CREATEDMIFROMHS. You can then use BIOSPEEK again to verify that the tattoo went OK.
And thanks for those CDs - I’ll get to work analysing them soon.
wrote:The strangeness continues, as the multiplier will not budge at all, even when I do change the multiplier jumpers. It is constantly stuck at 5.5, no matter what multiplier you select; in fact from the factory the jumpers were configured for an x6 multiplier...
Mendocinos are multiplier locked, but were famous for hitting between 400 and 600 MHz when bumped up from from Thier 66 MHz FSB. Have you tried 100fsb with yours? It might need a bit more voltage, but many celerons didn't need any extra. Also, the p2s has four times the cache running at half the speed of the celeron's cache, so the celeron was neck and neck for lighter application memory usage patterns.
wrote:Yes you can edit the tattoo, and you would need to change the format switch specifically to achieve this. Alternatively, in Smar […]
Yes you can edit the tattoo, and you would need to change the format switch specifically to achieve this. Alternatively, in SmartRestore you can double click on the yellow house, and it will show a technical support box asking for a code. I have yet to determine how this works, but for now I modified it to accept any/no code. This unlocks all the software available on the particular Master CD for that system, even if the system wasn't originally supposed to have it. Attached is a work-in-progress restore 'matrix' for the UK Hercules format as listed on my Master CD set.
In the format part codes section, RED indicates that archive is never copied to the hard drive, ORANGE indicates it is copied but may not be used.
In the format switch section, GREEN denotes that the associated software will be installed, RED indicates it will not. Some software may be RED in the switch section, but YELLOW in the part code section - the CD will copy the software to the hard drive, but will delete it straight after the restore without installing it...To check the tattoo in the BIOS, run BIOSPEEK.EXE from C:\DRIVERS, and choose PRELOAD INFORMATION. If the values are empty, then you should tattoo the system from your hidden sectors or the BIN backup file. Do the same thing, but with HDPEEK.EXE to check your hidden sectors are still OK. If they are, it's a case of running TATTOO.EXE /CREATEDMIFROMHS. You can then use BIOSPEEK again to verify that the tattoo went OK.
And thanks for those CDs - I’ll get to work analysing them soon.
Ah, that sounds very good; perhaps you can share the modifications you made to make that possible? As for the BIOS checking, I'll see what I can find and update this post.
EDIT: You were right on the money; BIOS info got totally wiped out, but it has been rewritten successfully using the command you supplied above. Oddly though, it's stored the CPU speed as 650MHz in the BIOS, as opposed to 366MHz, which is correctly reported in the HDPEEK information.
wrote:wrote:The strangeness continues, as the multiplier will not budge at all, even when I do change the multiplier jumpers. It is constantly stuck at 5.5, no matter what multiplier you select; in fact from the factory the jumpers were configured for an x6 multiplier...
Mendocinos are multiplier locked, but were famous for hitting between 400 and 600 MHz when bumped up from from Thier 66 MHz FSB. Have you tried 100fsb with yours? It might need a bit more voltage, but many celerons didn't need any extra. Also, the p2s has four times the cache running at half the speed of the celeron's cache, so the celeron was neck and neck for lighter application memory usage patterns.
Makes sense. I was thinking of the old socket 7s where you could set it as you pleased. This machine has a 366MHz chip which equates to 550MHz when the FSB is run at 100MHz. Unfortunately I think it's a bit too far for this chip, as it posts, but crashes trying to boot.
Oddly though, it's stored the CPU speed as 650MHz in the BIOS
Odd. I’m not quite sure why that has happened. I have sort of half reverse engineered the BIN file format (and have created a Windows GUI tool for viewing/editing/creating a TATTOO.BIN file for the purposes of testing this whole project thing), so when I can I’ll see if there’s any reason why that could have happened - probably just some bug though.
Ah, that sounds very good; perhaps you can share the modifications you made to make that possible?
I’d like to, yes. I’m not particularly comfortable sharing precise details on this because it is probably to an extent piracy. But it is really simple to do, provided you can work a disassembler and a hex editor. Because of the era from which this software came from, there aren’t “stringent” checks - to achieve this support code bypass you need to alter only a single byte of the SmartRestore application.
