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Fear and loathing with a promise cache card.

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First post, by nextse7en

Posted on 
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GHAAAAAAAA

Ok.

Dead vanilla 486 motherboard, no manufacturer markings. DX2/66. No onboard IDE AMIBIOS (AA9429354)

Promise DC200 IDE/FLOPPY interface card with 4MB of cache.

BIOS is configured with both HDD types at 0. Once the machine gets through post I see the Cache card's bios pop up and do its thing, it checks the cache ram and correctly identifies the HDD. (identification string and correct geometry)

Then I get a boot disk error.

Things I have tried.

Different cables, different drives, small drives, big drives, SD drive adapters, etc.

Do I throw this machine in the fire and pray to the old gods?

Reply 1 of 1, by BitWrangler

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l33t++

It doesn't boot off floppy when that drive and disk are known to boot on another machine? HDDs only "often" read on another controller than the one they were partitioned and formatted on, slight different geometry interpretations will bugger things up, particularly on pre-pentium hardware, can also occur across the 27G barrier, translation difference. So try to floppy boot, see if fdisk sees it.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

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