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486dx rebuild controller

M

medi-useA-Redux

YES!....

I have an OLD IBM 486DX with 24 meg ram I am hoping to set up as a controller {yes I know the dangers...this is practice} and as a library for all my D/L grow info...

I have a little problem however...I have , in the last 10 hrs, eaten an entire half strength brownie...:)...and cannot figure out HOW to get my cd rom working...

I have a 350 meg drive with win 3.X and the windows plus upgrade {win95 equivalent}..I have other, unformatted drives to add later, but first I must get dos to boot the ubuntu cd in the drive...

This drive previously had a cdrom mounted on drive G but no longer has th@ many drives...

I have no floppy...but I can get the bios to recognize the cdrom...I just have to initialize it from command line....

Could someone help out?

muA
 
M

medi-useA-Redux

it would help....if the bios booted from cdrom....I have 2 boot options....floppy drive or drive 0 . as I said...it's an OOOOLD pooter!:)

muA
 
T

TwoOhSix!

Member
Find a version of linux that can fit on a floppy (they do exist) or multiple floppy installs work too, where the file is split onto a few disks.
 
friscofrqancis

friscofrqancis

Member
You're gonna need another computer to build a book disk. You should be able to find a boot image that will work with your box and set it up with a win/dos utility called rawrite.
I did a quick search and found (but did not read) thishttps://help.ubuntu.com/community/SmartBootManager. There are several distros that come with the rawrite util on the install DVD or CD set.
Win 3.x came on floppies, so if you want to ultimately install windoze you might be better off searching for a set of those.
 
love?

love?

Member
Sweet computer man, 24 megs and everything, that would have been my dream back in '94.

MS-DOS doesn't support CD-ROM drivers out of the box. You will need to load the drive specific drivers either in the autoexec.bat/config.sys files when booting or you might be able just run some executable. If you're unlucky and it's an SCSI drive (or whatever weird standard) you will need to do the same for SCSI drivers too. Try to look for the driver(s) on your drive and if no luck just google for the brand/model of your drive and look for the MS-DOS drivers.

It's gonna be a fucking PITA probably tho. Installing hardware always was back in the DOS days and having to locate some two decades old drivers makes it worse...

You might also want to try if Windows supports the drive. No idea what the "plus upgrade" is but at least real Win95 has much better CD-ROM drive support than pure DOS.

The floppy disk idea is a good one, get the debian netinst disks for example if the computer has a network card (or you can put one in for the duration of the installation). Even if you have no floppy drive or disks both should be easy and almost free to get ahold of. I've also found simple null modem transfers to be a slow but reliable and easy way to get data to all kinds of old computers.
 
W

whyme2

Member
Sounds like a fun project. But its gonna be a challenge. See all the problemsa listed above. Remember that with 95 and earlier you must adjust your autoexec.bt and config.sys files - frequently for every program.
Drivers are going to be a PITA. Most drives made after 2000, will not have drivers for 95.
Good Luck
And don't forget yhe dip switch settings.
 
gingerale

gingerale

Active member
Veteran
drivers are not going to be a PITA. no, you dont need MSCDEX or any of that bullshit in win95. just install the generic cd-rom drivers and you're gold. if you want to access the cd-rom in dos mode, then find and download atapicd.sys, and use that in conjunction with mscdex. that file is a generic ATAPI cd-rom driver that will work on practically any IDE cd-rom, unless yours is an extremely old first generation drive based on some proprietary standard, highly unlikely.
 
M

medi-useA-Redux

Thanks for the input:)

I've GOT the drivers on the hd....somewhere!...they run the cdrom...I just do not know wh@ they are and how to find them....or how to use them!...I do not have a working floppy drive...

The windows on the drive is windows 3.X with an upgrade to make it win95 compliant...but underneath it is still dos...:)

I also have dos 6 and freedos on the drive..as I have not used dos for years...I've lost my dostouch:)


muA

EDIT Success!...I finally got the drivers found, installed and running...I now have win95plus running...I have a sound blaster 28.8 dsvd onp voice 115baud ctl3001_dev0004 soundcard/modem installed....I now just have to figure out how to connect the 486 modem to my computer or my modem...


suggestions?

muA

I'm rebuilding this as a WeedlLibrary reader and will be experimenting with both aduino programming and and serial LPT control....funfunfun!:)

muA
 
M

medi-useA-Redux

Just got some old hardware from the pooter shop...cd reader/burner, a working 1.44 floppy {YAY!} and a usb/card reader...

This should get the old girl working...then I can start putting my WeedLibrary together...

muA
 
D

DogBoy

Actually it's as easy as typing "win 3.11 boot disk with CDROM driver" into google and finding an old boot disk. All it requires is a plain boot disk you can make from the command line with the cddriver dll file and a link in the startup files. Fit's on a disk and used to be my main resource when i was an admin back then.

If it's hard your doing it wrong!
 
love?

love?

Member
No results found for "win 3.11 boot disk with CDROM driver". ;)

I think your memory might be playing some tricks on you DogBoy... Win 3.11 boot disk? Win 3.11 is an MS-DOS program. You boot into dos and run win.exe (or your autoexec.bat does).
 
D

DogBoy

love? said:
No results found for "win 3.11 boot disk with CDROM driver". ;)

I think your memory might be playing some tricks on you DogBoy... Win 3.11 boot disk? Win 3.11 is an MS-DOS program. You boot into dos and run win.exe (or your autoexec.bat does).
Click to expand...

Memory serves me very well. I am aware that a boot disk avoids the installed/to be installed OS, i just call it a windows boot disk for ease.


If you dont find what you want as a download in google you can simply go to the dos prompt of any machine and use the format command with switches to create a basic disk, then find a copy of mscdex and update the batch file to point to it.

The command for autoexec.bat is C:\Windows\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /L:D ( Replace D with whatever letter you want the drive to be )

you can also prefix the config.sys with 'lh' to ensure the file loads high to save memory
 
love?

love?

Member
He could do that yes. Although the benefits of doing that are a lost on me though especially as he already has the system working from the hard drive; why would he want to start messing around with floppies...

Anyway, I'm not sure I understand the question about the modem. The 28.8 modem (Creative Labs Phone Blaster?) is a phone-line dialup modem. You connect it to the telephone socket... if you want to connect the 486 to another computer or an adsl/cable modem you need a network adapter. If you buy one from the pooter store make sure to get something that fits your computer (your computer may only have ISA slots instead of PCI).
 
M

medi-useA-Redux

Thanks guys...I'm working on it...:)

I was just checking if it was possible to connect through the soundblaster modem to another pooter...but it seems it's more hassel than it's worth...

I finally got some working peripherals {cd reader/burner, 1.44 floppy and a usb/card reader} and I've made a redhat linux boot disk...I have a pc mag redhat cd...but the X windows is damaged...I'm gonna install redhat, get it to boot DSL and then install th@.

With luck, it'll be up and running this w/e and then I start building my weedthourous!:)

muA
 
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