By the way, have you made a backup of the BIOS ? I need that for my page about HP vectras ^^

No, I haven't backed it up yet. I've tried doing so and I keep just getting an empty file.

Also, I managed to find another hard drive that works with this machine and the problem still remains...

have you tried the earliest version of uniflash possible (available here : http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=19455) ? it managed to backup the bios of my HP vectra successfully !

How big is the new hdd ?

Alright, I think I was able to dump the BIOS. I'll upload it soon.

The hard drive is 1.2GB, similar to the old one. By the way, I want to benchmark this drive, but Speedsys always gets stuck at "Determining Memory Type." Any ideas on that?

Okay here's the BIOS:
https://mega.nz/#!i1NhRQpY!5o_CxxvaRzEYD4L7Np … HQ2kBD0pGWY0DZg

thepirategamerboy12 wrote:

Okay here's the BIOS:
https://mega.nz/#!i1NhRQpY!5o_CxxvaRzEYD4L7Np … HQ2kBD0pGWY0DZg

Thank you very much!!!!!! You are the first, who uploaded this bios in the whole wide internet!!!!!! Thank you again!! You are a god!!!!!!!!!!!

Replace the hard drive! The pauses is early sign of failure on early hard drive is not as sophisticated as later hard drives were.

You can use any PATA up to 40GB or so, hard drive even the computer sees it as 8GB, just go ahead and partition with your favorite OS.

Cheers, pentiumspeed

pentiumspeed wrote:

Replace the hard drive! The pauses is early sign of failure on early hard drive is not as sophisticated as later hard drives were.

You can use any PATA up to 40GB or so, hard drive even the computer sees it as 8GB, just go ahead and partition with your favorite OS.

Cheers, pentiumspeed

I just said I replaced it with another one of a similar size, and it has the same issue. I doubt both drives themselves are somehow bad in the exact same way.

thepirategamerboy12 wrote:

pentiumspeed wrote:

Replace the hard drive! The pauses is early sign of failure on early hard drive is not as sophisticated as later hard drives were.

You can use any PATA up to 40GB or so, hard drive even the computer sees it as 8GB, just go ahead and partition with your favorite OS.

Cheers, pentiumspeed

I just said I replaced it with another one of a similar size, and it has the same issue. I doubt both drives themselves are somehow bad in the exact same way.

...unless the problem is the hard disk controller.

If you have a controller card you could try whether your problems go away if you use that. But before that, try drive overlay software.

I don't have a controller card on hand. What would you recommend for a 486? Also, at least with the on-board IDE, the HDD reads at about 1.7mb per second. Is that considered acceptable for a 486?

It looks allright, my vectra performs at 1.8MB/sec

However with an ISA controller it might be slower. I suspect the "VL" in the name of the computer to mean "VLB" (or it's just for the "VLSI" chipset that's inside)

I see. Other than the already known stuck access issue, this drive seems to work fine. The only different speed-related thing I noticed compared to the old drive is that it actually takes about 2 seconds to create a directory, which I don't think I've ever seen before. Microsoft Office on Win 3.1 took ages to install (assuming because it has lots of different folders).

Sorry that this is an old thread, but I got back to tackling the issue again. I took out the CPU and it is a DX2-66, and not a 50mhz one like the BIOS says. Hmm...

I messed with the jumpers and now it's reporting correctly as a DX2 66. Sadly, that didn't fix the HDD issue, but at least that was taken care of.

Well, I tried EZ-Drive on an 8GB OG Xbox HDD I unlocked and the issue went away. Even installing EZ-Drive on the old 1.2GB HDD made it stop. Hmm...

Awesome !

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2019-03-10, 04:41:

Okay here's the BIOS:
https://mega.nz/#!i1NhRQpY!5o_CxxvaRzEYD4L7Np … HQ2kBD0pGWY0DZg

Hi! Can you tell me how you backed the Vectra's bios? I tried uniflash (pci bus not found error) and nssi (made a 66kb bio file)..
Thanks!!!

sylon wrote on 2021-04-14, 19:50:

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2019-03-10, 04:41:

Okay here's the BIOS:
https://mega.nz/#!i1NhRQpY!5o_CxxvaRzEYD4L7Np … HQ2kBD0pGWY0DZg

Hi! Can you tell me how you backed the Vectra's bios? I tried uniflash (pci bus not found error) and nssi (made a 66kb bio file)..
Thanks!!!

Ok its worked! 😀 With an older uniflash.. 1.18..
Actually I found someone who has a VL2 with a Ga.04.06 bios, that's why i needed.
Now i have to figuredout how to flash it back to my Vectra 😀

Can you share that version with us ? I'd like to add it here 😀 http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/7243

Deksor wrote on 2021-04-14, 20:30:

Can you share that version with us ? I'd like to add it here 😀 http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/7243

Of course! As soon as i get it! 😀