First post, by Nekome
Hi, folks! I'm trying to resurrect my old 286 from my college years. The problem that has me stumped is that it doesn't seem to remember it has a hard drive.
System details:
- Leading Technology, Inc. 5000AT
- CHIPS 451 VGA BIOS Version 211
- Phoenix 80286 ROM BIOS PLUS Version 3.10
- 5.25", 3.5", and hard drive which should be drives A:, B:, and C:
Switch it on and I get the "Invalid configuration information - please run SETUP program" message.
Pressing F1 gets me "No boot device available - strike F1 to retry boot". It should be booting from the hard drive.
I don't have a SETUP disk. Searching for solutions led me to a couple threads here mentioning GSETUP. I've copied that onto a 3.5" disk. But my current problem is that I can't get the computer sufficiently booted for me to run it.
I do have a set of MS-DOS disks that came with it. The INSTALL disk works, but the installation program eventually wants to write a set of floppies.
Earlier in the process it mentions installing to a fixed disk as an option:
But when I get to the actual writing part, it specifically asks for 360KB disks and instructs me to put one in drive B: (the 3.5" drive). I put in a blank 3.5" floppy, and get this:
Other diskettes from that pack have been fine, and I've tried a couple of different blank ones, so I think the problem is just it's the wrong kind of disk.
As for the hard drive, when I switch the power on, the HDD light comes on and I hear the expected noise while the computer is running its initial checks. I don't hear anything or see the light flicker when it's looking for something to boot from.
I took a look inside the case but didn't see any obvious problems. Everything's still attached and looking remarkably clean.
In addition to what looks like a full set of 5.25" MS-DOS floppies, I have two other disks that I believe originally came with the computer, labeled "5000AT Utilities" and "HyperDOS[tm] 2.0b". Neither can boot the computer.
Any ideas for how to proceed?