First post, by kodt
I am attempting to get a Pentium II machine up and running. But I am having difficulty with the hard drives and I am trying to rule out an issue with the motherboard.
Motherboard is a MSI MS-6119 v1.1 BX2 (non cpu plug in play version). Latest BIOS is flashed (v2.10).
Pentium II 350 MHZ
384 MB Ram (3 x 128 MB sticks)
I have tried with 3 different hard drives:
6.4 GB Quantum Fireball - (Unknown condition)
60GB Maxtor - (Was brand new in packaging)
30GB Maxtor - (Known working, pulled from another system)
The issue is the auto detect in BIOS does not seem to work. The only way to get the system to recognize the drives is manually entering the information using the old CHS method. The BIOS will allow me to configure sizes up to 32GB. If I leave the settings on Auto, it will report a "Primary Master Hard Disk Fail" message.
If I manually enter the cylinders etc.. the system will continue to boot but FDISK freezes on the "Verifying Drive Integrity 0%" step. Other tools such as Maxtor MaxBlast will detect the drive but give an error when attempting to partition. Windows Setup will also fail when attempting to create a partition. SeaTools does not detect any drives. Free FDISK is able to create a primary DOS partition, but will occasionally give a "Error Reading hard Disk: Time Out" error message. Super FDISK strangely reports 4 identical partitions on the drive, but Free FDISK will show no partitions.
I have tried swapping out the IDE cable with no change.
When I manually configure the hard drive in BIOS, I am unsure which mode is correct however (Normal, Large, LBA, Auto).
So I am wondering what my next steps should be.