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I am trying to fiqure out how to access the setup screen (drives, etc) on a Dell System 310 - 20MZ 386DX. It has a Pheonix ROM BIOS ver 1.10 A05. I'v tried CTRL-ALT-S, CTRL-ALT-ESC, and several others. Do I need some startup disk? Any Ideas? I'v no doco for this PC. Also, It has a single Connor 40MB Type 17 Hard Drive, no jumpers on the front. I want to add as a slave drive a Connor 170MB drive, no doco for any of this of course. How can I find out what the correct jumper settings should be? ANY HELP would be GREATLY APRECIATED.
13 responses total.
So far as I can recall, you hit <DEL> when it says to, when it's booting up. It should probably say on the screen. The IDE drives I've seen have jumpers on them. They're not on the "front" but rather on the circut board, usually on the bottom. There may be cryptic labels (c/d, or m/s), or they may be really cryptic and say J20 or something like that. With Maxtor; there's an 800 number (printed on the drive) where you can get jumper settings. With Connor, I think the best deal would be to talk to a Connor dealer, if such a creature exists. Failing that, the trick would be to call Connor directly. Usually, the drive contains enough information on the maker so that, if they're still in business at the same location, they can contacted.
Gennerally, only AMI bios have the "Hit <DEL> to go to Setup" messages. I don't think I've seen that from a Phoenix bios. I'd say to try every CTRL-ALT-??? sequence you can at boot time. You may be unlucky enough to have a machine that is old enough to not have the setup routine in rom. They originally came on a separate "setup" disk that you had to boot from. Those ussually get lost after a machine changes hands a few times.
I've seen computers with what I think were Phoenix BIOS chips which
entered the BIOS using CTRL-ALT-INS, CTRL-ALT-F1, CTRL-ALT-+, and which
required a floppy disk with a configuration program. (Most of the
floppy-only systems were 286's.) You usually don't have to enter the
keystroke command at boot time; you can do it any time (with Phoenix
BIOSes).
You might also try booting the computer and holding down the space
bar to force a keyboard error. That works with a Gateway computer,
anyway.
Yep, CTRL-ALT-INS was the magic sequence with an old Phoenix bios I had.
It's Ctrl-Alt-Esc on my Phoenix bios, but it has to wait until it's already started to load the OS. Doing that during the memory check does nothing.
GREAT! I got the setup screen to come up. It turns
out to be CTRL-ALT-ENTER that does it!? I also think
I have the jumpers figured out. However, in the setup
screen there were only 47 "Types" for hard drives, each
one with different cylinder, head, sectors, etc. values.
Of course none of these match the drive I'm trying to add:
Conner 170MB, 903 cyls, 8 heads, 46 sectors.
I did'nt see an option that would let you define a new Type.
Is there software that lets one define new types?
Thanks a MILLION gang for all the help!
It sounds like there are some differences between my Phoenix bios and yours, so this may not work for you, but among the hard drive types on mine is a "User Config." With that, you can input the specs for the hard drive by hand, rather than having to find a menu choice for it. My best bet for where to find User Config would be between 47 and 1.
Karl, with an IDE drive and an older BIOS, you just have to pick the
closest drive type which doesn't designate a drive larger than yours. If
you're installing DOS, don't use anything with a cylinder count higher
than 1024; DOS can't recognize cylinders above 1024.
The IDE controller, which is built into the hard drive (what you
probably think of as the "controller" is really an adapter) handles the
geometry of the hard drive internally. Most IDE drives really have 4
heads and a ton of cylinders, but your computer won't care. Just pick
something close to the right size. You might only get to use 80% of your
hard drive, but it's the best you'll be able to do.
Keeping in mind what jep said about hte number of cylinders, there is usually at LEAST one hd config that has +blank+ spaces for the heads, cyls, lz,,, etc. And that has typically been type 15(ish) and types 47 and 48. With those three drive types, you +should+ be able to enter the aprticualr critical information by hand ... and it'll work fine. If no, (and that would surprise me) then pick the type that has at least the right number of HEADS and lower on everything else if your numbers are higher - hmmm, that's an awkward way to say t .... If your drive is different from the avaiablle types, choose a configurations with the same number of heads, as your drive. And inside that variable (which pre-selects a sub-group of drive types) play blackjack with the rest of the numbers, up-to-but-not-greater-than the real numbers for your machine. The net-lag is horrid right now, so please forgive the typos and line length ...tnx
BIOSes designed before IDE drives became popular do not have programmable hard drive types. If your computer doesn't have a programmable drive type, it's probably a 386/25 or older. I don't know of any remedy for this deficiency, unless you can get replacement BIOS chips. (If you can get such a replacement, they are easy to install, at least they are if your BIOS chips are socketed -- most of them were. But I wouldn't know where to look for a new set of BIOS chips any more.)
(Even my 286-20 has programable drive types.) On Track Utilities, which use to come free with Seagate drives, might alow one to bypass the stuff in BIOS.
I'll have tocheck, but I +think+ Ihave an 8088 machine around here with a type 15 as a programmable drive (and it only went up to type 15).
Thanks everyone! I spoke with Dell tech support and they said the ROM BIOS for that system did'nt have a user coigurable "Type"I ended up using On Track Disk Manager to get the thing installed. So far so good. Thanks again folks.
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