Hi there -

I just recently resurrected a Vectra XU 6/200, a similar though not identical machine to your VA. I have actually experienced the same thing as you at a couple of points in the rebuild process - for me, it was when I had a video card in it that it apparently didn't like. I swapped it for another PCI video card (Matrox G200) which got me past the blinking cursor.

I didn't have the best luck booting from CD's on it though - if I were going to put Windows 95 on it, I'd probably find/make a boot floppy that loads a cdrom driver and mscdex, then install from there. Also, Windows 2000 runs pretty well on mine (dual Pentium Pro 200), if you have a reasonable amount of ram.

Hi,

Are the master/slave jumpers set correctly on this PC?

I've seen this exact problem on P2/P3 boards with there is an option ROM installed they don't like (video, SCSI, etc.)

Thank you for all your help and replies, I'll try to address the issues you raised:

I haven't applied any graphics card just yet, to try and leave the indispensable components only while I'm still solving this issue, no SCSI's also.

The HDD is recognised as Master in the Bios and the jumper is set as such, as the pc's only hard disk.

macroexp wrote:

Hi there -

I just recently resurrected a Vectra XU 6/200, a similar though not identical machine to your VA. I have actually experienced the same thing as you at a couple of points in the rebuild process - for me, it was when I had a video card in it that it apparently didn't like. I swapped it for another PCI video card (Matrox G200) which got me past the blinking cursor.

I didn't have the best luck booting from CD's on it though - if I were going to put Windows 95 on it, I'd probably find/make a boot floppy that loads a cdrom driver and mscdex, then install from there. Also, Windows 2000 runs pretty well on mine (dual Pentium Pro 200), if you have a reasonable amount of ram.

I know my way around a few things but I'm in no way an expert, would a boot disk like this include the cdrom driver and mscdex you mentioned?:

https://www.allbootdisks.com/download/98.html

Ok, so a little update.

I made a Win98 boot disk and keep getting the same blinking cursor screen. It does recognise a bootable disk is in there but doesn't go through the screen. If I try any other floppy drive it says it's not a bootable disk.

Out of despair I looked through the floppy disks that came with the pc and stumbled upon a DOS installation disk (missing the other ones).

I inserted it and it booted into the DOS installation menu, but only gave me the option to install in A:, the floppy drive.

So, the BIOS recognises both hard disk and cd-rom, but the pc is not able to boot from them, while the DOS installation program only recognises the floppy drive.

maxtherabbit wrote:

I've seen this exact problem on P2/P3 boards with there is an option ROM installed they don't like (video, SCSI, etc.)

I've found out that if I boot with no hard disk at all it allows me to boot with a DOS boot disk every time! But then I have no hard drive to install anything to...

So basically if the HDD is plugged in, it detects in BIOS but DOS won't boot from the floppy - and if I unplug the HDD the DOS boots but has nowhere available to which install/run fdisk, windows, etc...

I was able to run the IDE serial bus drivers in DOS, but then I can't install them anywhere

try a different hard drive and/or take the one that's in there out and test it fully on another machine

maxtherabbit wrote:

try a different hard drive and/or take the one that's in there out and test it fully on another machine

Thanks I did, I was able to install W95 on that same HDD through another computer. Guess I should search for another HDD drive to try in the Vectra

andre_6 wrote:

maxtherabbit wrote:

try a different hard drive and/or take the one that's in there out and test it fully on another machine

Thanks I did, I was able to install W95 on that same HDD through another computer. Guess I should search for another HDD drive to try in the Vectra

I mean test it with a manufacturer drive fitness test utility, not just "it boots"

It does sound like there may be something wrong with the IDE controller on your vectra though

maxtherabbit wrote:

andre_6 wrote:

maxtherabbit wrote:

try a different hard drive and/or take the one that's in there out and test it fully on another machine

Thanks I did, I was able to install W95 on that same HDD through another computer. Guess I should search for another HDD drive to try in the Vectra

I mean test it with a manufacturer drive fitness test utility, not just "it boots"

It does sound like there may be something wrong with the IDE controller on your vectra though

Sorry, I'm not an expert at all - would installing an ide controller card in a PCI slot be a valid workaround to this issue?

andre_6 wrote:

Sorry, I'm not an expert at all - would installing an ide controller card in a PCI slot be a valid workaround to this issue?

it very well could be, make sure to disable the onboard one in the BIOS first

8GB is right on the limit of what your M/B can probably handle.
Can you try a smaller hard drive?
My 486 for example does the exact same thing. It can detect the 8GB drive but it's as if it hangs the controller trying to address it all during boot.
6GB drives work fine.

