I am curious as to what use are you trying to do with the old
286 computer?
On Dec 1, 2010 9:18 AM, "brucehvn" <unet@brucehbase.org> wrote:
> A client of a company I work for gave us an old AST 286 machine (512K
> ram) that they have been using for many years, but the old original
> hard drive had finally started giving out. It was an old MFM or RLL
> drive.
>
> I decided the best course of action was to remove the existing fixed
> disk controller card and replace it with an IDE controller and one of
> many old IDE 1 to 5 GB hard drives I have.
>
> I purchased a Promise EIDEMax II IDE controller card from eBay, brand
> new in the box. At first when installing it into the 286, it acted as
> if the card was not recognized at all. There was no sign of the
> card's bios at boot time and running their plug and play configuration
> utility would just hang as if it could not find the card. I put the
> card in a different machine and was able to run the PNPUTIL program to
> disable PNP support and configure the card with standard parameters as
> described in the manual.
>
> When I put the card back in the 286, it was recognized, the bios
> screen comes up, I can even go in the card's bios and change settings
> as necessary. Everything seems to be happy. However, once I connect
> any IDE drive to the controller, it hangs at boot at the point it
> should be displaying the list of detected drives. According to the
> manual, it should display the list of drives, then the message "BIOS
> installed successfully" and then continue to boot. If I disconnect
> the drive cable, then it boots up from a floppy with no problem. I've
> tried 4 different hard drives ranging from 1 to 4.6 GB, Fujitsu,
> Quantum, and Seagate brands, but no luck. All the drives have been
> tested and definitely work in another machine. I'm using DOS 6.0 to
> boot, but at the point of the hang, nothing has been loaded yet from
> the floppy drive. I've tried using a different IDE cable as well,
> just in case.
>
> I've checked DOS msd.exe for memory/irq conflicts, etc, but can see
> nothing unusual. The card's BIOS is in an area that is unused (D000-
> DBFF), and I've set the primary port on the card to each of the 4
> settings of Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quad, which basically
> switches the IRQs and Ports among various choices, but no change. The
> computer only has a video card, and memory card. The floppy
> controller is on the MB. Oh, and also I've tried messing with the
> computer's BIOS settings for the fixed disk. Normally I have it set
> to none, but have tried a few different disk types, but it doesn't
> seem to make a difference.
>
> Anyway, I'm baffled. Everything appears to be in order and this setup
> seems like it should be working according to the manual for the
> Promise card. These drives seem like they are from the right era for
> this card.
>
> --
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>
-- > A client of a company I work for gave us an old AST 286 machine (512K
> ram) that they have been using for many years, but the old original
> hard drive had finally started giving out. It was an old MFM or RLL
> drive.
>
> I decided the best course of action was to remove the existing fixed
> disk controller card and replace it with an IDE controller and one of
> many old IDE 1 to 5 GB hard drives I have.
>
> I purchased a Promise EIDEMax II IDE controller card from eBay, brand
> new in the box. At first when installing it into the 286, it acted as
> if the card was not recognized at all. There was no sign of the
> card's bios at boot time and running their plug and play configuration
> utility would just hang as if it could not find the card. I put the
> card in a different machine and was able to run the PNPUTIL program to
> disable PNP support and configure the card with standard parameters as
> described in the manual.
>
> When I put the card back in the 286, it was recognized, the bios
> screen comes up, I can even go in the card's bios and change settings
> as necessary. Everything seems to be happy. However, once I connect
> any IDE drive to the controller, it hangs at boot at the point it
> should be displaying the list of detected drives. According to the
> manual, it should display the list of drives, then the message "BIOS
> installed successfully" and then continue to boot. If I disconnect
> the drive cable, then it boots up from a floppy with no problem. I've
> tried 4 different hard drives ranging from 1 to 4.6 GB, Fujitsu,
> Quantum, and Seagate brands, but no luck. All the drives have been
> tested and definitely work in another machine. I'm using DOS 6.0 to
> boot, but at the point of the hang, nothing has been loaded yet from
> the floppy drive. I've tried using a different IDE cable as well,
> just in case.
>
> I've checked DOS msd.exe for memory/irq conflicts, etc, but can see
> nothing unusual. The card's BIOS is in an area that is unused (D000-
> DBFF), and I've set the primary port on the card to each of the 4
> settings of Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Quad, which basically
> switches the IRQs and Ports among various choices, but no change. The
> computer only has a video card, and memory card. The floppy
> controller is on the MB. Oh, and also I've tried messing with the
> computer's BIOS settings for the fixed disk. Normally I have it set
> to none, but have tried a few different disk types, but it doesn't
> seem to make a difference.
>
> Anyway, I'm baffled. Everything appears to be in order and this setup
> seems like it should be working according to the manual for the
> Promise card. These drives seem like they are from the right era for
> this card.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Computer Tech Support" group.
> To post to this group, send email to computer-tech-support@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to computer-tech-support+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/computer-tech-support?hl=en.
>
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Computer Tech Support" group.
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