Hmm - yes, your CMOS options may be quite limited if there isn't a 'user defined' choice when configuring the hard drive settings. The whole CMOS/BIOS settings concept was introduced with the 386 - and that really does sound like an early one. Do you have a boot diskette? If not, you can get a file here that you can use to create one. It's hard to say what version of DOS might actually have been on there - anything from 3.2 to 5 or 6.xx. Try v6.22 first - it's a bit easier to use. "changed Drive A and Drive B to 3.5" floppy and 5.5" floppy, respectively" Another consideration for a machine of that vintage is that the 5¼" drive was often the bootdrive (A:) - you can't actually switch that from setup, it has to be physically reconnected (if possible). The 'A:' drive will be he one connected to the twisted end of the floppy drive cable. It may even be possible that the 3½" drive is 720K As far as batteries go - nothing much was standard then, odds are the battery is one of those 'Dallas Real Time Clock' (RTC) or similar - which can be difficult to find or change. Best bet would be to see if there is a connection on the motherboard for an external battery - it still goes inside the chassis, but merely plugs in. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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Anyhow - post back with the hard drive info (make & model). I think it's jumping the gun a bit to be thinking of FDD cleaners - first see if you can boot from a floppy. Depending on how badly you want to get this machine going, it may end up being an awful lot more trouble (and expense) than it's worth. While I'm pretty sure that I could get it going, I have the advantage of a very large 'parts' bin ; ) When all is said and done, it'll still be a 16MHz 386 - functional, but quite limited. You may get more satisfaction working with something a bit more recent, such as a 486 or Pentium I - which could be acquired quite inexpensively. Just a thought. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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Hi jboy, Good points about the floppy drives being 720K or the 5.25" being A:. Bad point about FDD cleaber 'jumping ahead'. After 8 years of disuse, the heads are almost guarenteed to be mold/mildew covered. If she tries to boot the drive may mess up the floppy and then she'll have another adventure finding a boot floppy, especially if it's a 360K. M2 Mechanix2Go@Golden-Triangle.com

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You might be surprised - I've worked with (and run) 20 year old machines and never once used a cleaner. At any rate, it seems premature since we're uncertain just what FDD is the bootdrive - and finding a 5¼" cleaner (or even the disks themselves) could well be problematic. If there's dust - blow it out. If the drive is magnetized or suffers from head drift - pretty iffy. Molds and mildew typically grow on organic surfaces - not metal/ceramic read-write heads - although if oils have deposited, that is a possibility (in Louisiana or Florida) While it may be a 360K (usually black) more common would be the greyish 1.2M We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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I think I'm actually getting somewhere finally. I was able to open it up and find the model number of the hard drive and look it up on Google. The model number is CP0104H, and according to www.computerhope.com/hdconner.htm, the specifications are: 120 MB, 762 cyl, 8 hds, 39 sect, 0 WPCOMP, 762 LZONE, and IDE type. Now, I need to tell the computer that in the bios settings, right? Will there be a way to input these values in case there isn't one already preset? I won't be able to attempt this until later tonight, as I'm not at home now. I will look around in the basement later today to see if I can find the original DOS bootdisk--as far as I can recall, it always booted from the C Drive. And I don't know what version of DOS it was, either; I suppose I'll find that out if/when I find the disks. I'll let you know what I find out. jboy said: "When all is said and done, it'll still be a 16MHz 386 - functional, but quite limited. You may get more satisfaction working with something a bit more recent, such as a 486 or Pentium I - which could be acquired quite inexpensively." Oh, I know. I don't have high expectations for its performance; I just want it to run WordPerfect and maybe one of those old games like KidPix or Mario is Missing. And buying another, slightly better computer just won't be the same. This computer was part of my childhood. :) Thanks everyone for all the help so far.

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Oh sure - I wasn't trying to discourage, just letting you know it may take a bit to get this relic going. Depending on your attachment to this machine, you could plunk the drive into a slightly newer machine and run those games & apps (if they still exist on the drive) If you can access the BIOS you need to look for something like 'user defined' to input the actual values. This might not be an option with that machine, and you may have to select the 'best fit' from the predefined tables. Actually, in order to access the drive's contents (assuming they exist) you'd probably want to reselect whatever it had been originally installed as, since that would be the geometry that it was originally formatted and installed under. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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"""""""""Will there be a way to input these values in case there isn't one already preset?"""""""""" As I said in my post, look for "user define" or possibly "type 47" Some of these old machines you must scroll down clear through all the other settings to find the ones you can "set."

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Just been reading above posts. Nothing much to add. <Mechanix2Go> You wrote: If she tries to boot the drive may mess up the floppy and then she'll have another adventure finding a boot floppy, especially if it's a 360K. Just as a point of interest most older DOS Bootdisks on Bootdisk.Com and my own PowerLoad Bootdisk Project are Imaged with WinImage which providding the file content does not exceed 360 or 720kbs can be written to older Low Density 5¼" 360Kb or 7½" 720Kb Diskettes. This can also be done by deleting files other than IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM, FORMAT.COM & SYS.COM (and possibly FDISK is space) to make the content as small as possible, and then resetting the target disk size from within WinImage. The real problem is finding 5½" 360Kb diskettes in the first place. 3½" 720Kb LD diskettes can be produced by covering the second hole and re-formatting it. I describe the use of WinImage becouse it is my experance that the majority of users creating older DOS Bootdisks do so from a modern main PC. Please reply with a message to let us all know we are on the right track...

