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I recently received an old 486DX PC from someone who had it in their attic for four years. When I got it home I tried installing windows 95 on it and it told me I already had an OS on it that could not be upgraded. After a while I stupidly formatted the hard drive only to realize I did not know how to Install DOS on it again. I came to this site and found a link to a web site with a MS-DOS 3.30 Bootdisk. It worked but I guess I should have figured it would only boot with floppy in the drive, and it does not recognize my Hard Drive or CD-ROM only the floppy drive. If anyone has any idea to get me on the right track or tell me how to Install DOS, and get it to recognize my CD-ROM and Hard Drive, I would really appreciate it.
Check the bios boot sequence to see if it can boot from the CD. If not, then go to
www.bootdisk.com
or
http://www.geocities.com/k_semler2002/linkz.html
and get a win95 bootdisk. Boot with it, check your partitions with fdisk (option 4 is the lookup), and if it's OK, esc out, format the drive, and load win95.
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The problem is that CD devices weren't even invented at the time DOS 3.30 was around so of course there is no support for them.
Follow Dan's advice and you will be fine.
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If you're going with 95, dos 7.0 is there, embedded on the CD. Just load that (95). (Unless you wanted a dual boot system with a lesser version of dos and windows.)
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I heard a trick to get win 98 to load on slower computers ( setup.exe nm )instead of setup.exe . I want to try it I have got a 7.1 boot disk. I'm not sure exactly how to get the FDISK program to work. The CD-ROM drive still not recognized so I can't get anything off the windows 95 or 98 disks or for that matter any other CD-ROM.
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Check the HOWTO and INSTALL GUIDES on the left of this page for details on using fdisk and then proceding with the install. There's really no need to use the /nm switch on setup, but if you feel better about it, go ahead. It bypasses the processor check. I've loaded 98SE (Second Edition) on a 486DX2 and it ran fine. Memory will affect the speed at which 98 runs on that machine, but it should run OK.
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A 486 BIOS will not a recognize CD drive - the drive has to be loaded from the OS with DOS or Windows drivers.
Yeah, any DOS version before 5 would be quite limited (no built-in memory management for one thing).
On a 486, my preference would be to install 622 first, then Win95. As mentioned earlier, you can 'switch' between DOS622 and Win95 - fairly handy on a 486, which will run Win95 somewhat slowly (depending, to a degree, on how much RAM). A fast hard drive helps too.
There are various versions of Win95, large disk support is only available from the 'B' version onwards, but probably not a problem - your machine probably wouldn't support a large disk in its BIOS, either.
DOS3.3 is pretty archaic - see if you can boot with a more recent version - it should recognize your HDD - otherwise you may have to setup the drive - or worse.hth
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jboy is entirely correct. (As usual. Thanx jboy.) ;>) I forgot that factor.)) I had to sys the drive, create a config.sys and autoexec.bat, copy the cd driver/mscdex.exe over to c:, and boot loading the cd driver. If this isn't done, when the system restarts to start windows to complete the setup, it'll "drop" the cd as the system at that point doesn't have the cd parameters set up yet.
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I thought i would take a look in the old AT case too see if any wires were lose. I noticed that the cd-rom which uses somthing similiar to a jewl case called a disc caddy pugged into some kind of sound card. I am really confused. I tryed using a program I found on www.bootdisk.com to get the cd-rom drive working but no luck. Still I don't know how to get it to boot dos of the HD. It only boots with the bootdisk in the A: drive . If the boot disk is not in the floppy drive it gives me the error message :non system disk or disk error. I'm really frustrated, thinking about buying a newer system and giving up.
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Ok, it sounds like the CD is one of the early, proprietary ones, if it connects via the soundcard. You may need to check with the card manufacturer's site and check for an installation program for the CD-ROM.
'non system disk or disk error' generally means that the DOS system files are not on the HDD. Good idea to enter the CMOS/BIOS and ensure that the disk is setup correctly there - hopefully you'll have 'autodetect hard drive' feature - you may have to run that. I would recommend getting a DOS622 bootdisk or similar recent version - really old versions of DOS could only read 32 Mb partitions. Boot from that and run fdisk, and check the drive status (4) - it's possible that the C: drive hasn't been set as 'active'.
If all is ok with fdisk, from a: enter:
sys c:
...and if you see 'system transferred' - then you should be able to boot without a floppy - you'll have a minimal 'bare bones' DOS OS installed - enough to start the computer, but precious little else - you'll need the rest of the DOS622 external commands to setup memory management and your CD etc.
Post back with progress ;-)
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I just got it to boot DOS from the HD! Was reading other posts and saw (sys C:) command. Now I just got get the CD-ROM working and install Windows.
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The sound card is a media vision spectrum MVA416. I can't find the driver for it.
Also isn't the power supply fan supposed to run all the time? I don't think that the PS fan works at all I feel no air when I put my hand behind it and it gets realy hot if you leave it on halfhour+
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Yeah - no fan on the PS can be Big Trouble!
That fan cools off the power supply itself, as well as the interior of the computer (which mainly heats up from the cpu chip). Not all 486's were equipped with a cpu mounted fan, so you may encounter heat problems - heat can shorten the life of the processor.
Generally (I think) if the power supply gets too hot, it will cut out - but I may be mistaken - it would be a good idea to replace either the fan or (easier) the whole power supply, if you are *sure* the fan isn't turning.
Glad you have the HDD booting - did you use the 3.3 disk? If so, you may want to upgrade, as stated earlier, 3.3 is severely limited.Try driverguide and see if they have a DOS CD driver for that model.
login: drivers
pwd: all
In addition to the driver, of course, you'll have to load mscdexe.exe - you will need the external DOS files for the version of DOS you have 'sys'ed onto your machine - I do recommend DOS6xx or thereabouts.
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There is a fan on the cpu and one on the ps but the one on the ps doesnt run. I've been running it with the case open.
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Yeah, well that will help cool the processor, but it won't do much for the power supply itself - eventually it may overheat and die.
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... only if you want to use them in DOS.
Assuming you want to use the CD to install Win9x, yeah, you should try and track down the specific DOS driver for it. The soundcard isn't quite as important, although you may want to use it in 'DOS mode' for games etc - odds are if you find the CD driver at the manufacturer's site, you'll find the soundcard software too. Windows may or may not have the appropriate Windows driver for your card, depends on which version you end up installing. If not, it should be available online somewhere.
First things first though, you should probably fix your PS problem, install a recent version of DOS and setup (at least) your CD drive.hope this has been some help ;-)
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I found a Socket8 MB with a AT form factor! My friend has a 200mhz Pentium Pro Machine with only the Motherboard damaged! I'm going to strip them both and put everything out of the Pentium Pro Machine in mine. (Except The Mother Board)This should be fun...
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 USB 2.0 Boot from DOS
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plzz help
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