VOGONS


HP Vectra VL2 4/66 Hard Drive Access "Stuck" Issue

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First post, by thepirategamerboy12

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I recently acquired an old HP Vectra VL2 4/66 PC. It's a 486DX/50 with 12mb of RAM, a 1.2GB IDE HDD, an SB16 CT1790 sound card, and more. It works perfectly fine except for the CMOS battery being dead and one other far more annoying issue.

Fairly often, when the hard drive is accessing files, the drive will get "stuck." I guess that's the best way to explain it. The activity light is on solid, but you can't hear the drive chattering like usual and nothing is being read. It then takes a considerable amount of time for it to retry. This makes it very annoying to play games that access files on the HDD a lot and makes some like Stunt Driver pretty much impossible to play because I can't get past the title screen without the drive getting stuck and crashing the program due to the read error. It does actually seem certain things trigger it more than others, like starting up QuickTime in Windows 3.1 for example.

I do notice that in the BIOS, even though it auto detects the HDD, I actually have to set it to custom for it to boot. Not sure if that's related to the issue or not. And also, I don't think I noticed this problem when hooking up the drive through USB on my main computer. I would try another drive, but I don't have one of a compatible size that's not being used. Any ideas? Thanks.

Reply 1 of 63, by Tiido

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That sounds like bad sectors on the drive than anything else. Run SCANDISK C: /SURFACE

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Reply 4 of 63, by SW-SSG

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Sounds like HDD is failing, OP. Then again...

yawetaG wrote:
danijelm wrote:

Maybe dx50 is your problem. 50 Mhz fsb is problematic.

Isn't the DX-50 2x 25 MHz?

There is a DX-50 at 1x50MHz and a DX2-50 at 2x25MHz. When people leave out the "2", like OP may have done, things get confusing. Either way, a 50MHz bus could be a source of various problems, but so could a DX2-50 OC'd to run at 2x33MHz, a possibility in this case considering that OP's machine likely shipped with a DX2-66 inside...

Reply 5 of 63, by thepirategamerboy12

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About some of the suggestions with the CPU being the fault, I do notice this when I turn the computer on at first:
40089764813_a9e2a40a3c_c.jpg

So, yeah, minor mistake earlier in that it's apparently a DX2 50. All of these errors (including the processor one) go away when I fix the HDD settings. And like I said earlier, I don't know if it's actually the HDD itself because it worked fine with no hiccups when transferring files to it via USB.

I do wonder why it has a DX2 50 instead of a DX2 66, though... Kind of odd.

Also, this is what the machine looks like if anyone's curious (under the PC-98, of course):
47002691302_7f9f11fa09_o.jpg

Reply 8 of 63, by thepirategamerboy12

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yawetaG wrote:

Does the BIOS save any settings? Because normally it should save hard disk settings too. So perhaps the BIOS battery is dead?

Yeah, it is dead. I mentioned this earlier. Thankfully, it's a CR2032 battery in a holder.

Reply 11 of 63, by Deksor

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What's weird is that the computer's name suggest a DX2-66, not a DX2-50. Is it underclocked ? What's written on the CPU ?

Also, what's the brand of the HDD ?

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 12 of 63, by thepirategamerboy12

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Deksor wrote:

What's weird is that the computer's name suggest a DX2-66, not a DX2-50. Is it underclocked ? What's written on the CPU ?

Also, what's the brand of the HDD ?

Yeah, I don't get it either. I haven't taken off the CPU heatsink yet. Also, fyi, this doesn't seem to affect CD-ROM access at all. The CD-ROM drive is hooked up to the same IDE socket as the HDD.

Reply 14 of 63, by Totos82

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Dear thepirategamerboy12
I have a Vectra like this, but probably the bios is dead. Could you backup the bios and send it to me? Is that possible? Pleeeeaaaassseeeee!! I have not found any bios file to this type of vectra.

Reply 15 of 63, by Deksor

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Maybe it's not the right one, but I have the one from my HP Vectra 486/33VL. They're possibly close enough to work with the same bios : http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php? … =30&f=8&t=19456

Although, I'd like to have the one from that model too to complete the page ^^

Trying to identify old hardware ? Visit The retro web - Project's thread The Retro Web project - a stason.org/TH99 alternative

Reply 16 of 63, by Totos82

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Deksor wrote:

Maybe it's not the right one, but I have the one from my HP Vectra 486/33VL. They're possibly close enough to work with the same bios : http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php? … =30&f=8&t=19456

Although, I'd like to have the one from that model too to complete the page ^^

This one is not good. I need ga.04 bios like yours. 🙁

Reply 17 of 63, by Totos82

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Totos82 wrote:
Deksor wrote:

Maybe it's not the right one, but I have the one from my HP Vectra 486/33VL. They're possibly close enough to work with the same bios : http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php? … =30&f=8&t=19456

Although, I'd like to have the one from that model too to complete the page ^^

This one is not good. I need ga.04 bios like yours. 🙁

486/33 vl is ami bios. My vectra is a Vl2 4 25e with Pheonix bios.

Reply 18 of 63, by Totos82

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Totos82 wrote:
Totos82 wrote:
Deksor wrote:

Maybe it's not the right one, but I have the one from my HP Vectra 486/33VL. They're possibly close enough to work with the same bios : http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php? … =30&f=8&t=19456

Although, I'd like to have the one from that model too to complete the page ^^

This one is not good. I need ga.04 bios like yours. 🙁

486/33 vl is ami bios. My vectra is a Vl2 4 25e with Pheonix bios.

Pleeeeaaaaasssse bios Ga 04.02 pleeeeeaaaassssseee!

Reply 19 of 63, by Totos82

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thepirategamerboy12 wrote:
About some of the suggestions with the CPU being the fault, I do notice this when I turn the computer on at first: https://farm8 […]
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About some of the suggestions with the CPU being the fault, I do notice this when I turn the computer on at first:
40089764813_a9e2a40a3c_c.jpg

So, yeah, minor mistake earlier in that it's apparently a DX2 50. All of these errors (including the processor one) go away when I fix the HDD settings. And like I said earlier, I don't know if it's actually the HDD itself because it worked fine with no hiccups when transferring files to it via USB.

I do wonder why it has a DX2 50 instead of a DX2 66, though... Kind of odd.

Also, this is what the machine looks like if anyone's curious (under the PC-98, of course):
47002691302_7f9f11fa09_o.jpg

Pleasepleasepleaseplease i need bios file Ga.04.02 please you are my last hope!