Grub is installed to the master boot record.
You need to either wipe the entire drive, or rewrite the standard msdos master boot record with "FDISK /MBR".

DaveDDS wrote on 2026-02-19, 19:33:

JKnightandKARR wrote on 2026-02-19, 04:22:

... BUT left the system on ...

Have you left it on this long before? ... there are hardware problems that "get better" (sometimes permanently ... sometimes temporarily) when power has been applied for a more lengthy amount of time.

Only like 5-10 seconds. This was like maybe 30-40 seconds without timing... but it did come up pretty normal with omly 5 sec delay with no drive installed.

akimmet wrote on 2026-02-19, 20:06:

Grub is installed to the master boot record.
You need to either wipe the entire drive, or rewrite the standard msdos master boot record with "FDISK /MBR".

That could be. I got 5-512Mb IDE DOMs off Ebay used, so could be. I'm going to remove the partition with my Win 11 system n try the Fdisk command. Thanks.

If you are not already aware, you will want to repartition from DOS. Modern Windows will align the partitions in ways incompatible with booting DOS.

akimmet wrote on 2026-02-20, 00:04:

If you are not already aware, you will want to repartition from DOS. Modern Windows will align the partitions in ways incompatible with booting DOS.

I have DOS install disks, I can remove the partition using DIsk Manager, then DOS should just see an empty new drive.

JKnightandKARR wrote on 2026-02-19, 21:11:

Only like 5-10 seconds. This was like maybe 30-40 seconds without timing... but it did come up pretty normal with omly 5 sec delay with no drive installed.

These kinds of time-related faults can be very "random" .. I've seen systems that worked after only few extra seconds to one that took minutes.

Probably work doing some testing - it it does fail at power-on time and somewhat reliably begin working after a "little while" this will help diagnose.

DaveDDS wrote on 2026-02-20, 00:54:

JKnightandKARR wrote on 2026-02-19, 21:11:

Only like 5-10 seconds. This was like maybe 30-40 seconds without timing... but it did come up pretty normal with omly 5 sec delay with no drive installed.

These kinds of time-related faults can be very "random" .. I've seen systems that worked after only few extra seconds to one that took minutes.

Probably work doing some testing - it it does fail at power-on time and somewhat reliably begin working after a "little while" this will help diagnose.

I've never had it do anything as far as delays, since I've had it, new idk, but might not hurt to do some power ons n time them to when the screen comes on or starts to boot or something.

OK, been a few days, but I have an update. I have the IDE DOM installed, and the system DOES see it, and sets it up automatically, but I have a small holdup that prevents me from using it. If I boot the system up using the Bootdisk, it DOES have C:\ so YAY!, HOWEVER..... I cleared the partition, or so I thought... I tried installing DOS 6.22, and the disks said the drive already had DOS installed, which, after clearing the partition, shouldn't have anything, and the system should see it as a new drive. It didn't even as about any partition setup, just went straight to where to install DOS. I got to Disk #3, after some issues which I got it to go past on Disk #2, and got to Command.com @ 99%, where the system seemed to freeze at, I tried rebooting, and got a "Missing O.S." message. So, going to try to redo the OS again after another attempt at deleting the partition. Sadly, I am unable to use my adapter since it doesn't seem to be working anymore. Tried multiple USB ports and 2 different systems, so it seems to be my 3-in-1 adapter. Also going to try to make new DOS disks, just need to get files from a friend of mine. Thanks again all, for the help on this. I've been trying to get this to work for like 2.5 yrs now, I think??... IDK.... The original drive fried on me, so got lucky n found a replacement, but who knows how long it'll work.

Did you write a new master boot record as Akimmet mentioned? Just to be sure.. Aaand, not to be "the guy" but maybe it is something totally else that is going. Bad RAM can give strange seemingly random errors. Old rusty boxes of electronics CAN have more than one issue at a time.

Joakim wrote on 2026-03-06, 15:03:

Did you write a new master boot record as Akimmet mentioned? Just to be sure.. Aaand, not to be "the guy" but maybe it is something totally else that is going. Bad RAM can give strange seemingly random errors. Old rusty boxes of electronics CAN have more than one issue at a time.

I can try that, I tried to use DOS install disks after removing the partition, but somehow it didn't work, so will try again. It does work fine with the old style HDD installed, including when I installed DOS 6.22 on it, so I don't really think it is the system itself, so it could just be picky about the MBR, will get back soon. Right now, no projects as my house currently looks like got hit inside by a tornado.... rewiring whole house... 🤣

I have a similar issue with my Mac SE/30 that I've been putting off fixing. A few comments.

1)
Do you have the 512 MB CF card setup correctly in the BIOS? This is how my CF cards look in the BIOS on my 286 test systems:
Cycls = 995
heads = 16
Precomp/Wpcom = 65535
Landz = 994 (my notes indicate that you can also use 995)
Sect = 63

Depending on if your BIOS uses mebibyte or megabyte, the total size could be either 489.7 mebibytes or 513.5 megabytes.

2)
After booting from a floppy diskette (e.g. Windows 98 system dis), did you run fdisk /mbr on the CF-card C-drive? You would need to do this because it looks like your CF card had Linux on it previously.

3)
Following which, did you go into fdisk and delete any old partitions, then setup a single primary partition of the size shown by the BIOS (~512 MB)? Did FDISK detect the full 490/513 MB?

4)
After fdisk finished, did your reboot the system from the floppy and run format c:

5)
Only after 1-4, you should boot from a MS-DOS installation boot diskette.

You mentioned that you have an old HDD that can (sorta?) work. Failing 1-5, I would use any modern or old linux installation to make a clone of that failing hard drive with the command line app dd. I'd first make an image of the HDD to save on a modern installation, then copy that image over to the CF card. The CF card can either be connected via your IDE/CF card to an IDE-to-USB adaptor (for use in Linux), or connected directly to an IDE port if your Linux,box, if it has an onboard IDE port. I have a few systems for which I still need to make dd images of IDE drives. I find it too bothersome to open the case and use the onboard IDE port for this cloning procedure, so I use a cheap IDE-to-USB adaptor I found on Amazon.

Alternately, you can use something more graphical like Norton Ghost 2003 to clone your failing IDE hard drive onto the CF card directly. Similar to the Linux procedure, you'd put your failing HDD and 512 MB CF card into a working and easily accessible system. I normally would pull out something like a socket 7 system to perform this clone job. You'd use a Norton Ghost 2003 boot diskette rather than run Ghost from within a Windows installation.

6)
I agree that marginal DRAM/SRAM, or an overheating CPU can cause some of your symptoms. However, getting to 99% DOS installation, then hang, hints to me that your BIOS configuration of the HDD isn't correct or in agreement with the formatted partition from FDISK. Don't rely on the MS-DOS installation process to partition your HDD, pre-partition in FDISK only. I vaguely recall running into this problem somewhere along the line.

Best of luck!

EDIT: thinking about this further, I wonder if the IDE-integrated power pins on the CF-IDE adaptor are a bit loose, that is, the have poor contact. They can either have poor contact going to the CF card, or on the pins leading to the motherboard. The pins on the old harddrive might be just a little fatter, making tighter contact.