Help setting up a 386

C

calculon000

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
Ok, so I got this 386 from a friend, and I had to put it together myself, the sound works for speakers, but every time I boot it up it it gives me the error message:

Disk I/O error
Replace the disk, and then press any key
Click to expand...

Is it referring to the floppy disc drive, or the hard drive?
How do I get it to work so I can finally put an OS on it and use it?
 
Are you using a boot up floppy when you turn it on? Is the hard drive a new one or did it come with the 386?

If you haven't already, search around for an MS-Dos boot-up disk on-line, put it on a floppy and try starting it with that.
 
I created a DOS boot disk and put it in the disc drive before I turned the computer on. Same message popped up.

The light on the disc drive is constantly on when the computer is on, is this a bad thing? I don't think its supposed to do that.

I have no idea wiether or not the HD came with the 386, my friend just gave me a bunch of parts from is pile that he's collected from all over the place.
 
I turned the ribbon cable the other way and it added another error massage to the one that is already there:
Diskette drive 0 seek failure
Click to expand...
so I'm assuming the floppy drive is not the problem, its the hard drive.
 
Hmm. The HD shouldn't really have anything to do with the ability to boot up from a floppy. The drive might be damaged. But... have you tried to mess around with the boot/floppy drive settings in the BIOS?

I don't know how much you actually know about hardware but if you're unsecure it could be a good idea to keep notes about what settings you change.
 
Yeah, I messed around with all the boot and drive settings, and nothing worked. I was afraid it would be a damaged HD.....

I guess I'll have to take the HD into some place to see whats wrong with it or buy another old HD.
 
As I said... the state of the HD should in no way hinder the comp from booting up from floppy. Have you checked that the boot-disk you made boots up any other computer? And have you checked those little pins on the back of the floppy drive which sets the floppy to slave/master?
 
After (Finally) getting the plastic backet off of the floppy drive, I noticed that on the underside there was a defective connection. My mom says she can take it to work and try an re-soder the connection. I'm just going to ask the guy I got the parts from for another floppy drive.
 
I just thought of something else - you might want to check to see if the hard drive is set to "slave" or "master". Find info about the hard drive brand online, then check the hard drive for the little 2-pin connector and make sure it's in the right spot.
 
The HD is set to master and the cd rom is set to slave. The same cable is hooked up to the HD, cd rom, and motherboard, and its labeled "slave" for one connector and "master" for the other, so I'm pretty sure I got that right. lol. A seperate ribbon-cord connects the motherboard to the floppy drive.
 
I got a new floppy drive and its reading the disc, but now it says
"diskette read failure" I'm wondering if the boot disc I made with winxp is incompatible with this machine.

When I checked, it turnes out that the computer isn't actually a 386, but a "Dell system OptiPlex GXM 5100"
 
Whatever a Dell OptiPlex GXM 5100 may be, I have the weird feeling my washing machine has more calculating power than that.

Does it work with electricity or you need a small steam engine? ;)
 
8) well, here are the specs I got from the bios:
100 MHz
32 MB RAM

It's a Pentium 1 that, according to a sticker on the outside case, is designed for windows 95.
 
Go to this site:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Has everything to help you to make a working boot disk. Download the boot disk copy and paste it in your disk. And it has drivers for old CDs. So even if your HD does not work you can use the old CD driver.

Are you sure that pentium is not 166? In the slots it has two 16 MB or four 8 MB memory module?
 
SUCCESS!
THANK YOU EyeMaster7! It finally did something when I made a boot disc from that website! Yay!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

now to get it to recognise the existence of the HD and cd-rom...

by the way, what's the command to go into the bios when it starts up?
 
Ok, I have a windows 95 cd in the cdrom, and it reads fine, but its not recognising the HD, which is set to master, and the CD-rom to slave. How would I go about getting it to recognise the HD, as win95 will not install untill I create a dos partition for it on the HD.
 
I'm an idiot

All this time fdisk kept telling me there was only 1 drive, which I assumbed meant the floppy drive. Turns out it was showing me the HD, because when I looked at the size, it said "1221 Mbytes"

now its just a matter of creating the right partition that win95 setup will accept.

Fdisk lets me create partitions, but I cant get into the C: drive, and setup keeps telling me that it needs 7MB when there is a 100MB partition already made in the c: drive. Help?
 
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