I'm trying to back up files from an old 386 PC (unused for some years). The battery was dead on first attempt so I had to reset the BIOS. I've added the C drive (automatic find) which now reads OK, but there is also another drive in a card slot and I can't remember how this was set up, ie is it via some settings in config.sys or autoexec.bat? Or will the config for it be written on the drive somewhere and I have to fill in the details by hand in BIOS? The 3 1/2" floppy drive settings were also missing in BIOS. Not sure now what size it was - is there some way to tell? I started off trying to use a serial link with laplink software (on both pcs) to copy over the files to a Win 2000 pc. Eventually managed to set options so they appeared to link - but probably the disk sizes on the 2000 pc are too large for the programme to handle so it wasn't possible to copy anything over. Any suggestions?

"there is also another drive in a card slot and I can't remember how this was set up" Is the drive itself attached to the card, or is it not, but it's data cable(s) is(are) attached to the card? Pulling the card and finding the model of the card and the drive, and searching with that/those should help. Generically.... - early IDE drives do not respond to the "identify" or similar command the autodetect feature in Setup uses - you have to set up the parameters manually, or choose a drive type with identical or very similar parameters. - in most if not all cases, you can't manually set the parameters for, or autodetect, a hard drive in the bios Setup unless it's IDE and is connected to the mboard IDE header(s), or to an IDE card in a slot if you don't have mboard IDE headers. You certainly can't do that for a RLL or MFM drive there, if it connects to a card. - if the drive is IDE it has a 40 pin/wire data cable connection - if it's RLL or MFM, it has a 34 pin/wire data cable connection instead of a 40 pin one, and you don't set it up in the computer's bios, which in most cases is only necessary for the IDE drives. In that case the card has it's own programmable chip and own configuration utility. An RLL or MFM drive should work automatically if it's set up right in the cards configuration and has been partitioned and formatted. Although, if the drive itself is not attached to the card, if the 34 wire data cable wasn't connected and you connected one, a 3 connector RLL/MFM data cable has different wires flipped between the middle and end connectors than a floppy data cable does - a floppy data cable won't work with a RLL or MFM drive on the end connector. ..... "The 3 1/2" floppy drive settings were also missing in BIOS. Not sure now what size it was - is there some way to tell?" It's probably 1.44mb. 3 1/2 720kb drives were used in later XT and early 286 computers - after that 1.44mb drives were standard. .... I'm assuming you set up laplink on the 386 after booting from it's C drive. Depending on what Dos version is on the 386, the max size of a partition Dos 6.22 and previous can recognize is 2.1 gb - the partitions on the drives on the 386 are probably a lot smaller than that, and they are probably a lot larger than that on the 2000 computer unless you're using old drives. But you probably have another problem. Dos 6.22 and previous (Win 95 versions previous to OSR2 and previous, actually), cannot recognize FAT32 or NTFS partitions, either of which are standard for hard drives in Win 2000. 2000 can recognize older FAT versions fine. The easiest way to copy the files is probably connecting the 386 C drive to the 2000 computer as slave on either IDE, or as master on the Secondary IDE, and simply copying the files to a folder using something such as XXCOPY, which will copy hidden files too. As far as the drive on the card goes, if it's IDE, if you can't detach the drive, you will probably have to free up the IRQ the card needs - that's probably either 14 or 15 - by disabling one of the IDE controllers in the 2000 computer's bios - the standard Primary IDE uses 14, the Secondary 15. If the 386 has just one onboard IDE header, or has no IDE header and has an IDE card in a slot the C drive connects to, the card with the drive on it is probably using IRQ 15. However, you may be able to set the card to either IRQ 14 or 15, or possibly another IRQ, if it has jumpers for that.