PC won't boot - pls help ;)

[seven7seven]

Hi all,

I've been using an old Pentium 1 box as a Wireless Access Point (using Pyramid Linux). It's been running fine 24/7 for about a year or so but a few weeks ago stopped booting.


Diagnosis so far:
Powers on, does POST, but then when it tries to boot off the harddrive it says:

"DISK BOOT FAILURE, REPLACE WITH SYSTEM DISK & HIT ENTER KEY".

I immediately suspected the harddrive had died, but after putting the drive into another PC it worked fine, so it's not the drive (or at least I don't see how it can be. I also tried booting off another hd, same result).

I tried with various IDE cables, nothing.

When I go into the "Auto IDE Detection" in the BIOS, it detects the drive just fine.

However, during the POST it lists the following:

"Primary Master Disk: none
Primary Slave Disk: CHS , Mode 0, 0MB. <--- pretty sure that's a bad sign."


Also, I tried to boot off a (bootable, I tested in another machine) stiffy disk, all I got was:

"Disk I/O Error - replace with system disk & try again". (dono if the floppy drive DOES work tho, so dono if this error is related...)


</diagnosis>


So... could this be a faulty motherboard or ?

I realise this is really obsolete hardware but this machine's got a lot of sentimental value to me: I've had it running headless as some sort of 'server' 24/7 for about 8 years or so, and would prefer not to just dump it



Your help is much appreciated to resurrect this old timer!


Richard

 

[MadMailMan]

Try flash the BIOS. If you can stillfind an image somewhere.

 

[Dean]

Boot using an Ubuntu Live CD (no need to install, just select "Try Ubuntu without making changes to my computer"). If that all works well, you know the problem lies with the HDD.

Have you tried using a different IDE controller on the mobo?

 

[seven7seven]

Try flash the BIOS. If you can stillfind an image somewhere.

Thanks! Will go on an interwebs treasure hunt, hope I find it =)

 

[dj_jyno]

It's not the hard drive (just to make sure, run a full diagnostic test suite like Seagate's Seatools) or IDE controller, since the stiffy drive refuses to boot as well. If I'm not mistaken, those are two separate controllers.

Try setting the disk type to "User (defined)" and press Enter on every column, which will select the values as given by the disk (with the older AMIBIOS, in any case). It's not critically important to get the figures correct, since modern operating systems bypass the BIOS size reading.

As MadMailMan suggested, try finding the latest BIOS image as well.

 

[Hectic]

Is there an option in the bios to do a "time delay" before it tries to access the drive? You could increase the time.
What is the possibility that there is something wrong with boot sector of the hdd?
Not sure if you P1 has usb ports, if so is a flash drive plugged in?
Did you try the other controller on the m/board?
When your hdd is detected, set to lba manually. Did you save your options when you exited?
Are your boot options configured.
Is the cable correctly inserted? red = pin 1? The same for stiffy drive.