OT: HP Vectra question

The HD is probably so old and infirm that it has not spun up by the time the BIOS asks it "are you OK?". It will die permanently soon.

Why not install a massive 4GB USB pen drive for all of $5 instead?

I am not surprised. Everyone that worked on those is probably long gone by now. Their service dept only deals in kit that is within a reasonable working lifetime. Max ram was something under 256M CPU 200MHz - mobile phones have an order of magnitude more computing power.

You should be able to buy a second owner recycled corporate computer 1GB and 2GHz for around $50 that will leave these wrecks for dust.

Find if there are any CMOS backup cells in the units and replace them, if keeping the PCs for which there are many good reasons to replace unless married to specific addin cards and lab equipment.

Can you write the exact error message as it shows on the screen?

For the installation of early hard drives it was important to decribe in BIOS either the hard drive type number, or the number of Cylinders, Heads and Sectors (CHS) it had. Your hard drive probably (because of size) prefers LBA mode - which might not be turned on, so the BIOS is feeding default CHS parameters to the OS.

Probably not a complaint, it's just showing that there are empty 'slots' for drives, and that there aren't drives installed in them. If this message has recently appeared, perhaps this comfort display was previously hidden (a BIOS option) and have recently been reset to show.

New cells, reset BIOS settings to default, then configure what doen't work.

It's too ancient for them to care...

Like Martin already stated: they are at the end of their life. Just replace them.

• Not true; passes Spinrite with flying colors and works perfectly in other computers.

• Does not support USB in any shape size or color..

• I _need_ the ISA support.

Time will tell.

Dinosaur! Legacy motherboards with ISA are still available for a price although you would probably be better off looking in a junkyard...

Even the longest lived scientific instruments I have worked on migrated to modern expansion bus archictures more than a decade ago.

Regards, Martin Brown

That won't say anything about the actual state of the hard drive. You could replace it with a compact flash card. Some of my test equipment used IDE drives. I replaced all of them with compact flash.

In that case you can take a look on Ebay to find a new motherboard and CPU. Maybe you'll need a different case as well. Recently I bougt a brand new Pentium overdrive CPU for a piece of equipment based on a

Its difficult to pinpoint the exact cause but your systems are getting flaky one way or another. I'd replace them because its a sign saying there is bigger trouble ahead.

There still is quite a lot of new hardware out there for use in older systems. Ebay and dealextreme.com are good sources.

The oldest BIOS'es sometimes had hard-coded disk characteristics in the BIOS setup; this quickly was dropped in favor of reading the disk info from the disk, BUT it sounds like your disk drives may be bigger than your BIOS is happy with. It doesn't like the numbers.

There were multiple workarounds, including disk drive jumpers that made large disks pretend they were small ones.

Your best bet is not HP, but the hard drive manufacturer; the 'setup' disks that come with drives can help (and in cases of old hardware, OLD VERSIONS of those setup disks are vital). Try searching Usenet archives (groups.google.com, and comp.sys.hp.hardware).

These are pre-Compaq merger, probably made in Grenoble. Not much chance any current help-desk jockey has a clue about these. The one reply below suggesting new battery for the cmos backup may be right on target. I had a couple of old Vectras go bonkers, the new battery was all that it needed to come back to life. Resetting all the cmos data then, of course.

good luck, Bill

• That might work in a more modern (but obsolete) computer. But even with a fancy interface card suggested & available via Amazon one could NOT boot from it.

• Ooh! That would be extra neat! I have obtained a Pentium slot 1 and ASUS MB for a "backup: computer (for that guy we have never seen..Mister Justin Case). Had problems with the ASUS MB as ASUS lied in a number of places in the manual.

those

and

Thanx for the HP ref.

look into PC104. you can get PC104 to ISA adaptors.

a machine with no USB is most unlikely to have PCIe