I'm not familiar with that particular model PC but most 286-386-486 of that era didn't autodetect drives like modern machines. You had to manually enter all drive information (heads/cylinders etc.) for them to work which is why it sucked when your CMOS battery died. Usually the drives came with some spec sheet with all that info.

I used to own a pirated copy of MH-IDE (Micro House IDE util) that ran off a floppy and would auto detect most IDE drives and even write this info to CMOS. Even when it couldn't write it to CMOS I would just copy the info to a piece of paper then enter it manually.

Basically you will have a few options:

1) Google the drive models for the necessary info.

2) Find an equivalent utility that can read the drive info and display it on screen or write to to CMOS for you. Maybe someone else here can recommend something equivalent to MH-IDE.

3) Find a Pentium era PC with built-in IDE - when you connect your drives they should be auto-detected. Go into the CMOS and copy the drive values onto a piece of paper. Reconnect your drives to your 286 and enter the information obtained into CMOS. Make sure you have replaced the CMOS battery or you will have to enter this info each time you reboot your 286 PC.

Thing is that it has automatic mode for HDDs and manual.

ive got the drive settings from : http://www.computerhope.com/hdquantu.htm

Its the PRODRIVE 40 model. And i have tested it on my advance/ml pentium board where its working fine.

In the bios the manual settings refere as "TYPE" eg the drive i have is a type 34 that info matches my drive parameters.

I will try somekind of IDE util as u wrote.

Also it is possible that the IDE controller has died? or is it just forgetting my settings cuz the battery is disscharged? I get a Error message every time i hard reset or soft even just ctr alt del reset the computer. But the time and all other settings are still saved.

It is possible that the IDE controller has died but the likely culprit would be the battery. Change that before you do anything else.

Make sure you have the jumpers on the drives set correctly AND in the correct position on the IDE cable.

Plug the drives into the other PC and write down all the HD info from the CMOS. Plug in 1 drive at a time into the 286 and enter the info you just wrote manually in the drive settings and see if it picks up the drive. I've had better luck on older machines manually entering drive info than choosing one of the predefined type listed in the CMOS.

Thanks for the info, i will post when i get the new battery. I also getting a other ISA IDE card so i can test whit that.

Is your a MFM Hard Drive or Standerd IDE Hard Drive
Dose the Hard drive spin up?.
Have you try unplug the power to hardddrive pull the cable and remove IDE card re-seat the card and plug everthing back in.

Yes the drive work. Ive installed it on my pentium setup, And i booted dos from it. its working just fine. Its a standard IDE drive.

I will post some pictures of the computer, its very small and the CPU and memory are on a ISA board that also houses the VGA board.

Is there a type 47 option where you can enter the disk's specs manually? If so, try that.

Ive tryed all the settings 😁 no go.

It seems that its the cmos battery that makes this error. Ive saw on a french forum a user whit the same problem after the battery died.

The battery is soldered on the board, so we will see how that goes 😁

Are we talking about an SBC; Single Board CPU ; I might have the same board: Victor Technologies 286 16/S - vga onboard - 30pins memory - if that is correct? - Unfortunatly i don't have a working keyboard - as the AT/XT keyboard isn't recognized beyond the caps/scroll/num - i managed to upgrade the board to 8Mb 30pin - but the board slept a bit to long and the settings are off

Please let me know ; i still have some 30pin memories 😉

http://i1248.photobucket.com/albums/hh498/her … ts/100_1942.jpg

http://i1248.photobucket.com/albums/hh498/her … ts/100_1937.jpg

just found: http://www.cbronline.com/news/tandy_to_keep_v … dy_product_line

Yeah that is the one i belive!

Ive gotten the new realtime thingy. but i havent desolder the old one yet due to i dont have the proper tools 😜