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Is this an FAQ yet??
I'm sure you've probably heard this one asked a million times - but my web
searches have left me high and dry. Surely some experts here can help or point me to the correct website?? I have 4 hard drives here that I snatched out of other computers in desparation to make them work on a little 386 I found for the rugrats. I thought that by using my (working!!) computer to format these hard drives, at least 1 would work, but it ain't so! I use Win 98, and loaded every hard drive on my computer as a removable disk (only way the things would show up). I also had to format them. But none of the formatted hard drives work in the 386! :-( Oh - and wouldn't you know, the floppy drive on the 386 bit the dust before we even met. I figured by playing with the hard drive - (adding stuff to it, that is), I wouldn't need a floppy drive. I'll load the Win98 formatted hard disk into the 386, start the dern thing, and get a message "HDD controller failure." Now I know that isn't true!! - Because... .... well, the 386's operating system (win 3.1) worked BEFORE I started messing with its original hard drive and... and... I'm too embarassed to tell my kids I ScReWeD it up! What do I DO!???????? :-( |
#2
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I have 4 hard drives here that I snatched out of other computers in
desparation to make them work on a little 386 I found for the rugrats. I thought that by using my (working!!) computer to format these hard drives, at least 1 would work, but it ain't so! I use Win 98, and loaded every hard drive on my computer as a removable disk (only way the things would show up). I also had to format them. But none of the formatted hard drives work in the 386! :-( I'm not sure how Windows formats removable drives. I know that formatting some flash memory cards via windows makes them unuseable in some digital cameras, because of the odd formatting. Windows sees flash memory as removeable drives. Or, have you formatted them as FAT32? You may need to format them as FAT16. Use a Win95 boot disk to do the formatting as this cannot format as FAT32. I would Install each drive, one at a time, as the only drive on the primary IDE. Boot using a Win95 boot disk, then fdisk and format them like that. I would also get a floppy drive and do it in the 'new' 386 box where they are going to live. Adam S |
#3
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"Electric Nachos" buenos.dias@mother.****er wrote in message ... I'm sure you've probably heard this one asked a million times - but my web searches have left me high and dry. Surely some experts here can help or point me to the correct website?? I have 4 hard drives here that I snatched out of other computers in desparation to make them work on a little 386 I found for the rugrats. I thought that by using my (working!!) computer to format these hard drives, at least 1 would work, but it ain't so! I use Win 98, and loaded every hard drive on my computer as a removable disk (only way the things would show up). I also had to format them. But none of the formatted hard drives work in the 386! :-( Oh - and wouldn't you know, the floppy drive on the 386 bit the dust before we even met. I figured by playing with the hard drive - (adding stuff to it, that is), I wouldn't need a floppy drive. I'll load the Win98 formatted hard disk into the 386, start the dern thing, and get a message "HDD controller failure." Now I know that isn't true!! - Because... ... well, the 386's operating system (win 3.1) worked BEFORE I started messing with its original hard drive and... and... I'm too embarassed to tell my kids I ScReWeD it up! What do I DO!???????? :-( How big are the disks? I've had no luck with anything over 100Mb in my 386. hamman |
#4
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"Electric Nachos" buenos.dias@mother.****er said:
I'll load the Win98 formatted hard disk into the 386, start the dern thing, and get a message "HDD controller failure." Now I know that isn't true!! If I remember correctly, I had to manually input the cylinders, sectors and whatnot into the bios on all my early (386 & 486) computers. http://www.wimsbios.com/index.htm?/HTML1/advanced.html The hard drives are almost certainly too large to work properly with a 386 bios; there are operating system limits also, you may need to use a hard drive utility. http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddrive/68 http://www.educom.demon.co.uk/info/disk.html Last thing, most modern cables are ATA66 or above, while 386s used ATA33 cables. It might make a difference or it might not. -- Mac Cool |
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