Booting a tabletop.. help needed

[bojan]

Hi guys... maybe someone could help me with my problem:help:
After a HDD failure (PCMCIA ATA HDD) on my Fujitsu tabletop, I am trying to replace it with flash card... Which is recognized as HDD by the bios from the start when the card is inserted in the HDD slot.
After booting from floppy, the system can use the flash as a C drive without problems.
I even transferred the system to it (by sys c: command), but then the trouble starts: computer does not want to boot from such C drive, it just hangs there... despite all the system files are there and visible via dir command (after booting from floppy, of course). The flash card was formatted before sys transfer...
But wait, there is more... another story is going on in parallel:
I can not use the new PCMCIA ATA HDD's in PCMCIA slot of my desktop to transfer the necessary files (w setup) ..
When I insert the the HD in PCMCIA slot, it finds the new hardware and installes the driver (PCMCIA interface) but after this it does not recognizes it as a separate drive or volume or whatever... so I am sort of stuck here.... Now, I can try to install windows from floppies (have to find them first), but this is a hard work....

What is so special about HD and boot sectors on them? Could flash card have one? and why flash card as it is now does not want to boot? And, what can I do about it?
Does anybody have the driver for PCMCIA ATA HDD? or any suggestion that may help here?
Soo many questions :eyepop:


Edit: When tried to install the system from floppies, fdisk behaves OK, new partition added etc etc.. but then the setup program says it can not write to boot sector and terminates.

[Zuts]

Hi Bojan,

(1) If you have a CD Rom and can boot from that then maybe you can create a bootable Windows install disc and boot from CD drive to install windows.

(2) If you can boot DOS, maybe you can install some network drivers and transfer an image of Windows to your PCMCIA hard drive and then boot dos and install windows.

(3) Try and boot a copy of ubuntu linux (the one that can fit on a USB key) and then connect via a network to copy the windows install to your PCMCIA HDD.

Paul

[Barrykgerdes]

I don't know the tabletop and the system you were running but why not replace the HDD and start from scratch from your original disks. There are many things I would try but they all depend on the actual computer.

Barry

[bojan]

Paul, thanks for this, I will try it later.. if I find a way to connect CD.
The problem is, my Fujitsu tabletop is Stylistic1000, and it has only 2 PCMCIA slots (one for HD, another one for flash card adapter), and floppy interface (accessible when the battery is removed).
So it is a bit tricky..
What I really need is to access PCMCIA HD somehow via another computer.. or to make flash card bootable or both...

[bojan]

Hi Bary,
Thanks for your post..
I am running w'95 (yes... 95.....
I can install the windows from floppies but there are so many of them and I am trying to find an easier way.
I have setup files (W95 cab subdirectory on CD), so I can in principle copy this and install the system from HD, but first I have to access it .. Catch 22....

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi
When you set up the replacement I imagine you used fdisk. Did you remember to set it active. I don't know the PCM1A card but I would imagine it contains some hardware, programmed to make it appear as a conventional HDD
Other than this the boot sector contains nothing more than an address in the first couple of bytes to point to the boot loader program a little further down the sector which gives the particulars of where to find the operating system.
The HDD 1st cylinder has two sides. The 1st physical cylinder contains the partition table (and some other material often used by OEM to do things at start up ). The other side of the cylinder contains the boot sector (1st logical sector) followed by the FAT table (2 copies) and directories. The size and type of these is set from the partition table.


I have did have Windows 95 on Floppy disks but I only have it archived on CD now. I once had a laptop that only had the Floppy disk drive and it was a real pain to load with Windows 95!

Barry

[bojan]

Hi Barry,
Yes, the partition (on flash) was set to active.. and it appears to BIOS as conventional HDD, but there was this error (while attempting to write to boot sector during running setup, however sys C: was executed OK, still resulting in non-bootable C drive).
Maybe I should try with some other flash card manufacturer??

[bojan]

Or perhaps the PCMCIA adapter has to be the right one??

[Paul Hatchman]

Bojan,
You need to put a boot sector on your flash card. You can try running "fdsk /mbr" to do this (mbr stands for master boot record).

If you still have problems, try checking out the articles on http://www.bootdisk.info/

Cheers.

[bojan]

Paul,
thanks for this info.. So others have done it already, as usual :-) ..
http://www.instructables.com/id/SS41FDMF23Z3A6Y/
I will try this afternoon and let you know the outcome :-)

[bojan]

OK..
I tried and fdisk came back with an error: "Error reading fixed disk. The master boot code has NOT been updated".

[bojan]

Ok guys, success :-)
The secret is revealed here:
http://www.gamebeat.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1057

[Zuts]

Congratulations :)

Paul