Greger wrote on 2022-07-17, 13:47:

Do I manually have to add HDD and floppy in the bios?

Yep, that was pretty norm back then.
You are supposed to know the type of the disk (if it's one of those predefined types 1-46) or set the type 47 and enter manually the geometry of the HDD you have installed.
Some bioses provided HDD autodetect option which was a separate gui, not the one where you configure the disks, and it could still fail.
Newer bioses could do HDD autodetection properly without user interaction.
But you still have to manually select the floppy drive type, as there is no way to detect that.

Greger wrote on 2022-07-17, 13:47:

What is the problem here? Do I manually have to add HDD and floppy in the bios? How is that even done if so? Or is something broken? Would be fun to try and get this working and perhaps get it to install windows 3.11 with some old games.

Thanks!

Yes.
the first photo you posted shows pretty much what you need to do.
I guess use the cursor keys to go to the field you want to alter, probably using up&down keys, then use the left & right keys to select the correct type of floppy drive.
Same would go for the hard drive. Finding the correct info to fill in, I'll leave for someone else to explain.
Gotta run.
Enjoy !

vstrakh wrote on 2022-07-17, 14:00:

Yep, that was pretty norm back then. You are supposed to know the type of the disk (if it's one of those predefined types 1-46) […]
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Greger wrote on 2022-07-17, 13:47:

Do I manually have to add HDD and floppy in the bios?

Yep, that was pretty norm back then.
You are supposed to know the type of the disk (if it's one of those predefined types 1-46) or set the type 47 and enter manually the geometry of the HDD you have installed.
Some bioses provided HDD autodetect option which was a separate gui, not the one where you configure the disks, and it could still fail.
Newer bioses could do HDD autodetection properly without user interaction.
But you still have to manually select the floppy drive type, as there is no way to detect that.

Ok gotcha. Perhaps it is written on the HDD which of these 46 types it is, or at least have the information necessary for me to add it myself? I will open it and see when I get home. Is the CD-rom also added like this?

Hopefully this is all a problem due to the battery running out, and the HDD will boot up some OS once it's added in bios. I glanced at it while changing battery and it was around 260mb I think. And it sounds like a vacuum cleaner too!

Edit: forgot to ask, but I guess STORE CMOS is the 486 bios way of saying "save changes"?

Greger wrote on 2022-07-17, 14:08:

Ok gotcha. Perhaps it is written on the HDD which of these 46 types it is, or at least have the information necessary for me to add it myself?

You need three numbers: cylinders, heads, sectors.
Chances are, they are on the sticker.
If not, find the drive model, and Google it...
And don't worry about "Pre" and "Lz" fields - IDE drives don't care about them.

Is the CD-rom also added like this?

No, 486 BIOSes don't support CD-ROMs, so you don't enter them in the CMOS Setup.

Edit: forgot to ask, but I guess STORE CMOS is the 486 bios way of saying "save changes"?

Exactly.

OK so I've typed in the right numbers for my HDD and floppy, and the floppy seems to be working. What has changed about the HDD is that it no more says there is no bootable disk, but it says that there is no operating system now. And it says it in swedish which I find a bit odd if there is nothing on it, why would it say so in swedish? I'm
swedish but if there is nothing on the HDD wouldn't the computer just type everything out in English?

Is there any easy way to browse the HDD without removing it? Some floppy disk that I could use? It would be a shame to format it if there is actually anything there. But perhaps the previous owner has simply formated it!

Where should I go from here? Will windows 95 run good on a 66mhz 8mb ram computer with 212mb HDD?

Greger wrote on 2022-07-17, 20:30:

OK so I've typed in the right numbers for my HDD and floppy, and the floppy seems to be working. What has changed about the HDD […]
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OK so I've typed in the right numbers for my HDD and floppy, and the floppy seems to be working. What has changed about the HDD is that it no more says there is no bootable disk, but it says that there is no operating system now. And it says it in swedish which I find a bit odd if there is nothing on it, why would it say so in swedish? I'm
swedish but if there is nothing on the HDD wouldn't the computer just type everything out in English?

Is there any easy way to browse the HDD without removing it? Some floppy disk that I could use? It would be a shame to format it if there is actually anything there. But perhaps the previous owner has simply formated it!

Where should I go from here? Will windows 95 run good on a 66mhz 8mb ram computer with 212mb HDD?

