#hard drives
5 messages in this thread
Hello to all, Help Help Help.! I've just found out how extraordinarily
complicated it can be to put a new hard drive in an old machine. I have a
Hyundai Super 286-C with an Award Bios 3.03c and Hyundai's very own Super
286-C System Board. Hyundai? You say. Yes they manufacture computers as
well as cars. My Hyundai has been an incredibly reliable machine. Purchased
in July of '88 and Never been down. I've added 2meg of expanded Ram,
Scanner card, 2400 Baud modem, 3.5" drive, Mouse and never had trouble
finding what was compatible until I began looking for a hard drive.
My problem is this I need to put in at least 100 meg (formatted) of
storage. I'll have no problem sacrificing the existing Seagate ST238R 30
meg RLL drive. As long as I get 100M. The Seagate is a Half Height 5.25"
drive. So I need a drive no larger than that (no space for a full height).
I thought of going for a SCSI because of there dimensions but SCSI hasn't
been in the IBM world long enough for me to do that.
My attention was turned to a Conner CP-3104 IDE. IDE is basically a MFM
drive (it uses MFM encoding). After numerous calls to both Hyundai and
Conner information for using this drive is a mess.
It seems Hyundai has discontinued the 286-C, which uses floppy controllers
on the system board and a Western Digital WD1003RAH Hard Drive controller,
and has come out with the 286-E using both controllers on the system board.
The hard drive controller is Conner's embedded SCSI or embedded IDE(MFM)
depending on the drive put in the machine. This is all fine and dandy;
except for the fact that the people at Conner say that I should upgrade my
Bios to Awards 3.05, but it may work with Bios 3.03c, and the people at
hyundai say maybe I should maybe I shouldn't change my bios they're not
sure.
Doesn't changing your Bios mean extensive modifications to your Mother
(system) board? Can anybody suggest a drive that I can use without making
these changes. Are these changes necessary, are they as bad as they seem?
What should I do, which direction should I go? I'd appreciate any and all
responses.
Thank you very much,
Ronnie,
Changing the BIOS usually just means pulling the old BIOS chip out of the
socket and sticking a new one in. I've never had any experience with a
Hyundai, but I doubt any motherboard changes would be necessary. (As long
as the BIOS isn't soldered to the motherboard, which I've never heard of
happening in any PC.) As for who to believe, my guess would be Conner.
Since there aren't that many BIOS's out there, it seems more likely that
they would know which ones work with their drive than that Hyundai would
know about every one of the (myriad) hard drives and/or controllers on the
market. My advice is to find out the price of a new BIOS and then decide
whether you want to risk it.
— Wayne
Wayne, Thank you for quick response. I've spoken with a friend of mine just
this morning (23rd), our conversation confirms your beliefs. I am now going
to get in touch with Award Software for the price of the Bios. I'll let you
know what happens. Thanks again and Have a Good Day. — Ronnie.
Ronnie,
I know what you're going through as I had some surprises when I installed a
72meg miniscribe in my 286-AT (Sperry). The problem with the big drives is
that DOS (less than 4.1) can't handle more than 1024 cylinders and the bios
has a similar problem when you try to do a low level format. I have more
than 1024 cylinders and didn't have to mess around with the bios as I am
using a driver made by OnTrack Computer Systems (1-800-752-1333) it might
be an idea to give them a call. I think the Disk Manager Formatting
software and driver is somewhere around $24 or so. I suspect getting an
upgraded BIOS may be more expensive. Also the driver gets around the
problem of DOS not utilizing the whole disk space. I suppose new BIOS won't
hurt anything but you might want to consider this software solution as
another option if you still have any trouble.
–Joe
No, changing the BIOS is a matter of unplugging the BIOS Rom's and plugginh
in the new set. I'd go with the new BIOS.
Tom G.