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I found a lot of stuff in the basement, among them a version of Kid Pix that requires the 5.25" (sorry for the mistype before) disks as well as the 3.5" disks, WordPerfect disks and manuals, and a lot more. I'll list the important disks as they're labeled: Help/Basic/Edit/Utility Startup/Support/Shell MS DOS 6.2 Setup Disks 1-4 MS DOS 5.0 Setup Disks 1-2 MS DOS 5.0 Diagnostic Disk Packard Bell Desktop Disk Packard Bell VGA utilities Lotus Works Program Disk I am so glad my dad made the decision to save everything, no matter how obsolete. I just hope they still work, after all these years. When I get back to my house, I'll try to input the correct hard drive in the BIOS, and go from there. Thanks, and I'll let you know how things work out.

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what version of kidpix is that one you have?

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That's encouraging - those are 3½" diskettes I would think. It seems as if DOS6.2 is (or was) installed. Probably the first setup disk of either set is bootable if there is no other bootdisk. I do recall another 386-16 a while back - the CMOS was pretty rudimentary. On the bright side, yours was all working at one time, so the settings should be doable. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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beosuser said: "what version of kidpix is that one you have?" For anyone that's interested, here's what it says on the side of the box: Version for IBM/TANDY & 100% Compatibles 640K VGA, MCGA, EGA, Tandy Dual Pack 3.5" and 5.25" disks Hard disk required, mouse required, sound card recommended MS/PC-DOS 2.11 or higher Sound Support: Sound Blaster, PS/1 Sound Option, Tandy Digital Sound, Disney Sound Source Programmed by Allen Young Works with most popular printers (monochrome and color) that are 100% compatible with one of the following: Epson 9-pin and 24-pin; Toshiba (not 1300); IBM Proprinter Series, IBM Laserprinter; Apple ImageWriter II, HP LaserJet Series II and III, DeskJet, PaintJet; Adobe Postscript jboy said: "That's encouraging - those are 3½" diskettes I would think." Yes, all those ones that I listed are 3.5" disks. Sorry for not mentioning that before.

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It's alive! I was able to get into the BIOS using the CTRL-ALT-S combination, and changed the hard drive settings to 762 for cyl, 8 for hd, 0 for pre, 762 for LZ, 39 for sec, and it told me it was 116 MB in size. That's close enough, apparently, for it to work. The programs I tried (Storybook Weaver, Oregon Trail, Mario Teaches Typing) all seemed to work perfectly fine. There are a lot more programs on there than I remember--19 of them. I still can't get the mouse to work. I have it plugged into the port where it has the picture of a mouse, next to the port for the keyboard, and the pins aren't bent or anything. It isn't a huge deal, because for a lot of these programs, the arrow keys will suffice. So what should I do to keep it in good condition? Also, is there a way to check in DOS how much RAM there is? Thanks a lot to everyone; there is no way I could have figured this out on my own. I can't believe it actually works.

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That's super. See, it's easy (once you know how). The CTRL-ALT-S method is unique to Packard Bell models, and can even be invoked from DOS. Odds are the next time you go to start it, you may have to enter that data again because of the very old battery - the settings may not stick beyond your computer session. More of an annoyance, although some of those old batteries can leak onto the board. To get the mouse to work, a DOS driver has to be loaded in c:\autoexec.bat or c:\config.sys - you can examine both of those with DOS Edit if your machine is running DOS6.2 or so to see. You may need to get a driver - CuteMouse is one of many available. Memory should be counted up on the initial screen at startup, however you can examine memory usage with the mem command (if this is DOS6.2) mem/c/p will show you how much, and what's using what. You may also have the M$ Diagnostic (MSD) which can tell you quite a bit about the machine - also Syschk can be pretty informative. If you like, you can post the contents of your config.sys and autoexec.bat here - may be able to suggest some changes to optimize things. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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jboy said: "To get the mouse to work, a DOS driver has to be loaded in c:\autoexec.bat or c:\config.sys - you can examine both of those with DOS Edit if your machine is running DOS6.2 or so to see." and "mem/c/p will show you how much, and what's using what." It is running DOS 5.0, and it apparently has something called an Editor (accessed when I type "edit" and press enter), but as far as I could tell, it won't let me look at those two things at the top. I have the 3.5" setup disks for DOS 6.22, but if it's working well enough in 5.0, I don't think I should mess with it. It would be nice, however, to access those two files, just to make sure. Unfortunately, I don't know how. Using mem/c/p doesn't work, because it tells me "too many parameters - /p" Pressing mem at the DOS prompt gives me: 654336 bytes total conventional memory 654336 bytes available to MS-DOS 627376 largest executable program size 393216 bytes total contiguous extended memory 0 bytes available contiguous extended memory 327680 bytes available XMS memory MS-DOS resident in High Memory Area jboy said: "Odds are the next time you go to start it, you may have to enter that data again because of the very old battery - the settings may not stick beyond your computer session." So far, I've restarted it about 4 times, and I haven't had to re-input those values. Amazing, considering the battery is probably about 13 years old.

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That's really something - usually 10 years is about all you can hope from one of those batteries. Yeah - DOS5 mem is a little bit different - to display usage you would enter: mem/c |more (the '|more' prevents it from scrolling off the screen) I'm a little rusty in DOS5 You can try the free DOS Pedit Also, you should have the excellent file manager for DOS - Dosshell (one of their better creations) Seems like that machine only has 1 Megabyte of RAM, probably in 4 x ¼ Mb - 30 pin SIMMs. You could probably find some sticks 1Mb apiece anywhere that sells the really old components. All in all, pretty good resurrection : ) We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

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so, how did the cmos battery was fixed? I believe the cmos battery in a portable pc I would like to use is dead. Or if not, where are those batterires available for purchase?

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