Me either! It’s very strange! I took a dd of the raw disk post restore to mess about with.
In regards to posting the modification made to the software, it is of course entirely up to you, but given the age of the software, I think it’s safe to say that it’s abandonware, and nobody would bat an eyelid. I’m just curious about this intricate system that PB NEC devised for system restoration. It does seem over the top when companies like IBM and Dell simply had compressed drive contents on the restore media. But I suppose, by doing it this way, PB NEC could genericise the master CDs to work for many different configurations.
wrote:I think it’s safe to say that it’s abandonware
Yes, I had considered this. I'll think about it.
wrote:PB NEC could genericise the master CDs to work for many different configurations
And not just PB NEC - there are files that would allow the restore (theoretically) on NEC systems, but also ZDS
Please find some information on this matter in your PM inbox.
Hi,
How do I re Tattoo my hard drive? I've had to replace as it was dead.;
Packard bell Pulsar 23 (1997)
Thanks
RichB93 wrote on 2018-05-04, 18:53:[...]
Yeah, I was thinking of maybe adding a Voodoo to this and 95B (sans Internet Exploder guff) to make it into a nice little DOS box. The newer Compaq board I put in there will probably move to another case at some point.
The integrated video in the SiS 620 is slowing the whole system down by eating half the memory bandwidth away from CPU. Putting in a different (2D) video card would improve that a lot. If you want Voodoo you could consider a 2D/3D card like a Banshee. That would work much better than adding a 3D-only Voodoo onto the integrated stuff.
LUNOTech wrote on 2018-05-05, 17:44:I do indeed have this password. And I'll upload the media soon, as I'm quite busy at the moment. As for bypassing the Tattoo, I studied one of the restoration files and was able to determine that, at a basic level, changing two particular instructions in that file will skip the checks altogether. Naturally, a few more tweaks were needed to make the restore work both functionally and cosmetically, and other features such as SmartRestore needed some work - I'm up to version 1.3 of this 'project' if you like (which added support for SmartRestore). Here's the virtualised copy:
pbmstres.PNG
PBWinVirtual.PNG
Can you put a link up for the virtualised copy?
Thanks
dionb wrote on 2020-05-06, 14:00:RichB93 wrote on 2018-05-04, 18:53:[...]
Yeah, I was thinking of maybe adding a Voodoo to this and 95B (sans Internet Exploder guff) to make it into a nice little DOS box. The newer Compaq board I put in there will probably move to another case at some point.
The integrated video in the SiS 620 is slowing the whole system down by eating half the memory bandwidth away from CPU. Putting in a different (2D) video card would improve that a lot. If you want Voodoo you could consider a 2D/3D card like a Banshee. That would work much better than adding a 3D-only Voodoo onto the integrated stuff.
Even with a G200 in there it felt a bit sluggish! I'm just not a fan of SiS chipsets, although perhaps I am being a bit too harsh. It's a shame it doesn't have AGP, as I have a nice Verite V2200 4MB AGP that would've fit the bill. Annoyingly I sold my 8MB V2200 PCI some years ago on here. Right now the machine still has the Compaq 815 board, a 667MHz Celeron(?) and a V2200 AGP + Voodoo1 installed.
RichB93 wrote on 2020-05-28, 00:16:[...]
Even with a G200 in there it felt a bit sluggish! I'm just not a fan of SiS chipsets, although perhaps I am being a bit too harsh. It's a shame it doesn't have AGP, as I have a nice Verite V2200 4MB AGP that would've fit the bill. Annoyingly I sold my 8MB V2200 PCI some years ago on here. Right now the machine still has the Compaq 815 board, a 667MHz Celeron(?) and a V2200 AGP + Voodoo1 installed.
SiS chipsets are fine, take a look at the SiS635T, their last Pentium III offering and one of the fastest chipsets for the platform, on par with beasts like the i840. This is simply an old low-end chipset that should be compared to the Intel i810, which is simplarly disappointing.
Why the ? with the Celeron 667? That's a pretty regular Coppermine Celeron speed.
