Does anyone know anything about old computers?

[TUD1]

I helped somebody move some furniture and I ended up with this computer for free. I have absolutely no clue how to properly boot this up, or even how to get it out of the setup menu.

[Jon A.]

That's a sweet looking minitower. Unfortunately I can't see what's on the screen.

[bob91343]

Put in a boot disk and it should come up okay.

[Username1]

Looks to me like the computer is in a BIOS setup screen, If it always comes up
like that, choose the menu item on the left that includes some words including
"save" aim for save with OUT keeping changes, or look for "load defaults" that
would send it back to factory settings. If it still does not boot, then its possible
the Boot Disk has some failure, or the computer's BIOS has been set to not use
the correct disk as its boot disk..... Just for starters.

In case you have not done anything in the BOIS screen before, be prepared, you
will only be able to navigate using arrow keys, esc. return, and a few other keys.

There should be some help items available, just take your time....
Check with The WIZ (google) for help, there is lots of how to navigate BOIS
stuff, google it!

That machine looks old enough to be Win 3.1, or 95, with outside chance of 98.
Lets see what he finds....

.

[RetroHacker]

Yes, I know a great deal about old computers - although, that one isn't particularly old... Heh.

The BIOS is going to be pretty much the same as any current BIOS (with the exception of EFI). If it's not booting, chances are that either the hard drive is bad, or the BIOS settings have gotten cleared and it isn't detecting the hard drive.

Boot from a floppy and see if it comes up, it should.

But, you'll want to use the hard drive - see if you can get the BIOS to detect the drive - many BIOSes have a Autodetect hard drive function you can run, if you can't set the primary drive type to AUTO. If not, pop it open and see what kind of hard drive is in there.

-Ian

[snelson903]

hard drive probley crashed or gone.

[TUD1]

I have talked with one of my friends on YT and he said that the hard drive is probably shot, and he said he would send me a used fully functional Seagate. I have also been informed that this most likely has an 80486 processor. I will probably have this machine up and running in the next few weeks or so.

[Jon A.]

Definitely a 486, it's right there on the screen. Clock doubler CPU running at 66MHz. Depending on what you want to use it for you may need more RAM as it has only 4 megs. RAM aside, it'll run Windows 95 without breaking a sweat. It'll run 98 as well but I wouldn't recommend it.

[RetroHacker]

Is the hard drive actually bad, or is the BIOS just cleared and not recognizing it? Set the type for the primary master to AUTO, or, if that's not an option, run the auto-detect disks and see if it finds it. This should be new enough to have one or both of those features.

There's nothing special about the drives machines of this era use. It's just IDE. The BIOS won't see anything past 8.4gb though, (540MB or so on even older machines) but many larger drives can be jumpered to report themselves as lower capacity, or it's possible to fool the BIOS into seeing a larger drive as a smaller one, and either using it at that reduced capacity, or installing a drive overlay program to allow you to use the rest of it.

Linux doesn't use the system BIOS for detecting drives. I'm running a 66mhz 486 as a utility box, and it's got a 1.2 gig drive that it boots the OS from, and a 120gig drive for data, using the original disk controller.

-Ian

[Nick_the_'Nole]

Looks like it's probably this motherboard. Pretty decent board, actually.

A random thought here: the BIOS is of the right age that it probably has a 2.1GB hard drive limit... and on some of those old boards, having a drive larger than 2.1GB would cause the system to hang on boot if it was set to autodetect the drive. (With autodetect being the default setting, meaning it'll revert to that if the clock battery dies.)

You might try going into the 'Standard CMOS Features' section of the BIOS setup and manually set the drive parameters of the primary master to 1024 Cyls, 16 Heads, and 63 Sectors... then save the setting, exit, and see if it boots.

[TUD1]

I will try programming the computer to recognize the HDD. I won't have access to the computer until this afternoon.

[smokey]

I to work on old and new computers. From what I can see I that the hard drive is not present and or you have no operating system. It could also be that the hard drive had crashed. Due to low ram in the computer and being a 800mgz processor. You would have to do a lot of updates on the board and power supply Upgrade. But if you happen to find a computer with a good hard drive with windows 95 you should be able to do more. Not so well on line but a good gaming computer. I hope that this will help you somehow.

[Username1]

First you should see if the battery is in good shape. A completely dead battery can
cause some problems. Be sure the voltages are correct. Listen inside, can you hear
the HD spin up? Fans running? All plugs in the HD? Be sure the HD is a size correct
for the board. Set the clock, turn it off unplug it for a hour, does it restart and keep time?
Can you go through the bios, make changes save them, and are they kept?
If all that seems ok, then try and figure out if the HD, if present is ok...
Can it fure up on flopy? Most likely need DOS 3-5 as in version 3.1 - somewhere around
version 5.
Use fdisk to see if the drive can be detected.
Put in another drive, as mentioned 2GB or less..... See if it detects.....
Remember another drive with win 95 won't necessarily run, or boot to anything
meaningful on a computer with a different board.

Be sure memory is still installed in the way is should be for that board.
An older board like that may not go from one device to another looking
for a boot drive, it may just go to the one selected.

good luck.

.