So what is happening is that the "Missing operating system" message (which is what it would say in English) comes from the boot sector or code on the first 512 bytes of the hard drive, not the BIOS.

So indeed, the hard drive is working and not (completely) empty. This message can happen if the previous owner tried to "wipe" the drive simply by using FDISK to delete all the partitions rather than truly overwriting the drive with zeros. The message can also happen if the cylinder/head/sectors numbers you put in are incorrect, or if they are correct but the previous owner was using incorrect ones causing the cylinder/head/sector numbers to shuffle around relative to the linear offsets of sectors which all modern (modern meaning 1995) BIOSes/operating systems use to address sectors on the drive.

I would use a floppy boot disk created with Windows 98. If you don't have a Windows 98 machine I'm sure there's a disk image out there somewhere or you could use FreeDOS too. Either would have FDISK and let you look at the HDD. The reason I suggest that is it comes with an IDE CD-ROM driver preloaded and you won't have to chase that down.

A machine with those specs was likely the reference machine used for testing Windows 95. It will run on it, and not be particularly fast but usable. It's analogous to a "Designed for Windows XP/Windows Vista Capable" machine if you remember those days. With a hard drive so small you don't need FAT32 support if you don't want it and could therefore use the "A" revision of Windows 95 rather than "B" or "C" aka OSR2/OSR2.5. On the other hand, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is likely what it shipped with and will "fly" on a 486DX2-66 w/8MB.

Personally, I use a plain dos bootdisk with Norton diskeditor on it.

That allows for easy disk viewing, with direct access to the disk which allows one to see the first sector which contains the MBR which can lead you to the data you need to set the disk in the bios so it might boot.

If the disk was partitioned and set up to boot using different numbers in the bios than the ones you are using now, that would explain why it is now not booting from disk and you will also not see any files on it due to this difference. (i think)

win95 should run. good is a matter of feeling. I'll just keep it at, it will run. at least if you stick to the first version of win95

Greger wrote on 2022-07-17, 20:30:

OK so I've typed in the right numbers for my HDD and floppy, and the floppy seems to be working. What has changed about the HDD […]
Show full quote

OK so I've typed in the right numbers for my HDD and floppy, and the floppy seems to be working. What has changed about the HDD is that it no more says there is no bootable disk, but it says that there is no operating system now. And it says it in swedish which I find a bit odd if there is nothing on it, why would it say so in swedish? I'm
swedish but if there is nothing on the HDD wouldn't the computer just type everything out in English?

Is there any easy way to browse the HDD without removing it? Some floppy disk that I could use? It would be a shame to format it if there is actually anything there. But perhaps the previous owner has simply formated it!

Where should I go from here? Will windows 95 run good on a 66mhz 8mb ram computer with 212mb HDD?

Hi @Gregor,

Is this your first DOS era computer? I think you need to read up on booting from a floppy disk. Then use a utility from floppy to troubleshoot your hard drive. If you have never had a DOS disk this might be a little tricky at first. But there are a few sites from where you can download a DOS diskette image and then use a piece of software to write out a bootable diskette to a USB floppy drive on your modern system. Of course you will need a USB floppy drive first.

It is also possible to purchase newer hardware that can be installed to take the place of the old floppy drive, like a Gotek that will boot from a USB that is playing the part of the floppy drive.

If you know anyone who has a floppy drive, you can ask them for help to make your bootable floppy diskette. The Windows 98 floppy is a good idea but any DOS from 3.3 to Win98 should work.

In my case I have many DOS machines from many years ago so I already have many floppy diskettes and floppy drives. But by now floppies are ancient equipment and not many have them on their machines. But once you have a bootable DOS floppy you will be able to install Windows 95, or 3.11, to the hard drive.

It's possible that the floppy drive, or the controller, will be bad. If that happens you may choose to invest in the Gotek instead.

Seaken

Brilliant answers from you guys! So I've got an original unopened version of Windows 98 (cool right? 😁 ) that of course contains that boot floppy disk. However as I tried to use it it doesn't want to work. I've tried on a few different computers with different FDD's now and once I managed to boot on it, but otherwise it just says disk i/o error or something like that. Does these things degrade over time? I was thinking of overwriting again with first that Norton tool and then make it into a win 98 boot disk again. Should rewriting it make it good again or is it simply too old? Or does three different FDD's of mine all suck? Man it was long ago that I last used these things... This is the only floppy disk I've got if I don't order some new ones online...

