I have an IBM PS/1 Expert

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeffrey Alsip
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeffrey Alsip

This is an old 486 with 32M of RAM.

Could somebody please supply a link for a bios upgrade? The lenovo site
has been very little help. Google has also failed to supply the link I
need. I assume that it will be in the form of a floppy disk image
file...but this system is so old (although the machine I have is brand
spanking new) that it may just no longer be available.

Thanks, in advance, for any help.

Jeffrey Alsip
 
magnate said:
Er, what's wrong with the installed BIOS?
Click to expand...

Everything works fine. It just lacks the ability to support a CD drive.
I checked my parts pile and found an unused 4x CD Drive from
approximately the same time period. It installs perfectly (in the spot
where the 5 1/4" floppy was), but the bios only wants to recognize
anothe hard disk...and only 512M or less, at that. I remember having an
old 386 Grid that I was able to get a CD to work on...so I believe this
will work with an updated bios.

This is not a critical system, its just a hobby (Hey, I wonder if I can
get this thing to work?) situation. This box was brand new in the
packaging when I came accross it. It had never been powered up until I
did it. I have come to believe that an packaged unused system from 1992
is something of a rarity, so I think it deserves a littlew attention.

I have a copy of OS/2 Warp...but need a CD Drive for the full install.

Jeffrey Alsip
 
Everything works fine. It just lacks the ability to support a CD drive.
I checked my parts pile and found an unused 4x CD Drive from
approximately the same time period. It installs perfectly (in the spot
where the 5 1/4" floppy was), but the bios only wants to recognize
anothe hard disk...and only 512M or less, at that. I remember having an
old 386 Grid that I was able to get a CD to work on...so I believe this
will work with an updated bios.

This is not a critical system, its just a hobby (Hey, I wonder if I can
get this thing to work?) situation. This box was brand new in the
packaging when I came accross it. It had never been powered up until I
did it. I have come to believe that an packaged unused system from 1992
is something of a rarity, so I think it deserves a littlew attention.

I have a copy of OS/2 Warp...but need a CD Drive for the full install.

Jeffrey Alsip
Click to expand...

Chances are, there is no such BIOS for this dinosaur that would
recognize any CD drive. Even more recent vintage systems (Gateway
p75, for one) couldn't do that. Your best bet is to use a DOS / Win9x
CDROM driver that does not require the drive to be recognized by BIOS.
The Gateway I mentioned would boot to DOS and then install NT4 from
the CD, but then NT would not see the CD drive no matter what (gave up
after 3 NT re-installs), so the only way to use CD was to reboot to
DOS, xcopy the data to FAT partition, reboot to NT again. Another way
is to get a SCSI CD drive and an ISA SCSI host adaptor - they are
around $10 each on pricewatch. Then SCSI BIOS and driver will take
care of that - as well as of the HDD larger than 512 MB you might want
to install - 4GB/10k rpm refurb was $12 last time I checked.

NNN
 
Jeffrey said:
Everything works fine. It just lacks the ability to support a CD drive.
I checked my parts pile and found an unused 4x CD Drive from
approximately the same time period. It installs perfectly (in the spot
where the 5 1/4" floppy was), but the bios only wants to recognize
anothe hard disk...and only 512M or less, at that. I remember having an
old 386 Grid that I was able to get a CD to work on...so I believe this
will work with an updated bios.
Click to expand...

ISTR BIOSes did not natively recognise CD drives until boot-from-CD
happened, which was way after 1992.
This is not a critical system, its just a hobby (Hey, I wonder if I can
get this thing to work?) situation. This box was brand new in the
packaging when I came accross it. It had never been powered up until I
did it. I have come to believe that an packaged unused system from 1992
is something of a rarity, so I think it deserves a littlew attention.

I have a copy of OS/2 Warp...but need a CD Drive for the full install.
Click to expand...

I also have Warp. You need to boot from the install floppy (I think the
floppy image is on the CD, if you've lost the original floppy). That
will find the CD drive without needing any BIOS upgrade (a la MSCDEX).
The install should go fine.

Re the 512MB HD limit: this is a BIOS issue. There were TSRs you could
run to gain access to the extra space, depending on the HD mfr. I
wasn't familiar with the IBM one (I used Quantum & Seagate). If the HD
is the 540MB standard for that time, it's hardly worth the trouble for
the final few MB. If it's a 1Gb or bigger, then it's worth trying to
sort it out.

Good luck,

CC
(I still have a perfectly functional 32MB 486DX4-100 which until
recently was my print server. Not sure what to do with it now, apart
from play roguelikes.)
 
Jeffrey said:
This is an old 486 with 32M of RAM.
Click to expand...
Could somebody please supply a link for a bios upgrade? The lenovo site
has been very little help. Google has also failed to supply the link I
need. I assume that it will be in the form of a floppy disk image
file...but this system is so old (although the machine I have is brand
spanking new) that it may just no longer be available.
Click to expand...

www.hardwarehell.com specializes in older PCs. Do you have the
explosion-proof version of the PS/1? IBM made one.

Unless you need to boot from a CD, you should be able to run a CD drive
even without BIOS support, at least with DOS or Windows, by loading 2
driver programs, one in the CONFIG.SYS file, MSCDEX in the AUTOEXEC.BAT
file.
 
Unless you need to boot from a CD, you should be able to run a CD drive
even without BIOS support, at least with DOS or Windows, by loading 2
driver programs, one in the CONFIG.SYS file, MSCDEX in the AUTOEXEC.BAT
file.
Click to expand...

Right you are. The CD is never recognized on the bios screen...but runs
perfectly when OS/2 is loaded!
 
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