Help! installing OLD hard drive in not so old machine

[CalebGaston]

I want to take an old 171MB HD (IBM model WDA-L160) and take it from an old
486-50 computer into my not so old P-133.....

Now, I want to keep the info on the HD if possible; I've tried just hooking
to the hard drive to my P133, but I guess it's not that simple as the HD
stops right after the bios finishes...(Yes, the Bios did set up the HD specs
for me).

So, do I have to wipe something off of the HD to make it work with the new
system...or am I missing something more obvious? And I DO want to keep the
old info on the drive...

My system just HANGS...even when I choose command prompt from my boot
disk....it acts like it will work, and then stops.

If I don't setup the drive in the CMOS, I can use the boot disk....but if I DO set it up in CMOS, it just hangs at the "Loading Windows95."

Thanx for any help...
C. Gaston

[emcron]

You can keep all the info on your hardrive the problem might be that you did not make the old hard drive a slave by setting the pins on the hardrive. You should see a few pins on the hard drive and a little plastic thing that connects two of them and then connect the two that make it a slave. After that just do the setup again.

Hope that helps

[This message has been edited by emcron (edited 06-06-99).]

[gardd]

You may need to get the disk parameters that were used in your old 486. Your drive was installed in the old machine using parameters like x cylinders, y heads, and z sectors per track. If you duplicate theses parameters in a user definable drive type on your p133, the drive should at least boot to a command prompt. To boot to windows, you may have to go through several gyrations of "hardware detection".

[Ed_S]

As emcron said, it must be jumpered correctly. The 170 should be set as slave, BUT you'll also need to check your other drive to be sure it is set as master. Some drives set up different for master than for stand-alone. Also be sure you have ribbon cable correct, red stripe to pin 1 on drive. The bios setup should auto-detect, but if not, the specs for that drive are at

http://www.storage.ibm.com/storage/techsup/hddtech/wdal8/wdal8jum.htm

You should print that page, old data could be deleted from their website anytime.

Once that's all set correct, should boot no problem. Will be seen by operating system as D:\, this will move any other drives (including your CD) up one letter. D becomes E, E becomes F, etc. Any software which references these drives will need to be edited or reinstalled.
Your data on the 170 should be safe and immediately accessable, although programs probably won't work since when they were installed, the drive was C:\, and Windows programs will be missing their registry references, DLL's, etc. Anythin dos-based should run fine after you reset it's data location.

Hope this helps. Good luck.