They do degrade over time.
I have some stock from different manufacturers I acquired about 15 years ago. Only about 30% are still usable.

Sometimes the condition improves when you format them (not quick-format) several times and just use them regularly, but many are FUBAR.

So I managed to save my old win98 boot disk by formatting it and making a new boot disk out of it. I've managed to boot my 486 in to that, and just looking at c: I can see that there is a version of Windows on it. I went to the windows folder and typed win, and then I get this error about VFAT initializing error or something (the error is in swedish).

Could this be due to me having typed in different HDD numbers in bios than was originally there before the cmos battery died?

If so, someone earlier in this thread mentioned that I could get this HDD information by using Norton disc editor, but I can't find this tool anywhere online, at least without registering on some site.. is there some other way for me to view this on the HDD?

Sorry if I seem like I'm out in deep water with this. It's because I am! I would just like to get this old 486 working.

Thanks!

Greger wrote on 2022-07-30, 12:04:

mentioned that I could get this HDD information by using Norton disc editor

No, It's not exactly like that.
With NDD you have raw access to the hdd, but you must have the understanding of the FAT partition structure. So you look into hdd structures sizes/offsets and see if it matches your current expectations/calculations and what not, and then make educated guess on what needs to be fixed. It does not report geometry automatically.

You can just look at the MBR information to get a good idea of the CHS params that the disk was partitioned with.
No need to start analyzing the FAT since that will not give you any clue about the CHS params.

in stead of norton disk editor you try this TS (PhysTechSoft) Disk Editor https://thestarman.pcministry.com/tool/de/PTS-DE.htm

Thanks guys! Searching for more help on the problem you are helping me with, I came across another program that can be seen in this photo. So at the top you can see the numbers that I've typed into the bios (the very same numbers that are on the HDD itself, that presents me with an error that there is no operating system. And there in the program you can see the numbers that are in the MBR. How does that translate to what I should type into the bios instead of what's already there?

Help is deeply appreciated 😁

Greger wrote on 2022-07-30, 12:04:

So I managed to save my old win98 boot disk by formatting it and making a new boot disk out of it. I've managed to boot my 486 in to that, and just looking at c: I can see that there is a version of Windows on it. I went to the windows folder and typed win, and then I get this error about VFAT initializing error or something (the error is in swedish).

Getting warmer!

You can't expect to be able to boot from a floppy and then C: and win, especially when your boot disk is Windows 98 and the Windows installation is presumably Win95. Even if they did match there are things that don't load when booting from floppy like Ifshlp.sys and could cause an error like that.

I think your best bet is to figure out exactly which revision of Windows (95a/b/c) is installed and get a boot disk for it. You can look at time stamps in c:\windows\system to get an idea. The Swedish language could dictate a different disk too. Once you find it and can boot from it, hopefully it's just SYS C: and FDISK /MBR.

Or you could just blow away everything on C: and reinstall; it's what I would do.

From that info the CHS params are correct.

There are 3 primary partitions, I'm guessing the largest one is set active ( the 1 in the row column? )
Can you verify that by checking with plain dos fdisk?
also try issuing the " fdisk /mbr " command, since in the photo it mentions unknown IPL for the MBR bootrecord.

I'm wondering if the other partitions are some computer specific partitions like bios or diagnostics, or some bootmanager leftovers.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-07-30, 19:41:

also try issuing the " fdisk /mbr " command, since in the photo it mentions unknown IPL for the MBR bootrecord.

yes but this could cause a mess when the boot disk is for a different version of windows, no?

jakethompson1 wrote on 2022-07-30, 19:49:

weedeewee wrote on 2022-07-30, 19:41:

also try issuing the " fdisk /mbr " command, since in the photo it mentions unknown IPL for the MBR bootrecord.

yes but this could cause a mess when the boot disk is for a different version of windows, no?

Yes it did. Now it says that the operating system is missing in English instead. Oh well. Probably the best alternative is to just install a fresh install of Windows 95. It was a fun experiment after all!

No, since fdisk /mbr only touches the partition table IPL

What you are thinking of is doing sys C: , that can be annoying and mess up when the DOS programs installed are from a different version than the system files which get installed by doing sys c: .