Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!percival!bucket!leonard
From: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: My Compaq 8086 is finicky ...
Keywords: no boot from hard disk
Message-ID: <1081@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 1 Oct 88 07:35:00 GMT
References: <10269@vrdxhq.UUCP>
Reply-To: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR
Lines: 51

In article <10269@vrdxhq.UUCP> tom@vrdxhq.UUCP (Tom Welsh) writes:
<I am still having problems with my compaq ...
<
<I tried a later version of dos (MS-DOS 3.2) and it still won't boot
<from hard disk -- only floppy.  I would like to hear from someone
<who has the following configuration and boots from the hard disk
<with no problem --
<
<   Compaq Deskpro (8086 NOT 8088)   (Actually, I have a NEC V30)
<   1 5.25 360K drive
<   1 20 MB hard disk
<   1 3.5 720K drive
<   640K memory
<      (the memory is:   256k on mother board
<                        256k on DAVONG memory board (bought in 1982 and
<                                                     NO memory errors ever!)
<                        128k on AST 6-pack plus)
<
<THe Compaq was originally purchased in Aug 85 (Davong board was inherited
<from my vintage IBM-PC)
<
<To support the 3.5 drive, I use device = driver.sys.  Bizarrely, both
<B: and D: point to the 3.5 drive (B is 360k, D is 720k).

This is normal behavior for Driver.sys. You might try DRIVPARM=/d:1
instead of DEVICE=DRIVER.SYS in CONFIG.SYS. It works with DOS 3.2
and lets B: be a 720k.

<Anyway -- I need help.  (And thanks to the people who suggested I
<check FDISK to make sure I had an active partition...that would be a 
<pretty brainless mistake -- but one I am certainly capable of.  Alas,
<that WAS NOT the problem.)

Here's another suggestion. Use Norton utilities or something to see where
on the disk IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM are. They *must* be the first
entries in the root directory, and IBMBIO must be in a contigous block
*immediately following the directory (ie clusters 2-???). On DOS 3.2
and later, IBMDOS doesn't have to be contigous, but I think it still
has to *start* immediately following IBMBIO.

At work I've had to help people recover from this mistake several times.
It seems that if you tell Norton Commander to copy *everything* on a
bootable floppy, and tell it it's ok to overwrite, it will merrily
copy these two files to the hard disk, and *then* delete the old
ones. This means that at boot, the system can't find IBMBIO where it
expects it....
-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."