Packard Bell-redeemable?

[COLN]

This week we received a donation of a Packard Bell Legend 994CDT. With no manual, this may be one of the donations that gets donated to trash. It does boot up 80 percent of the time and reads Phoenix bios 4.04, 133mhz. Only has 24mb ram which we could probably fix. When it boots up, it starts off with "color" but the desktop color disappears. The icons are in color though. Very strange Note with the pc says the Fujitsu HD is a replacement. Several times when I first starting playing with it, it came up with VFAT errors, not a good sign. I thought the older teens could put one of the spare 1.2 drives in it but the setup screen doesn't have a "autodetect" for another HD. Should we just toss this one or is there anything redeemable about it? Remember the center can use almost anything if we can get it to run consistently.:(

[ukulele]

Let the kids get it running right. It'll give them some pride if they can fix it. If they can't, they will still benefit from the experience.

[rangeral]

I'd let them try another hdd and check if your using onboard video or a pci card probably a 2mg if its there and might try another card from the junk pile see if it clears up the problem or could be the monitor. If these are all the machines your getting might as well try and make one that works with the parts from other machines.

[ukulele]

the setup screen doesn't have a "autodetect" for another HD.

A lot of the older machines don't have auto detect for harddrives. Just set up the drive parameters manually in bios. Just write down the cylinders, heads and sectors on the cover of the drive and enter it into bios manually. If the CMOS battery went bad then this information could be lost so check that first. Also some older boards won't detect drives over 512 MB without a bios update or third party software.

[paramufay]

133mhz will usually support up to 6.4 gig HD

I would repair this unit and use it.

boost the ram up to 80 megs and win 98se will run fine.

im posting/running the net and basicly doing most of my pc stuff with a 133.

[rmanet]

Originally posted by ukulele
A lot of the older machines don't have auto detect for harddrives. Just set up the drive parameters manually in bios. Just write down the cylinders, heads and sectors on the cover of the drive and enter it into bios manually. If the CMOS battery went bad then this information could be lost so check that first. Also some older boards won't detect drives over 512 MB without a bios update or third party software.

ukelele's right, replace the cmos battery, enter the bios settings, go to the fujitsu site for their drive software (usually has a workaround - ezbios or equivalent) to get past the bios limit - boot from the floppy you can make with their software, have the floppy format the drive and, like paramufay says, install your win98se and you're good to go

and I ran ME on a P133 laptop successfully for months with 72 megs RAM on a laptop - if you go that route the ME install has a switch to "ignore" the requirement for a P150 or better

[COLN]

I'll let them transfer the HD but not sure if it will work in that there is no place to enter all the usual, head,cyl, etc. I have never seen a BIOS setup like it before. It lists two options, DOS or other where I am looking for LBA and lists the drives, HD and floppy but nowhere to enter data. Very strange pc Unless there is another setup screen I don't know about which is quite possible It says to use F2 so that is all I have tried.

[ukulele]

This does sound like a weird bios to me. Maybe you can find out more about it with a thorough web search. As far as installing Win98 goes, it works just fine with 32 mb ram. In fact when it came out that was pretty much the normal amount most computers had. If the drive is not being recognized right perhaps you can just divide it up into smaller partitions and don't enable LBA. Just keep them under 512 mb each.

[Sterling_Aug]

CMOS batteries are very cheap online.

Upgrade the BIOS (if you can find a new version)

http://www.wimsbios.com

I just got 72 pin SIMM's for $6 per 32 MB stick, so a RAM upgrade can be under $30.

[COLN]

Thanks !! everyone. With your help and one of our teens found a really old Packard Bell site, they will accomplish something or have fun trying.:)

[ukulele]

Cool! :) They'll probably have more fun fixing it then playing games on it anyway. I might even be able to help with some upgrade parts so PM me if you need some older ISA parts. I have lots of old boards in the bone pile.

[omega31]

Would that old Packard Bell site be Ray's Packard Bell Web Site (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/8774/index.html)?