Local pickup - Arche 386SX laptop

[rubber_jonnie]

Interesting. Not out of the woods until I can sort out that FDD though as I have no other way to install an OS otherwise...

As always, you will sort it out.

Thank you

[rubber_jonnie]

So, the floppy has leaky caps:

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IMG20240921113721.jpg (255.71 KiB) Viewed 97 times

As witnessed by the crusty bits and for the other caps, the dull solder.

Luckily there aren't any and I do have the right values to hand, which is unusual

Will try to get them done over the weekend, see what the difference is.

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, caps replaced, drive behaves the same...

Basically it does the track zero seek ok, then tries to boot but can't, and depending on the disk I uses I sometimes get the 'Non-system disk' error message and sometimes get a message to reboot.

What I may have to do is hook up the CF card to another machine and format it and SYS it, see if I can get it working that way. BIOS is correctly set for the drive, which is a 1.44MB device and it is trying to load, but just not getting the data off the disk.

I suppose I could format a disk as 360KB and see if it'll boot off that as it may be a head issue with head 1.

[HigashiJun]

Your issue could finally take more time than expected...

I was also thinking about leaking caps in the FDD, but it seems the problem is elsewhere.

Would you have a known working replacement drive ?

[rubber_jonnie]

Your issue could finally take more time than expected...

I was also thinking about leaking caps in the FDD, but it seems the problem is elsewhere.

Would you have a known working replacement drive ?

Unfortunately not, although I have lots of spare FDD's, it's a non-standard FDD with a 26 pin IDC plug that also carries power, so I may need to make up some sort of adapter to connect a standard FDD drive.

I've just been trying to set up a 128MB CF card using an adapter and my Libretto 100CT with Win98, but for some reason it won't see it, but it does see larger 2GB CF cards. I would need to figure out the BIOS settings for the 2GB card to make that work.

I have tried 360K, 720K and 1.44MB boot disks, but none work sadly. If I can get DOS onto the 128MB CF card I'll at least be able to see if I can boot, which I think should be feasible, but I'm wondering if there is a cable issue, so might recover the connectors and just put in new cable. The disk is spinning now which is something.

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, so what I have is some progress Sadly not on the FDD front, but definitely on the booting front.

I borrowed the 512MB CF card from my Book 8088 and set the BIOS to an appropriate size:

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And it booted just fine

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IMG20240922170051.jpg (293.96 KiB) Viewed 58 times

Whilst looking at the HDD config in the BIOS I also found that it's limited to 1GB, so whilst the 128MB & 512MB cards work, my spare 2GB cards won't, the bios simply won't allow for any larger.

So I need to see if I have any 1GB cards at the back of the drawers, and if not I may have to pick some up. I may also look at finally getting my XT-IDE card built as that may allow me to set up new CF cards in my Amstrad Alt-386, which has ISA slots being a luggable.

It may also be that whilst the Libretto won't see the 128MB card, it may see 512Mb or 1GB cards since it does see the 2 GB cards.

If I can get it running at least, it means I don't have to rely on the FDD for getting software on board.

[stephen_usher]

Will it not see the larger cards (and think that they're smaller) if you set the BIOS to 1GB then?

1GB is a strange limit. 12GB would be more natural as that's when you run out of normal CHS space and have to change to LBA.

[rubber_jonnie]

Will it not see the larger cards (and think that they're smaller) if you set the BIOS to 1GB then?

1GB is a strange limit. 12GB would be more natural as that's when you run out of normal CHS space and have to change to LBA.

I've not tried partitioning them to 1GB TBH, I probably should.

The BIOS uses CHS manually set as a Type 47 or higher, but all the combos I've tried only allow for a max of 1GB, anything larger it refuses to calculate the drive size.

[stephen_usher]

I wonder if the BIOS has a 11 bit cylinder (12 bit signed) limit.

see: https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/Large-Disk-4.html

[rubber_jonnie]

I wonder if the BIOS has a 11 bit cylinder (12 bit signed) limit.

see: https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/Large-Disk-4.html

Interesting article and it seems if I stick to 4095 cylinders then 2GB is actually available, however I've tried to boot using various configurations with the 2GB CF from my Pocket386 and it won't play. the 512MB CF from my Book 8088 is still fine though.

So I need to play around some more, but in the meantime I have a 512MB CF card and a 1GB CF card on the way so I have a few options to try.