VOGONS


First post, by DankEngihn

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I have a Compaq Prolinea 4/66 that originally had a 270 MB Quantum Prodrive hard drive, that works perfectly, but is too small for what I want to do with the machine, and had bad bearings.

So I put in an 840 MB Quantum Trailblazer, and the BIOS sees it drive perfectly, and detects it's parameters correctly. Unfortunately the system that drive came from had a 504 MB hard drive limit, so it had Quantum Dynamic Drive software on it, which isn't needed with this computer.

This wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that it breaks the F10 BIOS utility, and just keeps booting. This is really inconvenient for me.

Is it possible to remove the overlay software without losing the data on the drive? I have stuff installed on it, that I really don't want to reinstall.

Any help would be appreciated.

Reply 1 of 4, by Caluser2000

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Copy all your data over over to another drive. Should be daisy chain another drive as slave. Once your stuff is saved from a boot disk with the same Dos version you have on that drive type fdisk mbr. This should remove the DDO from the master boot record. Once done sys C: the the drive, cross your fingures and reboot. If you are lucky it should boot straight to the hdd and you'll see your old files. If unlucky use xcopy to transfer the files from your back up drive back to the boot drive using xcopy “xcopy backup drive(say d:)\*.* s/e/ boot drive (c:)”

The main thing is doing the backup. A worse case senario is you will have to detete any partitions, recreate a primary Dos partition set it to active usong fdisk, reformat the drive, copy over the system file using sys c: and then copying over the files from the back up drive to the c: drive using xcopy or similar.

Did I mention create a back up before starting any thing?

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 2 of 4, by DankEngihn

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Thanks that worked.

Now because if you search Quantum Dynamic Drive overlay, this thread will show up, so here's how to remove it.

MAKE A BACKUP. This is important, in case something goes wrong

Boot from a floppy of the same DOS version as installed on the hard drive. (6.20 in my case), MAKE SURE IT IS THROUGH THE BIOS. Do not use the "Press space to boot from diskette..." Or it won't work.

If you're booting from disk one of the DOS install, press F3 to drop to the command prompt.

Did I mention the backup was important?

Type "FDISK /mbr" (without quotes)

When that's done, go back into FDISK and set the main partition as active.

Reboot the computer, and if you did it right, it should boot right into DOS without the annoying drive overlay

Reply 3 of 4, by Caluser2000

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Cool.

A lot off folk have the misconception that you have to reformat the drive for some totally unknown reason. Even a lot of so called IT professionals. The data is still on the hdd even if the DDO is removed.

And of course MAKE A BACKUP. This is important, in case something goes wrong

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 4 of 4, by FFXIhealer

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Caluser2000 wrote:

MAKE A BACKUP.

Us IT people have been shouting this mantra at the top of our lungs for 30 years and people STILL don't do it. I'm about to be at the point where I just shrug my shoulders and tell people "You should have made a backup." anytime they come to me and complain about missing files or data - ESPECIALLY around the Windows 10 upgrade thing. It doesn't matter how often you tell people to do it, they basically refuse. And then I'm the one who's supposed to magically find the files you deleted or didn't tell me about before I reimaged your computer and why in the blue hell did you keep your files under C:\Users\Public\ ? WHO TF DOES THAT!?! Sorry not sorry, your files are gone, bud.

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