I am rebuilding a 486 sx2-50 and originally built it with 2 hard drives, C drive being a 120 MB and D drive a 160 MB. I had some trouble with the BIOS detecting the drives but succeeded in the end.
I then upgraded to a single 850 MB drive, using ontrack software to partition the drive. I did this with the drive not installed into the PC. All went well and I then copied the contents of the original drives to the new 850 without problems. I then disconnected all the drives and installed and connected the 850 into the PC.
The machine failed to boot from C. All I got was the message "Hard Disk controller failure" and I had to boot from A drive.
Despite changing controller cards, positioning in different slots, re-partitioning the 850 as a DOS 540 I still get the same message.
Once I boot from A drive I can access C drive as normal so there appears to be no problem with either C drive or the controller card, but if I go into the BIOS and autodetect the hard drive it takes upwards of a minute to detect it. If I reinstall the old drives the BIOS will not detect them.
Also if I try to run the ontrack software to partition the 850 drive it reports that there is no hard drive.
Do I have a hardware problem with the BIOS or motherboard or have I missed something?
1. you can see the drive in your BIOS...
2. you can boot to floopy...
FIRSTLY
Before we go any further - Try and get an update for your BIOS. OTHERWISE - ADD THE DRIVE MANNUALLY. The 486 BIOS Auto detect feature in some BIOS versions made the assumption the 518MG was as big as was going to ever get (a throwback from the 386 days).
IF the above fails
- this should work ...
goto WWW.maxtor.COM and download MAXDRIVE. (a bootable floppy image) on this floppy disk is a program called EZdrive. I have used both these programs thse oler drives. EZmax will also allow you to have one partition of 850.
It seems your computer can see the partition -
Is the above correct ?
Stabbling the dark here...
try coping sys.com from \windows\command.. A:It should still be on the harddisk you can access when you boot from floppy.
then type A:\SYS c:
Once it is bootable, and a C:\ then make the other drive(s) D:\(a slave) and just copy....