Is this an FAQ yet??

[Electric Nachos]

I'm sure you've probably heard this one asked a million times - but my web
searches have left me high and dry. Surely some experts here can help or
point me to the correct website??

I have 4 hard drives here that I snatched out of other computers in
desparation to make them work on a little 386 I found for the rugrats. I
thought that by using my (working!!) computer to format these hard drives,
at least 1 would work, but it ain't so!

I use Win 98, and loaded every hard drive on my computer as a removable disk
(only way the things would show up). I also had to format them. But none of
the formatted hard drives work in the 386! :-(

Oh - and wouldn't you know, the floppy drive on the 386 bit the dust before
we even met. I figured by playing with the hard drive - (adding stuff to it,
that is), I wouldn't need a floppy drive.

I'll load the Win98 formatted hard disk into the 386, start the dern thing,
and get a message "HDD controller failure." Now I know that isn't true!! -
Because...





.... well, the 386's operating system (win 3.1) worked BEFORE I started
messing with its original hard drive and... and... I'm too embarassed to
tell my kids I ScReWeD it up!

What do I DO!????????

:-(

 

[Adam S]

I have 4 hard drives here that I snatched out of other computers in

desparation to make them work on a little 386 I found for the rugrats. I
thought that by using my (working!!) computer to format these hard drives,
at least 1 would work, but it ain't so!

I use Win 98, and loaded every hard drive on my computer as a removable disk
(only way the things would show up). I also had to format them. But none of
the formatted hard drives work in the 386! :-(

I'm not sure how Windows formats removable drives. I know that formatting
some flash memory cards via windows makes them unuseable in some digital
cameras, because of the odd formatting. Windows sees flash memory as
removeable drives.

Or, have you formatted them as FAT32? You may need to format them as FAT16.
Use a Win95 boot disk to do the formatting as this cannot format as FAT32.

I would Install each drive, one at a time, as the only drive on the primary
IDE. Boot using a Win95 boot disk, then fdisk and format them like that. I
would also get a floppy drive and do it in the 'new' 386 box where they are
going to live.

Adam S

 

[kwthom]

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 23:39:19 -0700, "Electric Nachos"

I have 4 hard drives here that I snatched out of other computers in
desparation to make them work on a little 386 I found for the rugrats. I
thought that by using my (working!!) computer to format these hard drives,
at least 1 would work, but it ain't so!

Um...didja think that the BIOS in your machine might be a bit
different that the one in the 386?

I use Win 98, and loaded every hard drive on my computer as a removable disk
(only way the things would show up). I also had to format them. But none of
the formatted hard drives work in the 386! :-(

Oh - and wouldn't you know, the floppy drive on the 386 bit the dust before
we even met. I figured by playing with the hard drive - (adding stuff to it,
that is), I wouldn't need a floppy drive.

Well, this is the FIRST problem to solve; get the computer a
functioning floppy & try that.

I'll load the Win98 formatted hard disk into the 386, start the dern thing,
and get a message "HDD controller failure." Now I know that isn't true!! -
Because...





... well, the 386's operating system (win 3.1) worked BEFORE I started
messing with its original hard drive and... and... I'm too embarassed to
tell my kids I ScReWeD it up!

What do I DO!????????

1) Is the original 386 HD still intact? If so try that; see if you
can get the system to function in it's original state.

2) Manually set BIOS in 386 machine to recognize one of the HD's,
then, using floppy, boot with Win95/98 floppy & try to reformat.

Are you sure your BIOS can recognize the sizes of the HD your using?

Luck to ya...

--kw

 

[Hamman]

I'm sure you've probably heard this one asked a million times - but my web
searches have left me high and dry. Surely some experts here can help or
point me to the correct website??

I have 4 hard drives here that I snatched out of other computers in
desparation to make them work on a little 386 I found for the rugrats. I
thought that by using my (working!!) computer to format these hard drives,
at least 1 would work, but it ain't so!

I use Win 98, and loaded every hard drive on my computer as a removable disk
(only way the things would show up). I also had to format them. But none of
the formatted hard drives work in the 386! :-(

Oh - and wouldn't you know, the floppy drive on the 386 bit the dust before
we even met. I figured by playing with the hard drive - (adding stuff to it,
that is), I wouldn't need a floppy drive.

I'll load the Win98 formatted hard disk into the 386, start the dern thing,
and get a message "HDD controller failure." Now I know that isn't true!! -
Because...





... well, the 386's operating system (win 3.1) worked BEFORE I started
messing with its original hard drive and... and... I'm too embarassed to
tell my kids I ScReWeD it up!

What do I DO!????????

:-(

How big are the disks? I've had no luck with anything over 100Mb in my 386.

hamman

 

[Mac Cool]

I'll load the Win98 formatted hard disk into the 386, start the dern
thing, and get a message "HDD controller failure." Now I know that
isn't true!!

If I remember correctly, I had to manually input the cylinders, sectors
and whatnot into the bios on all my early (386 & 486) computers.
http://www.wimsbios.com/index.htm?/HTML1/advanced.html

The hard drives are almost certainly too large to work properly with a 386
bios; there are operating system limits also, you may need to use a hard
drive utility.
http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddrive/68
http://www.educom.demon.co.uk/info/disk.html

Last thing, most modern cables are ATA66 or above, while 386s used ATA33
cables. It might make a difference or it might not.