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Question

PC can not access bios or boot with hard drive plug in.

Feb 22, 2015 10:08AM PST

so i have a VERY old pc i'm trying to revive. i have next to none for computer manufacturing information. when i start it up it flashes no information about how to access the BIOS or anything like that. i can boot from a live CD as long as a hard drive is not plugged in via a ribbon cable. when i turn it on it displays this:

Novel netware ready firmware v (940809)
(c) copyright 1991 - 1994 novel inc. all rights reserved
SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters DOS ODI Driver v1.10(00122Cool
(c) copyright 1998 SiS corp. all rights reserved
press <home> key to boot from Local Drive.
RPL-Rom-ADR: 0080 08c0 0001
RPL-Rom-IRQ: 11
RPL-Rom-PIO: D400

RPL-Rom-FFC: 1

it then count up to 5 and then it displays this:

searching for boot record from SCSI..Not Found

Boot Failure
Insert BOOT diskette in A:
Press any key when ready

all of these display regardless of weather or any cd/dvd drives or a keyboard is plugged in. any help is appreciated.

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
(NT) Did you try a floppy boot?
Feb 22, 2015 10:17AM PST
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PS. Some old machines didn't have on board BIOS setup.
Feb 22, 2015 10:22AM PST

You ran such from boot diskettes. This is forgotten lore.

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Answer
Holy carp!
Feb 22, 2015 10:15AM PST

Jurassic park?.
I can't answer this, but hang on in there.
Dafydd.

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Answer
one problem fixed, heres another
Feb 24, 2015 11:36AM PST

yes i had an old windows 98 floppy and that worked, i also managed to get into it by plugging two cd/dvd dives in at the same time. i now face a different issue. when booting from a live cd, it can't find the files when i have a hard drive plugged in. however when i unplug the hard drive it boots just fine. i have tried setting the boot order to cd usb hard drive, with no luck. its an old AMIBIOS. thank you. and yes, i have tried both puppy linux and lubuntu.

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Basic info is required
Feb 24, 2015 1:12PM PST

If its that old and you need to boot from floppy. I suggest you use the old rules for a HD connected. I *assume* you have old EIDE drive for a HD and this is a IBM type clone or system. If so, then make sure the HD is connected on the 1st IDE port(primary on mtrbd.) and uses last connection plus any jumpers have it as "master", CS doesn't apply. Place your CD drive on the "secondary" port of IDE. Set that CD drive as master as well, remove any 2nd CD drive for now. When done, boot from a bootable win98 floppy. That floppy should be a system floppy and have the format and system files required in order to start making the HD a bootable one and prepare it for use. If you need info on this process then google for win98 setup for HD and floppy required.

*NOTE* make sure you have a good CMOS(bios) battery present

tada -----Willy Happy

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The word is not good here.
Feb 24, 2015 11:43PM PST

Some old PCs had us entering the HDD parameters manually. Here we have one of those blasts from the past that could need that PLUS it may not have on board BIOS setup.

These are best avoided unless you have all the docs from those days.
Bob