a CF or SD card would be fine for testing even if you run into problems booting from them. As long as they are detected in bios correctly you should at least be now able to boot from floppy with the card acting as a HDD

chinny22 wrote:

8GB is right on the limit of what your M/B can probably handle. Can you try a smaller hard drive? My 486 for example does the ex […]
Show full quote

8GB is right on the limit of what your M/B can probably handle.
Can you try a smaller hard drive?
My 486 for example does the exact same thing. It can detect the 8GB drive but it's as if it hangs the controller trying to address it all during boot.
6GB drives work fine.

a CF or SD card would be fine for testing even if you run into problems booting from them. As long as they are detected in bios correctly you should at least be now able to boot from floppy with the card acting as a HDD

Thanks for your reply, actually ancient HDD's with low capacity are hard to come by around here, the 8.4GB was the lower capacity that I was able to find. For now I am waiting for the IDE controller card to arrive to try it out, which was not expensive at all, and in the meantime I will try to find a 4GB or 6GB HDD drive to buy if it doesn't work, but given your message I probably will anyway even if the card solves it.

Because of the sentimental value of this Vectra, for as long as eventual solutions demand for inexpensive hardware I am more than willing to test every possibility

chinny22 wrote on 2019-12-19, 09:32:

8GB is right on the limit of what your M/B can probably handle. Can you try a smaller hard drive? My 486 for example does the ex […]
Show full quote

8GB is right on the limit of what your M/B can probably handle.
Can you try a smaller hard drive?
My 486 for example does the exact same thing. It can detect the 8GB drive but it's as if it hangs the controller trying to address it all during boot.
6GB drives work fine.

a CF or SD card would be fine for testing even if you run into problems booting from them. As long as they are detected in bios correctly you should at least be now able to boot from floppy with the card acting as a HDD

Hello,
Thank you all for for all your help and replies, it really was the hard drive capacity that was causing the issues. With the 4gb HDD I got it works just fine. It means a lot, thank you.

I don't know if I can ask an additional question or if I should open a new thread, but here it goes: what graphics card would you recommend for the Vectra?

I've got a Jaton-branded GeForce MX4000 128MB card in my AMD K6-2 300 system with Windows 98SE, and it works well. Not sure if I would recommend it, as I bought it solely for utility. It was cheap when I bought it as new old stock, but people want random prices for it on evilbay. Might be a bit overkill for a 200MHz system, but it's far easier to come by than a Voodoo card, for sure.

andre_6 wrote on 2020-01-02, 22:27:

I don't know if I can ask an additional question or if I should open a new thread, but here it goes: what graphics card would you recommend for the Vectra?

I have a 16mb Matrox G200 in my Vectra XU 6/200. Good match for it - I couldn't get a TNT2 M64 to work well, the HP didn't like the BIOS.

BTW, another option for larger drives in these is SCSI cards. My XU has built-in UltraSCSI, and a 50GB SCA on an adapter is bootable, fully accessible, and fast.

macroexp wrote on 2020-01-03, 04:48:

andre_6 wrote on 2020-01-02, 22:27:

I don't know if I can ask an additional question or if I should open a new thread, but here it goes: what graphics card would you recommend for the Vectra?

I have a 16mb Matrox G200 in my Vectra XU 6/200. Good match for it - I couldn't get a TNT2 M64 to work well, the HP didn't like the BIOS.

BTW, another option for larger drives in these is SCSI cards. My XU has built-in UltraSCSI, and a 50GB SCA on an adapter is bootable, fully accessible, and fast.

Thank you all for your suggestions, the more I read about possible options the more the G200 matrox seems like a pretty good choice. I have to try and find the PCI version, a bit harder but possible I think

I just got this pc the Vectra XU 6/200 D4265N and am having some of the same issues, the system boots into nextSTEP and i want to install windows 95 instead but i can't get it to recognize the SCSI drive thats installed using a floppy boot disk. Looking at the installation instructions from the manual they mention using a “XU/VT Boot” diskette then from there installing windows 95 from the 95 disk. I assume this is to provide drivers for dos to use with the scsi controller. Its using an Adaptec AIC-7880 Ultra BIOS v1.2s-HP with a Seagate ST32171N. I've been messing around with it for days, i wish i could boot from a cd but everytime i try to boot from the cd using Smart Boot Manager 3.71 it freezes. I just want to get this hard drive accessible to FDISK so i can format it to an msdos compatible partition. I have the scsi driver for dos, how would i go about making a custom floppy boot disk which will autoload the driver for scsi?