hello So on the 286 i found out that it wants to boot off of the hard disk. I disconnected the b: floppy drive and it keep checking for an os on the hard disk. Then i disconnected the hard disk and it will finally let me boot off the a: diskette drive. Now the problem is i cant find a boot disk that will work on it. I have tried dos 6.22 and dos 5.0 from bootdisk.com. Does anybody know where i can find a boot disk that should work? thanks

Heres the hard drive information. Model #: WD93044-A 4-16-1991 (im guessing thats the date?) S/N:WD2538599 CYL:782 (i think thats the cylinders) HDS:4 (i think thats the number of heads) there's a bar code on the front that has a label on it that says: Model: WD93044-A32-10M P/N: 99-004036-07, CCC: A1 thats all of the information i can find on the hard disk.

The hard drive info required for the BIOS setup is like this Cyl head WPcom LZone Sect size im not sure what size it is because my mom doesnt remember. I also have no clue what WPcom and LZone and Sect means. thanks in advance

Please don't start a new thread--your old one is just a few lines down the page WHAT have you tried for disks? Do you know FOR SURE what size the floppy drive is? Is it 1.44 or 720K? Have you another drive to test? Just about ANY old 286 will look for a floppy drive first--if it's hooked up correctly and set in bios, if the drive works, and if a good, bootable, floppy of the correct size is in the drive.

That's a 40 meg. Drive type 17 should work with it. Those old drive types were based on typical values for MFM drives which usually had a figure of 17 as the sectors per track. MFM drives that didn't match exactly would have to use a drive type that didn't exceed the drives actual cylinders and heads. Otherwise the drive could be damaged if an attempt was made to access a part of the drive that didn't exist. When newer drives--especially IDE's--came along, they often had a 'translation' that allowed them to use a drive type even though it wasn't an exact match. The translation for the 93044 is: 977 cyln, 5 heads, 17 sect, WPComp: 977, LZone: 978 which is the typical values for drive type 17. The actual values for that drive are: 782 cylinders, 4 heads, 27 sect, LZone: 783 Those would be the figures you'd enter when using a user-definable drive type. When it existed, the user-definable type was usually 47. (The write precomp--wpcomp--and landing zone often don't matter for IDE drives--they're mostly for MFM and RLL drives. So when a value must be entered, using just the last cylinder for precomp and the last cylinder plus 1 as the landing zone will usually work fine. The precomp for an MFM type 17 was 300 and the landing zone was 977. But when using 17 as the drive type for an IDE drive, those values don't matter.) Even if you use the actual figures in a user definable type, the HD may not boot if it was originally configured as a type 17. As far as it not booting from the floppy drive, as Name suggests, you need to find out which drives you have and verify they're connected and jumpered properly.

DIC, Name pointed out this is a continuation of : http://www.computing.net/dos/wwwboard/forum/16137.html

hi thanks for the hard disk infomation. Ill input it into the BIOS when i get home from school. As for the floppy drives im pretty sure they are 1.44 and 1.2 because my mom has a bunch of programs like word perfect and other stuff that are all 1.44 and im pretty sure the 5.25 floppies are 1.2 when i put them in my other old computer a couple of years ago.Im guessing that the boot disks i made are not in the correct format for the 286.If i can get the OS on the hard disk working im sure the floppies will work. thanks for all of your help. ill post back later when i get home shane