This message may be several years late, but I hope someone has a long
memory and can help.

I have an old 486, running Win 3.1 with 2 hard drives (one master and
one slave) which will no longer boot because of CMOS problems (backups
are no longer an option). I have obtained a Pentium II computer and
the plan was to install Win 98, hook up the old hard disks and copy
the data files over to the new computer's hard drive.

Windows 98 installed okay, and when I hooked up the old master hard
drive, I could read it as drive D: and used Windows Explorer to copy
the files to the new C:. However, the same procedure with the old
slave drive doesn't work. And, according to Murphy's Law, everything
that is really important is on the old slave.

When I look in the BIOS, the computer seems to be able to see the
drive (it picks up the size of the disk), but Dos/Windows does not
report it being there. I have tried configuring the hard drive as a
master, but this doesn't seem to help. I have also tried just booting
off of the old master, but get an error "Error loading OS" and the
computer freezes.

Any suggestions on how to get the new computer to play nice with the
old hard drive?

David

Technical stuff that may be important:

New computer: IBM Personal Computer 300GL, Pentium II, 400 MHz, 64MB
Ram
New hard drive: Quantum Fireball, 6.4 GB
Old master drive: Maxtor 71260AT
Old slave drive: Fujitsu MPB3021AT, 2.1 GB
BIOS Machine type/model: 627568U
BIOS Date: 03/16/99
BIOS Mode: Desktop