Awww....

[arethinn]

The last time I tried to run my 486 (months ago, at least) it gave me a 1 long, 2 short error beep pattern, which means a display adapter problem. After removing and re-seating the card several times and numerous reboots, it consented to function. We figured the contacts had gotten corroded or something from sitting abandoned under the piano bench for months on end.

This time, it gave me first 8 short beeps - "Display Memory Read/Write Failure" - and after the buzz of memory test, 2 more short beeps - apparently "Parity Circuit Failure (incorrect memory checksum)".

In other words, the thing has got bit rot from disuse, and is pretty much toast. *snif*

My dad doubts that I can simply stick the hard drive in one of the other computers around here to see if what I was looking for today was actually even on the disk or not. I don't see why; I would have thought that reasonably-modern-IDE was reasonably-modern-IDE and that if I could find out the drive's parameters (heads/cylinders and all that), I could successfully install it. I think it dates from the mid 90s. I seem to recall that it's a 500 MB drive. ("Omigosh! Whatever will I do with all that space?") Is there some reason I'm not aware of that I can't temporarily put it in one of our current computers? (I say "temporarily" because everyone has all four IDE slots filled, heh.)

By the way, what I'm hoping to find there is a particular spirograph drawing program that I got on a disk of shareware that was included in a book describing each program on the disk. The book is ca. 1990, give or take; I know I ran the programs on our XT clone, which we bought in 1989 (IIRC). I have googled but not turned up anything which seems likely.

I have not even stopped to think whether I could even get it to run under XP or 2K, since its requirements are something like "MS-DOS 2.0".. well, burn that village when I pillage it.

Blergle.

Comments

[ungarsfragile.livejournal.com]

You should be able to pop the hard drive in, plug in the molex and ribbon cable, and access the drive with no trouble. Back the whole thing up to a CD before you start fiddling with data.. bit rot is contagious. (Alternatively, a peripheral high in bogosity will readily transmit bogons to low bogosity machine. Be wary.)

As for running your program.. try dosbox (http://dosbox.sf.net)?

[arethinn]

ha ha, you said "bogosity". ^_^

I'm not sure there's anything wrong with the hard drive. It didn't manage to get that far in the boot sequence this time. Last time it was fine, but then again, last time the memory was OK too.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you should be able to drop hard drive this into any modern machine and have it work just fine. If you set the BIOS to auto-detect the drive settings, then you won't even need to look up the heads, cylinders, and so forth. (Of course, auto-detection might rely on cooperation from the drive itself, which this drive probably doesn't know how to do.)

Don't forget to set the master/slave jumper(s) appropriately for wherever you're putting the drive in the temporary machine.

[arethinn]

Of course, auto-detection might rely on cooperation from the drive itself, which this drive probably doesn't know how to do.

That was my dad's opinion, but it's probably written down somewhere. Failing that it does have a brand and part number and I could probably figure it out.

Don't forget to set the master/slave jumper(s) appropriately for wherever you're putting the drive in the temporary machine.

Yeah, forgot that once. IIRC it just refused to see a drive in that slot.

[digitalsidhe.livejournal.com]

The drive should normally have the cylinders/heads/sectors info written on the label or case (though it may be in a format that makes little sense to anyone but a geek who knows what sie's looking for, such as "C/H/S: 999/16/64"). And yes, failing that, you should eb able to find the manufacturer and model number somewhere on it, then get the data from the manufacturer's web site.

Having an improperly jumpered drive will sometimes cause the computer not to see anything on that channel (primary or secondary), and could occasionally make it fail to detect any drives. All depending on the BIOS. But the problem would go away as soon as the jumper setting was corrected or the drive removed. No chance of permanent harm.

[arethinn]

The drive should normally have the cylinders/heads/sectors info written on the label or case

I seem to recall that our older ones didn't, and that it was in the documentation. I know all the ones I've installed recently have. I quite read the label without taking the drive out, though. (Currently it's sitting reassembled under the piano, since this is medium-sized surgery (in terms of hassle) which I don't feel like bothering with at the moment.)

Having an improperly jumpered drive will sometimes cause the computer not to see anything on that channel (primary or secondary), and could occasionally make it fail to detect any drives.

I only missed it the one time (hence example). We've been building up computers in this house since *koffkoff*. ^_^

[danodea.livejournal.com]

It depends on the variety of IDE. The oldest variety of IDE used a cable and cable pinout that varies from the last couple of revs (EIDE and UIDE). The oldest style cables won't fit modern controllers, and modern cables probably won't work on original-ide drives.

As long as it is at least EIDE compatible, you're probably OK.

You might have to do the manual configuration bit, but I'd try it, look in the bios, and see what it detected.

Good Luck!